Without egalitarianism, what is the point of Labour?

In a speech to the Fabian Society (a Labour think-tank) last week, Communities Secretary John Denham said that the party must abandon..

"...the purely needs-based approach to fairness, and inequality which has dominated much left-liberal thinking since the 1960s...The left needs to stop holding up egalitarianism as the ideal. If we continue to believe that the egalitarian approach is really the right one, and we, somehow, have to find more cunning ways of getting there, we will fail."

I only came across this speech having seen it reported in the Manchester Evening News. Their political commentator Andrew Grimes (whose 'Opinions you can't ignore') gushingly agreed, claiming that 'egalitarianism discriminates against common sense. It prescribes largesse for the idle, paid for by the diligent'. This, of course, assumes that the poor are not only idle, but that the rich are diligent. Perhaps more often than not it is the other way round.

Grimes goes on, perhaps much further that Denham would be able to stomach...'But the political notion of equality is an absolutist notion (!?), and it always has been. It its extremist modern manifestation, Pol Pot murdered millions in the killing fields of Combodia because they wore spectacles, read books, dressed nicely, earned more than paddy field labourers, or just fearlessly argued back against the egalitatian goons.'

This is sensationalist reporting at its best/worst (?) Grimes clings to the right, and in order to smear the left, like Tebbit, he will liken their current ideas with the most despicable moments in the history of the left (Tebbit, like I said in an earlier post, goes one step further by saying that the National Socialist Party of 1919-1945 in Germany was 'left wing')

What's perhaps most disturbing, however (I'm not bothered about what Grimes has to say - were he any good as a writer he wouldn't be commenting in a free paper)is that a Labour cabinet minister has come out against egalitarianism. A very good friend of mine argues against clinging tirelessly to old left-right arguments. To a large extent I agree with him. What I cannot do, however, is disassociate the Labour party from egalitarianism. The two go hand in hand - like day and night, fish and chips..whichever analogy you which to pursue. In the last 20 years much of the ideological baggage has been stripped away from the Labour party. This was necessary in order to fight the Militant Tendency and make Labour electable again. It is no longer committed to public ownership as a means to achieving equality - today is it an ideal to which the party strives rather than a policy goal. To take away this ideal removes Labour's raison d'etre. The post Clause IV period has seen Labour become a candidate for the 'Trades Discription Act' - take away egalitarianism and the party will have no reason to exist.

What is Sarkozy's motivation for this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8112821.stm

President Sarkozy of France has spoken out against Muslim French women wearing the full burkha, saying that it 'reduced them to servitude and undermined their dignity'. This is widely regarded as a prelude to the establishment of a parliamentary commission which may in the long run ban the wearing of burkhas in public. This is a sickening denial of an individual's human right to practice their religion and whatever that entails - provided that, of course, this does not inpinge on the liberty of others.

Quite frankly, I do not mind if women wear the burkha in public (so, no, it doesn't inpinge on my liberty and nor should it one anyone else's). The negligable, quite frankly miniscule minority who have in the past used it to disguise suicide bombs (and bombings have never been carried out in the West this way it must be said) number less than that other minority who say that it excludes these women from society. Unfortunately, the French government seems to fall into this latter category.

Yes, the women look 'different', but so do hassidic Jews. So, to be honest, do monks. Sarkozy's arguments completely contradict what most women who wear the burkha would say. Rather than reducing them to servitude and undermining their dignity, they serve as a very visible manifestation of women's deep religious beliefs. Sarkozy claims that they are a symbol of the paternalistic, submissive nature of conservative Islam synonymous with (although he doesn't specifically say this..) forced marriages, beatings and the like.

He has clearly missed the point. 99.9% of women wear their veil because it reflects their deep belief. It is a human right. Surely, Sarkozy must recognise this to some extent. The question is, then, what is his motivation? Is he racist? Unlikely. Is he so caught up in France's famous secularist culture that he is tripping over himself to deny the legitimate rights of thousands of French women? Possibly. This is significant because it has precedents in history, not least Nazi Germany in the 1930s when Jews started to emigrate as a direct result of the harsh policy of Nazis.

Oh, isn't it terribly awful about the Speaker..

It's a feature of British politics that really annoys me; politicians, the public, the media, you name it - they will call on a public figure to go, they will hound him or her, they will rake up all manner of arguments to support their claims. Then, when the individual finally gets out of their bunker and resigns, caving in to the pressure, it is followed by a collective "oh, he wasn't that bad", "we'll really miss her", "she was an excellent so-and-so".

I watched tributes to the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, today with a certain degree of cynicism. MPs and in some cases party leaders (Nick Clegg) who called for Martin's head gushed with praise for 'Gorbals Mick'. As a result, I was quite happy when Martin used his last address to attack party leaders for not supporting his plans last year to overhaul MP's expenses.

Praising individuals after you have stuck the knife in is nothing new in UK politics. A couple of years ago, after a sustained attack on former LibDem leader Ming Campbell about his age (65) and apparent unsuitability for the job, the former Olympic medal winner stepped aside and this paved the way for the younger Clegg. Again, immediately afterwards praise was heaped onto Campbell as a very able leader who, indeed, is well respected across the political spectrum and in the country (dodgy expenses notwithstanding!)

Historians among us will recognise that age is no barrier to success in politics: Gladstone - 85 years old in retirement in 1894. Churchill - 81 years old in 1955.

This leaves me with a simple conclusion. In both the Westmister 'soap opera' and civil society we all love to see someone dragged through the mud even if their credentials or record do not merit this. We lick our lips with anticipation as we wait for the axe to fall. When it does, we face sober realisation - we've dispatched with one of the 'good guys'. Gushing praise is one way to compensate for these guilty feelings.

An apologist for right wing conservatism

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind some Conservatives. It's a belief that certainly bucks the trend of late, however, I passionately believe that there are politicians in all parties who go into politics because they want to change things. They are fundamentally decent people. David Davis comes to mind...Lord Tebbit is NOT a decent person.

In a letter to The Spectator, Tebbit says that he does not think that there is anything right wing about the BNP. He believes that the party displays the old left wing policies of Labour before Blair et al. He regards history's greatest racists as leftists - Pol Pot, Mugabe and Stalin. To top it all he points out that 'Nazi' is short for NDSAP, or - National Socialist German Worker's Party.

Let's make one thing clear. Tebbit refuses to believe that the far right is the place for objectionable views because it provides room and justification for his own arch-conservatism. Indeed, he was the biggest right winger in the Thatcher cabinet - and made Thatcher herself look like someone whom Michael Foot was regard as a 'a bit of a lefty'

Of course Tebbit forgets to mention that the Nazis hated communism. Hitler campaigned for 20 years prior to becoming Chancellor on a platform of destroying the 'Reds' whom, for him along with Jews were responsible for the defeat of 1918. In power, Hitler banned the party (along with all others) and abolished trade unions. Economically, the extreme right and left do favour state control, the former through massive state corporations, the latter through worker's control. However, a fundamental difference remains - for fascists the state must become even more powerful. For communists and socialists it must wither away.

Furthermore, I don't think the BNP would take kindly to being regarded as 'left wing'. Only this week, Griffin railed against the 'liberal left' in the Unite Against Fascism movement for egging the leader a 'legitimately elected political party'. Opposition to Europe is a fundamentally right wing principle (socialists, by their very nature are internationalist), as are old fashioned attutudes to education and reluctance to invest in foreign aid (see BNP website http://bnp.org.uk/). We all know that anyone who criticises the BNP is, in their eyes, a Marxist nut, the 'mob' who attacked Griffin outside Parliament on Wednesday were under the auspices of the 'hard left'.

Clearly, Tebbit simply wants to pile the responsibility for the more extreme variants of his ideology on the left. Yes, communism has been responsbible for the deaths of millions (Stalin's purges and famines), however, to call fascism a left wing ideology is a complete contradiction in terms. At its heart fascists believe that life is a struggle between races, some of which are fundamentally better than others. Socialists don't see races, merely classes. Stalin fell into the old fascist trap of seeing some people as 'more equal that others', however true socialism has none of the hatred, bigotry and plain old idiosyncracies of its cousin on the far right. I am saddened that a former cabinet member will engage such a cheap argument not only when the old left-right argument is dead in the political mainstream but just so he can legitimise his own extreme views.

Is it any secret that he finds himself more akin to the BNP than the Tories? To make himself feel better Tebbit has had to dispense with some of the 'baggage of history'.

A dark day...

I'm sitting here listening to 'If you tolerate this...' by the Manic Street Preachers:

And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next...
...Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
At being so young and being so vain...
...And on the street tonight an old man plays
With newspaper cuttings of his glory days

To be renamed - *An ode for the abstainers* ??

I could have chosen a different quote - 'All that is left fo evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing' - Perhaps that's even more apt; PR elections are more democratic, however the problem comes with a low turnout when marginal parties like the BNP are elected. And that is exactly what happened today.

I happily blogged a year ago that the BNP had failed to succeed in the local elections. I remember my time in Carlisle - a key background for the BNP - characterised by fascist campaigning and leafleting. Ultimately such efforts were in vain. Now these neo-Nazis have two MEPs. Notwitstanding the fact that Euro-elections didn't exist during Mosley's day, one cannot get away from the fact that the far right can claim their biggest electoral achievement in British political history.

Their success can be boiled down to several reasons:
1. Anger over MPs expenses and general disillusionment with the Westminster system/the (warped) belief that MPs are 'in it for as much as they can screw out of the general public'
2. The rightward direction of New Labour over the last decade and a half - the inevitable skewing re: the distribution of wealth and the political 'disenfranchisement' of the old Labour party's natural constituency - the white working classes
3. Linked to the above - the working class's belief (wrong) that Labour has abandoned them and opened the floodgates to waves of immigrants (mainly eastern European) who have taken jobs and drained public finances through benefit claims.
4. The world economic crisis - probably less important than it may first appear to be - Brown has been largely praised for his statesmanlike approach regarding the financial crisis and benefitted a lot from the G20 (although expenses has largely negated this). Plus, no other British politician is seen as a better option in this respect - Cameron, for example, is still seen as a risky soft option.
5. The political nous of the far right to 'seize the moment', play on people's fears and exploit their own coverage and that of the discredited main parties for their own political gain. In this regard, the actions of the Telegraph has been abominable (has the editor been in the pay of Griffin et al?).

These tactics are nothing new, however, they have just come at a time when people are feeling other anxieties. This has created a toxic stew which has resulted in fascists representing me in the European parliament.

More to follow. I'm trying to organise my thoughts on this one -

On BBC coverage of the British National Party

As a Labour Party supporter I would like to play devil’s advocate as we all recognise that internal party debate is important.

We have a long established tradition of neutrality and impartiality in the broadcast media in this country – in contrast to print journalism and, notably American TV Networks (Fox News anyone?) I do not believe that the BBC would be fulfilling any public service by attacking the BNP. In fact, I think it would be welcomed by the ‘Fascists’. They love being underdogs and unpopular because it allows them to position themselves between ‘ordinary folk’ on one side, and the ‘old gang’ (the three major parties) as they put it, on the other. At best the BNP would denounce the BBC as ‘Marxist’ if they were attacked on air. At worst, they could turn it into a propaganda coup by telling their potential voters that the BBC are running scared because the BNP are the only party committed to doing what they promise in manifestos. Either way, they could paint the BBC as nothing more than an arm of the state used to smear the enemies of the sitting government. This is something that I am totally against regardless of the party.

I think the BBC needs to be respected for its impartiality. Louis Theroux does this magnificently for the corporation. In his time as a documentary maker he has interviewed black nationalists, white nationalists and even Baptists who said that deaths the Iraq War was divine retribution for America’s tolerance of homosexuality. Not once in any of these documentaries has Theroux passed any form of judgement on these clearly obnoxious individuals or their ideas. However, through clever questioning he has enabled Joe Public make an informed and enlightened opinion. Such opinions are much more powerful if they are formed by the individual. If the BBC teaches us to hate the BNP it becomes superficial.

We are all ‘liberals’ with a small ‘l’. John Stuart Mill taught us to give a platform to lies because under public scrutiny, or ‘the court of public opinion’ as it is these days called, they will quickly fall apart. It is far more effective to show the BNP for who they are and their questionable ideologies will fall apart well before June 4. Engage in ‘mud slinging’ and the BNP will only throw it back with much greater vigour.


The above post was in response to a letter to the BBC written by local Labour Party activist Kevin Peel:

I am shocked, disgusted and sickened at your coverage of the BNP on prime time news. It is bad enough that they get the oxygen of publicity at all, but your report was not even close to strong enough on attacking their policies of hatred, fear and division.

Impartiality can only go so far - when you are giving credence and legitimacy to a racist, homophobic, fascist party who would see homosexuality re-criminalised, non-white Britons deported and have rioting on the streets of this country, you are at best guilty of complicity in incitement to hatred and at worst positively promoting fascism.

I object in the strongest possible manner to my license money being spent in such a way and I would plead that you at least try to apply the same scrutiny to this bunch of monsters as you do to other political parties. Surely preventing fascism from rising in Britain is more important than the amount our MPs are spending on accommodation?

21st Century Breakdown

I remember when the last Green Day album was released. Monday 20th September 2004 was the first day of Fresher's Week. Back in those hazy days I lived in Woolton Hall in Fallowfield and remember strutting down to Sainsburys to purchase my copy of American Idiot. I'd already seen Green Day the summer before; this had prorbably been one of the last opportunities anyone had had to see GD again before they achieved a 'renaissance' with what was a very accomplished Grammy award winning concept album.

I think Green Day fans fall into two camps - those who were fans before 2004 and those who have become fans afterwards. I must say I liked the new experimentation on American Idiot and the opportunities it afforded the band to produce an ever more expansive live show (I've seen them twice since, once at the MK Bowl, and they were fantastic on both occasions). However, like many I long for a return to the Insomniac days of angst and three-chord driven punk energy.

I don't have a lot of time for those who say that Green Day 'weren't punk' in the 90s. Anyone who expects 90s punks to sound like their 70s counterpart seriously misunderestimate the evolution of music. Insomniac was a dark, disturbing album based on issues such as drugs, panic attacks, depression and boredom. 'Masturbation' has become the watchword for Dookie-era GD - the truth is that it was merely 'alluded to' on one song on album. No, GD of the 90s was proper punk, not quite as hardcore as Rancid - but with just as many credentials and passion. Both bands grew out of the California punk circuit. Yes, Green Day played to 5 kids, they carried their own amps around in a van and sang about everyday life. They did it the proper way.

GD had always been political. 2000s 'Minority' was a sign of things to come and by the time American Idiot came around I was happy because I had always been impressed by their ability to stay ahead of the game at a time when Sum 41 was churning out second rate versions of GD songs from 5-7 years previously. The new grandiose statements and Springsteen-influenced ballads and pianos fitted perfectly with BJ's skills as a show man - a modern day Freddie Mercury and a man whose energy on stage went some way to explaining why his rounder frame had seemed to disappear.

Over the last week I have been listening to 21st Century Breakdown. The last GD material I'd listened to was their alter-ego offering 'Stop drop and roll' (Foxboro Hot Tubs). Although in a chugging 50s garage rock style, this record offered a hint that the insomniac days were returning. However, what we get with 21BD is a more ambitious, dare I say it *better* version of AI. The pianos and melodies are there a plenty. As talented as GB and BJ may be, I can think of few other artists who sport as many creative influences - Clash, Springsteen, Beatles - they're all here. In fact, one song - Horseshoes and Handgrenades sounds *far* too similar to Main Offender by the Hives. Nevertheless I certainly think that the lyrics put GD into a league of their own and are better than AI:

American Eulogy, part a) Mass Hysteria

Red alert is the color of panic
elevated to the point of static
beating into the hearts of the fanatics
and the neighborhood's a loaded gun
Idle thought leads to full-throttle screaming
and the welfare is asphyxiating
Mass confusion is all the new rage
and it's creating a feeding ground
for the bottom feeders of hysteria

American Eulogy is my favourite song on the album - probably because it reminds me of a more ambitious 'Westbound Sign' from Insomniac. Looking at it this way and considering the range and lyrical improvements that have been made you would expect it to be a much better album than 1995s. I don't think it's quite as simple as that. 21BD is a great album, it will become a great addition to the back catalogue and will once again confirm GD's position musically - nevertheless, I think that it will still leave old fans unsatisfied. GD have built a new genre for themselves - 'stadium punk', the days of small sweaty moshing to Platypus (I have you) or Jaded seem to be over. Bands grow up, I just home that when I see them for the fourth time in October that they find time for these early punk classics, because what I'm hearing today, however great it is, just ain't punk, despite the lyrical quality.