La Lutte Continue

After the generally disastrous general election, the struggle continues...

Never say never again

'Asked on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show whether he could ever envisage joining the Conservatives - and perhaps taking a Tory peerage - Mr Clegg replied in shocked tones:

"Join the Conservatives? No, never. I am not a Conservative - never have been, never will be. Never, never, never. I am a Liberal Democrat to my core. I will be carried out in my coffin as a card-carrying Liberal Democrat."'


Going by his track record, this is probably the clearest indication we have to date that Nick Clegg is indeed intending to join the Conservative Party - and, going by this statement, sooner rather than later. The only possible question to speculate on now is when. One year? Two years? Four years?

Regime Change Begins At Home

To come within the orbit of imperialist politics is to be debilitated by the stench, to be drowned in the morass of lies and hypocrisy...Now, as always, let us stand for independent organisation and independent action. We have to break our own chains. Who is the fool that expects our gaolers to break them?
CLR James, 1935

Sadly, there are one hell of a lot of such fools around at the moment, willing to suspend disbelief and hope against hope that a classic imperialist adventure in Libya can somehow bring liberation, even after the bloody criminal disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars are now clearly to be consigned to the 'memory hole' as if they did not happen or are not still happening. It is as if a tidal wave of forced amnesia has swept over the British political elite and its allies in the corporate media. A Western intervention in the Middle East? Yes, fine, what could possibly go wrong? As the Guardian's Andrew Rawnsley - an ever loyal servant of power - observed of the House of Commons when David Cameron announced the UN was going to war:

After his Commons statement, Conservative MPs saluted their leader. Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne sat on the front bench, nodding approvingly. A Lib Dem member of the cabinet says proudly: "We have taken as forward a position as the Conservatives. We have argued the same way Paddy Ashdown did over Kosovo. To stand aside in this sort of situation would have been unconscionable." Iraq has left deep and still not entirely healed wounds in the Labour party. It would have been less risky for Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, to sit on the sidelines. So they deserve some credit too for putting Labour on the right side when a fascistic dictator threatens slaughter on his own people. Mr Cameron will get a resounding endorsement for his position when MPs vote tomorrow.


The Guardian on Saturday reported just four out of 650 odd MPs supported the Stop the War Coalition's position on this. For all the talk about Gaddaffi as a 'fascistic dictator', it is almost as if we are the ones living in a totalitarian state - yet we are supposed to be the ones bringing 'democracy'. Moreoever, as Robert Fisk notes, 'there is a racist element in all this'.

The Middle East seems to produce these ravers [like Gaddaffi] – as opposed to Europe, which in the past 100 years has only produced Berlusconi, Mussolini, Stalin and the little chap who used to be a corporal in the 16th List Bavarian reserve infantry, but who went really crackers when he got elected in 1933 – but now we are cleaning up the Middle East again and can forget our own colonial past in this sandpit.


For Cameron, an old Etonion brought up on British imperial mythology and legend, this war is a classic means of trying to distract attention away from his failing and unpopular economic agenda of cuts and privatisation at home - in the finest traditions of Margaret Thatcher's 'Falkland's moment'. In trouble at home with lecturer's strikes and looming strikes over public sector pensions, facing a mass demonstration by trade unionists and students in London, what better timing for a war? And just like the British ruling class over a century ago predicted at the outbreak of the Boer War in South Africa that 'it would all be over by Christmas', so Cameron reassures us that this war will be speedy. Yet, just as the bloody Boer War was in reality about securing gold and diamond reserves - so this war is a classic imperialist adventure to do with securing Libya's oil.

The hapless Clegg's Liberal Democrats, in supporting the racist Tory warmonger Cameron, are following more than just the tradition of Paddy Ashdown - they are standing in the dishonourable traditions of the racist warmongering Liberal Lloyd George , who once noted in his diary in 1932 after an attempt by some in the League of Nations to outlaw aerial bombardment, that the British Empire 'reserves the right to bomb niggers'.

And as for Ed Miliband's parliamentary Labour Party - well, what does one expect now from such a party? Despite Ed Miliband's claims to have 'learnt lessons' from Iraq, it is now manifestly clear that he and his party have learnt next to nothing. The silence of the likes of Diane Abbott is thunderous - political power and patriotism before principle it seems is the order of the day. Even some ordinary Labour Party members who on any other day would proudly wave the red flag of socialism are now lining up under the likes of the Stars and Strikes and the Union Jack. So David Osler tells us that 'once in a while there is a more or less accidental coincidence between what the US wants to see happen in a country and the interests of working people that live there. Libya, here and now, is one of those times.'

History here goes out the window. Can he give us any previous examples of such halycon days when 'what the US wants to see happen in a country and the interests of working people that live there' coincided?

Instead Osler tells us that 'the stark fact is that without external support, the forces that have put their lives on the line in the current uprising against Gaddafi face certain defeat, and a reactionary regime will brutally and triumphantly consolidate its rule, perhaps bringing the revolution in North Africa and elsewhere in the Muslim world to a total halt.'

The 'certain defeat' of the Libyan Revolution was far from certain - Gaddaffi's forces would have found it almost impossible to take and hold a city like Benghazi - and would have faced guerrilla war across Libya even if they did - while it is not only Gaddaffi's regime but the US and its allies that have a material interest in 'bringing the revolution in North Africa and elsewhere in the Muslim world to a total halt'. As Tony Blair puts it, the Western ruling class 'cannot be a spectator to the Arab Revolutions' - what he means is that they have to get in there and stop this 'outbreak of democracy' spreading further across the region - which is why Blair is so proud of Cameron for embracing 'the principle of intervention'.

Socialists have to maintain our independence from such imperialist politics - soaked as they are in blood and oil - and stress instead that the No Fly Zone Is No Way to Free Libya - liberation and emancipation can only come from the mass actions of the oppressed and exploited themselves -as the Arab Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have so beautifully demonstrated up to now. For those of us in the West, Regime Change Begins At Home - and in Britain that process of transformation has to begin on March 26th - Turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square!

Edited to add:
Richard Seymour: A Humanitarian Intervention?
Karl Sharro: 'The No-Fly Zone in Libya: Hijacking the Arab Uprisings'

Edited to add:
* Protest on Budget Day. This Wednesday March 23rd Stop the War and CND are participating in a protest outside Downing Street on budget day. We will be demanding David Cameron stops pouring money into yet another futile and destructive foreign war at a time when he is trying to force through the most drastic programme of spending cuts in generations. Welfare not Warfare - protest on Budget Day
Assemble 5pm Trafalgar Square and March to Downing Street.

* Come to the Public Rally - Hands off Libya, Hands off the Middle East. 7pm Wednesday March 30th.
Conway Hall, Red lion Square, London WC1
Speakers include Tony Benn, Lindsey German, Sami Ramadani, and Jeremy Corbyn MP.

The Big Society is coming to town

On Saturday 26 March in London, the 'Big Society' will be taking over the streets of London in the first national demonstration organised by the trade union movement against the cuts and for alternative solutions to getting out of the deficit crisis - there is even talk of the Big Society staying on the streets and going on strike to bring down the Government. Anyway, to mark the glorious 'coming out' of the Big Society Philosophy Football have done what they do best - produced a T-shirt...

Charlie Brooker on Nick Clegg

Governments around the world must be studying the coalition [government in Britain] and working out how to get their own Clegg. He's the coalition's very own Pudsey Bear: a cuddly-but-tragic mascot representing the acceptable face of abuse. But unlike Pudsey, he actually speaks. Immediately following each unpleasant new announcement, Cleggsy Bear shuffles on stage to defend it, working his sad eyes and boyish face as he morosely explains why the decision was inevitable – and not just inevitable, but fair; in fact possibly the fairest, most reasonable decision to have been taken in our lifetimes, no matter how loudly people scream to the contrary.

It's hard not to detect an air of crushed self-delusion about all this. At times Clegg sounds like a once-respected stage actor who's taken the Hollywood dollar and now finds himself sitting at a press junket, patiently telling a reporter that while, yes, on the face of it, his role as the Fartmonster in Guff Ditch III: Fartmonster's Revenge may look like a cultural step down from his previous work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, if you look beyond all the scenes of topless women being dissolved by clouds of acrid methane, the Guff Ditch trilogy actually contains more intellectual sustenance than King Lear, and that all the critics who've seen the film and are loudly claiming otherwise are misguided, partisan naysayers hell- bent on cynically misleading the public – which is ethically wrong...
From this article noting the tactical nouse of the Tories having the Lib Dems fronting their cuts. As Ed Miliband noted, Clegg has all but successfully destroyed a 150 year tradition of liberalism in just five months... On the subject of resisting the cuts,
there are a couple of decent videos on you tube - a song here while for chat show host Paul O'Grady's rant see here. Plus the new issue of Socialist Review leads on austerity and resistance, while Socialist Worker has all the latest on the crucial firefighters, London underground and BBC strikes in London...

Big Society Bull Shit and Liberal Skidmarks

One of the best letters in Socialist Worker recently was short and to the point.

'David Cameron talks about the “Big Society”, but what does that mean? For me, it means BS. If you don’t know what BS stands for, then you don’t know what Cameron is talking.'

There is probably more to the Tories Big Society agenda and idea than meets the eye, but at least as the Con-Dem cuts begin to come thick and fast (and while the cuts can't really get much 'thicker' than they already are, they are unfortunately set to come 'faster' next week), the current state of British politics begins to become clearer than ever. It is not a pretty sight. Just as Mark Twain once noted that 'it could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class, except Congress', it is without doubt that the front benches of the British Houses of Parliament will go down in history as the scene of all manner of crimes, many of them being currently committed on a daily basis.

However, the fact that it is the Liberal Democrats who are currently so fervently fronting the most vicious criminal Tory attacks waged on behalf of the richest people in the country against the very poorest is providing some grim humour amid the carnage being inflicted on Britain's social fabric. Loathe as I am as a socialist to quote a capitalist overlord on the disaster now unfolding,Alan Sugar (of 'The Apprentice' fame) probably reflects the views of many:

'One thing that's for sure, this coalition thing is an absolute joke. It's got to be sorted out. It can't last for long with these Lib Dems and all that. These two people, [Nick] Clegg and [Vince] Cable, in their heart of hearts never thought they would get into power, now it's as if [low level football club] Leyton Orient suddenly found themselves in the Champions League. Fish out of water! Unbelievable! They don't know what they are doing! I think Cable should ... he should just give it up. They should put him in a field somewhere and give him a bit of hay.'

While it is manifestly the case that the former Labour councillor turned Business Secretary for the current Tory coalition Vince Cable, despite his oddly quixotic attacks on 'capitalism', is no Marxist, there is one thing from Marx that he seems to have taken to heart. 'Politics', Marx once noted, 'is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.' That was Groucho of course - rather than Karl - but it seems to accurately sum up the current pathetic political disposition of the Liberal Democrats in power, and Cable in particular, as they embrace wholeheartedly the Tories austerity agenda and betray an ever-increasing number of their pre-election manifesto pledges in the process - above all most dramatically over tuition fees. It is true that, as Cable stated in parliament, 'The road to Westminster is covered with the skid marks of political parties changing direction', but wasn't this coalition meant to be allegedly about 'new politics' rather than 'power-for-power's sake', and all about 'honesty', 'fairness', 'transparency', accountability'? If the Liberal parliamentarians are largely 'Yellow Tories', one should also not forget the 'Red Tory' scum working with the government either, the likes of Lord John Hutton, Frank Field and Alan Milburn - all still nominally members of the Labour Party. One cannot fail but be reminded of the point the great Marxist historian CLR James once made, that Liberals and Social Democrats were 'the comedians of the modern political world'.

Yet what is also apparent is that while British politics looks set to revert at the next election back to a two-party affair between Labour and the Tories whatever Labour do between now and then, up to now the new leaders of the Labour Party have really failed to effectively hammer either the millionaire Tories or the skidmarking Liberals. This is largely because so many of them are Blairites through and through (witness Tessa Jowell's pretty abysmal performance on Question Time this week) and so can't effectively oppose say the marketisation of higher education as they were the original architects of that policy. As one Labour MP noted, the new Labour shadow cabinet 'is packed with the Blairite Tendency, several of the militant brand, and their influence is not to be under-estimated...There is not a single person in the Shadow Cabinet who could be described as a natural left-winger'.

Fortunately, a rising mood of militancy is developing in the British trade union movement, at least among the rank-and-file. Moreover, while the trade union leaders are verbally committed to organising co-ordinated resistance - in some cases they are actually now doing so - for example the NUS/UCU demonstration for education on 10 November in London promises to be huge. Such sparks and flames of resistance have to be fanned by socialists over the coming weeks in months if we are to get anything approaching the general strikes and general level of struggle of say France and Greece. Moreover, if we do not try and organise collective mass resistance to the Blue, Yellow and Red Tory scum amidst this economic crisis, and leave people to try and survive the onslaught on public services and accompanying jobs massacre in their own individual ways then a recent poll in Germany reminds us of the continuing danger of the rise of fascism on the back of racist scapegoating of immigrants and Islamophobia. A study published this week saw one in 10 Germans profess they would like a "Führer" figure to "govern Germany with a hard hand", while 35% said they considered the country to be "dangerously overrun" with foreigners. The national demonstration and carnival against racism, fascism and Islamophobia called by Unite Against Fascism and Love Music Hate Racism and backed by the TUC and the Muslim Council of Britain should also be a date in people's diaries to try and help stop similar sentiments taking hold here. Things are more unstable and uncertain in British politics right now than in my living memory at least, and there are openings emerging for socialists that provide opportunities to make our case for a new society based on people's needs rather than private profits that have not existed for a very long time, and we need to make the most of them.

The wit and wisdom of Nick Clegg

The day before I was elected leader [2007], Mr Cameron suggested we join them. He talked about a “progressive alliance”. This talk of alliances comes up a lot, doesn’t it? Everyone wants to be in our gang. So I want to make something very clear today. Will I ever join a Conservative government?
No...I will never allow the Liberal Democrats to be a mere annex to another party's agenda.
Nick Clegg, Speech to Lib Dem Conference, March 2008.

Look, the decision on how we govern this country and how people vote shouldn't be driven by fear of what the markets might do. Let's say there was a Conservative government. Let's say a Conservative government announced, in that sort of macho way: 'We're gonna slash public spending by a third, we'll slash this, we'll slash this, we'll do it tomorrow. We have to take early, tough action.'

Just imagine the reaction of my constituents in south-west Sheffield. I represent a constituency that has more people working in public services as a proportion of the workforce than any other constituency in the country. Lots of people working in unviersities, the hospitals and so on.

They have no Conservative councillors. They have no Conservative MPs. There are no Conservative MPs or Conservative councillors as far as the eye can see in South Yorkshire. People like that are going to say: 'Who are these people telling us that they are are going to suddenly take our jobs away? What mandate do they have? I didn't vote for them. No one around here voted for them.'

I think if we want to go the direction of Greece, where you get real social and industrial unrest, that's the guaranteed way of doing it.
Nick Clegg, March 2010

For too long, vested interests have triumphed over doing what's right and it's got to stop. Sometimes it makes you feel so helpless - and yes, angry too - when there's so much you want to change. I bet you've all felt like that once in a while. Like there's a mountain to climb, and it's just too much to do alone. The cynicism of so much public debate doesn't help. A cynicism that mocks anyone with the nerve to speak with sincerity about what they believe. A cynicism that's given up believing in hope. But I am not embarrassed by sincerity. I am not ashamed of believing in things.
Nick Clegg, Speech to Lib Dem Conference, Spring 2008.

Hung, Drawn and Quartered

I am not going to comment much here about the General Election 2010 - Socialist Worker and Lenins Tomb have extensive rolling election news, analysis and coverage - only to say, all in all, it was not anything like as bad as I feared it would be. In fact, the election proves the British people - against all the odds (9/10 major national newspapers in Britain backed the Tories or Lib Dems) - still remain fundamentally wedded to social democractic values and the welfare state - and delivered a hung, drawn and (if you count the triumphant entry of Caroline Lucas and the Green Party) quartered parliament which gave no main party a mandate for the cuts they all agreed was necessary - a desperately disappointing blow to all three main parties.

The Lib Dems and Tories are currently trying to cosy up to do some deal as I write - which kind of vindicates my slightly moody response when I bumped into some Lib Dem students canvassing yesterday (I described Clegg as a neo-liberal privatising warmonger about whom it seemed the only difference between him and other leaders was that he was probably better at sex than the other two. The Lib Dem students protested, 'But what about PR?'. 'Yeah, Clegg's a PR man, alright - he's very good at Public Relations' - I shot back). The whiff of a possible Tory-Liberal coalition is not edifying - on Leeds city council their attacks on refuse and bin workers pay provoked a gloriously victorious 12 week long all out strike - one possible future to come. The only thing anyone could realistically 'agree with Nick' Clegg on in the election campaign was his point that if the Tories implemented cuts Britain could soon have Greek style riots - well, if the Tories and Lib Dems implement cuts then Clegg's warning will be equally valid.

Though not all the local council results are in (Barking council in particular), the Nazi BNP were humiliated in their 'target seats', above all Barking and Stoke - though they still picked up worryingly high votes generally. It is always inspiring to see the Nazis lose - and speaking again of Leeds City Council, the city is now 'Nazi free' having just lost their one councillor there. But surely - and this is my last point - the real fight starts now - whatever the ultimate outcome of this election. In places like Barking for example - its great Labour so convincingly trounced the BNP fuhrer Nick Griffin and Margaret Hodge was able to tell him to effectively 'pack your bags and go home - you are not welcome here' - but the Nazis still got 6,000 votes or so in a working class area. Surely in such places - and indeed across working class areas across Britain - the work now has to begin in earnest to regroup and unite the Left around something like TUSC in order to be able to more effectively fight the coming cuts and offer working class people a genuine socialist alternative amidst the economic and political crisis and turmoil now beginning to engulf us all.

Edited to add: further congratulations to all the anti-fascist campaigners in Barking and Dagenham: local council results - Labour 51: BNP: 0

Election Fever Mounts

How long before a 'Grand Coalition' between the Tories and Labour?

Well, with a week to go, the 2010 British General Election is certainly managing to live up to early expectations as the 'worst election ever'...

On the one hand, we have the Conservatives, whose entire rationale, as the name of the party suggests, is to 'conserve' the existing capitalist status quo on behalf of those whose interests the system serves best. In this election, however, it is trying (and largely failing) to portray itself in an oxymoronic (and increasingly desperate) fashion as the 'party of change' and 'progress'.

On the other we have simply the desperate party of New Labour - whose whole rationale for existence was built around the theory of 'triangulation' to get into power - which meant in practise a steady shift to the right politically on the grounds that its core supporters had nowhere else to go - a strategy that appeared to work well enough, though the resulting compromises in order to maintain power for powers sake led to a complete abandonment of the founding principles of not only the labour movement but the labour party itself. It has long alienated its core support and has managed to also alienate most of its new support and now seems to be in something of an existential crisis. The banal case of 'Bigotgate' reveals much about where following the politics of 'triangulation' tend to lead you...

And then we come to the Liberal Democrats, who despite being one of the oldest parties in British politics have in quite remarkable fashion managed to present themselves in this election as a 'brand shiny new party', completely different to the other main parties - apparently simply because their leader Nick Clegg looked into a TV camera instead of talking to the person he was supposed to be talking to during the first leadership debate, and because it seems very few people watching had ever noticed even his very existence as a human being until this leadership debate.

There is one very good reason why no-one had taken any notice of the existence of Nick Clegg before this moment - there is really no earthly reason why anyone should have. I once saw Clegg sitting in a Starbucks by himself drinking coffee at Manchester Station (he is MP in nearby Salford) a few years ago. It was in the run up to the 2007 internal Lib Dem leadership election, in which Clegg was running against Chris Huhne (pronounced 'Who?'). Clegg looked every inch the typical yuppie businessmen with his suit and posh coffee and he was talking loudly into his mobile phone. No one around him seemed to either know or care who he was, but me being the sad political hack that I am, spotted him a mile off. I was, I'm afraid to admit, a little excited to have spotted him sitting all by himself and even actually - and this reveals the kind of nerd I am - pointed him out to the women working in WH Smith as I went and bought a copy of Private Eye. 'That's Nick Clegg, probably the next leader of the Liberal Democrats'. By the complete lack of interest this little piece of information provoked, I may as well have just as well been asking her where the nearest toilet was. Indeed I think she may well have actually regarded me as a human being with more respect had I asked her where the nearest toilet was.

However, over the last week or so people are talking about Clegg as 'the man', the deal maker, the power broker and so on for any future coalition government in the very likely looking 'hung parliament' that British politics seems to be heading for. As the front cover of this weeks Private Eye, notes, 'Vote Lib Dem, Get either the Labour Party or Tory Party free!' - the most likely coalition government being either a Lib-Lab Pact (with its accompanying distinctive whiff of the 19th century, which would hopefully remind people of the urgent case for independent political representation of the labour movement) or a Lib-Tory administration (which might help New Labour become electable again - not least because there is a chance of PR being introduced which would help minor 'third parties' like New Labour). However, given the nature of the three main political parties, all so similar to one another - all committed to major public service cuts and privatisation and so on - surely - and especially if the Lib Dems do get into power and PR is introduced - it is only a matter of time before we see the spectacle of a 'Grand Coalition' as in Germany between Labour and Conservatives. Won't that be something exciting and new to look forward to? Meanwhile, away from the TV cameras, real politics does, believe it or not, somehow manage to go on...