Nicholas Hughes RIP

While the media is in overdrive regarding the death of Jade Goody. I was saddened by the news that Sylvia Plath’s son, Nicholas, committed suicide recently. Below is a poem Plath wrote dedicated to her baby son.

Nick And The Candlestick by Sylvia Plath

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb

Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish—-
Christ! They are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs—-

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

  

Their crisis not ours….

This week has got me thinking, probably with a great deal of pessimism than usual especially after reading the debate on Hansard regarding the Welfare Reform Bill.

And what has also made me think was listening a talk given a trade unionist about the Winter of Discontent. Parallels and similarities can be made with this current economic climate. The latter days of a dying Labour government crashing into crisis after crisis of its own making,  monetarism of Callaghan/Healy that opened the way for Thatcher to ratcheting the ecomomic system up to neo-liberalism and Blair/Brown/Darling carrying on with that particular economic legacy.

And then ka-pow…!! Everything goes bust.

And that’s what amazes me is watching this fallout. You coulda predicted what would happen but the banks and NL all stand around watching catastrophe unraveling with this astonished, ‘Who knew…” reaction.

You base an economic system on debt, free market piracy and neo-liberalism then it is only matter for it to go bang…

And let up remember the dawn of a new age that was May 1997. The Tories had been kicked out and this anti-Tory vote brought about a Labour victory.  This election represented the hatred for the Tories and a desperation for new times, the collective trauma imprinted on the psyche of the working class.

Labour won a massive majority, unprecedented, bigger than the Labour victories of the 60s/70s and even for 1945. And yet they quandered it. Majority after majority…. That’s what angers me, Blair and co. squandered those majorities too busy ratcheting up the neo-liberal dream and imperial dominance.

Indeed a dream, a fantasy of what Labour could have accomplished and achieved instead of the Frankenstein monster of New Labour created. Blair’s legacy could have been positive, remembered for real social democratic policies, reforms that brought about an equitable society not one that has a wider schism between rich and poor, a society riddled with ever more poverty, a society that attacks the poor by punitive measures of benefit sanctions and stigmatisation while NL wordships of the altar of corporate capitalism, watched the banks behave in orgiastic self-indulgence, unfettered market ecomomics. Then the chickens come home to roast and we will will pay for this, their crisis. Bailed out banks at the tune of billions, tax havens still operating and gagging anyone who happens to ask questions, the bail-out money lost in a void (just what did the banks use the billions for, Mr. Darling..?). Somehow I don’t see the banking system in the dock being accused of quandering money, negligence, corruption and stealing…. Neither do I see NL in the dock for aiding and abetting, or indeed war crimes.

This brings me onto the article written this week by Jon Cruddas. Unfortunately, he is right about one thing is that Britain faces a severe and deep economic crisis, bigger and nastier than probably other European countries. Yet Cruddas seeks a political solution in 1995 Tony Blair (and accusing the left of ‘fundamentalism’ is an utter meaningless attack!!).

Actually, this article exposes the rank contradictions and hypocrises of Cruddas and the think-tank, Compass. If Labour has lost the ‘language of generosity, kindness and community as it lost the tempo of the country’ then why is Cruddas consistently voting for a party that has lost its way…?? His voting record exposes a NL apparatchik desperately trying to please. If Cruddas is really concerned about the soul destroying alienation experienced by the working class then he would stop nailing his politics to the NL mast.

 And his argument for another way, is not looking for a real equitable socialist opposition to the politics of NL. No, we get an early Tony Blair soundbite. This isn’t new (rather like when Kinnock/Hattersley invented ‘New Realism’… it wasn’t new nor realistic!) the rhetoric of NL was being created by the likes of Gould, Mandelson and Blair (and Cruddas having worked with Blair coming up not through the activist layer but through the TU bureaucracy). A quote which exposes spin and insincerity that really describes aptly the politics of Jon Cruddas.

And no, it is not a New Socialism. It is early NL. Lets be crystal clear about that.

Again, another reason I felt despondent this week was the reading of the Welfare Reform Bill. I believe NL have the won the arguments of welfare reform and the culture of dependency theory, which are now being played out as reality courtesy of the media and other misguided individuals of the liberal intelligentsia. But the Poll Tax (Community Charge Act) went through Parliament yet there was still resistence and a concerted campaign on the ground that helped to bring Thatcher down. Maybe there’s still hope but I don’t know. What NL has done with welfare reform will soften it up for the Tories who will inevitably say: “Well, it was a Labour government that brought in Workfare”….. And they can continue with the turbocharged attacks.

The talk I attended on the Winter of Discontent organised by my union, GMB, brought all this into focus. I remember the winter of 1979, I was 9 and my dad was on strike (funnily enough, he was a member of the GMB). I think there was a resistence, an energising fight-back against the Callaghan government. Does that exist now, or as working class militancy been shattered, fragmented and smashed by continual attacks by Tories/NL? The Left is small, fragmented and disorganised. What is similar is the reaction of the trade union bureaucracy, Len Murray then and Brendan Barber now. The sheer duplicity of Murray, Scanlon and Jones towards the strikes was breathtaking. Trade unionusts were comdemned for striking for a living wage and where also told to cross other workers picket lines. What is the TUC and the whole union bureaucracy doing over the economic crisis? Sod all….with the exception of demanding that JSA is increased..

And failure seems to be rewarded in this society as Unite trade union has given £2m to NL (I am against disaffiliation from Labour but what shocks me is that huge sums of money are handed over WITHOUT any conditions!!). But that’s the nature of the trade union bureaucracy, full of contradictions and tensions rather like the nature of the bourgeois workers’ party.

I will be still be engaged in activism and won’t give up fighting against this vicious ideology inherent in NL. Though I wish I could be more optimistic. You get used to the defeats as victories are thin on the ground.

I remember a former work colleague who was anti-trade union and she pontificating about how appalled she was the RMT was on strike. Her response was that the strikers ‘were bringing the government to its knees’….

I argued with her about the rights of collective action, solidarity and strikes, and finished by saying:

‘Christ, I wished the unions did bring the government to its knees”!…..

LEAP Conference

Another excellent event to advertise….

LEAP (Left Economics Advisory Panel) have organised a second conference, ‘‘Capitalism Isn’t Working’ at Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London on Saturday 25th April 2009 – just three days after the Budget. Starts: 10:30am Finishes:  4:30pm.

I attended the first conference last year and it was excellent.

Their Crisis Not Ours!

Just want to advertise this campaign. It has been set up by activists in the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) to organise a day of action regarding Budget Day – 22nd April.

In London we plan the following actions:

11.30am: Line the route on Whitehall where the Chancellor will go from No. 11 Downing Street to address Parliament

5pm: Protest outside the Treasury

7.30pm: We will hold a Question Time event at a venue soon to be confirmed which will be chaired by John McDonnell MP and be addressed by a range of experts, activists and high-profile figures who will answer your questions as to how we got into this mess.

Join the Their Crisis Not Ours! Facebook group and the Day of Action event!

And some brilliant postcards have been produced to advertise the event, contact the LRC for more details.

Put People First demo

This march has been organised by trade unions and other organisations. The G20 are set to meet on the 2nd of April in London.

On 28th March thousands will march through London as part of a global campaign to challenge the G20, ahead of their 2nd April summit on the global financial crisis.

The march starts from Victoria Embankment from 11am, to a rally at Hyde Park.

Put People First has three key messages:

- decent jobs and public services for all
- end global poverty and inequality
- build a green economy

I am going with my camera… and a union banner probably. See you all there….

McDonnell on Cruddas

An excellent letter from Jon McD. in yesterday’s Guardian regarding the article written by Jon Cruddas….

The political positioning of various New Labour candidates to succeed Gordon Brown after an election defeat goes on apace with the latest offering from Jon Cruddas (Labour has misunderstood Britain, 18 March). My only plea to all of these opportunists is: don’t drag the Labour left into this snake pit.

Smearing the Labour left with accusations of “fundamentalism” and plots to set up another party is beneath contempt. Mr Cruddas seeks to portray himself as the true successor to Tony Blair circa 1995, valiantly standing up for the New Labour equivalent of middle England, surrounded by “fundamentalists” of the right and left.

Mr Cruddas’s history of voting for the Iraq war, 90 days’ detention, ID cards, NHS privatisation, Heathrow expansion, and only this week for the imposition of workfare on the unemployed demonstrates that he does indeed carry the Blair/Brown New Labour mantle. It is these politics that have alienated and disillusioned so many people of goodwill that we are now facing the loss of a Labour government.

Far from plotting new parties or advocating fundamentalism, the Labour left, through the Labour Representation Committee, is getting on with the task of promoting the mainstream People’s Charter and other initiatives bringing together all those both within the Labour party and beyond who want to see a change from the New Labour agenda Mr Cruddas has supported for the last decade.
John McDonnell MP
Lab, Hayes and Harlington

Gaza: Israel’s dirty secrets

From today’s Independent

Israel was last night confronting a major challenge over the conduct of its 22-day military offensive in Gaza after testimonies by its own soldiers revealed that troops were allowed and, in some cases, even ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians.

The testimonies – the first of their kind to emerge from inside the military – are at marked variance with official claims that the military made strenuous efforts to avoid civilian casualties and tend to corroborate Palestinian accusations that troops used indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower in civilian areas during the operation. In one of the testimonies shedding harsh new light on what the soldiers say were the permissive rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead, one soldier describes how an officer ordered the shooting of an elderly woman 100 metres from a house commandeered by troops.

Another soldier, describing how a mother and her children were shot dead by a sniper after they turned the wrong way out of a house, says the “atmosphere” among troops was that the lives of Palestinians were “very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers”.

And as Michel Chossudovsky wrote in his article, The Invasion of Gaza, Operation Cast Lead was initiated two days after Christmas 2008 with the involvement of US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte who happened to be in Tel Aviv…

On the surface, Israel’s offensive was to attack Hamas when, lets be clear, it was really about targeting and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. And the statements from these soldiers back this up. Yet will Israel be in the dock accused of war crimes..?

Welfare reform: is Disability Living Allowance next…?

The DWP has commissioned a report analysing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and Attendance Allowance (AA) and the impact these benefits have on claimants. The study will attempt to investigate feasibility and what parameters it will take. It could take up to 2 years.

But why is this study being commissioned all of a sudden, and to what extent and purpose? I know it is about impact of benefits on claimants but why now? Two year study that will take it beyond the next general election as well. And the cynicism kicks in especially seeing the emphasis being made of the £35bn that DLA/AA costs.

And someone has to pay the price for bailing out the banks…

How many more miscarriages of justice..?

What have Barry George, Judith Ward, Michelle Taylor, Lisa Taylor, Stefan Kisko, Engin Raghip, Mark Braithwaite, Winston Silcott, Paul Hill, Gerry Conlon, Patrick Hill, Carole Richardson….And now Sean Hodgson all have common..? And it is not an exhaustive list.

They have all spent many years languishing in prison for a crime they didn’t commit.

The latest miscarriage of justice is Sean Hodgson and he was inside for 27 years!! He could have been released in 1998 when his legal team asked the Forensic Science Service to review the exhibits in the case. But they were wrongly told that the exhibits had been destroyed, and an investigation has been launched by the forensic science regulator.

And reading about this case brought into the focus the 3-parter on Channel 4, Red Riding. The days where the cops beat confessions out of suspects, denied them lawyers, forged confessions (useful invention the ESDA test) and generally fitted people up.

And the times of high profile cases that brought about political and media pressure to find someone along with institutionalised racism (an example of this is the demonisation of Winston Silcott in the media)….and a future miscarriage of justice. And are any of these cops made accountable for their conduct, disciplined, or prosecuted? 

No… the cops, for example, Melvin and Maxwell, in charge of the Broadwater Farm case were acquited of fabricating evidence in 1994. Apparently the defence lawyers who were involved in the original trial of  Braitwaite, Raghip and Silcott weren’t called as prosecution witnesses. The trial looked suspiciously like it was sabotaged by the prosecution……..

And even with the passing of PACE Act (Police and Criminal Evidence) during the mid 1980s, which, procedurally made the cops more accountable. And the fact there are rules to be adhered to, they can be challenged if they breach PACE this didn’t happen before its implementation.

But even with these rules miscarriages of justice happen. And NL’s obsession with ‘law and order’ last year in wake of the spate of stabbings gave the cops extra powers to stop and search youths without having reasonable suspicion. A new sus law along with racist fit-ups…. more miscarriages of justice.

But what is scarier is the counter-terrorism legislation, which is surrounded by secrecy therefore no transparency or accountability. If someone is caught up in this nightmare it means you can’t really challenge the evidence because the State’s excuse is that it won’t be in the public interest and could potentially damage national security. So the person won’t get justice, eroding habeas corpus, instead get banged up for 28 days….

But back to the issue of miscarriages of justice, how many more people are languishing in jails for crimes they didn’t commit…?

Debate on the Welfare Reform Bill

I shall try to be brief, because we have many other matters to discuss today. I tabled the amendments because, in my view, the Bill is an anachronism. It appears to have been designed for another age: an age when employment was available, and it was argued that people were not taking advantage of that. It seems to pursue the Government’s twin obsessions with targeting lone parents and privatising public services, at a time when 2 million people are unemployed and 3 million could be unemployed by the end of the year. Ten people are chasing every vacancy. People are desperate for work. It is hard to comprehend why the Government are focusing on introducing Workfare, a “work for your benefit” scheme piloted for the long-term unemployed and other groups, forcing them into work. Unless my amendment seeking payment of the minimum wage is passed, people will be forced to work 35 hours a week for £1.73 an hour in jobseeker’s allowance, while, unless new clause 1 is passed, the under-25s will be paid £1.37 an hour. That is not voluntary; it will be used as a sanction. If people refuse to comply, they will lose their benefits.

The argument for welfare reform initially advanced by the Secretary of State was the need to help people back into work. My amendments seek to turn a demand into an offer and a requirement into an opportunity. If Workfare constitutes an offer of assistance in work, why does it include an element of enforcement? When the PCS parliamentary group met the Secretary of State last week, he had changed his emphasis, and was more concerned with the need to tackle fraud and deal with people who claimed benefits without being willing to work. The media view of the Bill’s objectives seems to vary according to which newspaper Ministers have spoken to. If it is The Guardian, the main thrust of the legislation is support and advice; if it is the Daily Mail, it is tackling fraud and scroungers. In my view, the linking of these two issues is stigmatising.

(John McDonnell in yesterday’s debate regarding the 3rd reading of the Welfare Reform Bill)

I really urge comrades to read the debate on Hansard regarding the Welfare Reform Bill, and the likes of Terry Rooney and Tony McNulty defending the indefensible. Spineless, cowardly NL apparatchiks who, simply, don’t give a damn and are probably patiently waiting for that high flautin’ high profile private sector gig when Labour loses the next election. Words fail me as I am so bloody angry at the gall of these people.

And unlike the guff Rooney espouses, it’s Workfare, Mr Rooney…It’s stigmatising the unemployed, vilifying the unemployed, it is the politics of the workhouse and trying to entrench the culture of dependency theory as the establishment consensus as to why people are on benefits. The Bill is a punitive step in punishing the poor.

And the insincere claptrap from James Purnell: The Government believe in the welfare state. It embodies the conviction that we are more than just self-interested individuals, that there is such a thing as society and that we judge the moral value of a society by how it treats its poorest citizens. The Bill is aimed squarely at that principle. It rests on a belief in the dignity of work—a belief that work will always be the best route out of poverty, the best way for people to achieve their aspirations and the best hope that the next generation will do better than the last. That vision underpins the reforms. It is a vision of a supportive welfare state to help people to overcome the barriers in their way, but an active welfare state to make sure that as many people as can overcome those barriers do so.

You can also read the amendments put forward by John McDonnell and Lynne Jones (which fell btw) and which Labour MPs have a degree of humanity and social justice in their politics to vote for the amendments (usual suspects btw).

Oh, and my own MP Jim Dowd didn’t shock me by doing the right thing instead he did what he does usually and follows the NL line….

And the third reading passed, unemployment is skyrocketing and NL is bringing in the Welfare Reform Bill…..

What more can you say other than it is beyond contempt and I am so bloody angry…