So& Wloirkdersa’ Lirbeirtty y No 299 9 October 2013 30p/80p www.workersliberty.org For a workers’ government

Tamarod in Gaza Why the Mail hates Slavoj Žižek page 3 Ralph Miliband on film page 9 page 10 ROYAL MAIL See SALE page 2 IS TORY RIP-OFF 2 ROYAL MAIL

What is the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty? Keep it public! Fight on

Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to another, the capitalist class, which owns the means of production. Society is shaped by the capitalists’ relentless drive to increase their wealth. Capitalism causes poverty, unemployment, the blighting of lives by overwork, the principle! imperialism, the destruction of the environment and much else. Against the accumulated wealth and power of the By a CWU member liberalisation of the postal rored the consensus in other than the Tories! capitalists, the working class has one weapon: solidarity. sector in the UK was under - utilities – that the major The CWU campaign has The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build solidarity through Big investors, and a fair taken by Labour well in ad - player (in this case Royal recently focused on a boy - struggle so that the working class can overthrow capitalism. We want few middle-class people vance of legislation on Mail) has to meet universal cott of the private compa - socialist revolution: collective ownership of industry and services, who can afford £750 to workers’ control and a democracy much fuller than the present system, liberalisation from Europe. obligations on access for a nies who compete with the bid for shares, stand to with elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to AWL members who were fair “playing field”. This publicly owned Royal Mail. bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. make large windfall gains CWU activists at the time rigmarole is in reality about This has gone down well We fight for the labour movement to break with “social partnership” as Royal Mail shares are opposed the proposals. The giving guaranteed profits to with union members and and assert working-class interests militantly against the bosses. allocated and start trad - opportunity to argue a new entrants to the market, has rallied opposition, but it Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade unions, ing, from 15 October. workers’ case against liber - which can choose the most is a mistaken strategy long supporting workers’ struggles, producing workplace bulletins, helping The government has de - alisation and competition profitable areas of the busi - term because it conflates organise rank-and-file groups. liberately set the share price and instead for proper pub - ness. postal workers’ interests We are also active among students and in many campaigns and low to get a successful sell- lic planning and investment The CWU has undertaken with those of Royal Mail, alliances. off, and the moneyed was lost. recruitment drives in the which operates as a busi - classes are confident that The framework for future various private firms oper - ness within a liberalised We stand for: new private bosses will be privatisation was in place ating in the sector, but too market. ● Independent working-class representation in politics. able to get good profits by from then. The “private sec - little too late. Other unions A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour ● beating down postal work - tor disciplines”, i.e. cost cut - have already got members POSITIVE movement. ers’ pay and conditions. ting to be competitive, were and in some cases recogni - A motion for renationali - ● A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to strike, to On 16 October the postal used, with the result that tion in these firms. sation was overwhelm - picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. there was pressure to re - Late in the life of the last ingly passed at Labour Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, education workers’ union CWU will ● duce Royal Mail employees’ Labour Government Peter Party conference. and jobs for all. announce the result of a bal - terms. Mandelson followed ● A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Full lot on strikes to win guaran - But shadow minister equality for women and social provision to free women from the burden tees on terms and through the logic of liberali - Chukka Umunna refuses to of housework. Free abortion on request. Full equality for lesbian, gay, conditions. However, the CLOSURES sation, and pushed for part give a clear position. It’s bisexual and transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity union’s campaign so far has There were closures of privatisation. By then the like going through the mo - against racism. been far too defensive. major Mail Centres, and union had a different lead - tions... and the share sale is ● Open borders. The story of the campaign rounds of job cuts, as well ership under Billy Hayes, going ahead. ● Global solidarity against global capital — workers everywhere have against Royal Mail Privati - as an increase in tempo - who was in principle The current campaign of more in common with each other than with their capitalist or Stalinist sation by the CWU starts rary and casual workers. against the model of liberal - the union accepts in effect rulers. over 13 years ago. This experience contrasts isation and privatisation. A there is no alternative to a ● Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest workplace or When Derek Hodgson with that of the privatisa - vigorous and successful “company union” ap - community to global social organisation. was General Secretary the tion of BT where the share campaign was undertaken, proach. You can’t keep ● Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal rights for all union went along with the sale happened in advance which included fighting postal services public with - nations, against imperialists and predators big and small. liberalisation proposals of of the development of a within the Labour Party. out arguing positively for ● Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. the 1997-2001 Labour gov - Since the 2010 election, If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarity to sell — fully liberalised market. public postal services, in - ● ernment in the Postal Serv - though, has sought only to and join us! Though the telecoms pri - cluding greater public in - ices Act 2000. It did so on vatisation took place in 1984 achieve ameliorating vestment, and against the the basis that the publicly it was not until the early amendments to Con-Dem liberalised model. Contact us: owned Royal Mail (where 1990s that there were major legislation. Both Coalition To keep the sector the majority of postal CWU job cuts. partners are in favour of unionised the CWU needs 020 7394 8923 [email protected] ● ● members work) should be The postal regulatory postal privatisation, the Lib - to appeal to all workers in The editor (Cathy Nugent), 20e Tower Workshops, Riley free to compete in the liber - structure brought in after eral Democrats having a the postal sector on the Road, London, SE1 3DG. alised postal market. The the Postal Services Act mir - worse track record on this basis of class solidarity. ● Printed by Trinity Mirror Something to learn Robinson quits EDL Get Solidarity every week! On 8 October English De - ● Trial sub, 6 issues £5 o from Tea Party fence League leaders Tommy Robinson and 22 issues (six months). £18 waged o ● The Republicans in the But the chief political Kevin Carroll quit the £9 unwaged o US Congress seem set lesson is on how politi - EDL. to take the US budget 44 issues (year). £35 waged o cians who are militant and Robinson said it was be - ● deficit up to the wire on £17 unwaged o determined can use leg - cause of the “dangers of 17 October. islative assemblies to do far-right extremism”. gangs of football support - ● European rate: 28 euros (22 issues) o And possibly beyond, to much more than the usual According to the EDL- ers who gather in pubs, or 50 euros (44 issues) o the point where the US point-scoring or polite op - watching website “EDL drink heavily, and then go government not only position. The tactic of de - Tick as appropriate above and send your money to: News”, this “signals the out looking for Muslims (or sends workers home un - liberate parliamentary end of the EDL”. people who “look Mus - 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG paid, but fails to pay its obstruction was pioneered Unusually for a far-right lim”) to harass. Cheques (£) to “AWL”. bills. If president Obama in Britain, by Irish nation - group, the EDL has had no Ever since the EDL and the Democrats cam - alist MPs led by Charles Or make £ and euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub. social programme and very emerged, Solidarity has ar - paigned boldly for the Stuart Parnell in the 1870s little ongoing organisation. gued that it is an unstable principle of universal and 1880s, when all Ire - Name ...... It has organised a series of formation, but one with the health insurance — which land was ruled by Britain. street demonstrations, built-in danger that it is what the Republicans Their activity helped win Address ...... some fairly large, many serves as a terrain within want to destroy — then many concessions for Ire - small, often violent, since which a nucleus can re - the Republicans could not land, including, eventu - ...... spring 2009. Nominally group a new militant fas - get away with it. Or even ally, the principle of Home these are “against Islamic cist organisation. I enclose £ ...... if the Democrats were bold Rule. extremism”: in fact they are We still need to be on Labour should follow about using unusual finan - mostly mobilisations of guard for that danger. cial expedients. that model. 3 NEWS Anti-Hamas plan On hunger strike to stay

By Vicki Morris Pakistani women were bas - due to mass round up no ing their asylum claim on due process”. Thirty women asylum gender-based persecution. Yarl’s Wood in Bedford - seekers from Pakistan A statement by 14 of the shire, Britain’s largest immi - for 11 November and elsewhere, have hunger strikers says: gration removal centre for staged a hunger strike at “We need justice, we women, holds up to 400 Yarl’s Wood Immigration need safety and we need people and is run by private By Heather Shaw Removal Centre against protection. Women seeking outsourcing company Serco forced deportation. asylum from gender vio - under contract from the lence, honour killing, forced Home Office. In recent months, a Face - Some of the women were There are currently calls book page with 25,000 part of a group scheduled marriage, domestic abuse, trafficking need time to for an investigation into followers has appeared for removal from the UK on allegations of sexual under the title of the a charter flight to Lahore, prove their cases. We have had no access to legal aid... abuse of detainees by Palestinian Tamarod Pakistan on 1 October. The some staff. Movement. because of huge waiting list Tamarod (“rebellion” in Arabic) in Egypt collected more than 22 million signa - Global strikes and solidarity tures to oust Morsi. The Palestinian reimagining of this movement is creating a HONG KONG April, which killed over stir in the Gaza Strip by The Hong Kong Confed - 1000 workers. calling a day of protests eration of Trade unions More militant strikers against the Hamas govern - (HKCTU) held a solidar - ment on 11 November. have began operating road ity rally on 1 October at Tamarod activists have blocks and forcibly shut - a Government office in boldly distributed a state - ting down factories. Over Hong Kong. ment of intent directly to 100 factories were closed The demonstration on 2 October. the homes of some Hamas Police attacked strik - leaders, taking to the streets called for the release of Tamarod statement of intent ers with rubber bullets, in the early hours to avoid Wu Guijun, imprisoned arrest. They have even em - for organising with co- injuring at least ten peo - “We are hearing some call - Tamarod activist saying ple. blazoned expressions of sol - ing for rebellion... I support that they were receiving workers against job losses idarity on the offices of the the rebellion, but a rebellion funding and support from when the furniture factory Police attack garment Maan News Agency and Al against occupation…this Israel, Fatah, and intelli - where they worked re-lo - workers Arabiya, which were closed language should not be gence services from across cates. SOUTH AFRICA down by the government used amongst Palestinians. the Middle East, to execute According to the IUF BANGLADESH On 4 October, platinum recently. They claim nearly Do not embark on this dan - a coup in Gaza in the next trade union federation: Over 200,000 textile miners in Rustenberg 7,000 signatures on a similar gerous path. It is a path six months. Tamarod ac - “The workers downed workers across struck against a pro - petition to that used against which could have severe tivists insist that the only tools on 7 May and peti - Bangladesh struck in posed 4800 redundan - Morsi. consequences on our funding they get comes di - tioned the local govern - early October. cies by mining giant Although attempting to unity”. rectly from monthly contri - ment to intervene. On 23 Their demands were for Amplats. downplay the significance Threats to bring down butions from members. May, 300 workers were at least a doubling of pay of Tamarod in Gaza by dis - Having pressured Am - Tamarod are rising in inten - Abu Yamen of Tamarod besieged by the police to 8000 taka (£63) a month. missing it as “a movement plats into reducing the sity as 11 November ap - says that plans for 11 No - while marching to the City The minimum wage was on Facebook…nothing proposed redundancies proaches. The Izz ad-Din vember will continue de - Government; more than 20 last raised in 2010, and the more than that”, Hamas se - from 14000 to 4800, mem - al-Qassam Brigades, the spite the arrests and workers were arrested and government and factory bers of the Association of curity officials have begun military wing of Hamas, cir - brutalisation of activists. He bosses proposed a rise questioning and arresting detained, including Wu Mineworkers and Con - culated a photograph show - says: “People can no longer Guijun. All were eventu - only from 3000 to 3600 struction union (AMCU) large numbers of activists ing an armed member of be silent facing this injus - ally released except for taka (from £23 to £28 a are striking to save every and journalists, as well as the organisation along with tice, oppression and deteri - Wu. According to his month). single job. Last year, the politicians, about their in - the slogan “We prepare in orating economic situation. lawyer, Wu now faces Textile factories employ police shot 34 wildcat volvement with and knowl - silence, and Tamarod’s fu - Every citizen will be a criminal prosecution for over 3.6 million workers strikers at Lonmin’s edge of Tamarod. neral tomorrow will come, leader and will take a cam - ‘assembling a crowd to in the country, often with Marikana platinum mine. Hamas says Tamarod are 11/11 is our deadline”. era to record what will hap - completely inadequate pointing their frustrations disturb social order’.” But unemployment in On 6 September Hamas pen. Online petition: safety precautions, as seen in the wrong direction. “The march will be a South Africa is 25%. held a news conference goo.gl/oXShHn in the collapse of the Rana The miners are refus - Prime Minister Ismail march of mobile phones”. with a short video “confes - Plaza factory complex in ing to give in. Haniyah said on 21 August: sion” from an alleged Italy: Letta pledges more pain

By Hugh Edwards project begun around two carried through with full stitution of public life. politics and interests repre - ent to the political crisis. years ago by Mario Monti to support from his Demo - The birth of Letta’s coali - sented by the coalition. The effect can only be to On Tuesday 1 October Sil - restore financial stability cratic Party and the PDL of tion five months ago evoked All the union leaders, and further deepen confusion, vio Berlusconi abandoned and competitive fitness Berlusconi — and then widespread anger within the parliamentary fake left cynicism and demoralisa - his threat to bring down would not be derailed by promised even further the Democratic Party, in the — Nicky Vendola’s SEL — tion among millions. The the Italian government of the desperate antics of a “painful reforms”. These union confederations, and openly supported the gov - populist Five Star move - Enrico Letta. many-times-condemned bil - will add to the misery of an across the spectrum of left ernment. The extra-parlia - ment alone gave no support The whoops of joy from lionaire criminal. official unemployment rate opinion. Yet the possible mentary forces gathered to the government. the international bourgeoisie Prime minister Letta, in of 12% (40 % among the collapse of the government behind the campaign “in de - It will be licking its lips his address to parliament on young), average family in - saw no-one arguing to re - fence of the Italian constitu - were nothing compared to at the prospect of the in - the orgasm of triumph from 1 October, offered up hosan - comes reduced to the buy - shape the balance of forces tion” led by metalworkers’ evitable next round of cri - their counterparts in Italy, nas to the wonderful ing power of the late 80s, in a mass working-class-led leader Maurizio Landini re - finally reassured that the achievements of Monti — and the pillage of every in - electoral challenge to the mained philistinely indiffer - sis. 4 COMMENT Stalin’s Great Secret Most accounts of Stalin’s life make no mention of such an arrest. But one place it is mentioned is in Trotsky’s unfinished Eric Lee biography of Stalin, which was published at about the same time as Levine and the White Russians began their quest to This summer marks the hundredth anniversary of the get the Eremin letter published. drafting of a letter which revealed one of history’s great - Trotsky’s book — which rejects Stalin’s possible role as an est secrets. Or maybe not. informer — nevertheless includes a chronology and notes his The letter in question is dated July 12, 1913 and is signed by 1906 arrest. Colonel Alexander Eremin, head of the Special Section of the If Stalin was arrested in 1906, it was probably at the time of tsarist Department of Police. Writing from the police head - the police raid on the underground printing press in a Tbil - quarters in St. Petersburg, Eremin informs a captain in the isi neighbourhood called Avlabar. Like nearly everything distant Siberian town of Yeniseisk that one of the revolution - else in Georgia at the time, this would have been a Menshe - aries who has just been deported to his jurisdiction is, in fact, vik-controlled press. Stalin was one of the very few Lenin a former police collaborator. loyalists in that region of the Russian empire. Zero hours and The agent’s name is Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili — But this was a time when Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were better known to us today as Stalin. forced to work together, and shortly after Stalin learned of According to Eremin, Stalin began giving information to the location of the Avlabar press, the police closed it down, workers’ control the police following his 1906 arrest in Tbilisi, continued making many arrests. Stalin may have been the one who working for them in Baku, and then again in St. Petersburg. tipped the police off. By the time the letter was written, Stalin had broken from the police following his election to the Bolshevik Central Com - SUSPICION If Stalin was one of those arrested, and if he took up an mittee. Edd Mustill offer to become a collaborator, he would have been The problem with Eremin’s letter is that no one knows if it Finally the widespread phenomenon of zero hours con - is genuine. swiftly released. This would have awakened suspicion, tracts has broken into the national consciousness, with The letter first surfaced, apparently, in the 1930s and there and would almost certainly have been covered up. a lot of coverage in the media. is reason to believe that Trotsky saw it, or knew of its exis - Over the years, several biographers of Stalin — admittedly, tence. But Trotsky chose to reject the view — then widely a minority — have accepted that the circumstantial evidence Unite estimate as many as 5.5 million workers could be on held — that Stalin had probably been a double agent. such contracts, perhaps a fifth of the national workforce. Ed of Stalin’s collaboration with the police is overwhelming. But In the mid 1940s the letter surfaced again in New York, hardly any of them believe that the Eremin letter is genuine. Miliband felt compelled to promise to ban certain types of having been passed around among White Russian emigres. zero hours contract in his speech to the TUC last month. A century later, one might ask if it matters. I think it does. It was finally published in 1956 as a front cover story in Life For many decades, many on the revolutionary left — proba - Zero hours is so common in the service sector that it has Magazine , followed up by a book-length treatment by jour - become the norm in some chains; as much as 90% of the bly most — accepted that Stalin was a genuine communist nalist Isaac Don Levine. Levine had authored the first English with whom one might have disagreements. Some went so far workforce in the case of Sports Direct. But it also afflicts other language biography of Stalin a quarter century earlier and as to say that once in power, Stalin even committed viola - workplaces. Over 20,000 university staff are thought to be considered the letter to be genuine. tions of socialist legality. The Trotskyists of course went fur - employed on the basis of zero hours. Most scholars disagreed. ther and accused him of betraying the revolution. This growth can be attributed more than anything to the Within a few years, the letter was largely forgotten. But what if that betrayal pre-dated the revolution by a decline of union power at the point of production. And its But when Mikhail Gorbachev suddenly opened up Soviet decade or more? continued growth could serve to weaken the unions further society to a measure of free discussion in the 1980s, the letter In the end, Stalin created a police state that made the tsarist because many of them have been slow to cotton on to the im - resurfaced as Russian historians resumed the discussion of portance of organising casual workers. Stalin’s early career and possible role as a police spy. police seem like amateurs. His half-dozen escapes from pris - So combating zero hours is key for unions to defend their Having studied the history of the letter for several years, ons and exile under tsarist rule became impossible once he own interests; retaining membership, protecting established my own view is the same as that of historian and diplomat was at the helm of the Russian state. He learned the lessons terms and conditions, and preventing the undercutting of George F Kennan, who said that the letter is “one of those cu - well from a poorly organized political police; the GPU and wages. Unions are perhaps beginning to move on this; the rious bits of historical evidence of which it can only be said NKVD of his era were far more efficient and ruthless than food workers’ union BFAWU recently won, through strike that the marks of spuriousness are too strong for us to call it theSitra tlsinar, iistt m praeyd teucrens soourst,. was not a genuine revolutionary action, the near eradication of zero hours and agency work at genuine, and the marks of genuineness are too strong for us who was corrupted by power. He may well have been the Hovis/Premier Foods factory in Wigan. to call it entirely spurious.” corrupted by weakness, a young, fearful man in the FLEXIBLE Among the aspects of the letter that raise the possibility clutches of the police, accepting an offer that he could But the zero hours question also throws up wider ques - that it is genuine is the extraordinary story of Stalin’s 1906 not refuse. tions about the nature of “work” and how it is organised. arrest in Tbilisi, today the capital of Georgia. The defenders of zero hours make the point that “flexibil - ity” is good – this is true. But a Mass1 survey for Unite found that only 13% of workers on zero hours contracts wanted to Our hemline, our choice stay on one. Not surprising, because flexibility on the boss’s terms means hell for the rest of us. we wear — that a woman should dress for the gratification of Many of the so-called “benefits” of flexibility actually only others, robbing her of her own agency as an individual. Let us show up the sketchy nature of zero hours work. After all, not forget that what is deemed an “appropriate” length is what’s better? Giving up shifts (and pay) to deal with a per - Letter nothing more than an arbitrary judgement — every single as - sonal crisis, or being properly covered with good holidays pect of regulating skirt length is suffused with the worst and sick pay? Many young women attending secondary school will be kinds of patriarchal moralism that causes harm to women on It would be a missed opportunity if trade unionists limited aware of the almost fanatically zealous way schools pur - a daily basis. our demands to guaranteed hours. We can take it a step fur - sue a particular aspect of the uniform policy: namely the There is many a running joke based on this and other non - ther and argue that workers should collectively decide how length of the school skirt. sensical facets of uniform policy (how does nail varnish af - work is shared out. Why? Because we don’t want people Schools routinely rebuke pupils for any length deemed too fect our ability to learn?). However, we must understand that structuring every aspect of their life around work. And we short, remind us to check our skirts before going into assem - this is their point: that they are nonsense. They are not in want to affirm the principle of union control of workplace bly, and occasionally deliver an admonitory spiel with a place to serve our educational betterment; they are there as an procedures, build the confidence of unions to put forward threat of some form of sanction following. insistence on submission to authority even when, or more positive proposals for how work can be shared. Usually this is done under the pretext that “male staff will truthfully especially when, it is senseless to do so. They are Unite are calling for “a restoration of sector level collective feel uncomfortable” or even sometimes about how members there to get us accustomed to a societal structure where the bargaining” to tackle zero hours. It sounds like what they of the general public feel about our attire. vast majority of us will be systematically disempowered and have in mind could be a return to the old Wages Boards, the A cursory examination reveals these reasons as deeply expected to accept this state, preferably without question. merits of which are debatable. Of course, this won’t happen, The struggle against uniform regulations under the problematic. Using male staff as justification for school policy shadow of capitalism’s everyday horrors may seem a tad particularly in unorganised sectors and particularly under a disturbingly transmutes school students into sexual objects Tory government, without massive industrial campaigns frivolous. But the school is the place where we learn and and carries the dangerous implication that what we wear is develop ourselves, and what better lesson to learn than calOlin ga f olorc iat. l level, union branches which feel confident responsible for whether we are objectified or not. that we are free to wear what we want rather than what enough should start to assert themselves over working This message must be fiercely combated at every turn. others prescribe for us? practices as the Hovis bakers have done, and draw up Adjusting our skirt lengths for the benefit of the “general plans for the sort of workplaces we want to see. public” suggests that the public have a right to control what Rida Vaquas, south-west London 5 WHAT WE SAY BOOKS FROM WORKERS’ LIBERTY

Antonio Gramsci: working-class revolutionary This booklet Lynch-mobbing blocks discusses a major recent study on the Notebooks — Peter fight for better future Thomas’s The Hamzah Khan’s death through starvation in 2009, the Gramscian Moment discovery of his mummified body two years later and the of this child was a result of the capitalist system. Many mil - — and argues that recent conviction of his mother, Amanda Hutton, has lions of people live in this society and do not become child brought a horrific case of neglect and abuse to public at - killers. But this child killer does live in a capitalist society and the Notebooks were in fact a powerful tention. that society did create the circumstances in which this atroc - contribution to the working-out of ity was possible. Judge Roger Thomas QC said it was “as bad a case of un - The background to these events are that Amanda Hutton revolutionary working-class strategy in lawful killing of a child by a parent as it is possible to imag - was abused for many years by her partner. She suffered from developed capitalist societies. ine”. post-natal depression. She had sole responsibility for six chil - From what we know, Hamzah was starved to death by ex - dren. She was lonely and alone. She maintained her pitiful £4. Buy online at http://bit.ly/gramsci treme neglect from his mother, who was his sole carer. At the existence on a cocktail of anti-depressants, alcohol and time of his death in December 2009, the four year-old child cannabis. was still wearing a size 6-9 month baby-gro and a nappy. His The Jeremy Kyle-esque witchhunt orchestrated by the What is capitalism? Can it mummified remains were found by a police support officer bourgeois press does not allow us consider any of these cir - following complaints from a neighbour in 2011 about litter - cumstances. last? ing. That police officer raised the alarm when she saw the en - Right-wing moral hysteria is a lot of noise to prevent us With articles from Leon Trotsky, Max tire house was knee deep in rubbish. from thinking clearly about the deeper questions raised by Shachtman, Maziar Razi and many more. We also know that Hamzah’s father, Hutton’s long-term this case. It is designed to create the impression that we live partner Aftab Khan, was subject to a restraining order after in an otherwise perfect world which is spoilt by a few moral Edited by Cathy Nugent. he admitted to battering Hutton in 2008. Months after the in - degenerates. It puts a barrier to any deep understanding. £5. tinyurl.com/wiccil junction, he made complaints to the police and social serv - ices about Hutton’s neglectful parenting. For the next three LYNCH years Hutton managed to elude the authorities. She claimed It equates understanding with excusing. It directs our at - that Hamzah was living with relatives hundreds of miles tention towards lynch-mob vengeance and is a dog away. whistle for calling up all sorts of rotten prejudices about Working-class Hamzah’s oldest brother Tariq, 24, was the only other single mothers, ethnic minorities, and the poor. politics adult who knew about Hamzah’s death. He claims Hutton Mob mentality ensured that Hutton was sentenced to 15 had threatened to kill the other children if he went to the po - years in prison. This sentence serves nobody. This woman and anarchism lice. He says she put a knife to the five year-old’s throat. He can hardly be deemed a risk to anyone — except herself. A has been charged with preventing the burial of his brother short period of incarceration to draw a line under these Debates between and given a suspended sentence. events and start some rehabilitation may be justified. But members of Workers’ HATE what is 15 years in prison going to achieve? Liberty and comrades Hutton ticks a lot of boxes for being the a public hate- There will be a serious case review, but its conclusions will figure. Not only is she a neglectful single mother with an be inadequate. They will inevitably conclude that there was from various anarchist alcohol problem. not enough cross-agency information sharing and that social services should be bolder in intervening. traditions. She also had seven other children by an Asian father. And Socialists have different answers. Our program addresses £5. tinyurl.com/wcpanarchism perhaps worst of all as far as the tabloid press is concerned — itself to the problems of poverty, depression and social isola - she fraudulently claimed child benefit. tion. We have very concrete demands for free childcare, well- Perhaps more shocking than the death itself, is the fact that funded children’s services, play facilities, adult education, this woman was so isolated that she managed to slowly kill decent parental leave entitlements, funding for community her child over a period of three years and then keep the services (leisure centres, parks, and self-organised groups Marxist Ideas to Turn the Tide child’s death a secret for a further two years while five other that can help stop social isolation). Such things can ease the Readings and reflections on revolutionary children scratched out a survival in her house. pressure on parents and lessen the isolating effects of child- This woman was so isolated that she only came to the at - rearing. socialist strategy. Articles tention of another human being when the rubbish and filth On top of these concrete demands we have broader aspira - on the history of the that had filled her home had reached a point where it was tions for cultural, societal change. We want to abolish loneli - spilling out the door. Neighbours spoke of their amazement ness. We want everyone to have access to productive work Communist International, when police brought five children out of the house. They say and social wealth. We want to break down the divide be - they had never seen the children before and did not know tween “work” and “life”, between productive and reproduc - the United Front, they were living there. tive labour. We want to create a new culture based on human Amanda Hutton is undoubtedly a loathsome individual. solidarity, meaningful endeavour and abundance. Workers’ Government, But individuals make choices and act within a broader social It is almost certain that abuses and atrocities will still occur revolutionary context. So however difficult and painful it is, this situation in the socialist future. But there was something shockingly deserves to be understood. Even if our attempts at under - easy about Hamzah Khan’s death that passes a damning organisation and standing are partial or inadequate, we should not fear those judAg seomceinatli sotn s ooucri esotyc,i ebtuyi. lt on an international movement programme. attempts. of working-class solidarity, would be a safer place for What sort of world creates such a person? What sort of children. We owe it to this small child to fight for this fu - £5. bit.ly/m-ideas world do we live in where such horrors are possible? ture. It would be simplistic in the extreme to say that the death 6-7 What the Trotskyists did in Nazi-occupied France

In a way similar to that in which Ralph Miliband is being denounced as “the man who Vérité only under the counter. The Trotskyist group grew substantially in 1944-7, because hated Britain”, in France, after the end in August 1944 of the Nazi occupation, the Trotsky - it was almost the only group supporting workers’ basic demands. The CP argued against ists faced charges that they had not really opposed the Nazis. strikes on the grounds that “national reconstruction” was the priority. The charges came mainly from the Stalinists of the French Communist Party (CP), but When the CP lost its place in government, in May 1947, and turned to backing strikes; the CP was strong enough then, and the bourgeois authorities reluctant enough to autho - the Cold War sharpened; and France’s capitalist economy began to recover from its shat - rise left-wing publications, that for a while the Trotskyists’ paper remained as illegal as it tered condition of 1944, the Trotskyists came under pressure on all sides. They suffered had been under the Nazis. splits and losses. Minorities did the best they could to keep Trotskyist ideas alive until In the statement reprinted here, the Trotskyists outlined the real record of their activity they again acquired a large audience, in the late 1960s: their vicissitudes are another story. during the war. There had in fact, at times, been confusion and disarray among the Trot - A book about the French Trotskyists’ activity in the war, by Yvan Craipeau, one of their skyists, but fundamentally they remained the only active force loyal to working-class and leaders at the time, has recently been translated into English by David Broder, under the internationalist principles. title Swimming Against The Tide , and is available at bit.ly/craip. The main French Trotskyist organisation, the PCI, was declared legal in June 1945, but its paper La Vérité not until early 1946. Until then, it could buy paper on which to print La • French original of this article: bit.ly/la-v-44 La Vérité was an organ of “resistance” for four years. The first number of La Vérité was secretly mimeographed as To this struggle was devoted the first editorial of La Vérité; That is why our masthead reads: “Workers of all countries, early as August 1940. since then, there has not been a single issue of La Vérité unite.” This is why our doctrine is that of the Socialist. United where it was abandoned. For the rest, let us recall that since States of the World, which alone can prevent the return of There was another clandestine organ, L’Humanité , (official the first months of the occupation, our youth comrades or - fascism and war, and this is also why we denounced the ma - organ of the French Communist Party) but all Parisians re - ganized against the fascist gangs, assured the physical de - noeuvres of the occupying imperialism trying to make the member that it was then distributed in the streets with the fence of the last free youth organization, the CLAJ (Youth working peoples pay for the imperialist war. tacit consent of the occupying forces and besides, officially Hostels). The Nazi authorities soon dissolved it and arrested applied for legal publication. L’Humanité appeared then with - its leaders. 5. Struggle for Fraternisation out a single line against German occupation by virtue of the We appealed to the German soldiers to turn their arms German-Russian agreement, which it warmly defended. 2. Struggle Against Racism and Anti-Semitism against their officers and to fraternize with the workers of In contrast La Vérité , which had on its masthead “Neither Also since the first issue. Europe, at the same time as we appealed to the workers of Petain nor Hitler — For a Workers’ and Peasants’ Govern - this country to address fraternally the workers dragooned by ment” violently attacked Nazism, denounced the (Nazi) raid - 3. Struggle for the Peoples’ Right of Self-determination Hitler into his army, calling upon them to struggle together ing of goods, appealed for regrouping against fascism on This right being applied to all the peoples including the against fascism and capitalism. This propaganda is that for both sides of the demarcation line, etc. To our knowledge. La colonies. which L’Humanité reproaches us with most hatred, pretend - Vérité was the first organ of resistance. ing that we want to “give our hand to the murderers.” For four years, in 19 mimeographed and 54 printed issues, 4. Struggle Against Imperialist War On the contrary, La Vérité repeats unceasingly that “we La Vérité campaigned against fascism and the occupying im - We struggled with all our strength against imperialist war must execute the agents of the Gestapo, the SS, the reac - perialism. Its campaigns were oriented as follows: — which, as the Franc Tireur recalls, is the fruit of the whole tionary officers. It is against them that we must give our hand of the capitalist regime — by appealing to the workers of all to the German workers in uniform”. 1. Struggle Against Fascism countries to unite, in order to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Here, for instance, is one of our most recent posters, in Ger - Israeli military refuser Noam Gur speaking in Britain Between 12 and 24 November 2013, a young woman jailed by the government of Is - rael for refusing to serve in its army of occupation will be speaking across the UK, on a tour organised by the socialist organisation Workers’ Liberty to make solidarity with the Palestinians and the Israeli left.

Noam Gur is 19 years old, from Jerusalem. She is a queer and feminist as well as anti-mil - itarist activist. In April 2012 she was jailed for refusing to serve in the Israeli Defence Force as part of compulsory national service. Noam says: “I refused to join an army that has, since it was established, been engaged in dominating another nation, in plundering and terrorizing a civilian population that is under its control. The systematic destruction and dispossession that form part of a long-estab - lished policy of population-transfer, murder of non-violent demonstrators, the Apartheid wall, the massacre “operations” that the Israeli army chooses to carry out, and the rest of the daily violations of the human rights of the Palestinians have led, and continue to lead, to a long, indefinite, and preventable cycle of bloodshed. “For years I have been told that this control is supposed to protect me, but information about the suffering caused due to terrorising the Palestinian population is omitted from the story. The road to achieving true and just peace is long and hard, but as I see it, these actions by the Israeli army only push it further away. Over this past decade, the Palestinian people which takes direct action in defence of the Palestinians. have been increasingly choosing the path of non-violent resistance, and I chose to join this Between 12 and 24 November, Noam will be speaking at trade union, student and path and to turn to a popular, nonviolent struggle in Palestine — this, rather than to serve other meetings across the UK. More details soon. The schedule will be tight, but if in the Israeli army and continue the violence.” you’re interested in hosting a meeting or want to know about one in your area, get in Today Noam is an activist with organisations including the feminist anti-militarist group touch: email Heather Shaw at [email protected] or ring Sacha Ismail on New Profile, Anarchists Against the Wall, and Ta’ayush, a joint Jewish-Arab campaign 07796 690 874. 6-7 FEATURE

Renault strike, April 1947, started and largely led by Trotskyists. The Communist Party only supported once Collage of wartime Trotskyist papers the strike had gathered irresistible momentum.

man: “German soldier! Start the struggle immediately- and for the Workers’ Demands particular to the Socialist and Communist Parties, asking against Hitler, the Nazis, the Gestapo. Start the struggle im - In our newspapers, we devoted a considerable section to them to carry out unity in action. Also from the beginning mediately against all capitalists! Disarm your officers, form the workers’ struggles, promoting strikes and mass sabotage. we fought against the traitors like Belin who tried to enslave your Soldiers’ Councils! Don’t throw your arms away! Give We supported these campaigns of our central organ by hun - the CGT while we struggled. them to us! Struggle with us, your brothers, the French work - dreds of leaflets and plant newspapers. We participated in Such is, in its general lines, the policy which our comrades ers! Bring the revolution to Germany and establish the power almost all the workers’ movements and led a certain number defended during four years despite the violent blows of the of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils!” of them. Hitler and Petain police. For L’Humanité , the whole German army is indistinguish - We are asked whether we belonged among the “resisters”. ably a mass of murderers, although in that same newspaper 8. Struggle Against Deportations But let that question be asked of the hundreds of our mili - numerous facts are reported which demonstrate the contrary. La Vérité was the first newspaper that warned the workers tants who paid with their lives or their liberty for their at - We even refer them to the Catholic newspapers like the Té - about the deportations that were being plotted, and that tachment to our ideas and their devotion to the working moignage Chrétien to make them understand that the German called upon them to resist collectively, and if they were class. soldiers have been forcibly integrated into the Wehrmacht forcibly compelled to leave, to advise them on the organiza - and are Hitler’s victims like the workers of the occupied tion of resistance in Germany, mass sabotage, strikes, in liai - OUR MARTYRS To speak only of a few of those shot, there is Meichler, ex- countries. son with the foreign and German workers. manager of Unser Wort who was among the first shot in Paris. FRATERNISATION 9. Struggle in Support of the Maquis Most of them hate Hitlerism, and the revolution would have Through workers’ strikes and the solidarity of the popula - started in Germany long ago if they had not been welded There arc Marc Bourhis and Guegen, the former secretary tion. Precise instructions were given in that sense to all our to their General Staffs by the wall of national hatred which of our Concarneau district, the latter former Communist districts which backed the partisans everywhere by demand - encircled them, and if they had seen a way out of their sit- mayor of Concarneau who rallied to our ideas, both shot in ing democracy within their ranks uation. This is why the Gestapo reacted violently against October 1941 at Chateaubriant at the same time as Timbaud. . our fraternisation efforts. There are young workers like Lebacher of Drancy, teachers 10. Struggle for the Workers’ Militia like Thiolon of the XIth (arrondissement, Paris), regional Thus, in one single case, in October 1943, against our com - But for us the centre of the straggle is in the factory. We leaders like Cruau of Nantes, old militants like Wintley, rades who edited Der Arbeiter in Brittany, 65 of our comrades, called upon the workers to organize themselves militarily in leader of our German group in Paris, caught and murdered of whom 30 were German soldiers, were arrested, deported order to struggle against fascism: against that of Darnand, by the Gestapo in particularly atrocious circumstances, or and murdered. On that occasion four members of our lead - Déat and Doriot, and also that which might develop tomor - young workers like Van Hulst of Suresnes, killed by a ballet ership were caught and tortured. But this repression did not row under cover of the resistance movement and with the in his head in a fight against the Darnand militia. prevent our work from continuing. Up to August 1944, we backing of big capital. On this point, our campaign has been Among the hundreds of our comrades who were arrested edited several organs in German, namely Unser Wort and Ar - parallel to that of L’Humanité . and deported, let us name the various regional leaders like beiter Und Soldat , the latter distributed in the barracks, from Chauvin from Bordeaux, Demaz from Marseilles, Albert of 5,000 to 10,000 copies. 11. Struggle for the General Strike Paris, Gerard Block from Lyon, Henri from Nantes, all our Always insisting that the strikes should retain the charac - leadership of the South zone in 1941, almost our entire lead - 6. Struggle for Food Supplies ter of fights for workers’ demands we supported all the strike ership of Brittany in 1943. And eight members of our Central From the very beginning La Vérité called upon the working slogans launched by the” CGT (General Workers’ Confeder - Committee; Souzin, Corvin, Leblanc, Regnier, Liber, Blasco, masses to constitute housewives committees, to demonstrate, ation). For instance in July-August 1944, we backed the slo - Filliatre, Marcoux, the first well-known to Comrade Saillant to take into their hands the distribution of the food supplies, gan of general strike and of occupation of the plants. The with whom he worked in the Building Federation and the against the Hitlerites, the Vichyites, the monopolists and militant workers know that our comrades were not the last latter having escaped wounded from the torture chambers of gangsters of the black market. This struggle of the city work - ones in the plants that carried out these slogans. theS uGcehst apreo .those whom L’Humanite dares call “Gestapo ers was conducted in close alliance with the peasant work - agents!” Such are those about whom we are asked ers. This same campaign can be found in our most recent 12. Struggle for the Unity of Action of the Workers whether they “resisted against Hitler!” issues. We never ceased our appeals for the regrouping of the working class. In various regions our leaders hove cooper - 7. Struggle Against the Downfall of the Standard of Living ated with that of several other groups. We also appealed in • This abridged translation from The Militant 3 March 1945. 8 FEATURE Making the press really free

The Privy Council — an unelected body of medieval origin guarantee the expression of their opinion to a much greater —will meet on Wednesday 30 October to see if it can modify number of citizens — say to every group having collected a the proposals for press regulation backed by the three big po- certain number of signatures. Freedom of the press would in litical parties and placate the big newspapers, most of whom practice become much more democratic, would become in - backed a rival scheme already rejected by the Privy Council. comparably more complete as a result. The press lords want to retain the right to smear and lie But some may ask: where would we get printing presses without redress; but the proposed regulations include such and newsprint? things as making publications outside their framework (like There we have it! The issue is not “freedom of the press’ Solidarity) liable to worse penalties under Britain’s libel laws, but the exploiters’ sacrosanct ownership of the printing which already do much to protect the rich from criticism. presses and stocks of newsprint they have seized! The socialist alternative was explained by the Russian rev- Just why should we workers and peasants recognise that olutionary Lenin in this article shortly before the workers’ sacred right? How is that “right” to publish false information revolution of October 1971. better than the “right” to own serfs? The Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) Why is it that in war-time all sorts of requisitioning — of were reformist left parties, then governing Russia in uneasy houses, flats, vehicles, horses, grain and metals — are al - coalition with open bourgeois parties. The Bolsheviks were lowed and practised everywhere, while the requisitioning of Lenin’s party; they would win a majority in the congress of printing presses and newsprint is impermissible? workers’ councils (soviets) in late October 1917, and take The workers and peasants may in fact be deceived for a power. while if such measures are made out to be unjust or hard to realise, but the truth will win through in the end. By V I Lenin PRESSES The peasants are being deceived, fooled and intimidated State power in the shape of the soviets takes all the print- by the utterly deceitful and counter-revolutionary bour- ing presses and all the newsprint and distributes them eq- geois and “yellow” press, in comparison with which the uitably. press of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (not The state should come first — in the interests of the major - to speak of the Bolsheviks) is very, very weak... ity of the people, the majority of the poor, particularly the The capitalists (followed, either from stupidity or from in - majority of the peasants, who for centuries have been tor - ertia, by many SRs and Mensheviks) call “freedom of the mented, crushed and stultified by the landowners and capi - press” a situation in which censorship has been abolished talists. and all parties freely publish all kinds of papers. The big parties should come second — say, those that have In reality it is not freedom of the press, but freedom for the polled one or two hundred thousand votes in both capitals. rich, for the bourgeoisie, to deceive the oppressed and ex - In the wake of the 1905 revolution state censorship was The smaller parties should come third, and then any group ploited mass of the people. relaxed in Russia. A period of intense political and intellectual of citizens which has a certain number of members or has col - Indeed, take, say, the Petrograd and Moscow newspapers. creativity followed, which included the publication of satirical lected a certain number of signatures. You will see at once that it is the bourgeois papers ... that magazines. This is the distribution of newsprint and printing presses have by far the largest circulation. What makes for this preva - that would be just and, with the Soviets in power, could be lence? Not at all the will of the majority, for the elections have effected easily enough. shown that in both capitals the majority (a gigantic majority, Then why cannot democrats who call themselves revolu - Then, two months before the Constituent Assembly, we too) favours the democrats, i.e., the SRs, Mensheviks and Bol - tionary carry out a measure like declaring private press ad - could really help the peasants by ensuring the delivery to sheviks. These three parties command from three-quarters to vertising a state monopoly, or banning advertisements every village of half a dozen pamphlets (or newspaper issues, four-fifths of the votes, while the circulation of the newspa - anywhere outside the newspapers published by the Soviets or special supplements) in millions of copies from every big pers they publish is certainly less than a quarter, or even less in the provincial towns and cities and by the central Soviet in party. than one-fifth, that of the whole bourgeois press (which, as Petrograd for the whole of Russia? Why must “revolution - That would truly be a “revolutionary democratic” prepa - we know and see now, supported the Kornilov affair directly ary” democrats tolerate such a thing as the enrichment, ration for the elections to the Constituent Assembly; it would and indirectly). through private advertising, of rich men, Kornilov backers, be aid to the countryside on the part of the advanced work - Why is that so? and spreaders of lies and slander against the Soviets? ers and soldiers. it would be state aid to the people’s enlight - Such a measure would be absolutely just. It would greatly enment, and not to their stultification and deception; it would RICH benefit both those who published private advertisements and be real freedom of the press for all, and not for the rich. Everyone knows very well why. Because the publication of the whole people, particularly the most oppressed and igno - It would be a break with that accursed, slavish past a newspaper is a big and profitable capitalist undertaking rant class, the peasants, who would be able to have Soviet which compels us to suffer the usurpation by the rich of in which the rich invest millions upon millions of rubles. papers, with supplements for the peasants, at a very low the great cause of informing and teaching the peasants. “Freedom of the press” in bourgeois society means free - price or even free of charge. dom for the rich systematically, unremittingly, daily, in mil - Why not do that? Only be - lions of copies, to deceive, corrupt and fool the exploited and cause private property and oppressed mass of the people, the poor. hereditary rights (to profits This is the simple, generally known, obvious truth which from advertising) are sacred to everyone sees and realises but which “almost everyone” the capitalist gentlemen. But “bashfully” passes over in silence, timidly evades. how can anyone calling himself The question is whether and how this crying evil can be a revolutionary democrat in the fought. twentieth century, in the sec - First of all, there is a very simple, good and lawful means... ond Russian revolution, recog - which workers should always bear in mind, for they will nise such rights as “sacred”?! hardly be able to do without it when they have won political Some may say it would mean power. infringing freedom of the press. That means is a state monopoly on private press advertis - That is not true. It would ing. mean extending and restoring Look at [the bourgeois papers] you will see a multitude of freedom of the press, for free - private advertisements, which yield a tremendous income, dom of the press means that all in fact the principal income, to their capitalist publishers. opinions of all citizens may be This is how bourgeois papers hold sway, how they get rich, freely published. and how they deal in poison for the people all over the world. What do we have now? In Europe there are newspapers which... are delivered Now, the rich alone have this free... and yet yield their owners a sizeable income. These pa - monopoly, and also the big pers live by advertisements paid by private people, while the parties. Yet if large Soviet free delivery of the paper ensures the best circulation of the newspapers were to be pub - advertisements. lished, with all advertisements, it would be perfectly feasible to 9 FEATURE The socialism the Mail hates

By Martin Thomas

Paul Dacre, the Tory editor of the Daily Mail , is over-con - fident and nervy. So much so that he launched and has stuck to a claim that Labour leader Ed Miliband secretly pursues “the vision” of his Marxist father Ralph Miliband, who was “the man who hated Britain”. Often, usually, the Tories keep their support by presenting themselves as the safe, cautious option. They are the people with the expertise and habit of command to make cuts when The Mail claims Ralph Miliband “hated Britain”. Yet in the necessity drives. 1930s the Mail itself (and the Mirror, then also owned by Lord The times have become a little less usual. Chancellor Rothermere) backed the fascist Blackshirts. George Osborne has announced a splendid economic recov - ery — and at the same time a plan to continue cuts to the far ally break through seemingly impenetrable barriers... We future and put everyone jobless beyond two years into com - take this opportunity to recall with gratitude... how great was pulsory unpaid labour. his contribution to the understanding of the Soviet experi - Tory health minister Jeremy Hunt has declared a ban on ence”. the tiny 1% pay rise (a cut in real wages after inflation) prom - Miliband’s credulousness about Gorbachev’s reforms did ised to NHS workers. not make him a Stalinist, though I remember, around that Hesitantly, minimally, and without disavowing their early- time, heckling Miliband at one of the Socialist Conferences 2012 declaration that “we will keep all these cuts”, the Labour called by Tony Benn in Chesterfield. A Russian diplomat had leaders have started talking left. been invited to speak. We protested at the idea that the “re - They will abolish the bedroom tax. They will repeal the forming tsar”, Gorbachev, was anything socialist. Miliband Health and Social Care Act. They will not nationalise the en - was on the platform, defending the invitation. ergy companies, but at least peg prices for 20 months. They In 1960 The New Reasoner merged with another journal to will empower councils to take over undeveloped building become New Left Review . In 1962 Perry Anderson (aged 24) land. They will do something, they haven’t said what, to pro - become editor of New Left Review , and slanted it towards mote the Living Wage. importing slabs of continental-European Marxisant text into The Tories see top pay, share prices, and dividend payouts a Britain depicted as dank and stultified. all recovering nicely, but profit rates with a way to go yet, Miliband, like most of the older contributors, dissented, and opportunities yet unrealised in the depression economy and in 1964, with John Saville, launched a once-yearly jour - to shift the balance of forces further against the working class. vember 1946. The defence lawyer secured a Tory judge and nal called the Socialist Register , which continues. They want to indict all talk of curbing the inequality spiral. a special jury, with high property qualifications. He told the In The New Reasoner , Miliband had argued: “Very high Their minds probably sodden with Tory triumphalism, jury that “even if Laski had not used the exact words attrib - on that agenda, there is the need for socialists to make clear Dacre and the Daily Mail have overstepped themselves, uted to him... they fairly represented... his writings and other once again, but in the vocabulary of the 1960s, why common pushing even right-wingers to dissociate. speeches”. ownership of the means to life is the key to socialist change... By their slipshod attack, they have opened up a debate Plucking at the strings with which dislike of “foreign” Jew - The next job, however, is to carry this clarification to the about left-wing ideas like Ralph Miliband’s. ish intellectuals like Laski and Miliband would resonate, the Labour movement, in other words, to make socialists. There are precedents. On 4 June 1945 Winston Churchill lawyer declared: “We have beliefs in many things which Mr “There is an audience, even if it is now a bored audience, claimed that a Labour victory in the July 1945 general election Laski does not believe in at all. We believe in law and justice in all that multitude of institutions which go to make up the would bring creeping totalitarianism. “A socialist policy is in England; we believe in fairness; we believe in religious be - Labour movement. Nor is the boredom of the audience a abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom... Socialism is in its liefs”. fixed factor... essence an attack on British enterprise... A free parliament is In the years that remained before Laski’s death in 1950, his “There are some who yearningly look for a short cut. There odious to the socialist doctrinaire... No socialist system can be standing in the Labour Party was diminished. isn’t one. Now is the time to get in and push”. established without a political police... They would have to In 1945-6 Ed Miliband’s father Ralph Miliband was a stu - fall back on some form of Gestapo”. dent of Laski’s. Like Laski, he was a left-wing Jewish intellec - LAST tual. Unlike Laski, son of a prosperous British family, In 1961 he published his most influential book, a history of BACKFIRED Miliband came from a working-class family of Polish origin the Labour Party entitled Parliamentary Socialism. The attack backfired. Probably some who previously hes- which had settled in Belgium. itated about voting Labour were pushed that way when Ralph Miliband joined a left Zionist group, Hashomer At the time, most of the left, even the revolutionary left, they saw that the Tories had no counter-argument better Hatzair, in 1939. Among the other members of the group in subscribed implicitly to a “one last push” theory of social - than an amalgam between Labour and Nazism. Brussels was Abram Leon, who soon became a Trotskyist ism. The 1945 Labour government had done much of the work: a new Labour government pushed by the left would Another Tory ploy of the time connects up with the and in 1944 died in Auschwitz. In May 1940 Miliband fled to Britain, with his father, from complete the necessary nationalisations. Socialist Review, the Miliband slur. On 16 June 1945, Harold Laski, then chair of forerunner of the SWP, had expounded its own programme the Labour Party, had just finished a general election speech the invading Nazis. He was 16. His mother and sister found refuge with a sympathetic Belgian farmer. as a list of demands to be carried out by a Labour govern - in Newark, Notts. A Tory approached him and, reading from ment. prompt cards, asked him two questions: why had Laski not In 1941, Miliband won a place to study at the London School of Economics, where Laski taught. He returned there Miliband showed that the Labour Party, even in its great served in the army in World War One, and why had he ad - days of 1945-51, whose achievements he did not scorn, had vocated violence? after serving three years in the British navy. After his studies he became a lecturer at LSE, then at Leeds University, then at always operated within bourgeois limits. Much more than The Daily Express and other papers owned by the same another push to the left was needed. lord reported Laski as answering the second question: “If other universities. He was, according to his student and friend Leo Panitch, “a The analytical conclusion did not imply giving up on in - Labour could not obtain what it needed by general consent, tervention in the Labour Party. Yet, some time around the we shall have to use violence”. The Express headlined: “New rather uncomfortable and peripatetic supporter of the Bevan - ite Left inside the Labour Party in the early and mid-1950s”. mid-1960s, Miliband drifted out. He was active in the Centres Laski sensation: socialism even if it means violence”. for Socialist Education from 1966, but then, as far as I know, The Tory press was already running “a stream of stories In 1957 Miliband joined the editorial board of a journal, The New Reasoner , launched by E P Thompson, John Sav - outside active politics until his death in 1994, apart from his about ‘the red professor’, the eminence rouge behind the... brief involvement in the Chesterfield conferences. voter-friendly figures of Attlee and Morrison” (Stefan Collini: ille, and other former members of the Communist Party who had quit after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and then In 1967 he wrote a series of letters to the Belgian Marxist Absent Minds ). Laski was to them what Ralph Miliband is to Marcel Liebman, a contributor to the Trotskisant weekly La the Mail, and with the advantage that he was alive. Khrushchev’s own invasion of Hungary. Miliband himself had never been a member of the CP. His Gauche , about Israel. Lucid about Israeli government mis - Laski, like many social democrats, had come in the 1930s to deeds, Miliband was also lucid in defence of the Israeli Jews’ think of himself as a sort of Marxist, and of capitalism as views on Stalinism were similar to those of Isaac Deutscher, author of a fine and admiring biography of Trotsky who yet right to maintain their own national state. The exchange was needing some sort of revolutionary overthrow. Of course he published in 2006 with an introduction by the Lebanese- didn’t say what the Tory press alleged: what “violence” believed that the USSR would gradually evolve into democ - racy. French Marxist Gilbert Achcar. could the Labour Party possibly muster to overpower, simul - In 1969 Miliband published another important book, The taneously, both “general consent” and the established capi - Miliband, unlike Deutscher, opposed the 1956 Russian in - vasion of Hungary; but in 1988, in the Gorbachev era, he State in Capitalist Society , which showed the capitalist class talist military hierarchies? nature of the modern bourgeois-democratic state in factual Laski limited the repercussions for the general election by wrote: “Much that is happening in the Soviet Union consti - suing for libel. But he lost the subsequent libel case, in No - tutes a remarkable vindication of [Deutscher’s] confidence that powerful forces for progressive change would eventu - Continued on page 10 10 FEATURE Coffee table radicalism

Matt Cooper reviews The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology theories as if they were his insights. So he goes on to say that underlying the fantasy of Nazi ideology was one of a mod - It is difficult not to warm to a film that places a radical left ernising revolution that preserved tradition. But the idea of wing philosopher into mock ups of various film sets to fascism being “reactionary modernism” was asserted by Jef - lecture on his theory of ideology. That is what film maker frey Herf in 1984, and has antecedents stretching back to the Sophie Fiennes has done with Slavoj Žižek. 1930s. So we have Žižek dressed as a priest talking about the ide - Similarly, Žižek’s assertion that the riots in the UK were ology of fascism in the mother superior’s room from The driven by consumerism (the “wrong dream”) is both unorig - Sound of Music , about the vampiric attitude of the ruling inal and, in Žižek’s case, seems to be based on the most casual class towards the working class in the lifeboat from Titanic of acquaintance with the evidence. and about the nature of political violence in Travis Bickle’s The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology also demonstrates a wilful single iron bed from Taxi Driver . All of this is amusing failure to engage with a Marxist understanding of ideology. enough and makes a long and in places opaque lecture pass Žižek tries to tell us about fascism In this film (and elsewhere) Žižek has dismissed the Marxist pleasantly enough, but the ideas that underlie it are rotten. theory of ideology which he claims can be summarised by Slavoj Žižek has been proclaimed by some as the greatest books) that this view emerges from a study of society and the Marx as “they do not know it but they are doing it”. The line political philosopher of the late twentieth century — there is forms of ideology in it. Rather, consistent with his idealist is a rather obscure one (from the first German edition of vol - even an International Journal of Žižek Studies. His work is philosophical approach, the ideas emerge from the realm of ume one of Capital , but not in future editions). popular with a layer of the radical left, although maybe the pure thought, albeit cut with some empirically based psycho - Nor is the line directly about ideology; the “it” here is peo - kind who consumes rather than acts on their politics. analytic theory The world is sampled, squeezed and (mis)in - ple producing exchange values for the market. For sure, this He has somewhat replaced Chomsky as the author of the terpreted to fit this theoretical view. has a relationship to ideology, Marx argues that it obscures coffee table books of choice for the armchair radical, and he His evidence about society is what many of us would not the real nature of production to satisfy human needs, a veil sold out the Royal Festival Hall when he spoke there in 2010. think of as evidence — mainly film. This is not an affectation, that will only be lifted by once production is carried out by His ideas have been developed in a series of books since but central to Žižek’s view of the world. Ideology is fantasy, “feely socialised man under their conscious, planned con - the late 1980s, and fit with the themes of anti-globalisation, and film is the purest form of the projection of such fantasy. trol.” But the Marxist view of ideology based on the nature of Occupy, and other radical struggles that are often one side Film is not the mirror which we hold up to ourselves, but social life is not understood, far less developed, by Žižek. of class struggle. feeds us the fantasies by which we constitute ourselves. The For Žižek both the nature of ideology and the liberation of It is noticeable that Žižek does not attack capitalism as films are, for Žižek, reality. Thus M*A*S*H and Full Metal humanity is based on the idea of fantasy. For him, people’s such. The exploitation of workers as workers is notably miss - Jacket are used to understand the American military, Brief relation to ideology-fantasy is “I know very well what I am ing from this film. Rather he attacks consumerism, particular Encounter the nature of social control, and Jaws, fascism! doing but am I still doing it.” The project of liberation is not in its Coca-Cola/Starbucks form. This is despite, or maybe be - To say that the shark in Jaws stands for nothing other than to end fantasy, but to replace it with a better fantasy, or to cause, his philosophy is obtuse. fear itself is hardly a startling insight. Alfred Hitchcock spoke dream with the right desire. Although Žižek places himself in the revolutionary tradi - in similar terms about how the purpose of his films was not Thus Žižek goes down the road of anarchist cliché, we tion and draws on Marx, he does not see himself primarily as essentially narrative or plot, but to create an emotional re - should “be realistic, demand the impossible”, and he argues a Marxist. He says he wants to reinvigorate German idealist sponse in the viewer. To say this kind of work gives us an in - that the dream should not be of wanting the working class philosophy, particularly that of Hegel, through the applica - sight into how the Nazis scapegoated the Jews is little short to awake, but that new dreams and revolution become a sub - tion of the French post-Freudian, Jacques Lacan. jective act of will. of ridiculous. Žižek’s politics are, ultimately, mere fantasy. There is no feeling in this film (or in Žižek’s numerous Onto his argument, Žižek bolts some bits of other people’s The socialism the Mail hates Adventures in From page 9 According to the Mail editorial on 1 October, this showed “nothing but hatred for the values, traditions and institutions politics, love detail and without oversimplification. He defended its ideas, — including our great schools, the Church, the Army... that rightly I think, in a long exchange with Nicos Poulantzas, made Britain the safe and free nation in which he and his who would become an inspirer of Eurocommunism. family flourished”. According to Panitch, Miliband saw us, “the various Trot - The story about Miliband “hating Britain” has an ironic and life skyist parties”, as condemned to “sectarianism and isolation” twist, because Miliband’s Socialist Register published, in because of “clinging to an insurrectionary model derived 1965, E P Thompson’s article The Peculiarities of the English . By Matthew Thompson from the Bolshevik Revolution, which was entirely incapable Thompson, polemicising against Perry Anderson’s depiction of generating mass support from the working classes of lib - of Britain as a hopeless conservative mush, vindicated the Cloudy Sunday is the first novella by Mike Kyriazopou - eral-democratic, advanced capitalist regimes”. strengths of working-class history in Britain. (Anderson, it los. should be said, later conceded that Thompson had been That attitude, once Miliband’s hopes for the 1950s-60s Mike will be well-known to members and sympathisers “New Left” had faded, left him more thoroughly “sectarian right). But for Thompson and for Miliband there was not just one of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Mike was active with and isolated” than any of us. Indeed, inactive. us until 2007 when he moved to New Zealand and joined The Mail quotes from Panitch autobiographical notes Britain to be hated or loved. As Trotsky put it in the order of the day to the Red Army on 24 October 1919, when they were the Workers’ Party/Fightback. which Miliband wrote in 1983. He “remember[ed] standing Mike began writing Cloudy Sunday earlier this year after in front of [Marx’s] grave”, at the age of 17 in 1940, “fist fighting for the life of the workers’ state against British inter - vention: “there are two Englands. Besides the England of being diagnosed with motor neurone disease. clenched, and swearing my own private oath that I would be For a short book of seventy pages, Cloudy Sunday packs faithful to the workers’ cause... profits, of violence, bribery and bloodthirstiness, there is the England of labour, of spiritual power, of high ideals of inter - in a lot of historical and other detail as it traces the main “I don’t know”, wrote Miliband in 1983, “how faithful I character Tuatahi from New Zealand via South Africa and have been to that oath in terms of action: I am sure I should national solidarity. It is the base and dishonest England of the stock-exchange manipulators that is fighting us. The Eng - England to Greece (a journey reflecting Mike's own time in have done more, immeasurably more. But I have not, from those countries). that day to this, departed from the view that this was the land of labour and the people is with us”. Miliband loved the England, or Britain, “of labour and the Tuatahi is part of the Maori Battalion sent to Greece to right cause and that I belonged to it”. fight the invading German army at the start of the Second The Mail article of 28 September made that vow its first people”, which in historical fact won those freedoms the Mail prates about, and detested the “England of profits” which re - World War. item of proof that Miliband “hated Britain”. It did it by the As well as discussions of Maori religion, New Zealand same method of amalgam used by the Tories in the 1940s sisted them all the way. Ed Miliband, replying to the Mail , showed that Ralph labour politics and the history of the Trotskyist movement, against Laski and Labour. we get insights into the Russian invasion of Finland, Re - Socialist and Marxist views meant hostility to the British Miliband did not “hate Britain”, and he showed also: “My fa - ther’s strongly Left-wing views are well known, as is the fact betiko (Greek blues) and attempts by the Greek Resistance establishment and to narrow-minded English nationalism — to win over rank-and-file German soldiers. and so, “hatred of Britain”. that I have pursued a different path... I want to make capital - This is also a human story of a young man leaving ism work for working people, not destroy it”. The Mail’s two other citations are a diary entry by Yet in replying Ed Miliband could do no other than por - home to travel the world, falling in love and experienc - Miliband, at age 17, railing against English nationalism, and tray his father’s views as worth discussion. Let’s discuss. ing battle for the first time. a letter by him to a friend decrying “Eton and Harrow, Ox - Let’s see what it is that spurs the Mail to such unrea - • You can buy Cloudy Sunday as an eBook on Amazon ford and Cambridge, the great Clubs, the Times, the Church, soned venom. and read more about it on Facebook. the Army... the values of the ruling orders”. 11 REPORTS Government attacks NHS workers’ pay

By Joan Trevor rises that exists in many out that NHS personnel had duced if staff receive any public services. They say already faced a real-terms more money. The Government has those rises add £900 million 12% cut in pay in recent Health campaigners called on NHS pay review to pay costs in the NHS. years. should refute these lies: a bodies to abandon a They argue that there The background to these good quality service relies planned 1% rise in pay for should only be basic pay in - moves is the Government 1.3 million NHS staff. on a well-paid and moti - creases if there is evidence imposed real-terms cuts — vated workforce. The inter - They say that the rise — that recruitment, retention, about 4% a year — to NHS ests of service users are the which is below inflation morale or motivation issues funding. If the NHS wage same as those of the staff. and conforms to the Gov - require them. bill is becoming less “af - The real enemy to patient ernment’s own policy of The independent NHS fordable” it is because the care is the Tory-Lib Dems public sector pay restraint pay review bodies will Tories and Lib Dems are and their cuts! — is unaffordable. It is due make their recommenda - choking off the money the Healthworkers should tions in February or March Overpaid? We don’t think so service needs to thrive. to be implemented from not pay the price of bailing 2014, but they could be Disgracefully, the Gov - April 2014, after two years out the banks, and their swayed by the submissions ernment is also trying to pit of pay freeze and attacks on year’s planned pay increase. to that.” unions must prepare to healthworkers’ pensions. made to them by the De - The unions have Unite suggested that health service users — that fight on this issue. The Government’s justifi - partment of Health. protested against this bully - health secretary Jeremy is, most of the population – Activists in the unions cation for the move is part And the threat is clearest ing. Unison said: “We are Hunt was going against against healthworkers, will have to organise to of their propaganda against to the healthworkers’ not going to negotiate while Treasury advice that a 1% warning in its submission make the health union bu - public sector pay generally: unions. They are being told: a gun is held to our head for rise was affordable. to the pay review bodies reaucrats organise a they oppose the system of give way on pay structure a paltry 1% pay rise — our The Chartered Society of that the safety and quality proper fight. automatic incremental pay or potentially lose this members will not react well Physiotherapists pointed of patient care will be re - Irish doctors Build “Defend the Link”! strike Teachers take on Gove Junior doctors in the By Rhodri Evans tive union representation. Republic of Ireland Ire - There is good scope to By Kieran Miles land held a one day The Defend The Link campaign. Even better be - strike on 8 October over campaign meets on 9 cause the big public serv - NUT and NASUWT mem - long working hours. October to plan its cam - ices union Unison has bers in Yorkshire, the paign up to the Labour promised to send an offi - Midlands and parts of Three thousand doctors Party’s special confer - cial representative to the 9 eastern England struck took part and fifty-one ence, probably on 1 October meeting, and on Tuesday 1 October in hospitals were affected. March 2014. other unions like TSSA opposition to Michael Junior doctors are rou - and the Bakers are also Gove’s attacks on educa - tinely required to work Its aim is to defend the tion. individual shifts of over trade unions’ collective backing the campaign. There is also need to 24 hours at a time and up political representation As well as making campaign. The Collins re - to 100 hours a week. The within the party. In July, changes to the curriculum port is slippery. The leftish Irish Government has ad - in the wake of the now- with no staff consultation, shift by the Labour leaders mitted that the hours discredited charges Gove has been attacking on the bedroom tax and worked are in breach of against the Unite union of teacher pay, notably the European Working malpractice in the Falkirk energy prices, though wel - through the removal of the Time Directive. Labour Party, Labour come, could be used as national pay scheme, and a The doctors' strike fol - leader Ed Miliband called cover for damaging pro - posals on Labour struc - less-than-inflation 1% pay lows weeks of failed ne - for trade unionists to be day of regional strikes will any serious attempt to de - tures. rise in 2013, as well as de - gotiations with the Irish counted out unless they Central initiatives manding teachers work take place in London, the feat the government’s should be backed up by health service. individually "opt in". longer hours, retire later, South West and South East, plaNnUs.T and NASUWT the creation of local During the strike doc - The interim report to and for a smaller pension and the North East. members should pres - DTL working group or tors carried out a trans - Party conference on 22 pot at the end. Union leaders have sure the unions to name committee in every area plant and dialysis service September by Ray Collins 2500 schools in 49 au - started discussing a coordi - a date, and start planning which works to canvass and palliative care.They indicates a Labour leader - thorities were closed in nated national strike in No - now. ship unconfident on the local Labour Parties and vember, but the absence of attended patients who total. were undergoing active issue, and at least seems to branches of affiliated On 17 October, another a named date undermines say that any “opt-in” for - unions. chemotherapy and radio - mula will be in addition therapy which cannot be to, not instead of, collec - Bus drivers fight pay freeze deferred, and unforeseen • bit.ly/d-t-l maAjobro iuntc 1id2e,0n0ts0. outpa - Cheshire workers at Network Warrington buses struck on 6 and 7 October in an ongoing tient appointments have Crossrail How to make our dispute over wages. Their first strikes on 13 and 21 September highlighted that for the been cancelled as a re - movement a safe first time in 16 years, the workers would get no pay rise. The bosses pleaded falling prof - sult and about 3,000 op - Blacklist erations had to be space for women its. Unite members plan further strikes on 15, 23 and 31 October, refusing to pay for their Victory Party bosses’ losses. postponed. A meeting for women Saturday 12 October who signed the “safe 7.30pm until 12.30am space” statement. 2-4pm, 19 October, Uni - Firefighters’ pensions: Scottish ballot result due Live music from hipster ska versity of London Union, The result of Scottish fire - heroes Dirty Revolution Malet Street, London. fighters’ ballot over Scot - and protection of older fire - from the rest of the UK and Demonstrate for Bread & Roses, Clapham Speakers: Michelle tish government pension fighters which are better leave other fighters to fight pensions and jobs, Manor Street, London, SW4 Stanistreet General Secre - than what is on offer to fire - against cuts and 6DZ plans is due as we go to a battle over a new pension tary NUJ, Maria Exall fighters south of the border. privatisation. (nearest tube: Clapham press. scheme (including in - CWU and TUC General There is a problem with 11am Wednesday 16 Common or Clapham North) Council The SNP led Scottish gov - Scottish firefighers accept - creased pension contribu - October, Malet Street, FREE ENTRY • bit.ly/w-lm ernment has offered some ing the deal. They will end tions) and a statutory London, WC1E 7HY guarantees on capability up with different conditions retirement age of 60. London students S&o Wlorikdersa’ Libreirtty y need a union!

By Michael Chessum It’s fair to say that ULU is unique in its (president, University of London Union, federal nature. But if you can get away in personal capacity) with abolishing an SU by fiat, you can get away with abolishing an SU by fiat. University of London (UoL) bosses Other institutions may not be able to want to shut down the University of legally abolish their student unions, but London Union (ULU), the cross-London they will be able to take away all of their student union. services and spaces and leave them with There are essentially two factors here: an underfunded shell. one to do with the ideological agenda of The politics of space will become more university managers and the weakness of prominent. Student unions in the UK have the student bureaucracies, the other to do a remarkable amount of officially sanc - with the fate of the University itself. tioned space and off-message aesthetic ULU has played a pivotal role in the stu - and political independence, and especially dent movement since 2010, often calling where they are run by the left, manage - and hosting major demonstrations along - ments will seek to undermine them and side the National Campaign Against Fees take over their stuff. and Cuts. It is also part of one of the most They can do this only if student unions vibrant workers’ struggles in the country, are demobilised and weak; and any at - the 3 Cosas campaign by UoL ancillary tempt to moderate unions’ politics or in - workers. dependence will make them weaker. But ULU is the only cross-London body that that is precisely the route that many in fights on issues like housing, international NUS [the National Union of Students] will students, discrimination, and students want to go down. who work. We are very often the only stu - Give these people an inch, and they’ll dent union to organise around things like take your whole building. But unions the closure of fire stations and NHS cuts. across the country have been progres - So the first reason is relatively simple: sively trained to give ground — ideologi - we are pesky and anti-management, and if cally and in terms of cuts and material UoL can get away with shutting us, they conditions — by national bureaucracies. will. We are organising around three de - Meanwhile, the University of London is mands. The first is the defence of union abolishing itself, bit by bit. The Univer - autonomy; the second is better conditions sity’s decision-makers are its Colleges. for the cleaners on campus — who will be Many of these Colleges — in particular the on strike in November when we march — Lampedusa: and the third is the democratisation of larger ones — now want to go their sepa - rate ways. Imperial College left in 2007. universities and fighting for education as UoL used to receive all of the Colleges’ a public service. government grants. It used to teach stu - I should stress that the primary aim — dents directly, and it used to award all the i.e. keeping ULU as a student-run thing — degrees. Now UoL is really a shell, teach - is explicitly not a campaign for the status ing only a few hundred students and quo; we are demanding that the building mostly focussing on its highly lucrative In - be handed, rent-free, to a new pan-Lon - open the ternational Programmes global brand. don organisation which represents all stu - Although students still value it, many dents in the city — including students at newer unis and in Further Education. managers see it as a waste of energy. For We’ll be organising a referendum of many College heads, abolition of ULU is all ULU’s 120,000 members on the another logical step towards the end of plans for closure. borders! UoL.

As of 8 October, only immigration policy of the an excuse to refuse to 155 people seem to Italian state. share responsibility with have survived the Save ULU demonstration: 13 November, 1pm, from ULU, Malet St, WC1E 7HY The Council criticised Italy for the absorption wreck of a small boat the policy under which in which Somali and and settlement of mi - migrants who survive grants who go to Italy other migrants were at - such boat trips are then first because it is the EU tempting to reach Italy often forcibly returned to from Libya. countries where death or country whose territory Don’t flirt with Tories on EU! The boat sank just off torture are everyday is most easily reached by the coast of Lampedusa, risks. boat across the Mediter - Right-wing Tory back - referendum only when in Europe. bencher Adam Afriyie a small Italian-owned is - Many migrants are put ranean. there’s a big shift in British- Whatever the capitalist says that in mid-Novem - land in the middle of the into “detention centres” Lebanon is currently EU relations. Now it says it and bureaucratic evils of the ber he will force a vote in will “make a decision when Mediterranean, between before being forcibly re - dealing with an inflow of EU, Britain has plenty of Parliament over an in-or- it sees the text of the Sicily and Tunisia. turned. Italy, the report Syrian refugees equiva - out-of-the-EU referendum equally capitalist and bu - It is reckoned to have says, maintains a perma - amendment”. lent, as a proportion of in 2014 by tabling an reaucratic evils of its own, had over 500 people on nent “State of Emer - To try to embarrass the its population, to eight amendment to a private Tories in Parliament is and re-raising barriers be - board — over 25 for each gency” on its shores. member’s bill calling for a million people coming to good. But there are many tween countries in Europe metre of its 20-metre Armed coastguards referendum in 2017. Britain to seek safety. other ways to do it. And the adds further evils. length. 232 bodies have often confront the over - The richer countries Former Labour Party call for a referendum on the Support, or semi-sup - been found so far. crowded, flimsy boats should open up their chair Tom Watson says he EU is, here and now, only a port, for the Tory right on Just a day before the full of refugees. may support Afriyie. The disguised call to get Britain fiercely-guarded bor - this issue is short-sighted boat sank, the Council of Other European coun - Labour front bench previ - out of the EU and re-raise Europe condemned the tries use these policies as ders. ously said it would back a barriers between countries opportunism.