A paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity

David Cameron and Greensill: all n Letters and debate n Iran negotiations perfectly proper and above board n Royal family Nazis - according to the authorities n Nationalist nightmares No 1342 April 8 2021 Towards a mass Communist Party £1/€1.10 LOYAL SERVANTS OF LIBERAL BOURGEOISIE weekly 2 April 8 2021 1342 worker LETTERS

Letters may have been This is a strange argument for agricultural commodities (wages) and extending them becomes manifest with the repeal of shortened because of space. Some names for a Marxist to make. Capitalist and so commodity production in back into history, rather than the Corn Laws.  may have been changed production begins in the towns in agriculture. analysing each historical period Arthur Bough the 15th century, as the towns grow, Even, then, of course, as in its specificity. It is even more email creating the minimum size of market Marx describes - and Lenin also incongruous to do that at the same Blind alley required for capitalist production to establishes in ‘On the so-called time as trying to claim that the law Gramsci Writing in Weekly Worker, Ammar be able to undercut the independent market question’ - this commodity of value, as a natural law, only exists Debates over how Gramsci’s writings Kazmi asks me to “promptly handicraft producers. It’s why, as production in the countryside is not under capitalism, or indeed that the have been interpreted and deployed explain” and “correct” what I Marx describes, capitalism has capitalist production, unlike that concepts, value and surplus value, can be helpful in clarifying important wrote in my article, ‘Defend David to begin in the towns and such already established in the towns. only exist under capitalism, when questions of left strategy. But David Miller’, about the professor’s industrial production rather than in But, the commodity economy now it’s quite clear that they operated Broder makes a disingenuous and “alignment with pro-Shia groups” agriculture. But it’s precisely for implanted in the countryside creates for thousands of years prior to misleading point in his article, ‘The (Letters, March 18). I am very this same reason that the number of the basis for the differentiation of capitalism, in different forms - each misuses of Gramsci’ (February 25). happy to respond - not to correct or wage workers employed in capitalist the peasantry into proletarians and of which has to be analysed in its Broder states that “Gramsci retract, but to further emphasise the production remains tiny, compared bourgeois, just as the differentiation own specificity. That indeed is the had ended comradely relations main points. to the number of petty-commodity of the independent commodity real lesson and foundation of the with Togliatti in October 1926, The thrust of the article was producers, and peasants. Indeed, as producers in the towns had done Marx-Engels theory of historical when the latter refused to pass on to defend David Miller, his rights Marx writes in Critique of the Gotha previously. materialism. to the Russian leadership his letter to free expression and broader programme, even in the middle The increased pressure from To say “The development of critical of the tone of exchanges academic freedom in the face of a of the 19th century in Germany, rising feudal rents on the peasants capitalism in agriculture and in trade with the Left Opposition”. Broder’s concerted assault. The defence of peasants comprised the majority sharpens this process, as Lenin’s laid the basis for the introduction intention is to suggest a fundamental free speech is essential, especially of society. So for the majority of analysis of it in Russia illustrates. of industrial technology that led to divergence between Gramsci and given the current attempts by the society wages can play little role in The peasants with more fertile land, the so-called Industrial Revolution Togliatti from this point, so as to Johnson government, the Labour relation to living standards during or otherwise better placed, are able and industrial capitalism” is back support his argument that Togliatti leadership and sections of the this period. to meet these rents, by expanding to front, as the analysis of Marx misrepresented Gramsci’s politics, media to undermine it, such as in Roberts’ analysis seems similar their commodity production, and and Lenin demonstrates. Simply when developing the PCI’s post-war their attacks on the left and their to that of Friedrich Lange, which vice versa. The poorer peasants, throwing peasants off their land strategy. witch-hunt against anti-Zionists and was criticised by Marx, and of more dependent on domestic cannot lead to capitalist production, Of course, what really “ended supporters of Palestinian rights. Petr Struve, who utilised Lange’s production, find themselves unable because, as Marx describes, that comradely relations” between the However, in defending his right argument in relation to Russia. to compete with the capitalist has happened throughout history, two friends and comrades from to free speech, it is also important Struve was criticised by Lenin, who production of commodities in the going back to antiquity, without Sardinia was that, at the beginning for Marxists to point out the political also dismissed Lange’s argument. towns. They become wage workers resulting in capitalism. Instead it led of November 1926, Gramsci was differences we have with David Even if we assume that the number under the ‘putting out system’, and simply to various forms of slavery, imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist Miller: we defend his right to speak, of non-capitalist wage workers become increasingly incapable of and a sinking back of the level of regime. Further direct debate but we do not support his political increased - in other words, workers devoting enough time to their own development. Capitalist production and dialogue became impossible. position and alignment with the employed by the feudal lords as land even to produce their own can only become established if it is Nevertheless, there are multiple Muslim organisations, whether Shia retainers, etc, and paid wages - this subsistence. more efficient than existing forms pieces of evidence that Gramsci’s or Sunni, that Ammar cites in his still represents a small proportion of In Russia, as Lenin illustrates, of production, which means it has views in prison anticipated key letter. society. they then rent out their land to richer to take place on a large scale to take elements of Togliatti’s post-war As I argued in my original article As Lenin points out, dismissing peasants, becoming themselves advantage of economies of scale leadership approach. (and which Ammar quoted in his this same argument from Struve increasingly proletarianised. Some and division of labour, even prior Furthermore, as detailed in letter), this is because Marxists and Lange, it’s not wages that become full-time agricultural to the introduction of machines. chapter 20 of Andrew Pearmain’s are opposed to “a sectional determine the living standard of the day labourers; others move to the But, such large-scale production can new book, Antonio Gramsci: and religiously sectarian form direct producing peasant, but (a) towns to become industrial wage only occur when sufficiently large a biography (IB Tauris, 2020), of politics” and instead stand the fertility of their land and (b) the workers. As the richer peasants markets have developed - otherwise Togliatti made serious attempts to for the universalist, “radical, proportion of their product taken now are able to employ such day the produce cannot be sold. contact Gramsci in prison, so as to secular traditions of the workers’ from them by the landlord in feudal labourers, their money revenues, Those large markets can only seek his views on developments movement” (my emphasis). Our rents, by the church in tithes and by which previously only acted as develop in the towns first on the within the movement. In June 1930, working class politics must be the state in taxes. money, can now become capital, basis of the development of urban Togliatti asked Gramsci’s brother, based on the independence of the What does happen during employing wage workers to produce industrial producers. There is no Gennaro, to visit him to request his workers’ movement from bourgeois this period of growing capitalist surplus value. It’s by this process, basis for such to occur in agriculture opinion on Stalin’s move against the and religious ideology and industry in the towns (especially as Marx and Lenin describe, that first, because the peasants, even ‘right opposition’ in the Soviet party, organisations, whether state, church as the growing merchant class also capitalist production, which starts the poorest peasants, are able to and the implications that this had for or mosque. brings in exotic products from in the towns, becomes transferred to eke out their subsistence from the the Communist International. That does not mean that we overseas) is that, as global trade agriculture. land without any requirement to Gramsci’s scope to feed back his do not support the freedom of expands - also creating a basis for But, this occurs a long time go to market to meet their needs. views was limited by his lack of conscience of religious believers capitalist industrial production, as after the capitalist development of If they are dispossessed of their access to reliable information, and by or fail to welcome them into the Marx sets out in the Communist industrial production in the towns, land, they become slaves or serfs, the strict supervision of his meetings ranks of the workers’ movement: manifesto - the feudal lords find as Marx also describes in Capital. not wage workers employed by with Gennaro by the fascist prison we stand alongside oppressed themselves requiring a larger The urban capitalist production capitalist farmers, because there guards, but there is no evidence groups internationally, and support surplus product, as the commodity places increasing demands on the is no basis for the latter to exist. If to suggest that he was in principle their battles for democracy, such economy expands. They seek to old agricultural production in the they are employed as wage workers, opposed to picking up and further as the struggles of Iranian workers buy this wider range of industrial countryside, which continues for it is not by capitalists: ie, they are developing his comradely relations against the Islamic Republic. products - especially since, as Marx a long time, causing increasing not paid out of capital, but out of with his fellow Sardinian and old Marxists distinguish between, explains, the towns on the basis of pressure on the land, given that the revenue. It’s only after a long period classmate from Turin University on the one hand, reactionary this capitalist production begin to peasant producers continue to utilise of development of capital in the days. ideologies, whether religious or exploit the countryside via unequal the old methods. It not only leads to towns, and the growth of an urban Mike Makin-Waite secular, and the power structures exchange. It’s this which causes their own exhaustion, but to them proletariat, that the demand for email which uphold them, and, on the the landlords not only to move exhausting the land itself through agricultural commodities reaches a other hand, individual believers, from labour rents, through rent in overuse. Indeed, as once again Marx stage when capitalist production in Useful idiots? who can be won to the movement kind, to money rents - as they need describes in Capital, it’s only when agriculture becomes possible. Sticks and stones may break my to end oppression and to the cause money to buy this expanded range this has led to large-scale ruination Confusing the Industrial bones, but words will never hurt me. of socialism. of industrial commodities - but also of the land that capital begins to Revolution after 1800 (actually So goes an old adage. But, of course, This means we must critique all to increase the proportion of the invade agricultural production - and the Industrial Revolution is words can be hurtful: it all depends reactionary ideas and organisations peasants’ output that must be handed to reorganise it, and to apply capital normally taken as having started on the context. However, words which represent a blind alley for the over as rent. It’s that which impacts so as to raise its productivity and in 1760) as the commencement cannot be made to de-exist and nor working class, not accommodate the living standards of the peasants, restore its former fertility. of industrial capitalism is to make can the use of any words be claimed our politics to them or give them not changes in wages, given that the Incidentally, this process shows the same mistake as Jean-Charles as the sole prerogative of any self- credibility in any way. It is this type peasants are not paid wages! how silly it is to talk about ‘the de Sismondi, or the Narodniks defined group. of accommodation on which we The need of the peasants to law of value under capitalism - in and Nikolai Danielson in Russia, Words, especially in the context differ from David Miller. It would acquire money to pay rents, tithes particular, the existence of surplus as Lenin describes - for example of social rejection, can be extremely be wrong to hide these important and taxes, where previously they value in capitalist accumulation’, in A characterisation of economic hurtful - as indeed can certain differences of political principle and only needed to supply surplus because it’s quite clear that the law romanticism. Industrial capitalism gestures or behaviour (which is so, while we support the campaign labour or surplus product, means of value here operates in relation had started in Britain centuries why in most legal systems there to defend him, we also continue to that peasants must now also begin to the non-capitalist commodity prior to that, and prior to capitalism exist laws which make it a criminal assert our right to disagree with his to produce commodities, rather than production. Moreover, it’s also quite entering agriculture. The former is offence to offend the dignity of political positions. engage entirely in direct production. clear that the independent peasant the necessary condition for the latter. another person or group). But words, Derek James As Lenin describes, it’s this boost to producer who pays a money rent What occurs after 1760 is the phrases and concepts can also be London the commodity economy - as the to a landlord, pays over an amount development of machine industry, weaponised usually by those wishing peasants must engage in increased of surplus value, rather than simply and the increasing role played by to stifle debate in order to promote Strange domestic production and begin to surplus product. It’s the existence relative surplus value. It also creates some religious, ethnic or political Michael Roberts says: “Then from divert a portion of their agricultural of this surplus value, arising the material conditions for the objective. 1450 to 1600 the population (and output to commodity production, from non-capitalist commodity growth of this productive capital Internationally, the most obvious labour supply) recovered and real in order to sell to an increasing production that makes possible the relative to the antediluvian forms and persistent case is that of the wages fell. In 1630, the English town workforce - which creates establishment and accumulation of of capital that previously dominated conflation of the nationalist political economy was back to almost the basis for the differentiation of capital itself in the first place. - commercial capital and financial philosophy of Zionism with the exactly the same point it was at the peasantry. That is not possible Michael seems to have made the capital. It creates the basis for the religion of Judaism. According to in 1300” (‘Capitalism and labour until capitalist development in mistake of bourgeois academics of dominance of industrial capital this definition, anyone opposing the productivity’, April 1). the towns promotes this demand taking the categories of capitalism over those previous forms, which politics and policies of the state of BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3XX l 07903 054393 l www.weeklyworker.co.uk l [email protected] weekly worker 1342 April 8 2021 3

Israel is defined as ‘anti-Semitic’ cannot be obliterated. And driving prices and rents in central London Friday April 30 - Monday May 3 - in other words, expressing a them underground merely guarantees are falling fast, as many middle hatred of Jews. This has the effect their longevity in hurtful contexts. class Londoners are selling up of intimidating individuals and of Context is all and laws already exist and moving to the suburbs and the Online Communist University shutting down debate on a major to deal with those who would hurt countryside due to the expansion of human rights issue. others by sticks, stones or words. home working. With the ‘buy to let’ However, this form of ethnic The mob howling now for the market on the verge of collapse, we nationalism has been widely head of Habib display their ignorance may soon be witnessing Beckman’s condemned - most recently last of history and language. They are long-predicted collapse in house week by 200 Jewish intellectuals perhaps useful idiots, helping to prices - more recently echoed by in what has been dubbed the promote the tribal fragmentation august institutions such as The Jerusalem Declaration on Anti- of the working class majority. And Economist magazine and the Semitism (JDA). It is the latest in that can only help to serve the very Warwick Business School. statements that have pointed out that system that creates and maintains the As in the 1930s depression-era politicians and ideologues can and racism they complain about. USA, we can see the spectacle of do use ethnic, religious, linguistic Terry Bell empty properties at the same time and other fundamentally superficial Cape Town as homeless families. In 2021 USA differences to divide, rule and this has been clearly shown in the manipulate populations. Council housing Oscar-nominated film Nomadland, But news of the JDA, certainly here I first became interested in housing starring Frances McDormand as a Coups, putsches in South Africa, was overwhelmed when I came across the book, The senior citizen who lost her home by another ruckus about the use of downwave: surviving the second and pension in the 2007-08 sub- words: the so-called ‘N-word row’ great depression by the late Robert prime mortgage credit crunch. Now, at London’s School of Oriental and C Beckman, in 1984. like many thousands of American and revolutions African Studies (SOAS), involving Beckman was a disciple of the citizens, she travels across the USA its director, Adam Habib, former ‘Kondratieff wave’, which says that in her camper van in search of Friday 7pm vice-chancellor of Wits University there is a 45-65-year cycle in the temporary work. Mussolini’s March on Rome - in Johannesburg. In a discussion in world capitalist economy. Whilst Closer to home, I have personal glorious myth and sordid reality which he made clear that the use of many statisticians have shown that experience of the widespread Speaker: David Broder offending terminology would not this theory is statistically incorrect, homelessness that is affecting people be tolerated at SOAS, he mentioned Beckman made many millions of in the UK, especially amongst the - correctly in the context - the pounds through the sales of his young. My 26-year-old nephew has offending word. books - The downwave selling over been sofa-surfing for the last three Saturday 10am He was promptly dubbed, by what 500,000 copies. years ever since he came out of Hitler’s beer hall putsch - a dress can only be described as a vocal mob, Beckman became famous in the prison. When he has nowhere else rehearsal for 1933? as a racist. And they maintained that 1980s for predicting that house to stay for the night, he sleeps on a Speaker to be confirmed the context did not matter: only black prices would collapse following a mattress in my mother’s front room. people could use the term. Habib, of big expansion in the private rental I have tried to get my nephew Indian ancestry, was not apparently market. At a certain stage it would a rented room in a house in multi- Saturday 2pm black enough. So, according to this become cheaper to rent property occupancy, but rents here are £100- grouping, the ‘N-word’ may only be than to rent money from a bank plus a week, whilst the local housing Louis Bonaparte’s 1851 self-coup: used by those they define as ‘black’. or building society. Whilst house allowance (LHA) for a single person the army, universal suffrage and Does this mean people defining prices did fall a little in the early is only £65.35. He is on the housing referenda themselves as ‘black’ may use it 1990s, however, the big collapse in waiting list for Clarion Housing, Speaker: Mike Macnair in all and any context, even when house prices is yet to happen. which took over Fenland’s council it is aimed to cause pain by social For many years now I have housing under New Labour, but he rejection? believed that the big dividing is in ‘band C’ - meaning in reality And does this ruling also apply to line in politics is not whether one that he will never get a flat. Saturday 6pm the South African equivalent of the supports the nationalisation of the I have tried everything to help How the August 1917 Kornilov ‘N-word’ - the ‘K-word’ [‘Kaffir’]? top 150 monopolies, but whether my nephew find accommodation. coup was defeated Not only has author Fred Khumalo, one supports the building of council I have contacted his probation Speaker: Kevin Bean by using this word in context, houses. Margaret Thatcher clearly officer, as well as social services and shown how silly is this ultra-woke did not want council housing - Fenland district council, but no-one censorship, but the word is also to hence the selling off of five million seems to want to help. At the same Sunday 10am be found - again in context - in justly council houses through the so-called time, the council has - temporarily praised works of literature. Imagine ‘right to buy’ from 1980. due to Covid-19 - housed 54 street The August 1953 coup against describing a scene in rural, apartheid However, as Thatcher famously homeless (mainly migrants) in Mohamad Mossadegh: the CIA’s South Africa, for example, where replied, when asked what her local hotels and bed and breakfast first Middle East coup a white farmer threatens a black biggest achievement was, she did accommodation. Speaker: Yassamine Mather worker. It would be a travesty to not say privatisation or winning The housing crisis is a crisis print the dialogue as ‘I’m going to the Falklands war, but “Tony made in 10 Downing Street. It kill you, you bloody K-word.’ Blair and New Labour”. Blair and started with Thatcher’s selling off Then there is, of course, the his chancellor, Gordon Brown, of council houses under the ‘right Sunday 2pm ‘F-word’, which was most definitely following in Thatcher’s footsteps, to buy’ and the failure of successive Turkey 1981: the nature and likely to cause offence to a great did not support the building of governments, including New significance of the generals’ coup many people, even a decade or two council houses, but preferred to Labour, to build council houses. Speaker: Esen Uslu ago. But this short-form description expand the private rental market The so-called ‘benefit cap’ and the of fornication is now fairly by allowing ‘buy to let’ mortgage cuts to local housing allowances commonplace in films and even interest to continue as a business have added to the numbers of in some mainstream publications. expense. street homeless, the numbers of Sunday 6pm And at a time when the publication In contrast Jeremy Corbyn sofa-surfers and the numbers Left responses to the events of of ‘short-form fornication’ was wanted to build 100,000 new in temporary bed and breakfast January 6 severely - even legally - frowned council houses per year, whilst at accommodation, whilst £32 billion Speaker: Alexander Gallus upon, so too was the use of the term, the same time building 500,000 a year goes to subsidise private ‘queer’. But it became, in our sexist private houses. But even Corbyn, landlords through housing benefit. society, quite proudly appropriated along with his shadow chancellor, What should be done? Well, Monday 10am by homosexual groups. The word, John McDonnell, had bought into for a start Marxists must be much ‘gay’, also underwent a similar Thatcher’s so-called ‘property- more ambitious than the Labour The Arab Spring and Egypt’s transition in recent decades. owning democracy’. 100,000 new Campaign for Council Housing army coup against radical Islam Depending on the context, even council houses works out at only (and Left Unity), which parrot the Speaker: to be confirmed now such terms can be used in a 150 per constituency per year, whilst call of Corbyn and McDonnell hurtful way. Context - it includes there are three million people on for the building of a meagre apparent intent - is vital. And, for current council housing waiting lists. 100,000 new council houses a year. Monday 2pm all the current furore, it is not only Anneliese Dodds, shadow Marxists would be well-advised to words with racist connotations chancellor under Keir Starmer - in copy the policy of Socialist Appeal, The nature and global significance that, in certain contexts, would spite of pressure from the Labour which calls for the building of of January 6 be hurtful and harm the dignity Campaign for Council Housing, one million new council houses Speaker: Daniel Lazare of someone they were directed at. which calls for the building of each year, whilst at the same time What about those words - in a sexist, 100,000 council houses per year nationalising the banks and the male-dominant society - referring - is lukewarm when it comes 10 big private house-building Monday 6pm particularly to the female anatomy? to committing a future Labour companies, along with all land. Why prime minister Jeremy Or those referring to male genitalia? government to building houses. As Marxists we must put an end Dependent again on the context, I Dodds has said that Labour will to the so-called ‘property-owning Corbyn would have faced a have found it either ridiculous or keep the disastrous ‘right to buy’, democracy’. By building millions coup and how we can defeat simply vulgar to be called a ‘silly but will allow receipts from council of council houses, together with counterrevolution old C-word’ - especially since the house sales to be spent on building controls on private rents, we can put Speaker: Jack Conrad reference is to something I do not new council houses instead of the all private landlords out of business. possess! The same would apply to money going to the treasury, as By doing this we can put an end Further information and free registration are available at what, for the sake of apparent super- currently happens. to ‘blood-sucking landlords’ - and communistuniversity.uk/spring-cu-2021 and political correctness, I should refer to As many capitalist and socialist homelessness and overcrowding at facebook.com/cpgbcommunistuniversity as the ‘P-word’ - something I do at economists have pointed out, “the the same time. Organised by CPGB: www.cpgb.org.uk and least have. UK is a private housing market John Smithee Labour Party Marxists: www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk The simple truth is that words with an economy attached”. House Cambridgeshire weekly 4 April 8 2021 1342 worker RACISM

Marching in lock-step with liberalism, the labour bureaucracy and race industry professionals Servants of liberal bourgeoisie Anger is an insufficient response to the Sewell report, argues Paul Demarty. The left needs its own critique of liberal anti-racism mong the many evils of the (Interestingly for an essentially Tory different minorities). Class is of institutionalised racism can be of liberal responses to the Sewell Commission on Race and document, they credit this result to mentioned, mostly to emphasise the denied. Take the government’s report is not theoretical so much as Ethnic Disparities, there is “the progress won by the struggles well-understood fact that the worst anti-extremism Prevent strategy, rhetorical: they speak from a place A 2 the trivial matter that it released its of the past 50 years” rather than the levels of educational attainment are which embeds Islamophobia into where the facts and figures just report as the Weekly Worker was usual bunkum about ‘British values associated with white working class our school system by ordering do demonstrate the persistence of going to press last week, leaving me of tolerance and respect’.) Later, boys. teachers to report “suspicious” structural racism, and therefore from with my name against an article on this claim is expanded to address the The report’s recommendations Muslim children … We see young a kind of epistemic closure, whereby anti-racism which barely mentioned widening scope of the word ‘racism’ are standard fare: relations black men far more likely to the counter-explanations of Sewell it. in liberal discourse: between police and ethnic minority be stopped and searched by the and co are a priori ridiculous. But that may be a blessing in communities must be improved. Metropolitan Police, and twice There is an important element of disguise, since ours is a society It is certainly true that the There should be more ‘accountability’ as likely to die in custody. British truth in this, of course, which is that obsessed with hot takes - ie, shallow concept of racism has become for stop-and-search actions, and Pakistanis are paid 15% less than the report really is, as Begum claims, gut reactions - and the takes on much more fluid, extending stronger enforcement is needed their white British peers. And how an “insult”. The commission was set this report burn with the fire of a from overt hostility and against racial discrimination through can we forget the entire Windrush up in the wake of last year’s Black thousand suns. They are also, on the exclusion to unconscious bias a beefed-up Equalities and Human generation who were degraded, Lives Matter protests, which claimed liberal side at least, overwhelmingly and microaggressions. This is Rights Commission and various denied hospital treatment and the lives of at least one statue. dreadful, and testify to the brittleness partly because ethnic minorities other bodies that should be set up to benefits, and many deported by Perhaps too much attention has been of liberal anti-racism far more than have higher expectations of look at disparities in different areas a home office that saw British shone on the specific political biases the ‘racism’ of Tony Sewell and his equal treatment and, rightly, (health, education and so on). They people as foreign because of their of Sewell and a Johnson crony like colleagues on the commission (if the will not tolerate behaviour that, also suggest that the term ‘Bame’ race?4 Munira Mirza, formerly of Spiked, report seriously breaches a rule of only a couple of generations (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) both of whom are on record as liberal political decorum, it is surely ago, would have likely been should be abandoned, since it creates The peculiar thing here is that denouncing the idea of institutional by being explicitly patriarchal rather quietly endured or shrugged an unhelpful amalgam that obscures several of these objections relate or structural racism (Mirza was not than racist). off. The fact that this generation the detail of the question. to issues discussed in the report. on the committee but was involved So what is the view of the expects more is a positive aspect For example, it is not the case in setting it up); nonetheless, the commission? In his introduction, of integration. However, there Antagonists that Sewell and co are unaware of whole endeavour was plainly a Sewell and co readily admit that is also an increasingly strident We shall get into the problems with disparities in the application of stop Tory initiative. On the face of it, this racism continues to exist in the form of anti-racism thinking [sic] this account of racism in due course, and search. Instead, they explicitly process looked like the carrot to go form of white prejudice against that seeks to explain all minority but it is perhaps more fruitful to deny that these disparities are due with the stick of clampdowns on the ethnic minorities. There are also disadvantage through the prism introduce its antagonists at this to institutional racism in the police: right to protest. Yet the document those ‘disparities’ in achievement of white discrimination. This point. The liberal critique of the “it is the commission’s view that before us is not so much a carrot, but between various ethnic minorities diverts attention from the other Sewell report focuses on its blunt the story in this area has not been another stick, painted orange. and the white majority that give the reasons for minority success and denial that Britain is structurally focusing enough on the disparities To the angry protestors of last year, commission its name. The latter, failure, including those embedded or institutionally racist: this flies in in crime, and often violent crime, it really does say, ‘You’re wrong, however, are not primarily to be in the cultures and attitudes of the face of successive reports into that lie behind stop and search.”5 there are no serious problems, so stay explained by the former: those minority communities different aspects of society, going They go on to quote that notorious in school and try not to get suckered themselves.3 back to the Macpherson inquiry into racist, David Lammy, on this point. into “strident anti-racism thinking”’. Put simply, we no longer see policing after the Stephen Lawrence This means that Begum’s job - as This is the sort of thing that modern a Britain where the system is The commission, therefore, case. (Doreen Lawrence herself the spokesperson, no less, of an anti- liberals like to call ‘gaslighting’, after deliberately rigged against ethnic decided to follow these disparities popped up to denounce Sewell and racist think-tank - is to refute this the Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight, minorities. The impediments “upstream” to their true causes and, co.) We can quote the ‘hot take’ of claim, rather than simply motor on in which an abusive husband slowly and disparities do exist, they are most controversially, their findings Halima Begum of the Runnymede as if it had never been made. drives his wife insane by subtly varied, and ironically very few centre on the state of family life and Trust, in a round-up that appeared in To do so, of course, would manipulating her environment. of them are directly to do with to some extent on ingrained cultural The Guardian: demand alternative hypotheses There is, therefore, much justice racism.1 behaviours in certain ethnic groups concrete enough to test against in the accusations of cherrypicking. (to explain the disparities between Neither the existence nor the extent the evidence. But the framework One example was usefully pointed weekly worker 1342 April 8 2021 5

out by Kenan Malik - also in the means of representation, which is We must, then, seek after reduce it are dangerous utopianism. exploitation - trade unions, mutuals, Spiked orbit, but apparently the to say, the bourgeois professional the sense of these extraordinary Yet ‘equality of opportunity’ is a workers’ political parties - were only one whose brain has not been ‘class’. (More usually called the assertions. And it is not hard to goal shared by the liberals whom gutted, destroyed or politically microwaved by the experience. ‘professional managerial class’, I find: if the analysis of institutional the SWP refuse to criticise. For tamed. In his own Guardian article he prefer to use the B-word to highlight racism necessarily leads people them, too, either inequality is simply This has led to some important notes that the report cites, as an that this social layer, which is not to anti-capitalist consciousness, assumed, or the occasion of risible questions disappearing from the explanation for certain disparities, strictly a class in Marxist terms, has then there is no need for soi-disant ‘solutions’ (teaching everyone in agenda, their being - in an age of its being as a function of bourgeois socialists to make any criticisms deindustrialised towns how to code, trivial rates of industrial action the lack of fluency in English rule, and in fact always has. As at all of Runnymede Trust types and things of that sort). and ‘capitalist realism’ at the within Bangladeshi and Mike Macnair likes to put it, if you (the Socialist Worker piece also level of high politics - essentially Pakistani communities: “Among want to talk to a capitalist, you talk quotes Begum, it so happens, and Race or class hypothetical. They were not 45- to 64-year-olds, 17.4% of to his lawyer.) she will likely find the Socialist The Sewell report is not wrong to always, however. Suppose you are Bangladeshi women and 9.0% of Workers Party article a rather more say that many of the ills attributed a trade union rep on a building Pakistani women were unable to Inferior pleasant read than this one). The to ‘race’ are ultimately a matter of site. Some of the workers on the speak English” … It’s a stretch All on the left will share the mass movement against racism class, in other words. Indeed, they site are vulgar racists. It is a duty to suggest that the inability of a liberals’ revulsion at this report, will spontaneously grow over into do not go nearly far enough, since to challenge such racism, of course. small number of older women on some level. However sincere one against capital and the state; many of their ‘other’ contributing However, when the time comes to to speak English is a significant the individual members of this the class character of bourgeois causes - for example, family go on strike, you need those racist contributor to the economic committee, its composition - of anti-racist liberalism is irrelevant, breakdown and background crime workers so far as possible to vote disadvantages their communities MBEs and CBEs, authoritarian except inasmuch as it will leave levels - are, insofar as they are real, for action in a ballot and to maintain face. Around 3% of Britons of educationalists, charity bosses and the ‘revolutionaries’ as the ‘best very closely correlated with social discipline during the walkout, and Bangladeshi origin and 2.1% business luminaries - was clearly no fighters’ for the movement, since class as well. The big lie is the point you need them to do this, regardless of those of Pakistani origin accident, and the result is inevitably their tactics will be the more where they and their Guardianista of how successful you have been in cannot speak English. To put a purely apologetic exercise. militant and therefore effective. critics are agreed - that education disabusing them of their prejudices. that in context, the figure for the The trouble is that the backlash This is, in substance, the same and associated ‘equality of Otherwise they will scab and Chinese community is 2.3%, yet among run-of-the-mill liberals strategic framework that governed opportunity’ is the remedy. the strike may be defeated. The it is taken by the report as a model presents a theoretically inferior the popular front policy of Georgi Once we take it as ‘natural’ experience of united struggle can, community that has raced ahead model to the inquiry’s findings, Dimitrov, and it is the long-standing that there are only a few places at of course, have its own ‘educational … The commission distorts the which at least state their reasoning policy of the SWP in relation to its the top, however, we accept that effect’, but even if it does not, and data to pursue polemical points. clearly and provide their data, as anti-racist work, though it is getting ‘management has a right to manage’, our racist colleagues remain as It criticises others for seeing opposed to the essentially anecdotal more craven by the year.8 and more broadly it is the business ignorant as they were to begin everything in racial terms - but character of their opponents’ Instead of telling ourselves just- of the bourgeois elite to produce with, it is in the interests of black does exactly that when it suits its responses. If our ‘natural’ allies so stories, we must make a serious a pliable workforce for ongoing and Asian workers that their action agenda.6 behave more deceitfully than our attempt to confront the relationship economic activity. This produces succeeds, and therefore that their ‘natural’ enemies, whom we know between racism and capitalist class two phenomena. The high premium racist antagonists participate in the There is a clear bias towards are also lying, some analytical rule. For illustrative purposes, let us on successful entry to the bourgeois action. (Compare the professions, culturalist and patriarchal caution is in order. look at what Sewell and company professional class will tend to where the sacking of some bigot explanations of the phenomena No such restraint is on show have to say on the matter. There is a make membership of this layer opens up career opportunities for under discussion, in other words. over at Socialist Worker towers, short section of their report dealing hereditary, no matter how formally those more junior … ) The central error of the liberals is unsurprisingly, whose emergency specifically with “geography, class ‘meritocratic’ the mechanisms of As we said, these were once to conflate such a bias with racism editorial concludes: and ethnicity”: “The UK suffers entry appear to be; the generosity concrete, rather than abstract, as such: in reality, it is a Tory bias, from acute geographical inequality. of the spoils allow parents to give concerns: we have recently had no more, no less. That ought to be That Sewell’s report deliberately That is hardly news. But the scale their kids an edge. Thus pre-existing cause to remember the case of the enough - so why isn’t it? sets out to attack the idea of of the gulf in opportunity is seldom imbalances between - for example - Shrewsbury pickets, and it is worth That, in the end, is a function institutional racism shows just appreciated,” the authors note - and, different ethnic backgrounds will mentioning that, a few years before of the concept of structural racism how worried the state is. For as good Tories, ‘opportunity’ is the tend to perpetuate themselves in the playing a key role in this important itself. The concept is supposed to a growing number of people, key word here. There are simply no composition of the professional and strike alongside communists and do the work of explaining the extant institutional racism best explains prospects for people outside London bourgeois elite. socialists, Ricky Tomlinson was inequalities between ethnic groups. why it is that patterns of prejudice and a handful of other cities, most of The second problem has to a member of the fascist National It must do so, obviously, without are repeated throughout capitalist which are declining in comparison. do with what it means for the Front. There is something more reference to supposed physiological society. It tells us why the police “It is the ex-industrial and mining workforce to be pliable. That is, important going on here than and genetic differences between are up to 19 times more likely to areas, and towns on the coastal in the end, a matter of offering the merely strike tactics, which is that racial groups, which would not stop a black young man than a periphery, which are the poorest worker the choice between whatever it is not in the material interests of demand a ‘structural’ conception white one. It explains why prisons and least productive places. Towns conditions the company is prepared workers, whether at the level of of racism at all; it must also do so are disproportionately filled with like Barnsley in South Yorkshire, to offer and, ideally, the dole queue. some partial struggle or the class as without, as Sewell and friends do, black and Asian people. And it Dudley in the West Midlands, The fundamental mechanism for a whole, to be divided into warring interpreting racial disadvantage as a explains why the poorest ethnic Middlesbrough in the North East or ensuring this is competition - there sections; unity in action makes function of some more fundamental groups are concentrated in the Blackburn in the North West.”9 must be Engels’s famous “reserve best use of the one clear advantage social cause or causes. worst, and most overcrowded, The authors get themselves army of labour” to threaten the the working class has over the This is actually a trickier job than homes. Rather than saying into a bit of muddle on how this employed with destitution by capitalist class, which is that there it first appears. If structural racism is that individual prejudice is to geographical and class distribution replacing them. Once there is such are a lot more of us. It is, broadly fundamentally about race, but race is blame for this phenomenon, actually overlaps with ethnic an army, the working class - all speaking, the understanding of that a social construct, what is it? What institutional racism says the backgrounds. They make great hay things being equal - is trivially reality which we call (true) class- are the structures? The difficulty problem is systemic - that it is out of the fact that these deprived divided, in practice especially consciousness. is irresolvable unless we step into built into the capitalist system.7 localities are disproportionately between migrant and native labour. Racist ideology is plainly a the sort of pessimism associated white compared to the national There is thus a real tendency towards threat in this connection, and so with people like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Almost nothing here is true, except average, and especially compared sectionalism in the consciousness of anti-racism (in the sense of explicit and declare white supremacy an perhaps the point that “a growing to London. They must also concede ordinary workers, which may well ideological struggle against racism) inescapable, pervasive and self- number of people” hold it to be that “the most concentrated pockets express itself in racist or otherwise is therefore a necessary corrective perpetuating structure of mass so, which is therefore no cause of deprivation are found among nativist forms. Popular racism - but not sufficient. For, as we psychology; but then it is difficult to for celebration. The pushing of ethnic minority groups, particularly is, in the end, just such a form of argue and Sewell’s commission see how there could be reasons for this agenda proves the opposite Pakistani, Bangladeshi and black sectional, backward, false class- half-acknowledges, the structure of Coates to ‘believe his own beliefs’ of the ‘weakness’ of the state, or groups”, but nonetheless assert consciousness.11 The capitalist class structural racism is the class structure (since they, too, would be distorted more accurately the government: it that “it is the poorer white people, may then exploit this consciousness - the domination of society by the by the structure), never mind for proves that Johnson and his odious outside London, who are the largest to master the labour market more capitalist class. Restricting ourselves people to risk life, limb and liberty friends are quite happy to press on group to be found in areas with fully, playing groups of workers off to liberal forms of anti-racism leaves in mass struggle against racism. with an overtly reactionary backlash multidimensional disadvantages, against each other. us powerless to fight against this That, in the end, is why the to the liberalisation of race relations from income to longevity of Thus the failure of Sewell and domination: we need, instead, a discourse of structural and/or since the late 1960s. It is their rabid life”.10 This is to subtly change the co to truly take account of the fact strategy to rebuild the elementary institutional racism is rhetorical; support base who are ‘worried’ terms of discussion and therefore that, given that the structures of organs of solidarity of the workers’ why initiatives like the 1619 Project, about woke statue-defilers, not the misrepresent the data - we are no disadvantage they discuss really movement and fight, openly, for a when they are honest, must declare Johnsonistas themselves. They have longer comparing relative, but are essentially structures of class total alternative: socialism l themselves primarily polemical the smell of blood in their nostrils - absolute, magnitudes. and class proxies (geography, rather than historical, and so on. and it is not their blood. Absolute numbers matter too, of social cohesion, etc), at the very [email protected] Structural racism must either find Institutional racism offers no course. The Socialist Worker article bottom of these structures we still its structural substrate in something explanation for the phenomena is wrong to assert that the authors find disproportionate numbers Notes else, thus ceasing to be what it is, listed here, for the reasons we see their only meaningful remedy, from the country’s major ethnic 1. p8. The report is available at assets.publishing. or it must treat its structure as an have already stated; instead, it education, as “a zero-sum game, minorities. So long as our ambition service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/974507/20210331_-_CRED_ esoteric mystery: as god tells Moses, occludes a serious explanation, and where if some groups advance is ‘equality of opportunity’ within Report_-_FINAL_-_Web_Accessible.pdf. “no-one may see my face and live”. ironically lends spurious credibility others must be left behind” - or at a steep social hierarchy, we must 2. p27. The mysteriousness of the divine, to supposedly ‘data-driven’ least that is not what they claim here. reproduce old bigotries or, at 3. p11. of course, proved a fine foundation documents like the Sewell report Instead their rhetoric is, like that of best, replace them with new ones. 4. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/31/the- verdict-on-the-sewell-report-into-racial-disparity. for the power of a distinct clerical by providing a flattering contrast. the government, of ‘levelling up’ As good Tories, meanwhile, the 5. p144. caste in the three major faiths If the use of the institutional racism and increasing social mobility. The background to the mass deprivation 6. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/04/ claiming lineage with Moses; and concept entailed that racism “is problem with this for any socialist is of the ex-industrial towns is nearly yes- we-need-a-more-nuanced-debate-about-race- the mystification of racism by the built into the capitalist system”, comically obvious: there is simply invisible to them: it is as if they but-this-flawed-report-fails-to-deliver-it. 7. socialistworker.co.uk/art/51559/Sewell+report+ liberals, also, serves a vulgar and then William Macpherson and the not very much room at the top of were just hit with a meteorite. Of denies+institutional+racism+to+obscure+how+the+ worldly purpose. By reducing various worthies involved in his capitalist society, so social mobility course, they were instead victim to system+works. racism to a matter of representing eponymous inquiry were clearly is a wholly fantastical ‘solution’ the vicious and victorious struggle 8. This was the subject of my last article, ‘Anti- the strictly unrepresentable, none the wiser, as are the armies of to the problem. As good Tories, of the Thatcher government against racism as a straitjacket’, April 1. 9. p37. liberal anti-racism discloses its liberal journalists and NGO types the Sewell commission discreetly the power of organised labour. The 10. p38. class-sectional character: it is the currently having a collective hernia assume that inequality is quite very institutions that could cut 11. In part - we leave out of account here the petty property of those who control the about Tony Sewell. natural and so attempts to seriously against the atomising effects of bourgeoisie. weekly 6 April 8 2021 1342 worker IRAN

NotWith the US still not directly in involved in the thenegotiations, Yassamine room Mather considers prospects for a revived nuclear deal

First time round, in 2016: John Kerry and Javad Zarif fter weeks of speculation, it is unclear how the US intends to scenarios of who was where at while for its part the US does not media is full of messages from pro- negotiations began on revoke these sanctions or how many any time varies according to news want to see Iran become an ally of Trump Iranian rightwingers calling AApril 6 in Vienna between sanctions will eventually need to agencies, but it appears that the China or Russia. on their compatriots to “take back our representatives of Iran, France, be lifted before Iran will agree to American team were in one room country from China”. As always, fake the UK, Germany, Russia, China return to the conditions imposed on and the Iranians in another, with the China news has created its own bandwagon, and the EU. This is likely to be the the country’s nuclear development Europeans shuttling between them. In late March, Iran and China finally where hard facts deter no-one. first part of a lengthy and difficult by the Joint Comprehensive Plan What is not clear is where Russia signed the much-talked-about 25-year As for the long-term future of process to bring the US back into the of Action (JCPOA) regarding and China fitted into all this, but it deal. Some details remain secret, Iran Iran’s economy, we should remember nuclear deal and pave the way for uranium enrichment. According is assumed they were in the same claiming at China’s request, with pro- that US sanctions, including those Iran’s reversal of its recent increase to the US special envoy for Iran, room as the main European/Iran Tehran commentators claiming that imposed by Donald Trump, are only in the level of uranium enrichment. Robert Malley, who is leading the negotiating teams. China has made more concessions to part of the problem. At a time when First indications that talks US delegation in Vienna, his goal Of course, all this was simpler Iran than to any other country in the most of the world, including the were underway came from US was to “see whether we could agree when the UK was part of EU, but, region. Contrary to comments made United States itself, is rethinking secretary of state Antony J Blinken, on a road map back to compliance when it comes to the details of the by rightwing Iranian analysts, it the dominant role of the market, who informed European foreign for both sides”. He said that the US negotiations, it is expected that seems China is very keen for the Iran espousing state intervention to ministers on April 2 that the knew it was “going to have to lift France, Germany and the UK will nuclear deal to progress. According rebuild the economy in the post- United States would join them in those sanctions that are inconsistent present some kind of a united front. to Iran’s foreign minister, “We were Covid era; at a time when the Biden seeking to restore the 2015 nuclear with the deal that was reached with According to EU communiqués, able to jump-start the China strategic maladministration seems to be accord, which he said “was a Iran”.1 the Vienna talks aim to resolve or at deal thanks to the signing of JCPOA. ditching the neoliberal economic key achievement of multilateral On April 3, a spokesperson for least make progress on two issues: Before that the Chinese were not policies that have dominated diplomacy”. Iran’s foreign ministry rejected a identifying steps the US must take replying to our overtures.” Chinese western capitalism since the Reagan/ In response to this, the Iranian US proposal to gradually lift the on sanctions, on the one hand; and leaders have themselves made similar Thatcher era; the Iranian regime foreign ministry have maintained sanctions imposed by the Trump those Iran must take on its nuclear statements in the past. remains a steadfast supporter of the position initially declared by administration. However, despite programme, on the other. As I wrote last year,2 none of more privatisation and reduced state the country’s supreme leader, Ali all the rhetoric from both sides, The first round of talks the sensational claims made by the intervention in the economy. Khamenei, that they will not enter headlines are already indicating finished on April 6, with Russia’s Iranian pro-Trump opposition were This, combined with endemic into “direct” negotiations with the aims of Vienna. On April 2 they ambassador to international true. There are no plans for a “land corruption, has paved the way for the USA until the sanctions it had were all telling the same story: “US organisations in Vienna, Mikhail grab”, and no Iranian island has been economic collapse and, even if the imposed were removed. Deputy and Iran agree to resume talks on Ulyanov, claiming this round was sold/given to the Chinese … In fact, country can revive the nuclear deal, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi nuclear deal” (Wall Street Journal); “successful”, with two expert- as many foreign affairs commentators it is unlikely that the removal of told reporters on April 4 that there “Vienna meeting signals new level groups on sanctions-lifting have pointed out, the agreement - sanctions, combined with renewed would be no direct or indirect talks push to revive Iran nuclear deal” and nuclear issues given the task certainly what has been published economic trade with western Europe, with the US - that was one day (Politico); and “Iran nuclear deal: of identifying concrete measures so far - deals with other non-binding China and to a lesser extent Russia, before heading to Vienna, where US takes first steps to rejoining to move forward. Ulyanov added matters, with no specific contracts will benefit the impoverished and those much-anticipated talks were accord with talks next week” (Sky that the experts began their work agreed. For example, there is a suppressed Iranian working class. to be held. He insisted: “Our main News). immediately, but warned that the general agreement about the proposed But at least, if sanctions are removed, condition is that the United States But there were to be no official restoration of the deal would not sale of Iranian oil, presumably at the regime will have one less excuse first fulfils all its obligations and face-to-face meetings between happen quickly. However, “The a low price, to China for the next for the current economic situation, removes all sanctions, and then Iranian and US officials - the US most important thing... is that 25 years in exchange for Chinese and ‘insiders’ (those close to the we verify them and return to full team was in the Austrian capital practical work towards achieving investments in airports and ports, centres of power) who circumvented compliance.” According to foreign for “separate contacts”. The US this goal has started.” telecommunications and transport, sanctions and made huge profits minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, delegation was even staying in a All this is following the pattern oil and gas fields, infrastructure and from the black market, will have to the US has imposed, reimposed different hotel to the Iranian team, of negotiations in 2015-16, when banking, whereby China will acquire find other ways to make money in the or relabelled some 1,600 sanction presumably to avoid bumping into ‘expert teams’ dealt with details Iranian assets as it helps address corrupt Islamic capitalist Republic l measures on Iran, inflicting $1 them in the corridor, and there was between ministerial meetings. And Iran’s unmet investment needs. trillion worth of direct and indirect talk of three separate rooms used it is likely that the discussions Last month a number of media Notes economic damage. in the Grand and Imperial hotels will lead to a deal, because Iran’s outlets were quoting a figure of 1. bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-56643178. Although Iran wants sanctions to in the Austrian capital, where the economy is facing total collapse, $400 billion and rumours of this 2. ‘Boost to Beijing’s ambitions’ Weekly Worker be removed before any direct talks, negotiations are taking place. The partly as a result of sanctions, still persist. Persian-language social August 6 2020. weekly worker 1342 April 8 2021 7 CORRUPTION Tip of an iceberg Bribery, fraud, nepotism and graft are all endemic to the bourgeois order, writes Derek James he Cameron-Greensill affair of corruption and jobbery in the has all the ingredients of a British state, whether nationally or Tthoroughly contemporary in local government. scandal - the revolving door between When taken together with the politics and the very lucrative private lenient culture of the judiciary and sector, arcane financial dealings the bar during corruption cases, and shadowy lobbying, and a sense certainly in comparison with the that privileged individuals can get US courts dealing with Enron and away with playing the system at Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the expense of the rest of us. Just as and the intensely relaxed attitudes predictable are the calls for greater of the establishment towards transparency and new legislation to even quite blatant corruption and close the obvious loopholes, whilst wrongdoing, such as tax avoidance the existing independent watchdog and ‘secret loans’, we can see why assures us that, despite appearances, the ‘chumocracy’ has finally replaced everything is all above board and that the ‘good chaps’ in directing key parts nothing actually illegal has occurred. of the British state, and thus how the So that’s OK then - nothing to see revolving door that helped both David here, so let’s move on. Cameron and Lex Greensill opened Although new revelations are still Dave, fancy making £60 million? so easily l appearing in the press, the basic facts are now quite clear. Lex Greensill, new legislation to cover the types lobbying have been essential parts ‘gentlemanly’ capitalism in the an Australian financier and founder of lobbying undertaken by the ex- of the stock-in-trade of political City following the ‘Big Bang’ and Notes 7 1. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9434067/David- of Greensill Capital, acted as an prime minister. However, despite life for centuries. Which opponents the wider financialisaton of British Camerons-friend-Lex-Greensill-said-spoke-PM- unpaid advisor to David Cameron apparently echoing the widespread of the dominant political group in capital; the privatisation of state sold-civil-servants-loans.html. whilst he was prime minister - a disapproval of Cameron’s parliament from the late 17th century assets, and the growth of public- 2. thetimes.co.uk/article/david-cameron-jeremy- position which gave Greensill access exploitation of his ‘public service’ onwards did not accuse ministers and private partnerships and private heywood-lex-greensill-and-all- that-free-money- slmdtxxnf. to 11 government departments and and political contacts for very their supporters of being ‘placemen’ financial initiatives in core state 3. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9384803/David- agencies. During his time at No10, lucrative personal gain, Labour’s seduced by corruption and jobbery, functions; light-touch regulation, cameron-texted-Rishi-Sunak-lobbying-grant-loans- insiders have claimed, Greensill measured approach really failed to and in the pocket of ‘the Court’? less rigid tendering and contractual Greensill-went-bust.html. had free rein throughout the heart of chime with the public mood, which Patronage was simply the other side procedures, such as in healthcare 4. thetimes.co.uk/article/david-cameron-greensill- deal-claims-lobbying-tfd6j71n3. the Whitehall machine, and boasted seems to see the Cameron-Greensill of the coin to Whig liberty. and the provision of personal 5. thetimes.co.uk/article/the-boredom-naivety-and- in his dealings with senior civil affair as just the tip of a very large However, corruption has a wider protective equipment during the chance-connections-that-led-david-cameron-into- servants that he “spoke for David corruption iceberg. importance in the development of a pandemic; the appointment of scandal-z8f6g0n0r. Cameron”.1 Although Greensill As The Times commentator James specifically capitalist state, which outside ‘experts’, drawn from 6. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9407333/David- Cameron-CLEARED-lobbying-watchdog-texts- received no salary for his public Kirkup reminded us, the former gives it a different form, function and the ranks of business, to advise Rishi-Sunak-asking-Covid-loans.html. service efforts, The Sunday Times prime minister was only doing what significance from the patronage and governments on ‘value for money’ 7. independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ reported that he directly benefited countless other Tory and Labour corruption of pre-capitalist states and ‘cutting red tape’ - such as Lex david-cameron-greensill-labour-lobbying- from a government loan scheme politicians had done or attempted and societies. Unlike the classical Greensill and Sir Philip Green; the register-b1826628.html. 8. thetimes.co.uk/article/cast-out-david-cameron- which he had forced through by to do, and would continue to go on world or feudalism, the capitalist cult of the entrepreneur and the for-the -good-of -politics-rrx6zl8qw. citing the personal authority of the doing so, unless “the elders of the class does not usually take a direct deification of ‘business’, which 9. socialistworker.co.uk/art/51520/ prime minister only weeks after political tribe … make an example of part in government. Whereas the have dominated both Tory and Secret+lobbyists+for+rich. senior civil servants had warned that Cameron”. This is important for the great Roman landowner or feudal Labour governments since the 10. thetimes.co.uk/article/cast-out-david-cameron- 2 for-the-good-of-politics-rrx6zl8qwn. it was potentially unlawful. ruling class, he seemed to suggest, magnate ruled directly over the 1980s - all of these developments 11. For a discussion of these features, see H Draper After he left office, Cameron went because it must now subaltern groups - as, say, senators have provided opportunities in Karl Marx’s theory of revolution London 1977, on to work for Greensill Capital, or as part of a territorial aristocracy their various ways for the growth Vol 1, pp311-38. receiving share options worth tens demonstrate to the public that - the capitalist class generally gives of millions of pounds in return for even for the greatest politicians, its full attention to business and representing the interests of the actions have consequences … is rarely at the helm of the state company and lobbying members ‘One rule for them, one rule for in person. Rather, it is politicians Online Communist Forum of the cabinet, such as chancellor the rest of us’ is bad for politics and state bureaucrats, albeit with Rishi Sunak, to act in its favour.3 He and everyone in it. David intimate personal and ideological reportedly told friends that his reward Cameron may be shameless, but connections to capitalist interests, for going through the revolving door politics can’t afford to be.8 who carry out this function on behalf from Downing Street into the private of capitalism, not the capitalists sector would be a mere $60 million!4 themselves. Nice work, if you can get it, Dave. Deeper problem Furthermore, as Marx first All this came to light when Many on the left will echo similar observed in the 1840s and 1850s Greensill collapsed, leaving criticisms and focus on Cameron’s - especially in relation to Louis Cameron’s share options worthless individual greed and sense of Napoleon Bonaparte and French and threatening 50,000 jobs - 5,000 entitlement, in order to make an politics - and Engels saw later of them in Britain.5 In the days indictment of the political system.9 with Bismarck and the German that followed the breaking of the That is, of course, true - there are, empire in the 1880s, this form of story, other figures from the tangled and will be, countless other venal specifically capitalist state tends to undergrowth at the interface between and self-seeking Tory and Labour increase both the autonomy of the the state and business also found politicians who will seek to feather executive within it and its autonomy their names in the frame, including their own individual nests, even if, with respect to the rest of society, a former cabinet secretary - the late like David Cameron, they already including the ruling class.11 Lord Jeremy Heywood - various own three houses and possess private Seen in this light, corruption - Sunday April 11, 5pm junior treasury ministers and Sanjeev wealth that runs into millions.10 whether employed to buy politicians, Covid-19: will it all be over by Christmas? Gupta of Liberty Steel. Cameron’s However, Kirkup’s rather guarded parties and officials during factional deafening silence in response to comments point to a deeper problem battles within the ruling class, or as Speaker: Dr Mohsen Shahmanesh the allegations, and an independent that these periodic scandals pose - a means of controlling the executive Register in advance for this webinar: watchdog’s findings that the former not just for the Johnson government and thus restraining its tendencies us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1fkeWOCVTxi9J-t3MCMWqw prime minister had not broken any or even the ‘political class’ more toward autonomy - is an essential lobbying rules, only added more fuel generally, but for the legitimacy tool to serve the interests of either Sunday April 18, 5pm to the flames.6 and authority of the ruling class as a individual capitalists or of the A week in politics For the hacks at The Sunday whole. bourgeoisie as a whole. Because Political report and discussion from Times, The Times and Daily Mail In a bourgeois democracy like capitalism will always seek to corrupt CPGB’s Provisional Central Committee it was the story that wrote itself, Britain, the normal form of capitalist the state in this way, it is endemic whilst for the Labour opposition it rule usually relies to a great extent on even within the most ‘transparent’ Previous OCFs can be viewed or heard at these places: became the gift that kept on giving, securing the consent - or the very least and democratic capitalist states: YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/communistpartyofgreatbritain especially when Cameron’s lobbying the acquiescence - of the working however tightly drawn the legislation Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/cpgb-pcc could be tied to possible job losses class in various ways. Electoral may be or how closely regulated the Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/412z90d6iSHN3bqwxAaP8h at Liberty Steel and the pervasive politics and the incorporation of relationships between politicians and Apple Podcasts: air of corruption and sleaze that the organisations of the working private interests, laws will not end podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/marxist-report/id1494068795 hangs over Johnson’s government. class into the political system are corruption within the capitalist state. Organised by CPGB: www.cpgb.org.uk and Labour took the expected high important ways of securing consent If this is the fundamental Labour Party Marxists: www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk moral tone by demanding an inquiry and the broader legitimacy necessary determinant of the nature and For further information, email Stan Keable at into Cameron’s contacts with Tory for such a ‘normal’ political structure forms of corruption, a range of [email protected] ministers, combined with calls for to function. In such parliamentary other factors have facilitated it in “greater transparency” and extensive systems careerism, bribery and contemporary Britain. The end of weekly 8 April 8 2021 1342 worker CAPITALISM

FinancialWhat Marx described as the ‘purest and most colossal form fictions of gambling and swindling’ continues today, but on an altogether bigger scale Michael Roberts looks at some recent examples must declare an interest. In days as collateral to Greensill that were of old, many moons ago, I worked really debts owed by other parts of Ifor an investment consultancy that the company! Meanwhile Gupta’s advised Bill Hwang, the owner of group company was receiving state- Archegos - the ‘family office’ hedge backed emergency Covid loans to fund that recently collapsed, leaving tide its businesses over during the $20 billion owed to two big banks, pandemic. Thus Gupta completed Credit Suisse and Nomura. the purchase of a £42 million London townhouse. Gupta is now believed to Bill Hwang be in Dubai. Hwang was then a ‘Tiger cub’ - The UK government under Boris someone that veteran hedge fund Johnson may well be forced to manager Julian Robertson of the ‘nationalise’ Gupta’s Liberty Steel to pioneering Tiger hedge fund showed save the business. It has drawn up a favour to with ‘seed’ investment contingency plan to run Liberty Steel capital. After leaving Tiger, in 2001 using public money, while searching Hwang struck out on his own, to for a buyer. So this financial great success. But then there was the meltdown will be resolved with the first scandal, when in 2013 Hwang British public paying up - similar to was barred from the US investment how the treasury supported British business. Authorities alleged that, as Steel in 2019 at a cost to taxpayers of part of an insider-trading scheme, his nearly £600 million. Tiger Asia Management hedge fund So nothing has changed from had violated promises it made to when Marx wrote about “a new some of the world’s most powerful financial aristocracy, a new investment banks. variety of parasites in the shape of But no matter: Hwang - a pastor’s promoters, speculators and simply son and deeply religious - soon re- nominal directors; a whole system invented himself to do ‘god’s work’ of swindling and cheating by means in financial speculation. Hwang of corporation promotion, stock has credited his faith with helping issuance, and stock speculation”.2 him get through the difficult times. Bill Hwang: from rising Tiger to Archegos fall In the rise of finance, “All standards After Tiger Asia’s demise, he said of measurement, all excuses more that he had listened to recordings stock-jobbing swindle everyone offices, often in hubs like Singapore, £1 billion - more than a quarter of the or less still justified under capitalist of the Bible for hours. On getting knows that some time or other the Luxembourg and London. Chief fund’s value at suspension. production, disappear.” Since god’s word, he set up what is called crash must come, but everyone executives are paid something in the property here exists in the form of a ‘family office’, Archegos Capital hopes that it may fall on the head of order of $335,000 a year, according Lex Greensill stock, its movement and transfer Management, and eventually built his neighbour, after he himself has to a report from the Insead business Then there is Greensill. This become purely a result of gambling up its trading positions running into caught the shower of gold and placed school. was a ‘fintech’ bank set up by on the stock exchange, where the the tens of billions of dollars with it in safety.” In this case, Goldman In the Archegos example, it seems former Morgan Stanley and little fish are swallowed by the sharks Wall Street banks, including some of Sachs and Morgan Stanley got out that only the mega investment banks Citibank executive, Lex Greensill. and the lambs by the stock-exchange the ones his old firm was accused of of Hwang first and Credit Suisse and have suffered and not the man and It specialised in ‘supply-chain wolves. cheating. Nomura did not. woman in the street. So we may have financing”: ie, ‘reverse factoring’, What is new are the forms of Hwang’s downfall came last week The Archegos story is an old- no sympathy for them. But indirectly where the buyer chooses invoices these swindles. There has been a when he was unable to meet margin style financial meltdown. Yes, the we all get hit, because banks are that the financing ‘factor’ (Greensill) huge rise in what is called ‘shadow calls on derivatives trades (known financial instrument involved - using funds, also often borrowed, will pay for early. That is the opposite banking’: ie, lending and funding by as ‘equity swaps’) that he had struck equity swap derivatives - is a new to speculate in this way rather than of factoring, where the supplier ‘non-banking financial institutions’, with several investment banks. These form of financial asset (or what providing a proper banking service chooses the invoices that it wants which has expanded hugely since the instruments gave speculators the Marx called ‘fictitious capital’), for people. Banks lend with strict paid early by the factor. Supply chain end of the 2007-08 global financial option to gain from stock positions invented in the last 25 years. And the conditions on mortgages or loans to financing speeds up transactions in crisis and is now nearly half of all without having to own the underlying setting up of a ‘family office’, which small businesses, but it seems with a fast-moving global market. But it financial ‘assets’. Our new financial shares. As Marx put it some 150 is not subject to the same financial no control at all in relation to the puts the burden of payment on the moralist, former Bank of England years ago in Capital, “Profit can be regulations (such as they are) as likes of Archegos, where banks can factor. Lex Greensill’s revolutionary governor Mark Carney, warns that made purely from trading in a variety modern hedge funds, has become a make big money if all goes well. innovation was to package these “more than £20 trillion of assets of financial claims existing only on new way of avoiding scrutiny. Hedge But, as one equity derivatives trader invoices into investment funds to are held in funds that promise paper ... Indeed, profit can be made funds are speculative financial put it, equity total return swaps are be sold to banks - much as the big daily liquidity to investors despite by using only borrowed capital to vehicles basically for betting (with “a classic case of picking up nickels investment banks turned subprime investing in potentially illiquid engage in (speculative) trade, not mostly borrowed money) on the in front of a steamroller … You can mortgages into securities before the underlying assets.” backed up by any tangible asset.” movement in the prices of stocks, pick up those nickels all day. That 2008 financial crisis. Carney reckons that funds It seems that Hwang had borrowed bonds, commodities, and on the steamroller moves pretty slowly. Greensill also took deposits to like those run by the disgraced billions of swaps from different ‘derivatives’ of these ad infinitum. But if you trip, boy, do you get run invest in its apparently lucrative manager, Neil Woodford, are built banks to maximise his ‘leverage’ in Betting companies, when advertising over.”1 operation from companies and local on a lie and could pose a threat to betting on the stock market, without on TV, must keep saying, ‘Please councils, offering high rates and the global economy. Funds which telling each bank how much he had bet responsibly’, as the regulators Neil Woodford finding funds and loans for clients hold assets that are hard to sell in a borrowed. demand (with little effect, of course). In the case of the Woodford when big banks would not lend. It hurry - while allowing investors to The Archegos Capital debacle But with ‘family offices’, usually financial scandal in the UK, there sprouted fast and took on exposure take their money out on demand - has exposed the hidden risks of funded by mega-rich global family has been a direct hit to people in in loans worth $143 billion by are a mounting risk to the financial the lucrative but opaque equity fortunes, it is even worse. There are the ‘real world’. It is more than 2019 with ten million customers. In system.3 derivatives business, through which no controls or warnings at all. 18 months since the implosion of particular, it provided funding for Back to Marx, who wrote that one banks empower hedge funds to make In a report issued a year ago, Neil Woodford’s investment fund metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta, who of the “two characteristics immanent outsize bets on stocks and related business school Insead noted that business sparked the biggest British owns the third biggest steel company in the credit system” is “to develop assets. “We have a fundamental the number of single-family offices investment scandal for a decade. in the UK. the incentive of capitalist production problem in the reporting of had grown by 38% between 2017 More than 300,000 individuals who - from enrichment through holdings of synthetic equity that and 2019, to reach more than 7,000. entrusted their hard-earned savings Sanjeev Gupta exploitation of the labour of others, is not secret and is not new,” said Assets under management stood at to the famed ‘stock picker’ are still But Greensill went bust because to the purest and most colossal form Tyler Gellasch, a former official some $5.9 trillion in 2019, the report waiting to recoup the money. Many it could no longer find sufficient of gambling and swindling”.4 of the US Securities and Exchange estimated. That compares with $3.6 have had to delay retirement after financing for its ever-expanding loan So the finance sector carries Commission and executive director trillion in the global hedge fund nursing tens of thousands of pounds commitments and high deposit rates. on just as before, engaging in of Healthy Markets, an advocacy industry, according to HFR (Hedge of losses. The UK’s Financial Gupta’s steel workers could now lose speculation - and regulators cannot group. “If there are five different Fund Research). These ‘family Conduct Authority, the supposed their jobs and German local councils and do not stop them l banks providing financing to a single offices’ can do what they want with financial regulator, failed miserably could take a $500 million hit. client, each bank may not know it, their assets, without regulation. to spot the Woodford crash. The scandal is still unfolding, as it Michael Roberts blogs at and may instead think it can sell its Rich families place a growing share Woodford was once lauded as “the seems Greensill never had sufficient thenextrecession.wordpress.com exposure to another bank if they run of their wealth in these types of man who can’t stop making money” funding to take on the huge liabilities into trouble - but they can’t, because structures. On average, they control and “Britain’s Warren Buffett”. (debts) that the likes of Gupta’s steel Notes those banks are already exposed.” assets worth $1.6 billion apiece, But this great stock speculator was companies had. Worse, it also seems 1. ft.com/content/fb364689-9b04-47cb-aba9- When Archegos’ bets went according to another 2020 study forced to suspend trading in his that Gupta’s companies were using 5eb15d1cea85. south, Hwang could not meet his by UBS investment bank, and a £3.7 billion flagship Equity Income invoices to raise loans from Greensill 2. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27. commitments to these banks and handful can stretch into hundreds fund after failing to cope with a that were issued by other parts of htm. 3. thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-9377797. several were left holding the baby. of billions of dollars. Typically, surge of investors reclaiming their the corporate complex - in other 4. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27. As Marx said in Capital, “In every each family office has two or three cash. Investors stand to lose up to words, claiming potential receipts htm. weekly worker 1342 April 8 2021 9 POLEMIC Playing into imperialist hands Foppe de Haan seems to have been taken in by the campaign to demonise China, argues Daniel Lazare n his article last week1 Foppe of invading Iraqi soldiers looting Washington has scads of ‘Darren de Haan has a problem with what hospital incubators and dumping Bylers’ at its disposal - bright and II wrote last month2 about US premature babies on the floor. The shining young academics and charges that China is engaged in emotions that such stories aroused journalists, who are desperate to enter genocide against 12 million members were also real. Yet Nayirah turned America’s bloated foreign-policy of the Turkic Uyghur minority in its out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti establishment and willing to do or western province of Xinjiang. ambassador, and her testimony was say anything to gain a perch. But, Curiously, it has nothing to do eventually revealed as a lie cooked instead of exposing ‘Spirit-breaking’ with my argument that the charges up by the US public-relations giant, as the warmongering nonsense it is, are overblown nonsense based Hill and Knowlton. de Haan ‘red-washes’ it by giving it a on dubious sources and “shifting The same goes for booby-trapped pseudo-left gloss and then passing it and inconsistent” evidence. To the toys that Soviet soldiers tossed out of along to his comrades in arms. contrary, comrade de Haan quite helicopters in order to kill and mangle There is a lot to unpack in this agrees. He writes: Afghan children in the 1980s. Those episode. If anti-racism has become stories were also felt true because, as “part of the legitimating ideology of We are all aware of how the US we all know, nothing is too bestial the bourgeoisie”, as Paul Demarty will weaponise and even create America certainly does for those wicked Soviets. But even recently observed,8 then the super- ‘human rights’ situations in order though they were picked up by The sensitive liberalism of people like to further its goals, and that it has Uyghurs and the state. In fact, with which to contextualise the New York Times, The Los Angeles Byler has as well. If truth no longer engaged in such actions almost since almost the very beginning devastating feeling of being so Times, Mother Jones magazine, matters in any straightforward sense, constantly since World War II. of the People’s Republic in 1949, powerless. Human Rights Watch and others, then it is not only Donald Trump who As such, I obviously agree the Uyghurs have experienced they turned out to be lies designed benefits, but liberal Democrats, who with [Lazare] that the capitalist diminishing levels of power Exhibit A in terms of Chinese to drum up support for CIA-backed are far more skilful when it comes countries are promoting this and autonomy relative to Han oppression, according to ‘Spirit- jihadis seeking to topple the Soviet- to the concentrated mendacity that narrative for the usual reasons, via settlers, and … increasingly they breaking’, turns out to be an Islamist backed government in Kabul - the US propaganda represents. If do- the usual avenues (eg, the National experience high levels of fear. who thinks his fellow Uyghurs are same jihadis who would later topple gooders can be made to sympathise Endowment for Democracy). lazy and unambitious and whose the World Trade Center in Lower with an Islamist who uses rumours main criticism of the government Manhattan.4 and innuendo to curry American No, de Haan’s complaint is not Double win is that it limits access to “Islamic A fact, in other words, is not support, then they can be made to about genocide, but about the fact ‘Liberation’ is just another word for knowledge”, which today invariably something that seems true, feels true sympathise with the military build- that I had anything positive to say old-fashioned imperial subjugation - means Saudi-style Wahhabi or might even prove true at some up currently underway in the western at all about Chinese government or so the Hunerven/de Haan narrative jihadism. Hunerven feels Alim’s later date. It is something that is true Pacific or the provocative shows of educational programmes aimed at goes as well. But, while ‘Spirit- pain. But should the rest of us feel it right now. Hunerven’s attempts to force that have become the US norm expanding job opportunities and breaking’ is certainly interesting, as well? Or should we feel a measure dance around this basic principle are in the South China Sea. better integrating a previously it is not in the way de Haan thinks. of relief that Alim’s powerlessness absurd. Yet not only does de Haan This can also be used to blind neglected province into the larger Rather than an exposé, it is a means that he and his co-thinkers are swallow it hook, line and sinker: he people to America’s own hypocrisy. economy. Any such argument is textbook example of the ultra-liberal unable to plunge Xinjiang into a holy urges his fellow socialists to do so as While Hunerven/Byler lambasts “unhelpful”, de Haan says, because sensibilities that the United States is war like the one in neighbouring well. China for putting a million Uyghurs it “paints over underlying issues” mobilising as part of its anti-China Afghanistan? behind bars, the fact is that the US concerning how the Communist campaign. Now that the ‘yellow The article continues: Warmongering imprisons twice that number - 2.2 Party of China is “cynically using the peril’ has gone out of fashion, the But wait - it gets worse. While million people in all as of 2016 - fact that a small part of the Uyghur US has had to come up with a new Once, meeting Alim in a park, he de Haan rejects the anti-Chinese with another 4.5 million under close population has been ‘radicalised’ … a line of attack - one that assails the said that a relative stationed at a genocide campaign, he apparently government supervision by virtue as an excuse to forcibly retrain and People’s Republic for not living up prison near Alim’s hometown does not notice that Hunerven’s of being on probation or parole. relocate Uyghurs”. to the lofty ethical standards that had told him what was happening article relies on Adrian Zenz - the Roughly half have been locked Since the CPC has “no real America supposedly espouses. The there. Over the past few months German ultra-rightist, who is the up for non-violent offences, most interest in dealing with the problem result is a double win, in which many young Uyghur women campaign’s chief architect - for two stemming from the ‘war on drugs’ of Han chauvinism”, as de Haan the US position winds up morally who had previously worn of its most important claims: ie, that that Richard Nixon initiated in 1971 puts it, then even something as enhanced, while China is demonised reformist Islamic coverings had “a police state has rapidly taken form for reasons that could not have been ostensibly benign as job training in terms of world opinion. been arrested and sentenced to in Xinjiang” and that “an estimated more racist.9 As a top Nixon aide winds up replicating and reinforcing Hunerven shows how it is done. five to eight years in the prison one million men and women had named John Erlichman explained it. The government may “teach them His article opens with a description as religious ‘extremists’ who been sent to the ‘transformation two decades later, it was all about [the Uyghurs] a ‘modern language’ of a young Uyghur man named Alim, harboured ‘terrorist’ ideologies. through education’ centres that had stirring up popular hostility against (ie, Mandarin) and enrol them in whom the author encountered in the As he spoke, Alim’s lower lip been built across the region” (see black people and the anti-war civics classes (focused on teaching Xinjiang capital of Urumqi in 2014: trembled. He said the Uyghur and footnotes 38 and 41). movement: ‘respect’ and ‘patriotism’ for the state Han prison guards had repeatedly If Zenz is unreliable when it and its legal system)”. But the results He was a tall, quiet young man, raped these young women, saying comes to genocide, how can he be We knew we couldn’t make it are oppressive all the same. Efforts who had come to the city looking that if they did this “they didn’t reliable when it comes to police- illegal to be either against the war aimed at purposely undermining for better opportunities. Critical miss their wives at home”. state tactics and mass incarceration? or black, but by getting the public Uyghur culture are not the same as of many of the rural people If de Haan had taken five minutes to associate the hippies with physical genocide, but they are bad with whom he had grown up, he Hunerven adds: to Google Hunerven’s name, he marijuana and blacks with heroin, enough. saw them as lacking capitalist would have discovered that it is a and then criminalising both But is this really what is going on? ambition and an understanding Many Uyghurs repeated such pseudonym for a young American heavily, we could disrupt those De Haan’s main source is an of the broader Muslim world. claims. They described beatings, academic named Darren Byler - an communities. We could arrest article entitled ‘Spirit-breaking’, But he was even more critical torture, disappearances and anthropologist at the University of their leaders, raid their homes, by Adam Hunerven, which ran last of the systemic, ongoing issues everyday indignities that they Colorado at Boulder, whose views break up their meetings and vilify September in an online journal called that had pushed Uyghurs into and their families suffered at the align perfectly with those of the US them night after night on the Chuǎng.3 He finds it so convincing migrant labour and limited their hands of the state. At times these state department under Joe Biden’s evening news. Did we know we that he urges followers of the Weekly access to Islamic knowledge. stories seemed to be partial truths, secretary of state, Antony Blinken.5 were lying about the drugs? Of Worker “to read this in full, as it goes There were far too few economic but many times the level of detail Elsewhere, Byler thus writes that course we did.10 into the issues surrounding settlerism opportunities and far too many and the emotional feeling that “it is crucial that US policymakers and colonialism, as well as explaining religious and political restrictions accompanied these stories made strive to work with partner nations Yet the current US administration what life in Xinjiang is and has been in the rural areas of north-west them feel completely true. Part and civil society to build a global now has the temerity to accuse China like”. His article then quotes six China, he explained. of the widespread psychological coalition that stands for the civil and of behaving in a racist manner toward paragraphs, some 440 words in all, Since the beginning of the most damage that Alim mentioned human rights of unprotected citizens the Uyghurs. As Joe ‘No Malarkey’ in which Hunerven assails China for recent ‘hard-strike campaigns’ above, came precisely from in China and opposes authoritarian Biden might put it himself, “C’mon, not “acknowledging the centrality that led up to the implementation hearing about such things in an statecraft in general”.6 In an interview man, give me a break!” l of native sovereignty in the Uyghur of the ‘People’s War on Terror’ atmosphere that makes all kinds a few months ago with the Center for homeland throughout its history” and (renmin fankong zhanzheng) in of atrocities possible. Even if the Strategic and International Studies, Notes for “emphasis[ing] ‘the liberation’ of May 2014, many people in the individual claim might be false Washington’s top foreign-policy 1. ‘Examining underlying issues’ Weekly Worker the Uyghurs and other native groups countryside had reached a new in some instances, the particular think tank, he said: April 1. by the People’s Liberation Army in level of despair and hopelessness. type of violence it describes was 2. ‘Uyghurs: why now?’ Weekly Worker March 18. 3. A Hunerven, ‘Spirit-breaking: capitalism and the 1940s”: Alim told me: “If suicide was not probably occurring nonetheless, We need to have greater coalition- terror in north-west China’: chuangcn.org/journal/ forbidden in Islam many people or it would soon. building with European states, two/spirit-breaking. Since the 1949 revolution - so the would choose this as a way out.” with the G-10, with states in the 4. quora.com/Did-the-USSR-really-drop-toys- self-valorising narrative goes - After praying in the mosque he Are such tales partially true, global south to take a stand … filled-with-explosives-on-Afghanistan. See also R Braithwaite Afghantsy: the Russians in Afghanistan Uyghur society has entered into often saw men crying in each partially untrue, or what? What does By putting moratoriums on trade 1979-89 Oxford 2011, pp234-33. a tight harmony with their Han others’ arms - the promise of Hunerven mean when he says that coming from the US to these 5. twitter.com/dtbyler/ ‘older brothers’. Their solidarity future redemption matched by even though a horror tale is false, places [ie, Xinjiang], I think that status/1376970056223977473. in shared socialist struggle is said the brokenness they felt in their it is psychologically damaging is the first and best approach. But 6. cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/ 7 dist/b/732/files/2020/10/Darren-Byler_Human- to have resulted in ever-increasing own lives. “Have you seen The because it seems true and might soon it’s not enough. Rights-in-China-The-Case-of-Xinjiang_Final.pdf. levels of happiness and ‘progress’ hunger games?” he asked. “It prove true as well? In 1990, people 7. csis.org/node/58909. Quote starts at 20:00. … Of course, despite this rhetoric feels just like that to us.” But it were horrified when, in the run-up to So ‘Spirit-breaking’ is a small but 8. ‘Anti-racism as a straitjacket’ Weekly Worker of economic liberation and was hard for him to put into words the Persian Gulf War, a 15-year-old not insignificant part of a global April 1. 9. sentencingproject.org/publications/trends-in-u-s- harmonious multiculturalism, what, exactly, this felt like. He Kuwaiti girl known only as Nayirah campaign aimed at isolating Beijing corrections. all is clearly not well between was grasping for a cultural script regaled US congressmen with tales and putting it on the defensive. 10. harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all. weekly 10 April 8 2021 1342 worker TV REVIEW Royalty and the Reich Andy Webb (director) Queen Elizabeth and the spy in the palace Channel 4, April 4 his documentary might not have Blunt - serving as an MI5 officer and already known about him - although revealed anything radically NKVD agent - was sent to Germany, it was finally confirmed, as long Tnew, let alone provided solid or along with Sir Owen Morshead, suspected, that he had been ordered incontrovertible proof for its main the keeper of the royal archives at by the KGB in 1951 to defect with contentions. But it certainly told the Windsor Castle. Their destination Maclean and Burgess in order to story with some verve and panache, was the Schloss Friedrichshof, an protect their most precious asset, helped by plenty of fascinating imposing 19th century castle near Kim Philby. Blunt, however, could archive footage and photos - some Frankfurt owned by the Hesse branch not bear to leave Britain - loving of which I had never seen before. of the royal family. The Hesses were the country in his own peculiar Therefore it is worth watching, distant cousins of George VI - then way. After he was publicly exposed, especially if you are not particularly the king and father of the current he claims he considered suicide, familiar with the subject matter. monarch, Elizabeth Windsor.1 but instead turned to “whisky and The spy in question is Anthony They carried a message from the concentrated work”. Blunt, third cousin to the Queen king underlining that the mission was As Queen Elizabeth and the spy Mother. He spent most of his early on his behalf and the reason given for in the palace reminded us, the royal life in France, and his mother had the trip was to retrieve almost 4,000 family can never entirely escape their been close friends with Mary of letters written by Queen Victoria to sordid history. Six years ago The Sun Teck, wife of King George V. In fact, her daughter, Empress Victoria, the somehow dug up old video footage Blunt’s family were dressed in her mother of Kaiser Wilhelm. According of half the royal family in 1933 “cast-off” clothes, as we discovered to the account given in the Royal cheerfully doing Nazi Hitler salutes during the programme. He was also Archives, the letters - as well as other - the young Elizabeth included and director of the Courtauld Institute, documents - were “exposed to risks Edward VIII too joining the fun Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures and owing to unsettled conditions after - with the newspaper running the an acknowledged expert on the art of the war”. Morshead needed Blunt, wonderful headline, “Their royal Nicolas Poussin. In other words, Sir because he knew German and hence heilnesses”. This was not just larking Anthony Blunt KCVO spent decades would make it easier to identify about. Hitler’s coming to power was at the very epicentre of the royal the desired material. When Blunt widely welcomed among sections family and the British establishment. returned to London with this cache, of the British establishment, just However, what brought him he was almost immediately given like Mussolini before him. After all, to world attention, of course, was the job of Surveyor of the King’s how could it be otherwise? Martin not his aristocratic connections or Pictures, retaining this position until Niemöller’s “first they came for academic brilliance. Rather, the his retirement in 1972. the communists” just seemed like fact that he was the “fourth man” Frankly, the idea that in the good advice for the ruling class - of the Cambridge Five - a group of middle of a still active battlefield it even before Hitler’s regime was Cambridge University-educated was vital to recover letters written in thoroughly entrenched, Communist MI5/MI6 agents working for the the late 19th century is risible. The Party of Germany leaders and Soviet Union from some time in the far more likely explanation for the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and their pro-Nazi uncle and aunt militants were in Dachau. Why not 1930s to at least the early 1950s. His mission, as we have already seen do the same here in Britain? The other more famous comrades were dramatised previously in Netflix’s quickly locate the letters in question. le Carré novels - it is likely that the Duke of Windsor certainly knew Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and The crown2 and mentioned in the The documentary suggested, as Kremlin still holds copies of the where he stood. Kim Philby - followed later by John documentary by Miranda Carter, have others, that he microfilmed the letters today. Perhaps that helps to But Hitler’s rise represented an Cairncross, officially confirmed as Blunt’s biographer, was to find the letters and sent them to Moscow in explain the permanent smirk on the unfortunate problem for the British the “fifth man” in 1990 by Soviet communications between the Dukes a diplomatic bag. These would have face of Vladimir Putin. ruling class. A war of expansion was double-agent Oleg Gordievsky. of Windsor and Kent to prince been part of the 18,000 documents obviously on the cards from early on As we saw in the documentary, Philipp of Hesse before American that Blunt passed on to the Soviets in Secrets - it was laid out in Mein Kampf and Burgess, Maclean and Blunt were occupation forces got their hands his spying career, allegedly including Anthony Blunt was interviewed 11 elsewhere. The only question was, gay at a time when homosexuality on them. Philipp was a grandson of the plans for the D-day landings in times by MI5 between 1951 and would it damage British interests, was illegal. One of the assembled Frederick III, German emperor, and Normandy - which the Allies had kept 1964, when the American FBI told meaning the British empire, or experts on the show was Alastair a great-grandson of Queen Victoria. secret from their supposed wartime their British colleagues they had would Hitler’s attention be focused Laing, curator emeritus of pictures His relative - a certain prince Philip, ally, Joseph Stalin. It is not difficult to identified him as a spy. He eventually almost exclusively to his east and and sculpture at the National Trust Duke of Edinburgh - was actually see why the existence of such letters confessed, but was granted immunity the destruction of Stalin’s regime? If - who counted Anthony Blunt as named after him. Philipp was also one is political dynamite now, let alone from prosecution - and actually so, the Nazi regime and the British a friend. He made the interesting of Hitler’s most powerful aristocratic in the immediate post-war years. worked in the palace for a further ruling class had mutually beneficial comment that Blunt “must have felt, henchmen, becoming Oberpräsident The Duke of Kent, prince George, eight years. He was personally shared interests. in some way: how loyal am I to a (supreme representative) of the was killed in a military air crash in congratulated by the queen upon The establishment was divided country that could potentially do this Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau 1942, he and the Duke of Windsor his retirement, despite her knowing on this issue. Winston Churchill to me” - that criminalised him. It also - until the two had a falling out, were, of course, uncles to the current about all about his spying past. - though no-one can dispute his meant, naturally, that Blunt was used leading to his dismissal and then monarch. But it almost goes without You can speculate endlessly about lunatic anti-communism or highly to secrecy as a way of life - a handy arrest in 1943. saying that it was not just the Duke why the royal family kept the secret dodgy views on things like eugenics skill for any spy or double agent. Obviously, George VI and the of Windsor, the wannabe Nazi King, for as long as they did. Perhaps and the Jewish question - broke from Laing also blamed the “malevolent British establishment as a whole who was cosying up to Hitler - as the partly to protect the reputation of the consensus: he was almost alone influence” of the charismatic Guy knew the letters could prove highly documentary told us. In the words of Britain’s intelligence forces, which within the Tory Party in thinking Burgess for the path taken by Blunt, damaging in the wrong hands - historian Piers Brendon, George VI had taken a severe battering - not that the Nazis posed a mortal threat who was completely infatuated by especially those involving the was “implicated in the appeasement helped by a constant stream of to the British empire (India being him. Duke of Windsor, formerly king business right up to his fetlocks” - rumours that Sir Roger Hollis, the Churchill’s obsession). Though But what has to be emphasised Edward VIII until his abdication which is getting very close to home, director general of MI5 from 1956 hating him on just about everything above all is that the Cambridge Five, in 1936 to “marry the woman I with dangerous implications for the to 1965, was also a Soviet agent. else, Labour supported Churchill on and others like them at the time, were love”, Wallis Simpson. George was present-day royal family. Guilt by But surely the paramount reason the basis that he would conduct a motivated by a genuine anti-fascism particularly concerned about any family associations. was to protect their own honour serious war against Germany - the - Stalin and the Soviet Union seemed letters from the Duke of Windsor Gennady Sokolov, the Soviet spy, and apparent good name - the Firm rest of the establishment would either to be the only bulwark against Hitler that considered the possibility of is quoted in the film as saying, “if was determined to keep secret from appease Hitler or actively encourage and the Nazis. This was a conviction being restored to the throne if Hitler the documents discovered by Blunt the world the Duke of Windsor’s him. reaffirmed by the tragic situation succeeded in invading Britain, or were published” it would cause a correspondence with the Nazis (The Programmes like the Channel 4 in Spain, when the imperialist which showed that he knowingly scandal, “which could even be the crown also tantalisingly suggests that documentary can help us to challenge bourgeois democracies allowed revealed Allied secrets to the Führer fall of the dynasty” - which is not Blunt might have blackmailed prince the official ideology that surrounds Franco to come to power through - which would hardly be surprising, an entirely ludicrous suggestion. Philip with a portrait of him done by World War II. The British ruling an active policy of non-intervention. given his open pro-Nazi sympathies. But the programme also quotes Yuri the society osteopath, Stephen Ward, class fought an imperialist war, not As Blunt said in a later interview, “I Clive Irving, author of The last Modin, formerly controller for the one of the central figures in the an anti-fascist war or democratic was persuaded by Guy Burgess that queen, told the Channel 4 show that Cambridge spy ring, when asked if 1963 Profumo affair scandal3). But crusade to save the Jews - which is I could best serve the cause of anti- Churchill sanctioned the mission the Soviets could have blackmailed Blunt was publicly outed as a spy pure mythology - and then did a deal fascism by joining him in his work because both he and George VI the British royal family, as saying in parliament by Margaret Thatcher with the US, recognising that the UK for the Russians” - it was a case of “understood the threat potentially - “Yes, we could have done that, when she became prime minister in was no longer the global hegemon. “political conscience against loyalty caused by knowledge of how far but we would not”. This is hard to 1979. She was furious by what she Hopefully there will be more royal to country”, even if he did go on to back this sympathy with the Nazis believe, to put it mildly. The Soviets saw as upper class cronyism and secrets and scandals to come l say in his posthumously published ran through the royal family” - which might have decided not to blackmail the establishment closing ranks to Eddie Ford memoirs that spying for the Soviets could leave the monarchy “very, very the royal family for this or that protect itself, describing Blunt as was “the biggest mistake of my life”. jeopardised” if such information expedient political reason, but the “repugnant and contemptible”. After [email protected] become public knowledge. Irving idea that they would refuse to do so the news broke, he was immediately Letters also said it was “amazing” that as a matter of principle is absurd. stripped of his knighthood and lived Notes This brings us to the crux of the story. Blunt “knew exactly where to go” If any of the above is true - as a virtual recluse in London until 1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlosshotel_Kronberg. 2. esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a29813130/ As Allied forces were rolling up the in a large castle stuffed with all as opposed to the product of an he died of a heart attack in 1983. anthony-blunt-kgb-soviet-spy-the-crown-season- last pockets of German resistance manner of documents - he assigned overactive imagination, fuelled Blunt’s memoirs, published in 3-true-story. before reaching Berlin, Anthony two soldiers to go into the place and by countless spy movies and John 2009, revealed little that was not 3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Ward. weekly worker 1342 April 8 2021 11 BOOK REVIEW Nationalist dreams and nightmares JS Beneš Workers and nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890-1918 Oxford University Press, 2017, pp268, £56.85 DK Reill The Fiume crisis: life in the wake of the Habsburg empire Harvard University Press, 2020, pp289, £21.49

oth these books are about land hunger and by immigrant and for thinking about the dynamics and than being even slightly rationally nationalism and the break- imitative town-building. The UK is, The Austro-Hungarian consequences of such a break-up, persuasive. Its function is, rather, up of a larger multinational similarly, a collection of territories that of the Austro-Hungarian empire not dissimilar to that of the ‘fnords’, B empire contained many state regime. Reviewing Jakub (England, Wales, Scotland, part may serve as an indicator of the which are inserted in news stories Beneš’s book, published in 2017, of Ireland) which have been to a nationalities. likely general shape of the gradual in Robert Shea and Robert Anton is perhaps rather belated, but it considerable extent Anglicised in paralysis of workers’ movement Wilson’s Illuminatus conspiracy- provides fundamental background the late medieval and early modern The problem was that the politics through subordination to theory fantasy trilogy - to produce to that of Dominique Kirchner Reill: periods through the same dynamics. workers’ movement nationalism, and the likely results unreasoned generic aversion by Beneš’s book is about the growth It is thus not completely unrealistic of breaking up the larger unified repetitive reinforcement of fear. of nationalism in the late 19th-early to imagine the UK ending in the allowed itself to be economy into smaller national Here the point is to enable Beneš to 20th century workers’ movement same way as the Habsburg empire - disorganised along territories - whether in the form of the write about the late 19th and early in Austria-Hungary; Reill’s is a breaking up along national lines. collapse of the EU or of Scots, Welsh 20th century workers’ movement in microcosm-study of the disastrous I stress ‘completely’ because there national lines and Ulster independence (or, for that a way which recognises its strengths, consequences of the implementation are profound differences between the matter, of ‘northern independence’3). without risking being identified by of nationalist programmes. UK and the later 19th-early 20th And the same is true - perhaps even critics as a communist. Today the Brexiteers argue that century Habsburg empire. German more strongly - for the collapse of Beneš also displays some the ‘European project’ is and was Austria was and is a fragment of the ‘European project’, hoped for confusions about Marxism - for unrealistic because of its supra- Germany, while England in the UK and predicted by Brexiteers. example, he characterises the demand national character. Its failure can thus is the whole medieval nation-state. for universal suffrage as Lassallean be analogised to that of the Habsburg Wales, Ireland and Scotland have all Beneš (when it was the view of a much multinational empire. But what is been far more deeply Anglicised than Workers and nationalism recounts broader 19th century left - including this ‘nation’ which is, in Brexiteers’ Hungary, the Czech lands, Slovakia, the relationship between the Marx and Engels, who generalised it view, the foundation of all possible Slovenia, Croatia and Ruthenia had Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei from Chartism) and as “reformist” ‘democracy’? Reill’s narrative of been Germanised in the later 1800s. Österreichs (Social Democratic (p22), which was not anybody’s Fiume elitist attempts in 1918-21 to In Britain, the peasantry as a Workers Party of Austria - SDAPÖ view until a late stage of the history. attach their city to Italy illustrates class was liquidated long ago, and or just SPÖ) and Czech and Or, Beneš says, Karl Kautsky both the role of states in promoting at the same period (16th to 18th Austrian‑German nationalist trends - promoted “the orthodox Marxist national identifications and the centuries) the landlord class became between 1890 (the party was founded popular wisdom that nationality complexities of what they did. Fiume bourgeoisified as a rentier-financial- by a unification process in 1889) was purely ‘superstructural’ - that elites had in the middle 19th century capitalist superstructure to capitalist and the fall of the Habsburg regime is, disconnected from the largely identified with Hungary to hold off agriculture and industry, while the in 1918. This is a subject which economic material realities of the the claims of Croatia;1 in Reill’s clerisy was radically subordinated has been studied fairly extensively ‘base’ and thus false” (p150) - which narrative they were trying to play the to the state by the Reformation. In in German-language writing, and both shows a stunning degree of same game with Italy in 1919-21. late Habsburg Austria-Hungary, in more superficially in English. failure to understand the way the Conversely, present-day Britain contrast, these classes persisted as Beneš’s particular ‘take’ on it is that base-superstructure metaphor was could be analogised to late-Habsburg important political actors. he focuses on the experiences of used in late 19th-early 20th century Austria-Hungary - and has been so Austria-Hungary was rapidly workers who participated in the SPÖ Marxism, and also flatly ignores analogised, for example by Tom industrialising in the late 19th-early and its constituent organisations Kautsky’s actual intervention in the Nairn.2 Just as Austria-Hungary 20th century. The UK, from 19th through published and unpublished debate on the national question in remained a state identified by its century industrial ascendancy, has autobiographies, and on socialist ‘Nationality and internationality’ in dynasty down to its breakup in now long been (like 17th century cultural production (novels, poems 1907-08.4 1918-19, so the British state remains Venice and Genoa, or the 18th and so on). Nonetheless, Beneš’s actual identified as the ‘United Kingdom’. century Netherlands) a country The book has an irritating ‘tic’ of research is highly illuminating. It And the Habsburg Austrian empire, which lives mainly by financial presuming, without ever explicitly draws out brilliantly the way in once its larger claims in Germany and operations, and, indeed, has in recent arguing, the falsity of socialist which the SPÖ as a formation which the ‘Austrian Netherlands’ (Belgium) decades begun to move into the next projects, by way of characterising became a mass party (and which had been lost, was, in essence, a phase of decline (like 18th century worker aspirations to radical change won general male suffrage in 1907) German-dominated collection of Venice) of depending to a significant as “utopian” or “millenarian” and developed as a mass movement in territories (several originally non- extent on the tourist trade. the SPÖ’s project as “religious”, ground-level engagement, cultural German), which had been partially Nonetheless, something like the “redemptive” or “chiliastic”. Given as well as political, with working Germanised through medieval and ‘break-up of Britain’, which Nairn that the Habsburg regime was class experience and with rival early modern German expansion has been predicting since the 1960s, actually overthrown in 1918, this political trends. And one of his driven by landlord and peasant is by no means unimaginable. And ‘spin’ is merely irritating rather eventual conclusions - that “The weekly 12 April 8 2021 1342 worker

conviction that wage-earning people marginalise the ‘social nationals’ in Nonetheless, there is a missing action by setting England, Scotland possessed the right to determine the Prague and the Catholic-clericalist element here, which was, in fact, and Ireland against each other. character of national politics and and anti-Semitic ‘Christian Socials’ already missing from the accounts It would inevitably be difficult culture was … a major achievement” in Vienna. Manhood suffrage of earlier historians which Beneš for the SPÖ to fight against the - reflects his research better than was, in fact, adopted; and the first discusses. This is the place of the stream of the Habsburg state’s use the gestures throughout the book elections under the new regime saw active management of politics by the of nationality issues to manipulate towards neoliberal orthodoxy considerable successes for the SPÖ. state core and - related - geopolitical politics. It would have to be harder through the talk of “utopianism” and The result, in both German factors. The Habsburg monarchy for a party which began as one mainly “millenarianism” does. Austria and the Czech lands, was had, in the revolutionary crisis of of German workers, with the Czechs A main lesson of Beneš’s study that the SPÖ organisations and 1848-50, called upon the nationalism only slightly later organising large for the left is, in fact, the opposite of their supporters began to see the of the smaller nationalities in aid numbers (as Beneš points out): since his gestures to neoliberal orthodoxy. working class as the natural leaders against the German and Hungarian the regime was one which preserved It is that the maximum programme of the nation. Chapter 4, ‘Socialist liberals.6 After its position was a German-language army, and had in - that is, thinking the possibility of Hussites, Marxist Wagnerians’, restabilised, it had shifted its posture Cisleithania pursued Germanisation a radical alternative to the existing addresses the consequences of this, and held Hungary down by military until the liberals fell, the defence of world order, and developing it as German-speaking and Czech- force, but governed in alliance with a state unity by the German left could through literature and artistic and speaking SPÖ publicists appealed section of the German liberals, with appear merely as the defence of their cultural operations, as well as formal increasingly to the national culture an aspiration to taking the leadership own ‘privileged’ position. programmes and so on - is essential. as such - in tension with each other. of the whole of disunited Germany. But the internal limits of the SPÖ It is, in fact, indispensable to the This in turn leads into chapter 5, This project was destroyed by a project also have to be recognised. working class developing class- ‘The logics of separatism’, which succession of military defeats: It was not an ‘all-state’ party, but political independence in relation to recounts the increasing nationalism in the Franco-Austrian war over primarily a party of the Austrian the minimum programme - of what and separatism of the Czech SPÖ Italy or ‘second Italian war of Germans, Czechs and Galicians, to seek right now in the domain of organisation, ending in a split in independence’ in 1859; and in the which acquired a Trieste affiliate in politics. The loss of that ‘Second 1911. But it shows that this was Austro-Prussian war in 1866, which 1897. Hungary had a separate social International utopianism’ (by way of not only driven by simple Czech was simultaneously a ‘third Italian democratic party founded in 1890, the Soviet dystopia, on the one hand, nationalism, but also by several other war of independence’, in which the which also organised the Slovaks; and the Trotskyists’ ‘transitional factors: by the belief that the Czech Austrians lost the Veneto. Croatia had the Social Democratic programme’ delusion, on the other) workers had shown, by their more Behind the Austrian defeats is Party of Croatia and Slavonia, leaves the ‘post-utopian left’ unable combative action in 1905, that they British relative decline. Britain, founded in 1894; when the Trieste to be more than a political tail to were to the left of and more militant as the world-hegemon power in group affiliated to the SPÖ in 1897, a either the liberals (lesser-evil US than the German Austrians; by the the early 19th century, pursued a separate ‘Yugoslav social democratic Democrat supporters, left remainers) practical difficulties of bilingual policy of keeping Europe divided, party’ was founded in Slovenia. or to the nationalist-authoritarians meetings; by struggles over minority- including keeping the several The SPÖ was thus never a ‘little (Lexiteers, and so on). language education, especially for German states strong enough to fight International’, even if SPÖ leader These issues are not, however, Czech migrant workers in Vienna; France if necessary - but not united Victor Adler claimed that title for central to the argument of Beneš’s and by the “vices of large nations” enough for fully independent action. it.8 It still thought in national terms book. Rather, he tells the story of - meaning the German-speakers This meant British support for the - unlike those visionaries among how the SPÖ’s engagement with thinking of the Czechs as coming continued existence of the Habsburg the Balkan left, who envisaged mass working class culture, in from “rural idiocy”. regime. Louis Bonaparte’s 1851 not a Yugoslav, but a Balkan the context of Habsburg Austria- Chapter 6, ‘War and revolution’, coup restored France’s capability of federation.9 An analogous, explicit Hungary’s political discourse of sees the terminus of the development independent military action, and this ‘Danubianism’ might have had national contradictions, produced in in 1914-18. The German-speaking in turn directly led to Austrian defeat more success than the SPÖ’s limited the end division in the party - which SPÖ leadership’s support for the war in 1859, and stimulated other efforts Cisleithanian ‘inter-nationalism’ in turn fed into the break-up of the effort was shared by a significant at national unification at the expense in posing a real working class Austro-Hungarian state at the end of part of the Czech leadership - but of British control: thus the American alternative to the nationalists. World War I. Chapter 1, ‘Narrating as the Habsburg regime was seen civil war of 1861-65 against the Finally, when we come back to socialism in Habsburg Austria’, to be facing defeat (earlier than Anglophile free-trader slave-owners the actual collapse, we come back to focuses on the sources used and the Germany, since the Habsburgs’ army - and thus the Austro-Prussian war of geopolitics. The Czechs went over roles of socialist cultural production turned out to be less effective than 1866, Franco-Prussian war of 1870, to the side of the Entente and were and of worker self-education. The the Hohenzollerns’), this increased The SPÖ was never a ‘little and the creation of the Hohenzollern rewarded with generous borders, at ‘utopian’ and ‘religious’ ‘fnords’ are the conflict between the ranks and German Second Reich. the expense of the Sudeten Germans particularly thick on the ground here. the leadership. From late 1916, the International’, even if SPÖ The 1866 defeats made it and the Slovaks. The Serbs were Chapter 2, ‘Exclusion from the Czech SPÖ participated in the Czech leader Victor Adler claimed impossible for the Habsburgs to similarly given ‘Yugoslavia’ as an nation’, takes us to worker activists’ nationalist ‘united front’, which maintain military rule in Hungary, enlarged kingdom. The Romanians responses to allegations from the began to look to the Entente powers the title. It still thought in and led to the ‘Compromise of 1867’, got the whole of Transylvania, not German and Czech nationalists in the for support for independence. In the national terms - unlike which produced the ‘dual monarchy’ just the Romanian-speaking parts. 1890s that the social democrats were result, the Habsburg regime was Austria-Hungary: there was German The Austrians and Hungarians, in “indifferentist” towards the nation smashed - and all of its component those visionaries among Austria or ‘Cisleithania’ west of the contrast, were enemies, and received - by pointing to the nationalists’ parts radically impoverished by the the Balkan left, who Leitha, also including the Czech inter alia a determination that their complicity in the exclusion of the dislocation of the material divisions lands of Bohemia-Moravia, Polish- countries must be made landlocked. workers from the ‘nation’. Beneš of labour which had developed envisaged not a Yugoslav, Ukrainian Galicia and Bukovina, This determination, which handed starts with the physical basis of this under the economy of the Habsburg but a Balkan federation. An what is now Slovenia, and the Trieste to Italy, also set up the claim - the sharp differentiation regime. former Venetian colonial possession conditions for the ‘Fiume crisis’ between class spaces in Vienna Beneš’s ‘Conclusion’ is titled analogous, explicit of Dalmatia (currently Croatian studied by Reill. and Prague alike - and to the ‘Ideology and utopia’ and reasserts ‘Danubianism’ might have coast); and there was Magyar considerable ethnic diversity of the neoliberal fnords - but also Hungary or ‘Transleithania’ east of Reill workplaces and working class the contradictory point, that there had more success than the the Leitha, also including Slovakia, The Fiume crisis covers a much areas - before showing how social was a real emancipatory impact SPÖ’s limited Cisleithanian Romanian-speaking Transylvania, shorter period (1918-21) and a much democrat poets and other writers of the working class masses’ Serb-speaking Vojvodina, and smaller geographical space (a port dramatised the idea of exclusion, engagement with the SPÖ’s ideas ‘inter-nationalism’ in Croatia (with Fiume/Rijeka, in the northern part of the east coast both among the German-speakers and organisation to assert their own posing a real working class which gave Hungary a northern of the Adriatic, alternatively called and among the Czech-speakers. right to participate in the nation. Adriatic port independent of Rijeka). But it shares with Beneš’s 1897 saw both a suffrage reform, Beneš started with the Austro- alternative to the Cisleithania’s Trieste). The choices book close attention to ground-level which allowed some workers to vote Marxists’ arguments about the nationalists made by the Habsburg state thus detail. As Reill argues, the ‘Fiume in the February-March parliamentary national question, and then with set up the conditions for national crisis’ is chiefly famous in western elections, with the Social Democrats the varying views in the existing contradictions, which would historiography as a precursor to winning 14 seats; and, in April, a academic literature about why become central to late 19th-early Mussolini’s fascism, as the Italian violent controversy triggered by successively the SPÖ and the 20th century politics. In Hungary, nationalist poet and self-publicist, the government ‘conceding’ to the Habsburg state fell apart. Hans the liberals and nationalists pursued Gabriele d’Annunzio, in September Czech nationalists (by decree) a Mommsen had argued back in 1963 ‘Magyarisation’ at the expense of 1919 mobilised a group of veterans requirement of bilingualism for that the rising Austro-German, the smaller nationalities; in Austria, and youth to take over the city, and civil service jobs in Bohemia and Czech, etc bourgeoisies, competing the liberals and nationalists pursued in September 1920 set himself up Moravia. The pressure of national with each other, drew the workers’ Germanisation. When in 1878 the as Duce of the city, using language conflicts led to the SPÖ officially movement into their orbit; a central liberals failed to pass the military and imagery which was associated federalising its organisational form. role in studies of this kind was given budget for Habsburg intervention shortly afterwards with Mussolini’s Chapter 3, ‘Storms of November’, to the SPÖ leaders. Beneš turns in Bosnia, the king-emperor, Franz Fascisti. But she makes the point that takes us to Austria 1905, when instead to ‘discourse theories’ of Joseph, turned to creating a coalition the story ‘on the ground’ is, in fact, there was a tumultuous campaign both class identification and national of the clericals and nationalist groups a good deal more interesting and for universal suffrage - more identification - though thankfully he against the liberals - a return to the ambiguous. D’Annunzio responded tumultuous in Prague than in Vienna. does not follow the disastrous logic policy of 1848-50.7 to the efforts of Fiume’s own The context of the campaign was of these theories towards intellectual The SPÖ was attempting to political elite to obtain annexation to unequivocally international: Beneš closure against competing views and intervene in this constitutional Italy: a choice which they pursued in draws attention in more than one adverse evidence. Instead, this set-up, which was designed the effort to preserve what they had place to the influence of the Russian approach does not exclude to preserve the Habsburg had under the Habsburg regime. revolution of that year on the SPÖ’s the active role of worker- monarchy and its freedom Fiume/Rijeka had been an aggressive suffrage campaign.5 Mass autodidacts and militants of action by setting the independent city-state loosely demonstrations took large numbers at the base in constructing nationalities against each associated with the medieval of workers into parts of the capitals the national culture turns of other - just as, in Britain in kingdom of Croatia, which in turn from which they were normally the SPÖ German and Czech the 17th century, Charles became in the late Middle Ages excluded; in Prague, the result was organisations - which can tell I, Charles II and James II attached to Hungary, and which, after significant street fighting. The size us important things about the endeavoured to improve the fall of Hungary to the Ottomans, of SPÖ-led contingents tended to evolution of the SPÖ. the monarchy’s freedom of joined Habsburg Austria. Unlike weekly 13 worker 1342 April 8 2021 What we fight for Trieste, there was no historical basis from her first and last chapters, but regime’s wish to identify with Italy. preserve what they had - and got n Without organisation the for any Italian claim that Fiume/ a thematic treatment of aspects of the Chapter 5, ‘A sense of self’, Italian fascism and three rounds working class is nothing; with Rijeka was part of Italia irredenta; experiences of the local inhabitants addresses local government’s efforts of ethnic cleansing: first against the highest form of organisation it had never been part of Roman, and the local government in 1919- to promote Italian identification, the Slavs, then against the Jews, it is everything. Lombard or Carolingian Italy, or 20. Chapter 2, ‘Follow the money’, and the ways in which the city’s then after 1945 against the Italians. even a colonial possession of late tells us the story of the consequences inhabitants responded. For example: The leaderships of the German n There exists no real Communist medieval-early modern Venice. But for the Habsburg state for the money displaying Italian flags became Majority SPD and of the Austro- Party today. There are many it did have a large Italian-speaking it had, until 1918, issued. What was compulsory for government offices, German part of the SPÖ, and of so-called ‘parties’ on the left. In resident population (as was generally to be used for money? It had to be and a way of showing loyalism for the Italian Socialist Party, similarly reality they are confessional sects. true of port towns in the region - see ‘overstamped’ Habsburg money, others; individuals changed their endeavoured to avoid civil war. Members who disagree with the p26). After 1850, Fiume had been but how much was to be produced? names to Italianise them; school- The Italians got Mussolini for their prescribed ‘line’ are expected to added to Croatia; but under the ‘1867 The government tried to create the teachers were retrained to teach in pains; the Germans, after a delay, gag themselves in public. Either Compromise’ in Austria-Hungary, it conditions for ‘Fiume crowns’ to Italian rather than Hungarian. But Hitler; the Austrians Dollfuss and that or face expulsion. was reinstated as a corpus separatum be exchanged for Italian lire 1:1, Italian geography did not replace then Hitler; and at the end of the n Communists operate according (‘separate body’) independent of thereby squeezing the money supply. Danubian: rather, geography lessons day the enormous destruction of the to the principles of democratic Croatia, but under Hungary. Between The inhabitants of Fiume used a centred on Fiume itself and its 1939-45 war. centralism. Through ongoing debate 1867 and 1914 the city grew rapidly variety of expedients - among them immediate environs. Reill argues that After 1945, nationalism was we seek to achieve unity in action as the Mediterranean port for the extensive counterfeiting, which went many inhabitants accommodated widely discredited. It took a while and a common world outlook. As Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary. on throughout the former Habsburg what the local statelet wanted of for anti-revolutionism to be made long as they support agreed actions, During October 1918 the Habsburg lands (pp94-103) - and had to engage them; and this in turn, she argues, was plausible - by the combination of members should have the right to regime collapsed, as a result of plain in everyday currency speculation to a sort of ‘Italianisation’ which would Stalinist dystopia and concessions speak openly and form temporary military defeat and financial crisis, keep abreast. preserve what the city’s notables had through both social democracy and or permanent factions. and the demands of the USA and Chapter 3, ‘Legal ins and outs’, had before 1914 under a different Christian-democracy in Europe, and n Communists oppose all impe- Entente powers that there would addresses the attempts of the Fiume brand. Reill’s conclusion is that through left versions of nationalism rialist wars and occupations but be no peace without the regime authorities to deal with legal issues, Fiume can be seen as a microcosm of (actually linked to Soviet support) constantly strive to bring to the fore conceding ‘self-determination’ to the problem being that Hungarian the difficulties experienced by all the in the ‘third world’. Full-bore the fundamental question–ending war its nationalities. On October 29 the law, as modified by the special status components of the former Habsburg nationalism has revived in response is bound up with ending capitalism. provisional council of the Croats, of Fiume as a corpus separatum, empire after its dissolution. to the collapse of Stalinism and the n Slovenes and Serbs claimed Fiume. had applied before 1918, but now class war on the working class waged Communists are internationalists. The next day the Fiume municipal in theory applied only insofar as the Class by liberalism. Both the early dreams Everywhere we strive for the closest authorities handed over power to an new authorities continued its use. There were difficulties for all classes, of nationalism and its disastrous unity and agreement of working class ‘Italian National Council of Fiume’ The claim to adhere to Italy implied as Reill points out, but particularly consequences for the working class and progressive parties of all countries. - in spite of rival projects, including the application of the Italian civil disastrous consequences for the are worth remembering l We oppose every manifestation a Fiume workers’ council’s demand and penal codes - and the penal proletariat. Under capitalism, access Mike Macnair of national sectionalism. It is an for a universal-suffrage plebiscite of code was declared to apply in May to everything is rationed by access internationalist duty to uphold the the city’s inhabitants, about which 1919 (p125) but not retrospectively. to money. The proletariat as a class [email protected] principle, ‘One state, one party’. state to join or independence (pp41- And, in civil law, the Hungarian is the propertyless class, which is n The working class must be 44). The ‘Italian National Council’ liberal divorce law, not the Italian forced to work for wages for others, Notes organised globally. Without a global turned out to be backed by the prohibition of divorce, continued to because it lacks assets of its own, 1. M Maritan, ‘National indeterminacies at the Communist Party, a Communist Entente naval forces, which arrived be applied (pp126-29). The Fiume and is paid enough to live - which is periphery of the Habsburg monarchy: nationalisms International, the struggle against shortly afterwards (p44). authorities were, Reill argues, trying adaptable by class struggle - but not versus multi-ethnic identities in Fiume/Rijeka and capital is weakened and lacks Trieste, 1848-1867’ Nations and nationalism 2020, coordination. However, the USA, and in to carry on as if they were still a enough to accumulate. Vol 27, pp174-88. particular president Woodrow corpus separatum, but in relation Radical dislocation of the 2. For example. The enchanted glass Verso 1988; n Communists have no interest Wilson, was unwilling to concede to Italy. The D’Annunzio regime of economy therefore particularly ‘Ukania under Blair’ New Left Review January- apart from the working class Fiume to Italy. Wilson’s ‘expert’ September-December 1920 proposed savages the proletariat. If money February 2000. as a whole. They differ only in 3. freethenorth.co.uk; redpepper.org.uk/the-case- advisors had argued for giving in the alternative a revolutionary holdings are liquidated (as opposed for-northern-independence. recognising the importance of Fiume to the ‘Kingdom of the corporatist constitution - which was to being ‘bailed out’), the upper 4. Translated by Ben Lewis in Critique Vol 37, Marxism as a guide to practice. Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’, which never brought into force (p132). The and middle classes are affected; pp371-89 and Vol 38, pp143-63. That theory is no dogma, but became Yugoslavia; his ostensible problem is not unique, since every but the dislocation of the material 5. In Hungary the monarchy threatened the liberals must be constantly added to and and nationalists with universal suffrage, but backed ‘self-determination’ principle should revolutionary regime faces it - and order of production, leading to down on this threat when they capitulated on enriched. arguably have led to accepting for Brexit, our own government has no wages coming in or wages other issues: see N Stone. ‘Constitutional crises in n Capitalism in its ceaseless transfer to Italy, but Wilson taken arbitrary powers under ‘Henry becoming worthless, immediately Hungary, 1903-1906’ Slavonic and East European search for profit puts the future obstinately refused. Reill argues VIII clauses’ to change the inherited threatens workers with starvation. Review Vol 45(1967), pp163-82, pp172-81. 6. H Draper and E Haberkern Karl Marx’s theory of of humanity at risk. Capitalism is that Wilson stuck fast over Fiume EU law. Hence the fact that the Fiume revolution V: war and revolution New York 2005, synonymous with war, pollution, because he could pose as ‘anti- Chapter 4, ‘Between city and workers’ council makes only an chapter 2. exploitation and crisis. As a global imperialist’ on this issue (Italy being state’, addresses the thorny problem ephemeral appearance in Reill’s 7. There is a convenient summary in AG Whiteside The Socialism of fools: Georg ritter von Schoenerer system capitalism can only be a weak power), while conceding the of citizenship. Who could vote? story. The point is also visible in superseded globally. imperialist annexation demands of Who had the right to reside, and the partial deproletarianisation of and Austrian Pan-Germanism Berkeley 1975, pp12-24. n The capitalist class will never Britain, France and Japan (pp29-41). who, in contrast, could be deported? the immediate post-revolutionary 8. G Eley Forging democracy: the history of the The resulting deadlock at Versailles Equally important, who could access period in Russia, due to economic left in Europe, 1850-2000 Oxford 2002, pp92-93. willingly allow their wealth and was ‘solved’ in 1920 by the great welfare provision? I say ‘equally dislocation. The issue has been 9. ‘The Balkan socialist tradition: Balkan socialism power to be taken away by a and the Balkan federation, 1871-1915’ (2003) parliamentary vote. power negotiators declaring Fiume important’, because the break-up of developed as a theoretical problem Revolutionary History Vol 8, No 3. independent (p38). pre-1918 Hungary entailed wrecking by Marcel van der Linden, discussing 10. ‘Deproletarianisation’ - debated in S Pirani The n We will use the most militant Meanwhile, the Fiumean ‘Italian the economy of Fiume, which, as the ‘transition dip’ as an obstacle to Russian revolution in retreat 1920-24 Abingdon methods objective circumstances National Council’ was running an already mentioned, had been built the idea of workers’ revolution.10 2008, pp20-23. ‘Transition dip’ - van der Linden, allow to achieve a federal republic ‘Workers and revolution’ in P Brandon et al (ed) effective press campaign to promote up as the Adriatic terminus for But trying to avoid a ‘transition Worlds of labour turned upside down: revolutions of England, Scotland and Wales, the ‘Italian’ character of the city Hungarian trade. A large part of dip’ turns out not to work, either. and labour relations in global historical a united, federal Ireland and a - including, for example, giving the inhabitants were thus dependent The Fiumean notables tried to perspective Leiden 1920, chapter 1. United States of Europe. women the right to vote (which they on welfare support, which, in turn, n Communists favour industrial did not have in Italy itself) because depended on relief provision from unions. Bureaucracy and class women voters’ enthusiasm made Entente powers. compromise must be fought and good press (pp48-54). This press Reill shows that the Fiume Fighting fund the trade unions transformed into campaign formed the background authorities elected to base citizenship schools for communism. to the ability of D’Annunzio and his on the Habsburg-regime category n supporters to invade Fiume without a of ‘pertinency’. This was parallel Communists are champions of shot fired, in spite of the orders of the to the status of Habsburg subject, Back on course? the oppressed. Women’s oppression, Italian government (pp55-57). The and of Hungarian citizen; it was an fter the first week of our out in both February and March, combating racism and chauvinism, USA retained the whip hand due to institution parallel to ‘settlement’ AApril fighting fund we have giving us a combined deficit and the struggle for peace and Italy’s war debts, and would not agree under the old English Poor Law, received exactly £350 towards of £296 for those two months, ecological sustainability are just to annexation; D’Annunzio blocked which gave the right to receive our £2,000 monthly target. which more than wipes out the as much working class questions a compromise under which Fiume welfare benefits from the parish if Most of that results from the January surplus of £183. In other as pay, trade union rights and would become an ‘independent’ you had it - but, if not, liability to usual batch of standing orders words, to get back on course, demands for high-quality health, Italian protectorate in December be deported to your place of original received at the start of each what we need is an extra £100- housing and education. 1919, and in summer 1920 made a ‘settlement’. A more modern analogy month - there were 16 of them, plus coming our way this month. n Socialism represents victory coup against the ‘Italian National is the Chinese hukou, which allows ranging from £5 to £50 - thank Of course, the fact that we’re in the battle for democracy. It is Council’; finally, at Christmas 1920 employers to treat workers of rural you, comrade AC, for that last still not printing because of the the rule of the working class. (a date chosen in order to keep the origin as illegal immigrants to the one. Also worth a mention are the pandemic reduces our costs quite Socialism is either democratic or, story out of the papers) the Italian cities. But there was difficulty in SOs from FK (£35), CG (£30), II considerably. But we could really as with Stalin’s Soviet Union, it government shelled and invaded the using and revising the categories and SJ (£20 each). do with upgrading our office - turns into its opposite. city in order to oust D’Annunzio and (given the break-up of Austria- On top of that there were once we’re able to get back in n Socialism is the first stage force acceptance of independence Hungary), and tension between the three PayPal contributions, there together again! So please of the worldwide transition to (pp1-8). Italian fascists subsequently use of ‘pertinency’ and the Fiume with comrade DB at the top of do your bit for the only weekly communism - a system which (1922) made a coup against the authorities’ (claim to) aim to become the list with his monthly £50 paper fighting for a single knows neither wars, exploitation, Fiume government, and Mussolini a part of Italy. Should Italians be able contribution. Mind you, I see he Marxist party which unites the money, classes, states nor nations. annexed the town in 1924 (pp225- to easily acquire pertinency? In this took a break in March, so I’m revolutionary left on a principled, Communism is general freedom 26): by now the USA under Warren context, there were issues about the pleased to see he’s back on track democratic basis! l and the real beginning of human Harding and Calvin Coolidge was Italian soldiers’ relationships with once again! Robbie Rix history. no longer interested in the detail of local women, and so on (pp167-69), Well, £350 isn’t bad, but The Weekly Worker is licensed by European affairs. It was to be taken and soldiers’ effective impunity in we’re a bit behind where we Fill in a standing order form November Publications under a Creative by Yugoslav forces in 1945 and relation to crimes (pp169-74). These need to be, if we’re going to (back page), donate via our Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence: formally annexed, as Rijeka, in 1947. are, again, symptoms of economic reach that £2K landmark. And website, or send cheques, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ The bulk of Reill’s book is not dislocation, as well as (Reill’s we really need to, having missed payable to Weekly Worker legalcode. ISSN 1351-0150. the narrative I have outlined here point) of the ambiguities of the local No 1342 April 8 2021 Press lied, police lied, bosses lied After 47 years The convictions of the Shrewsbury 24 have at last been quashed. There was a conspiracy - between the employers, the police and the Tory government. Bernard Mattson reports webinar was held on refused to follow orders and went on Wednesday March 31 hosted hunger strike, and for much of the Aby the Public Interest Law time were treated abominably. Centre (PILC), entitled ‘Shrewsbury During the trial there had been a pickets, political policing and the report in The Sunday People saying state’. that Des Warren had a Jaguar car in This, of course, concerned the 24 his drive and owned a holiday home. Shrewsbury building workers falsely Ricky pointed out that the Jaguar convicted in 1973-74 following was an old, broken-down model their strike and militant picket. Six with no engine, which was used by of the accused were actually jailed, his cat, looking after its kittens on the including Ricky Tomlinson, who back seat! The ‘holiday home’ was a today is an acclaimed actor, and small, old caravan with no wheels! Des Warren (now deceased), who But all this was about par for the recalled his appalling treatment in course for the mainstream media (no his 1982 book The key to my cell. change there then). They were let down by their own He and others spoke of the long union, the TUC and the Labour fight for at least a little justice and, Party leadership, though there was not surprisingly, of the sadness that plenty of support for them in the Des and others had not lived to see working class as a whole. But their the outcome of last week’s appeal. convictions were finally quashed by After the panel had made their the court of appeal on March 23 after Des Warren (left) and Ricky Tomlinson (centre) were fitted up speeches there were some questions a mere 47 years! put to them, selected by the chair The speakers were Annabel Timan Woodrow Wyatt. The broadcast between the home secretary, the get a roof over their heads and food from the chat. For example, what and Piers Marquis, the lawyers took place in the course of the first employers and the police. It was on the table. to do next? Once again the more involved in the appeal, Dave Smith trial of the Shrewsbury pickets. not done with a nod and a wink. Then it was the turn of John impassioned responses from from the Blacklist Support Group, The programme was broadcast It was conceived after pressure McDonnell, who spoke of the the panel included the words, Labour’s John McDonnell and Ricky directly before the defendants from Tory members of parliament dangerous turns in the law currently ‘solidarity’, ‘love’, ‘keep fighting’ Tomlinson himself. There were over were due to give evidence. who demanded changes in the being proposed by the Tory and ‘no divisiveness’ (that last 330 people attending the webinar, The documentary featured picketing laws.2 government, including the right of comment referred to future actions). plus a large number following on footage of our client, Ricky undercover cops to break the law and Another question asked about the other channels. Tomlinson, and also Des Warren Parts of this speech were highlighted of the police to decide who can or role which the Labour leadership As the PILC preview said, in its opening minutes. The by panellists in the webinar and, cannot protest, and when and where might play in this. For some reason programme’s narrative concretely, of course, it was quite true. The they can do it. True enough, and it the panellists seemed a little reluctant On Tuesday March 23 2021 but wrongly, linked our clients government was out for blood is something to be fought by the to address that part of the question. the court of appeal made the with disruption and violence. following the victory of the working class, but possibly the most However, the whole occasion was following judgement in the case National Union of Mineworkers in used word at the event as a whole interesting and emotional. There are of our clients, Ricky Tomlinson, As I say, that part of the appeal February 1972. The miners’ militant was ‘solidarity’. This came from clearly a lot of people who want to Arthur Murray and the failed, but, as Piers pointed out, they mass picket at Saltley coke depot both speakers and audience members keep fighting, though they are not at ‘Shrewsbury 24’: “It follows that have not finished with it yet. There earlier that month played a highly in the chat column, but I could not all clear as to how. There is no reason under Ground 1 the convictions is a report on the background and significant part in that victory. The help wondering where McDonnell’s not to continue using the courts to of all the appellants are unsafe. evidence in this part of the appeal,1 ‘Pentonville 5’ dockers, as they were ‘solidarity’ was in the case of, for appeal against injustice, but in this Their appeals are allowed and all along with the players and their called, were arrested on July 21 1972 instance, all those leftwing members case it took 47 years before a clear the verdicts in relation to them are backgrounds, making it pretty clear and released a few days later. The of the Labour Party expelled or injustice was partially righted. Yet quashed.” that what Des Warren said from the Shrewsbury picket took place on currently suspended in the ‘anti- there are far more such injustices dock at his trial was true. September 6 1972. Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ out there regarding jobs, homes, Annabel Timan gave a pretty full Comrade Warren stated: Next up was Dave Smith, witch-hunt launched by the party health … report on the section of the appeal secretary of the Blacklist Support bureaucracy under the leadership of We need a well organised based on witness statements that Was there a conspiracy? Ten Group, which organises in support Jeremy Corbyn (predictably he too working class not only to rectify the police had destroyed - it turned members of the jury have of militant construction workers eventually fell victim). such abominations, but to impose a out that the defence had not been said there was. There was a who were subsequently denied Other words used included new, democratic, alternative order. informed of their existence, let conspiracy, but not by the pickets. work, thanks to the employers’ ‘love’ and ‘keep fighting’ and But what form that should take and alone their destruction. The police The conspiracy began with the blacklists. Dave gave an these, along with ‘solidarity’, were how it could be obtained was, of had taken statements from about miners giving the government a impassioned contribution in support perhaps employed most of all by course, not a subject for discussion 700 people, but at a later date re- good hiding last year. It developed of the Shrewsbury pickets, especially the last speaker, Ricky Tomlinson at this event l interviewed them, producing press when the government was forced Ricky Tomlinson, and spoke of the himself. He gave an informative photographs of pickets with some to perform legal gymnastics in long struggle of themselves and of and very moving speech, going Notes heads circled for easy identification, getting five dockers out of jail other blacklisted trades unionists, over the picketing, the trials and the 1. pilc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PILC_ Court_Rep_v2_ONLINE1.pdf. in order to help the witnesses come after they had only just been who have had, and continue to have, imprisonment - the latter especially 2. Quote taken from The key to my cell by Des up with the ‘right’ story. It has been put there. The conspiracy was a tremendous struggle just to work, of himself and Des Warren. They Warren (Living History Library, 2007). claimed that the police only came back to those witnesses for their final Subscribe Name:______Standing order statements, once they were sure they 6m 1yr Inst. To ______Bank plc ______could do that. Address:______UK £30/€35 £60/€70 £200/€220 Piers Marquis gave the report on Branch address ______Europe £43/€50 £86/€100 £240/€264 ______the section of the appeal that failed, Rest of £65/€75 £130/€150 £480/€528 Post code ______Account name ______but which will be pursued further. As world ______Sort code ______Account No ______the barristers’ report says, New UK subscribers offer: 3 months for £10 ______Please pay to Weekly Worker, Lloyds A/C No 00744310 sort code 30-99-64, the sum of ______every month*/3 months* Prejudice: on November 13 1973, until further notice, commencing on ______This replaces any previous order from this account. (*delete) Granada Television broadcast UK subscribers: Pay by standing order and Tel:______save £12 a year. Minimum £12 every 3 Date ______a documentary (produced also Email:______in conjunction with Anglia months... but please pay more if you can. 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