Marxist spotlight from India

by Robin MacGregor

Revolutionary Democracy new series Vol. II; No. 2 (October 2025) £7.50 including p&p from NCP Lit, PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

 

 The October 2025 issue of Revolutionary Democracy has safely arrived in London for New Worker readers to acquire their own copy. It contains the usual mixture of material on past and present South Asian politics, archival material and statements from Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations’ members on various issues such Bolivia and the Middle East. 

 In the first category there is an interesting short piece on overthrow of the Maoist Nepali government which is blamed on “the old elites of Nepal, the military bureaucracy complex, hiding under the banner of the youth protest”. A regular RD contributor, C N Subramaniam writes on the BJP Government’s drastic watering down of India’s labour laws. A shorter piece describes the same government’s disenfranchising masses in the state of Bihar by demanding that potential voters present a plethora of documents to get on the electoral role. These new regulations were introduced because the BJP failed to secure a majority in the Hindi speaking state. This would never happen in Britain where Sir Keir Starmer simply cancels those elections he knows he will lose. 

 Much of this issue is devoted to the life and times of Badruddin Umar (1931-2025), an Oxford educated veteran of the Bangladesh communist movement. His politically engaged family emigrated from India to what was then East Pakistan in 1951 to escape the post-Independence communal violence. His career as a lecturer in several universities was abandoned in favour of political activism. Among other things he edited the East Pakistan Communist Party (ML)’s weekly and was president of the Bangladesh Peasant Federation. He long opposed the country’s ruling Awami League and the welcoming of multinational corporations who developed the country’s highly exploitative garment industry. He was also no friend of the present regime, a fact made evident in his own article on the Post-July uprising in Bangladesh.

 Of specialist issue are two articles devoted to the 1975 resignation of the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the political lessons which are to be learnt from that episode. Another is an interesting review of a book entitled Stalin and Indonesia. Soviet Policy Towards Indonesia, originally published in Russian 22 years ago, that provides a useful summary of a neglected but important topic.

This long-standing Indian Marxist journal supports a particularly dogmatic trend in the world communist movement and so it’s not surprising to see that nature of the Chinese state is the focus of an article entitled Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics by the New York based Towards Marxist Leninist Unity group. Less controversial is a shorter piece equally appropriately entitled Trump is a continuation of the politics of imperialism, albeit in decline as well as a topical article on Developments in the Middle East by Hamma Hammami from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

 Another instalment of extracts from a 1937 Soviet book by A V Shchegolov on the Soviet philosopher Alexander Bogdanov (1973-1928) is provided while the main archival material in this issue concerns talks held between Joseph Stalin and Kim Il Sung held in both 1949 and 1952. 

 These are prefaced by an introductory article by RD Editor Vijay Singh in which he claims the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) never became a proper dictatorship of the proletariat because is allowed rich peasants to be involved in co-operative farms. This is a controversial point which the UK Korean Friendship Association took issue with in a substantial critique in a December 2025 blog posting. 

 The March 1949 talks were largely concerned with previous and future Soviet aid to the DPRK was discussed. The the military strength of the DPRK, which was to be a vital matter the next year was also discussed. In September 1952 the talks, which also included the Chinese, were more urgent due to the war against the Americans being in progress. Here the military situation is discussed in detail, along with essential Soviet and Chinese aid which finally ensured a humiliating defeat for the Americans, something for which they have never forgiven the Korean people.

 We also get a 1944 letter from Josip Broz Tito, the head of the Yugoslav resistance during the Second World War, to the Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov about the progress of the national liberation struggles in the Balkans.

 Finally, this issue continues with publishing documents relating to relations between the Soviet party and the Communist Party of India. In this case 1952 discussions related to the Indian parties internal troubles and its political strategy.  Regardless of the merit some of the viewpoints expressed here this issue provides much useful information and food for thought.  

Revolutionary Democracy is a half-yearly theoretical and political journal from India. It contains material on the problems facing the communist movement, particularly relating to Russia, China and India, the origins of modern revisionism, the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and developments in the international communist movement.

1066 and all that...

by Ben Soton

BBC1’s Sunday night drama, King & Conqueror, opens up one of Early Medieval Europe’s most important events – the Norman conquest.
This is not the time of absolute monarchs with grandiose palaces; it is the dog-eat-dog world of early feudalism. Loyalties had little to do with nationality, which arose centuries later but a world where your local or regional overlord or earl often mattered more than the titular monarch. A world power came out of the blade of a sword and was held by rival warlords and schemers. It had a greater resemblance to Game of Thrones than The Tudors.
King & Conqueror traces the trials and tribulations of Harold Godwinson, the Earl of Wessex (played by James Norton) and William of Normandy (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau); whose rivalry for the English Crown came to a head at Hastings in 1066. The drama paints a story of two similar men; both at the higher end of the feudal hierarchy and of a similar age. Both were outstanding warriors – much like the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada, the other claimant for the English throne, who was killed by Harold along with most of his men only a few weeks before the fateful battle of Hastings. 
It was a clash of titans and a case of last man standing. It all begins around the time of the coronation of Edward the Confessor (played by Eddie Marsan) and ends with the Battle of Hastings. Whilst Harold and William are portrayed as heroic figures and family men; Edward is portrayed as a weak, over pious man with no interest in women. In the drama he is easily manipulated by his mother Emma of Normandy (played by Juliet Stevenson) and later his
wife, Gunhild (played by Bo Bragason). In a show of defiance he batters his mother to death with the crown. Although this is fiction it is widely believed that she was plotting against her son the king.
Although the portrayal of Edward the Confessor may be exaggerated it is probably an attempt to show him in contrast to the machismo of Harold and William. However there is considerable evidence that Edward, whose wife was also Harold’s sister was celibate partly for religious reasons hence the title Edward the Confessor – though the desire to thwart the Godwin clan’s dynastic ambitions was clearly another pressing motive.
There’s all sorts of other historical inaccuracies in the series. But, of course, this is not a drama-documentary but historical fiction like Shakespeare’s romps through the Wars of the Roses and the Hundred Years War with France. The series does, however, manage to capture the feudal power play of the period. In its favour the series does not take the side of either protagonist; Harold was simply the most powerful man in England whilst William may have been Edward the Confessor’s preferred successor. In the final analysis William triumphed on the battlefield.
Meanwhile King & Conqueror makes enjoyable and gripping entertainment with epic battle scenes in the final episodes. Finally however tough life may have been for the likes of William and Harold life was much harder for their subjects.

The borderlands of history

by Ben Soton

 
The Far Edges of the Known World – A New History of the Ancient Past: Owen Rees: Bloomsbury Publishing London 2025; 384 pp; hbk: £25

The ancient world is often seen as a history of empires and the cataclysmic clashes between them. These empires include that of Egypt, Persia, the short-lived Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great and, of course, Rome.  Owen Rees’s new book covers the many places on the edges of those empires as well as those gaps in-between.
The book is part of a recent tradition in historical literature, which focuses on trade and cultural exchange rather than simply that of kings, queens and battles, and it is divided into four sections; Pre-history, Egypt, Greece, Rome and Beyond the Classical World.   
The author makes extensive use of Greek and Roman historians such as Herodotus, Ovid and Tacitus as well as philosophers such as Socrates and Plato, who apparently went to Egypt to sell oil  – well a man cannot live by words alone. 
The most influential culture in the classical world was probably that of the Greece.  Ironically there was never a Greek empire as such; the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great only lasted a few years and its successor states, Ptolemaic Egypt and the Syrian-based Seleucid empire did not actually include Greece. What we refer to as the Greek world was a collection of city states, centred in the Aegean, covering much of the Mediterranean and beyond.  
Meanwhile classical Greece is viewed by those on the right as the blueprint for the superiority of the West. Although Athens was, indeed, the first place to promote a limited form of democracy it was a hierarchical society based on slavery, the subjugation of women and a chauvinistic attitude to those outside its parameters.  
Those outside the Greek and later Roman world were referred to as “barbarians”; one such group being the Scythians, a nomadic people who inhabited much of what is now Russia and Ukraine. The author devotes a chapter to the Ukrainian city of Olbia; a place where Greeks and Scythians interacted. Rees points to shared cultural similarities; for example Scythians following the Greek cult of Dionysus as well numerous examples of inter-marriage.  As a result there were no clear boundaries between the two groups.  Meanwhile cultural definitions are often a result of elite manipulation; whilst the interactions between groups of people often take place on geographic peripheries and amongst the lower orders of society.  In other words the most important boundary between people is that of class and not culture. 
Today we live in a world still dominated by empires but there are large swathes of the world no longer under their domination.  People’s China, Democratic Korea, Cuba and parts of South America, to name but a few.  We are told by our masters that these people are inherently different from us, comparable to modern day barbarians. Is this really the case?
I am told basketball is a very popular sport in Democratic Korea. Baseball is a popular sport in Cuba; both sports originated in the USA.  Likewise football is a popular sport in China, having begun in Britain.  It would seem ordinary people have more in common with each other than the elites who seek to divide us.  Maybe this has always been the case?  

More Monkey Business

by Ben Soton

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes continues the series of films made between 2011 and 2017. Simians still live within the ruins of human civilisation; whilst the remaining humans have been reduced to a feral state and have lost the power of speech.  Despite the absence of Andy Serkis, who provided much of the work behind the facial expressions in the previous films, the acting and special effects are of a high standard.   
Though the concept goes back to a 1963 French sci-fi novel the early American movies, made between 1968 and 1973,  reflected the fears of imperialism at the time including race riots, Vietnam war protests and challenges from the socialist camp.  Human civilisation has been replaced by an ape based hierarchical system akin to feudalism; ironically intended to be a parody of socialism. Also reflected in the television series that followed two fugitive astronauts and a renegade chimp continuously outwit a troop of gorilla soldiers, who mistakenly believe their society; hierarchical, backward and agrarian is superior to the human civilisation that preceded it.    
The recent franchise has similarities and differences.  At the end of the preceding film, War of the Planet of the Apes (2017) an ape called Caesar establishes an egalitarian society in which the first rule is Ape Shall Not Kill Ape. A misnomer, common to both franchises is that only humans kill their own species.  It is widely documented that chimpanzees regularly commit murder and the animal kingdom as a whole is far from benign.  Environmental issues and the frailty of human civilisation are at the heart of the recent franchise. Human civilisation is being destroyed by a deadly virus after which apes and remaining humans battle for limited resources.  However apes are not really apes but representations of the human other.  The other social system, the other race – the other part of the world.  In situations where the apes have become dominant the position is reversed.  This is reflected throughout both series of films.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes opens with a benign group of apes, known as the Eagle Clan, who subsist by training eagles to hunt for them.  In the opening scene, lead character Noa (played by Owen Teague) and a group friends undertake a coming-of-age ritual, to cement their position in the clan.  The Eagle Clan becomes enslaved by a more aggressive group of apes led by another Caesar (played by Kevin Durand), not to be mistaken for the Caesar in the previous film.
Caesar resembles King Louis in Kipling’s Jungle Book as he grapples to acquire lost human technology. The film centres around Noa’s attempts to free his clan and Caesar’s desire to acquire human technology.  A key to both their quests is the talking human Mae (played by Freya Allen), whose loyalties are uncertain.  As with the earlier Planet of the Apes movies, we see the triumph of hierarchy over egalitarianism. Notions of man verses nature are also prominent whilst the exploitation of the Eagle Clan by Caesar is a possible reference to colonialism. But at the end of the day it all boils down to table-turning – and if you liked the others you’ll certainly like this.

Problems of Peace and Socialism

by Robin MacGregor

Revolutionary Democracy :Volume Two, No. 2 (New Series) October 2023 
£5 plus £2.50 P&P from NCP Lit. PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

 Another issue of the Indian Marxist journal has arrived on these shores. It maintains now familiar format of articles on Indian affairs past and present, article from parties belonging to the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations (ICMLPO, plus materials from Soviet archives. This time there are slightly fewer, but longer articles than hitherto. 
With regard to contemporary Indian the issue opens with two short articles on violent attacks on tribal peoples in Manipur state and the increasing number of anti-Muslim pogroms which increasingly common features of Indian life under the BJP government. 
There follows two longer articles on India. The first offers a detailed critique of the latest national budget for India. The author found that beneath the predictable fine words, there are ill thought out programmes and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities. An interesting study of India: Broken Legacies of the Land and Forest Rights Movement provides an account of the subject from pre-colonial times through the British Raj to the present day, noting that things did not improve very much after independence. 
  The centre-piece of this issue, occupying almost a quarter of the space is the Asiatic Mode of Production in South Asia: An Empirical Study by Tripta Wahi. The concept of the “Asiatic Mode of Production” is a much debated one in Marxist thought. It was invented by Marx, but was not developed by him to any great extant. It refers to societies where government power and prosperity depends on large scale irrigation systems which had to be maintained by peasants. Some critics (both Marxist and non-Marxist) say the concept is unnecessary and what it describes is simply a variant of feudalism common in Europe. The present article covers what was British Punjab in pre and colonial times. 
  An Interview of Qemal Cicollari, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Albania with a Brazilian journalist defends the reputation of Enver Hoxha and blames the fall of socialism in Albania on his successor Ramiz Alaia. Unfortunately parts of his comments about other present day “communist” parties in Albania tends to resemble Private Eye’s Dave Spart.  
A transcript of an August 1946 "Record of the Meeting Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, I.V. Stalin, and Members of the Delegation of the Labour Party of Great Britain” reports a two hour meeting in Moscow. The exchange of views was a polite one, so we should not read too much into Stalin’s comments including one to the effect: “That the Soviet Union advances towards socialism via its own, Russian way, which is the shorter one, while the British advance towards socialism by a longer roundabout, way, both of these ways being appropriate”. Interestingly Stalin had a more realistic view about the possibility of a return to power by Churchill than his visitors. This reviewer is happy to identify the delegates as party chairman Harold Laski, General Secretary Morgan Walter Phillips, Harold Clay, Assistant General Secretary of the Transport & General Workers Union, and Alice Bacon, the new MP for Leeds North-East. Hopes for better relations between the two wartime allies were destroyed by Labour Prime Minister Attlee who secretly authorised the production of British atomic weapons less than six months after the meeting.
  The issue concludes with two sets of historical documents. The first is Materials for the Draft Programme of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks drawn up in 1947 with comments by Stalin. This is given a helpful introduction by the journal’s editor Vijay Singh. While it has been published in Russian, this is the first English publication. Finally we have a reprint of a 1951 Communist Party of India pamphlet containing comments from various party branches  making Suggestions and Criticisms on the Draft Programme and Policy Statement of the CPI, 1951. This is followed by an internal Soviet Party document about it which was sent to Stalin’s for information before publication in Pravda. 
All in all another worthwhile issue. Occasionally a few concessions to non-Indian readers would be helpful, particularly for those of us who tend to forget that a lakh is 100,000 and a crore is 10 million.

In the name of Christ

by Ben Soton

Jesus – A Life in Class Conflict by James Crossley & Robert J. Myles; Zer0 Books, Alresford 2023, Pbk 304 pp, £19.99

Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Was he the actual son of God? An anti-Roman rebel claiming to be the King of the Jews? Or even a mythical construct whose narrative was created from several mystical figures who may have existed at around the same time. This is the subject of Jesus – A Life in Class Struggle by James Crossley & Robert J Myles. Both authors have a strong academic grounding in the period; with Crossley being an expert in Millenarian Movements whilst Myles lectures on the New Testament.

    According to Crossley and Myles the Jesus was the leader of a movement, of which he and his twelve disciples acted as some form of leadership committee. The movement was a reaction against the rise of regional potentates such as Herod Antipas and his attempts of gentrify Galilee, most notably through the building of the city of Tiberias. Jesus and his followers, described by the authors as the “Jesus Movement” were on a mission to the rich; an attempt to either persuade or force them to give up their wealth. Like many movements in pre-industrial times, they harked back to an earlier, largely imaginary perfect and more social just kingdom and are seen as a product of Millenarianism, the idea that some kind of cataclysmic change is coming. The authors refute conservative interpretations of Jesus, which claim that he was some kind of proto-capitalist entrepreneur.

    The book is thoroughly researched using mostly Biblical texts. Crossley and Myles use their extensive Biblical knowledge to interpret and analyse the New Testament Gospels; picking out possible inaccuracies or misinterpretations. For example, why did Jesus need to be baptised by John the Baptist; surely if he was the Son of God and born without sin, he would not need to undergo baptism, which is meant to represent the washing away of sin. Meanwhile the story of the Good Samaritan arose over a legal issue of whose responsibility it was to assist injured travellers; not the morality tale as often presented by modern Christians. On the other hand, the authors to not doubt that the disciples genuinely believed in the resurrection of Jesus; the basis of the Christian religion.

    Crossley and Myles conclude by reminding us of the reactionary role Christianity has played over the last two thousand years. After a period of persecution, it was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire and later played an integral role within European Feudalism. 

     Modernised forms of Christianity were later adopted by the emerging capitalist class, most notably in the form of Protestantism. Christianity also played a role in the imperialist calve up of Africa in the 19th Century as well as playing a reactionary role in the Cold War against the socialist camp. This does not however mean that it was the intention of the movement’s original advocates, including Jesus himself.

  However numerous Christians have stood on the side of the oppressed. Examples include John Ball during the Peasants Revolt and the Levellers in the English Civil War. The 20th century saw the likes of Canon Hewlett Johnson the Red Dean of Canterbury, a defender of the Soviet Union and Stalin whilst Christians also took part in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles such as Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus and Oscar Romero in El Salvador. It might be worth asking – who would Jesus side with today?

21st Century Communism

by Robin MacGregor

The International Communist Movements – Annual Report 2019-2020: Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Science ; Bari: Marx 21 Edizioni, 2022, 328 pp; €18:00 from: www.marx21books.com

This volume is a welcome collaboration between the Academy of Marxism, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and the Italian publisher Marx 21 Edizioni of Bari. CASS is not just another think tank, but plays an important role in shaping party and government policy in China.
    It is “an English and compressed version” of a work first published in Chinese in June 2020. Both Editors, Xin Xiangyang and Pan Jin’e, hold senior positions in the influential Academy of Marxism, while the individual authors and translators (all Chinese) share the same affiliation. It seems this is the second such report, but is the first to appear in English.
    In all there are fifteen chapters, plus an Appendix summarising recent developments in the world’s communist parties.
    The first by joint editor Pan Jin’e not only summarises the contents of the book but looks at the recent activities of various other parties such as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. This is followed by an article on history of the Communist International which was established in 1919, and offers interesting reflections on its positive and negative impact on the communist movement, particularly on China. Two articles are devoted entirely to China; one outlines the achievements of the entire 70 year life of the Peoples Republic, while the other focuses on the May Fourth Movement, which in 1919 saw student protests in Beijing over China’s shabby treatment at the Treaty of Versailles spread like wildfire across the country resulting in a widespread interest in Marxism at the expense of reactionary traditional nationalism, which resulted in the foundation of the 50 strong Communist Party of China in 1921.
    These are followed by an account of the global balance of forces since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Despite the fall of socialism in the Eastern Bloc capitalism has not got all its own way thanks to China’s powerful economy which will be the anchor of a new order with “a community of shared future for mankind”.
    There are four articles on the recent activities of the ruling parties in Cuba, Peoples Korea, Laos and Vietnam. That for Vietnam covers the Communist Party of Vietnam in the run up to its 13th National Congress which took place in 2021. The two articles on Cuba and DPR Korea both focus on constitutional developments which both countries made in 2019, when the DPRK made important amendments to its constitution and Cuba brought in an entirely new one. Finally, that on Laos deals with the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party’s policy on developing the party’s cadres.
    The final section deals with recent developments of non-ruling communist parties. This starts with general survey of activities of Western European communist parties, their congresses and electoral activities. It does so fairly and, unlike some Soviet era publications on this theme does not pretend that they on the verge of revolution.
    This is paralleled by a similar piece on activities in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe where there have been some positive results under very difficult circumstances, particularly the legislation passed in some countries and in the European Union which brazenly equates the liberators of Auschwitz with its builders. This is followed by a useful summary of those parties involved in the European Left, which had as setback in the 2019 elections for the EU’s so-called parliament. This section also includes a more detailed account is of the Workers Party of Belgium which has had an unexpected electoral success.
    The article entitled “The Communist Party USA: 100 Years in Struggle for New Development” is interesting,but does not really live up to its title as it largely revolves round the CPUSA’s 2019 Convention. The informative article entitled at on “New Developments of the Japanese Communist Party” is more accurate. This gives a detailed account of the party’s recent policies, achievements and activities. The article does not shy away from addressing the party’s recent decline.
    On the whole the translations are decent enough with few obvious howlers, but on occasion a native English speaker should have been on hand to give a final polish. The title of the Belgian article is “Revival of the Workers’ Party of Belgium and its Enlightenments” could obviously have been improved upon.
    However, these are small grumbles which a reviewer feels entitled to make. The volume provides useful concise outlines of subjects which for British readers are normally below the horizon. We hope to see another volume, which is promised in the introduction before not too long.

Allie Burns returns

by Ben Soton

1989 by Val McDermid. Softback: Sphere 2023; 464pp, rrp £8.99. Hardback: Little, Brown 2022; 432 pp, rrp £20

1989 was by the standards of those of us belonging to the progressive part of humanity a pretty dreadful year. The main news stories seemed to have been counter-revolution, leading to the destruction of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and AIDS. These two events are reflected in 1989, the most recent novel by Scottish crime writer Val McDermid.
    The story features the adventures of the investigative journalist Allie Burns; the lead character in 1979 McDermid’s previous novel.
    Ten years on Burns finds herself working for Ace Media and living with her girlfriend Rhona, also a journalist. Both women work for Ace Media, owned by the multi-millionaire Wallace Lockhart. Lockhart, who has striking similarities with Robert Maxwell is not painted in a good light. He is portrayed as power grabby and venal whilst the story covers the theft from his company’s pension fund. Meanwhile his slightly wayward daughter Genevieve; again, a parody of Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, is portrayed as reckless and devious as well as willing to cheat her own father out of money.
    Essentially two stories – the first being about HIV infected Scots migrating to Northern England in the hope of better treatment for what was then a fatal illness. The second, and longest part of the book takes Burns to the German Democratic Republic on the brink of the notorious counter-revolution. The novel exposes the author’s lack of awareness about left-wing politics and the former socialist countries. At some point in her novel, she describes life in East Germany as so bad that it would make the Trots who sell Socialist Worker vote Tory. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that Socialist Worker sellers were and still are on the same side as the Tories when it comes to supporting the overthrow of people’s democracies past and present.
    McDermid’s lack of understanding of left-wing politics should not necessarily diminish her abilities as a crime writer. Her politics can best be described as Guardian reading left-liberal; constantly exposing capitalism’s failings whilst showing an innate hostility to its only alternative. The book possibly represents an evolution in the development in the lead character Alison Burns from investigate journalist to private detective; two jobs with a very similar skill-set. In other words, watch out for future novels featuring the investigative journalist turned private-eye.

Another view from India

by Robin McGregor

Revolutionary Democracy: New Series Vol. I, no. 2, September 2022. £5.00 + £2.50 P&P from NCP Lit: PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

The latest issue of this twice-yearly Indian Marxist journal has once again arrived on these shores. This time half the journal is taken up with matters pertaining to Ukraine, with the remainder devoted to contemporary Indian politics and some historical material.
    Sadly this is an issue in which the journal’s affiliation to the views of the late Albanian leader Enver Hoxha strongly come to the fore, with a number of sectarian pieces arguing that events in Ukraine demonstrate the “imperialist” nature of contemporary Russia which they say is backed by what they call “social imperialist” China. This inevitably then leads to support for the Ukrainian “resistance” and the puppet Ukrainian regime. Calls to “Stop the War in Ukraine” are inevitably followed by demands for the “Russian occupiers” to “get out” which is, of course, the demand of US imperialism and its NATO lackeys.
    Statements by the Revolutionary Communist Party of Volta – PCRV / Burkina Faso and the Revolutionary Alliance of Labour of Serbia amongst others take this view. Of course Hoxha considered that this had been the nature of the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin and the coming to power of Nikita Khrushchev and his alleged restoration of capitalism in the USSR when Mikhail Gorbachev was merely the Stavropol Komsomol regional deputy director of agitation and propaganda.
    Two long articles originally published in Albania in 1974 and 1987 are reprinted here which back up this argument. They accuse both Khrushchev and later promoters of “Soviet Revisionism” of encouraging Great Russian chauvinism, particularly on the place of the Russian language in the non-Russian parts of the USSR.
    Allegations of “Great Russian chauvinism” have of course long been levelled throughout the existence of the USSR, by Trotskyists and by imperialists who sought to destabilise the USSR by fanning ethnic conflict.
    It is often overlooked that many of nationalists in the non-Russian republics were just anti-Russian (and anti-Soviet),extremely anti-Semitic and very hostile to minorities within their borders and in neighbouring countries.
    It might be worth noting that it was Stalin who reversed Lenin’s policy of using the Latin alphabet for newly literate peoples in Siberia and the Central Asian soviet republics and insisted on the Cyrillic alphabet that was the norm in the rest of the Soviet Union apart from the Caucasus – not least because Russian was the second language of the entire USSR.
    There are three substantial articles dealing with contemporary India. The first deals with the impact of the latest budget from the right-wing BJP government of India on the peoples of India. India is poorest half of the population own a mere six per cent of the nation’s wealth. Things are getting worse with inflation in commodity prices affecting the poorest particularly harshly.
    Another article describes how a 1942 Ordinance used by British colonial authorities to clamp down on the growing Independence movement is still in force in new guises and has been used to supress national movements in Jammu and Kashmir. An example of the Indian government’s brutality is given in an account of a massacre of villagers of Silger in one of India’s Tribal Areas by government forces allegedly in pursuit of Maoist terrorists.
    Of the historical material we have an offering from the Editor on Grover Furr, the American academic who has carefully expose as lies all of Khrushchev claims in his 1956 “Secret speech”. There is also a somewhat technical, but important piece concerning the authenticity of some of Lenin’s last writings when he was very ill.
    This issue concludes with another piece from the Soviet archives. This time we have Stalin’s observations made in March 1951 on the Communist Party of India’s tactics. By that time the party was frustrated by its lack of progress since the formal ending of colonialism in 1947. Stalin’s advice was that copying the Chinese path was unsuitable for India was inadvisable, partly because geography did not permit the Soviet Union offering the same military support that it had given to China and that India had a larger working class. Stalin was firmly opposed to individual terrorism such as bumping off particularly bad landlords.
    It is to be hoped that this and related previously published materials will be consolidated to a separate book as they have much to say about Stalin’s later years and Soviet relations with the Indian and Chinese parties (and other topics) which needs to be better known.

Jurassic World Dominion

by Ben Soton

Jurassic World Dominion (2022). Dir: Colin Trevorrow; Writers: Derek Connolly (story), Emily Carmichael & Colin Trevorrow (screenplay); Stars: Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Laura Dern, DeWanda Wise, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill. 12A 207 mins.

The Jurassic Park franchise, where scientists employed by a faceless corporation create cloned dinosaurs for a wild-life theme park built as an attraction for wealthy tourists, has reached its finale with Jurassic World Dominion. The film sees the return of the some of the original Jurassic Park stars, including Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neil, who meet the heroes of the later Jurassic World series, Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt. If two sets of species, separated by 66 million years can be brought back to life, why can’t two sets of actors separated by three decades do the same?
    In Dominion, Claire Deering (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen Grady (played by Chris Pratt) are living in hiding shielding a cloned child; whilst their pet velociraptor ‘Blue’ lives in a nearby forest with a child of its own. Meanwhile, Cretaceous-era locusts destroy whole swathes of the world’s grain crop.
    The villain of the film is Biosyn; the faceless corporation that created the locusts and kidnaps the child and the baby velociraptor. At this point Deering and Grady embark on a global search to rescue both missing infants. In their travels they meet up with Kayla Watts (played by DeWanda Wise), a free-lance pilot whose wreck of an aircraft is reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars.
    Their journey takes them to the Biosyn headquarters and dinosaur sanctuary in the Italian Dolomites. There Deering and Grady meet up with the stars of the original series: Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill), Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). One of the features of the original Jurassic Park series was to make intellectuals look glamorous; a process possibly started with the Indiana Jones franchise. Grant and Sattler are both palæontologists whilst Malcolm is a specialist in Chaos Theory.
    The notion of out-of-control corporations is a theme in Michael Creighton’s original Jurassic Park novel and many of his other works. This has obvious progressive undertones; however, this needs to come with a health warning. Some on the utopian right believe that capitalism has been superseded by a bizarre system referred to as Corporatocracy; this concept is popular amongst Trump supporters in the USA and has been echoed by Tory weirdo Michael Gove. In other words, the existence of monopolies is not the logical evolution of capitalism but diversion from it.
    Meanwhile Dominion raises several highly important issues, including climate change, the illegal trade in endangered species and cloning. Not to mention who should have control over these activities and who should put a stop to them.
    The film contains a number of brilliant and realistic action scenes, as well as the compulsory dinosaur fight where the T-Rex comes out on top. I almost laughed out loud when the closing scenes showed pterodactyls co-existing with birds, mosasaurs swimming along with Blue whales and triceratops walking with elephants – maybe I should not take things so literally but as an analogy to existing species facing extinction.

States of hostility

by Ben Soton

The Shortest History of War by Gwyne Dyer. Old Street Publishing: London. Hardback: 2022; 240pp; RRP £12.99; Softback: 2nd Edition, 2022; 256pp; RRP £8.99.

Gwyne Dyer’s, by its very nature short, book covers conflict from pre-history to the present day. The author’s first fault is in his understanding of the definition of war itself by defining any form of conflict as war. According to Dyer, war originated in rivalry between rival bands our pre-historic or even pre-human ancestors. These conflicts, which often amounted to simple ambushes, were not strictly wars.
    War originated with the emergence of Bronze Age class society in the city states of Mesopotamia around the fourth millennium BC. These states had their own territories that their rulers wished to expand; whilst the specialisation that came with the development of agriculture gave birth to one of the world’s oldest professions (along with the prostitute) – the soldier. The first recorded battle between states was probably the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC, between the Hittite and Egyptian kingdoms.
    Dwyer points out that human society is by nature egalitarian and uses anthropological evidence to back this up. This broadly conforms with Marxist theory, namely that for most of our history we lived under a system of primitive communism. Although the author falls short of using Marxist terminology, he makes several references to humanity returning to its egalitarian roots without mentioning any change in property relations. This conforms to the highly flawed ‘Whig view’ that presents history as a seemingly endlessly upwards journey from an oppressive and benighted past to a ‘"glorious present’. In fact, we now live in a less equal society than we did 50 years ago.
    The book covers changes in warfare from the first conflicts to the present day; in what could be described as ‘stones to drones’. Dwyer makes the interesting point that the story of the {Trojan Horse} is probably an analogy with some kind of early siege engine. He explains how technological developments have influenced warfare whilst pointing out that warfare remained unchanged for long periods of time.
    For instance, a Roman centurion would not have felt out of place at the Battle of Hastings and a soldier from the Thirty Years War (1618–49) would not have been out of place in the in the Napoleonic Wars, almost 300 years later.
    Dwyer must, however, be corrected for comparing what he describes as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Tony Blair and George W Bush. In 1979 Afghanistan had a people’s government that came under attack from Islamic terrorists backed by the USA. The Afghan government asked the Soviet Union for military assistance under the provisions of a treaty dating back to 1919, whilst the invasion of Iraq was an illegal act perpetrated by war criminals.
    The Shortest History of War is part of a series of books published by Penguin that give pencil sketch histories covering areas such as Democracy, The Soviet Union, China, England and Greece. Whilst the book has obvious flaws, it contains useful information and can provide the reader with added insight into the subject.

The Red Buttons

by Ben Soton

Red-Button Men: Red-Button Years: Volume 3 by Ken Fuller (2021). Independently published. Paperback:‎ 365pp; RRP: £12.99. Kindle: 484pp; £5.99.

This is the final instalment of Ken Fuller’s trilogy, now available on Amazon and Kindle.The ironically named novel sees the end of the London & Provincial Union of Licenced Transport Workers (LPU), known as the ‘Red Button Union’. In 1919 the LPU merged with the more moderate and less democratic Amalgamated Association of Tramway & Vehicle Workers, known as the Blue Button Union, to form the United Vehicle Workers (UVW).
    The novel’s title is a reference to those activists who attempted to continue the militant and democratic traditions of the Red Button Union into the new organisation.
    Once again Fuller introduces real historic figures such as Ernest Bevin, Sylvia Pankhurst and Theodore Rothstein, alongside fictional characters such as Mickey Rice.
    Rice is the ultimate personification of a principled trade union activist, devoid of any opportunism, either from the right or left. This contrasts with both Sylvia Pankhurst and Ernest Bevin.
    Pankhurst, a militant suffragette and socialist, formed her own party rivalling the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and sided with the so-called left-communists who opposed Lenin’s New Economic Policy needed to re-build the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Civil War. Bevin became a fervent anti-communist and the architect of the 1945 Labour government’s foreign policy based on subservience to US imperialism.
    The book covers the period from 1919–1922. It includes the formation of the CPGB although, arguably, insufficient attention is given to this historically important event whilst perhaps too much attention is given to the actions of Ms Pankhurst.
    Significant to the novel are the events of Black Friday 1921; a reference to 15th April 1921 when the infamous leader of the National Union of Railwaymen, JH Thomas, failed to come to the aid of the miners. Black Friday led to a series of setbacks with several unions, including the UVW, forced to accept wage restraint. This in turn led to demands for a breakaway union, the Trams Omnibuses & Tubes, known as the TOT union.
    The novel goes into considerable detail regarding the finer points of negotiations between the UVW and the employers. On the one hand, this shows extensive research on the part of the author. On the other hand however, at times I wondered if this was not too detailed for what is after all a novel and not a reference book.
    Unlike the earlier two novels, Love and Labour and Romance and Revolution there is less reference to the romantic adventures of the main character Mickey Rice, who is now happily married to Annette, the daughter of a leading Belgian Communist.
    Ultimately, the UVW amalgamated with several other unions in 1922 to form the Transport & General Workers Union (TWWU), which in 2007 formed the basis of the general union Unite. Red-Button Men is a fitting finale to both an informative and still readable set of novels.

Fighting the fascists in the Swinging Sixties

by Ben Soton

Ridley Road. A four-part mini-series adapted by Sarah Solemani from Jo Bloom's 2014 novel of the same name. Currently showing on BBC1, Sundays at 9pm. Also available on BBC iPlayer.

Set in 1962, a young Jewish woman, Vivian Epstein (played by Agnes O’Casey), leaves her comfortable life in Manchester in search of her boyfriend. She finds work as a hairdresser and on her afternoon off wanders into a fascist rally in Trafalgar Square only to find her lover, Jack Morris (played by Tom Varney), masquerading as a far-right thug.  The organisation in question was the National Socialist Movement (NSM) led at the time by Colin Jordan and John Tyndall and campaigning in Ridley Road in London’s East End, from where the drama takes its name.
    The drama has three areas of focus: those opposed to fascism, the fascists themselves and those naïve individuals fooled into supporting it. After Jack is injured in a street-fight Vivian becomes involved with a group of Jewish anti-fascists for whom he is working undercover. The group, led by Jewish cab driver Solly Malinovsky (played by Eddie Marsan), have fresh memories of the Holocaust and Cable Street and are determined to get this poisonous ideology crushed for good. Vivian infiltrates the NSM to discover Jack’s whereabouts.
    Ridley Road also shows how fascism prays on people’s fears and even legitimate concerns.    Fascists fraudulently claim to be opposed to capitalism and often promote an opposition to modernity.
    In one scene a covert fascist sympathiser talks of the closure of corner shops due to competition from supermarket chains. For most readers under 70 it is difficult to recall a time when most shopping was not bought in supermarkets but in the early 1960s they were an innovation. The same demagogues often hark back to an imagined past when apparently everyone knew their neighbour and looked out for each other – a dog whistle reference to immigration. From personal observation, the death of community spirit is grossly exaggerated just as is the notion that it was somehow better in the past. Meanwhile, the street I live on still has a corner shop, only it is open for much longer than it would have been in the 1960s.
    Colin Jordan (played by Rory Kinnear), the leader of the NSM, is portrayed as calm and collected, as well as a doting father.  He is not a one-dimensional, spitting fanatic, the classic cartoon fascist. The rank and file, referred to as his men, are portrayed as thuggish and drawn from the lower end of the working class. The wife of one of them points out that the stately home, used by the NSM, has been donated by a wealthy aristocrat. A reminder that fascism is not about looking after the little people.
    Ridley Road intertwines newsreel footage between scenes, which gives it a documentary feel.    It contains several sub-plots, giving the drama an added suspense. Meanwhile, it also makes reference to the treatment, or should I say mistreatment, of women – both by the fascist movement and ironically also within the Jewish community. This multi-layered and largely accurate historical drama is definitely a must in terms of Sunday night viewing.

A Marxist view from India

by Robin McGregor

Revolutionary Democracy. Vol XXV(2), September 2020 and Vol XXVI(1), April 2021. £5.00 + £1.50p&p from NCP Lit: PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ.

The twice-yearly Indian Marxist-Leninist journal is making a recovery from a COVID‑19-induced interruption to publication. The last printed issue was Vol 25(1) for October 2019. Another Vol 25(2) for April 2020 was prepared for the press but remained unprinted, although its contents can be read on the www.revolutionarydemocracy.org website.
    This issue is naturally dominated by the pandemic. Its normal mixture of articles on contemporary India, articles on international themes reflecting the views of parties belong to the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations (ICMLPO), rounded off by materials reprinted from the Soviet archives, is unchanged, however.
    The impact of COVID‑19 on India made Boris Johnson and Donald Trump look like strategic geniuses. In India a hastily imposed lockdown caused a mass migration of suddenly unemployed migrant workers in the towns and cities (for whom there was no such thing as furlough) having to return (unassisted) to their native villages, which only made the spread of the disease worse. Additionally, the BJP Government took advantage of the pandemic to force through new labour laws that are, naturally, detrimental to the working classes.
    Also relating to contemporary India are articles on the recent farmers’ protests against three agrarian laws speedily rushed through Parliament by the right-wing BJP government.
    On a more optimistic note, there is an interesting piece briefly surveying the Soviet Union’s measures against epidemics that made a better job of things even in the midst of revolution.
    The longest article is a serious study of the post-Soviet Russian economy tellingly entitled The Crisis of Neo-liberal Economics in Russia, which argues that “the revival of some of the Soviet symbolism are used by Putin opportunistically to conceal the true neo-liberal essence of his economic policies”. The recent elections suggest that this is wearing a bit thin.
    The archival materials deal with two separate matters, firstly with the Comintern’s support for a separate Black Nation in the USA in the late 1920s and other matters relating to the CPUSA’s work amongst the African Americans. This notion was based on the assumption that there was a peasant-based African-American nation in the Black Belt South. But the campaign for self-determination had little support amongst its intended beneficiaries, who were struggling for equality within the USA, and in any case it was made redundant by the Depression-era migration of farm workers into the northern cities.
    The archival-based article reprints interesting notes of the February and March 1951 discussion between Stalin and representatives of Communist Party of India on the possibility of an armed rising in India. Some elements in the Indian party’s leadership favoured such an undertaking, seeking similar support from the Soviet Union as that given earlier to China. Stalin told them firmly that situation was rather different, however. He reminded them of the fact that the Himalayas stood in the way of supplying the necessary arms and in any case, there was no mass working class or peasant support for such adventurism at a time when the triumph of independence over British colonialism was still fresh.
    The ICMLPO is strongly supportive of the political line of Enver Hoxha of Albania. This is most evident in a translation of parts of a brutal 2000 Serbian novel Goli by Miroslav Mika Ristić, which deals with “Goli Otik – sadistic prison for communists in revisionist-capitalist Yugoslavia”. This is introduced by Ristić’s grandson and is based on the prison on the barren island off the Croatian coast, which is now a bleak tourist attraction.
    Partly due to Covid, this issue concludes with a number of obituaries including those of Nina Andreeva, the long-term General Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, who first raised a Marxist-Leninist banner against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988. Michael Lucas, the Canadian editor of Northstar Compass and long-standing Revolutionary Democracy contributor Naba Kumar Bhattacharya are also memorialised.
    If one were to make a small criticism of the journal it would be to suggest that the editors ought to make a few concessions to readers beyond India. In the report on the Indian farm protests I came across my first ever reference to “Arthiyas”, which needed a consultation with the good Dr Google to establish that they are grain commission agents in the Punjab.

Days of hope in Stuart London

by Ben Soton

The Royal Secret by Andrew Taylor. HarperCollins 2021. Hardback: 480pp; RRP: £14.99; Kindle: 476pp; RRP: £7.99.

This is the fifth novel in the Marwood & Lovett series set in Restoration London. James Marwood and Cat Lovett are children of Puritan republicans, which puts them in a difficult position under the restored Stuart monarchy. By the fourth novel however, they are both doing rather well for themselves. Marwood works for Lord Arlington, Charles II’s intelligence chief. Meanwhile Lovett owns a thriving architecture business inherited from a late husband.
    Being a male and female in their 20s or early 30s, the novels contain an element of suspense as to whether there will be any romantic involvement between them.
    Taylor manages to bring Restoration London to life by giving a warts and all account of the period, covering all social strata from lowly servants to the king himself. Although the message of his novels is somewhat disappointingly pro-monarchy, he correctly points that there were many, including Catherine Lovett’s late husband, who harked back to the Commonwealth. They also show a period rife with corruption where most people seem to be on the take; an atmosphere common to periods of political demoralisation, such as after the collapse of a progressive regime.
    The Royal Secret centres around a Dutch plot to disrupt the signing of the Treaty of Dover between Stuart England and Bourbon France. Charles II was expected to convert to the Catholic faith at some later date and support France militarily in a war against the Dutch Republic in return for a £230,000 annual pension, a huge sum of money in those days.
    In those days the Dutch Republic was a bastion of Protestant progressive capitalism whilst France at the time represented reactionary feudal absolutism. Many Protestants would sympathise with the Dutch in a similar way as progressives today would side with Cuba, China or People’s Korea.
    In the novel Catherine Lovett is tricked by a Dutch agent into assisting his attempts to disrupt the treaty. Meanwhile a jealous Marwood chases a trail of murder and mayhem involving, amongst other things, a blackmailing servant and a pet lion. The question is will Lovett succumb to the seduction of the mysterious Dutchman, who may attempt to play on her possible republican sympathies? After all, this is a time of divided and complex loyalties – again, not everyone was glad to see the back of the English Republic.
    With the main characters still young, I look forward to seeing the adventures of Marwood and Lovett develop as the Stuart monarchy lurches from crisis to crisis until its eventual overthrow in 1688. Meanwhile, Taylor’s novels give an all-round insight into a sometimes-overlooked period in English history.

Still Looking Good

by Ben Soton

 If you are a fan of EastEnders, you may be wondering what Adam Woodyatt (aka Ian Beale) has been up to then head to the theatre. He has been starring in the stage adaptation of the Peter James novel Looking Good Dead. In the play Woodyatt plays Tom Bryce, a fifty something business man with financial problems; not a million miles from his usual role of Ian Beale. Although many actors are typecast Woodyatt doesn’t do a bad job in either role. Looking Good Dead also features James’ creation Roy Grace, played by Harry Long. Many of James’ novels contain the back story of the search for Grace’s missing wife; although this does not feature in this stage play. In fact, in this stage adaptation the villain takes a more central role.
    Another recurring theme of James’ novels is the anxiety faced by those people referred to as middle-class. In Looking Good Dead Bryce owns a company that in his words provides bespoke services to the wealthy. In other words, he runs errands for rich people they can’t be bothered to do themselves; in a world where rich people can usually employ underlings to do things for them. I almost laughed out loud when a mysterious wealthy American turns up at Bryce’s home asking him to buy a dozen Rolex watches for some of his employees; something that would normally be done by a personal assistant. Meanwhile Bryce has an alcoholic wife, Kelly (played by Gaynor Faye) whose best friend is his credit card. Bryce’ world is caving in upon him until one fateful day when he finds a memory stick on a train.
    The play’s opening scene includes a prostitute in sado-masochistic attire; a reference to the sex industry in Peter James’ home town of Brighton where most of his novels are set. It later transpires that the young woman was in fact a student struggling to pay tuition fees. Meanwhile the play includes imaginative use of stage scenery where the set incorporates a dungeon, Bryce’s living room and a police control room which slides in and out when needed.
    An enjoyable production which manages to combine crime with an element of social commentary. Between now and October Looking Good Dead will be playing at Salford, Nottingham, Glasgow, Dartford, Milton Keynes, Sheffield, Malvern, Leeds, Woking, Swindon, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Brighton and Norwich.

A Renaissance Man

by Ben Soton   

Execution by SJ Parris, HarperCollins 2021. Hardback: 496pp, £14.99;. Paperback: 496pp,   £8.99; Kindle: 496pp, £4.99.

Execution is the sixth novel by SJ Parris (the pen name of writer and journalist Stephanie Merritt) covering the exploits of Giordano Bruno. A Dominican monk, Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) abandoned Holy Orders after being discovered with the heretical work of Erasmus and was forced to flee Italy from the Inquisition. He spent much of his life as a wandering scholar and he is believed to have spent some time in England in the 1580s. Little is known about what Bruno did in England during his stay but Parris’ novels, based on Bruno’s opposition to the Catholic Inquisition, tries to fill the gap and puts him in the employ of Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s spymaster.
    Bruno’s latest adventure takes place in Elizabethan London, or specifically Southwark. He infiltrates the plotters around Anthony Babington who plan to assassinate Elizabeth and put her Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots on the throne.
    Parris’s novels bring the Elizabethan world to life. As an author she details the dress, customs and even the food of the time. Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames outside the control of the City of London, was nominally run by the Bishop of Winchester. The prostitutes who worked Southwark’s streets were known as ‘Winchester Geese’ and the whole area was dominated by brothels, playhouses, bear pits and gambling dens.
    Parris’s depiction of Southwark reminds us that England has been a multicultural society for a long time. For instance, one character in this book is Leila, a ‘Moor’ – a general term in those days for people of African or Middle Eastern origin.
    Attempts to restore Catholicism in Elizabethan England were reactionary. A Catholic victory would have destroyed the limited free thinking that existed in England at the time. England would have come under the domination of Spain, which would have stifled commerce and prevented the development of capitalism. Parris’s interpretation of events and Bruno’s role in it broadly support this view. The author adds that Elizabeth’s advisor Robert Cecil wanted to alter the English constitution, making everyone including monarchs answerable to the law. In other words, Mary Queen of Scots’ execution may have set a precedent in English law paving the way for the trial and execution of Charles I, her grandson, less than a century later.
    What of Bruno himself? An outsider who risks life and limb for England but receives little reward for it; he is not given residence in the country. He is often insulted by members of the lower orders in alehouses for being a foreigner, whilst he is insufficiently rewarded by the likes of Walsingham who are happy to use his skills. At least members of the lower orders have the excuse of not knowing that he is actually doing them a favour. Bruno is the ultimate heroic outsider.
    Giordano Bruno was a truly remarkable man. He is known for having developed a system for improving memory as well as being a supporter of the ideas of Copernicus. Bruno also believed in the concept that if the universe were made up of numerous stars there could also be many planets. Parris’s novels fill in the gaps in his fascinating life and are a fitting tribute to a genuine Renaissance Man.

Ghosts and middle class angst

 by Ben Soton

The Secret of Cold Hill: Peter James: Pan Books 2020, 400 pp; hbk £11.99; pbk £8.99; Kindle £4:99

The appearance of a mysterious old woman. Sightings of people long dead and general strange happenings. This is the subject of Peter James’ new novel The Secret of Cold Hill – a sequel to his 2019 work The House on Cold Hill.
     Peter James is a native of Brighton and many of his novels are set in that seaside town and the surrounding area. His books have been made into television programmes and stage plays. Many have occult themes. This one, at face value, is a supernatural thriller. In fact the two Cold Hill novels are essentially about the anxiety suffered by that section of the population referred to as the “middle class”.
     Marxists have often debated whether they actually exist. Are these people not just the better off section of the working class?
     The middle strata is made up of small business people and skilled white-collar workers who often possess a university degree. Less likely to suffer poverty and low pay as other sections of the working class they instead suffer issues of insecurity, anxiety and occasional guilt toward those less well off.
    In The Secret of Cold Hill two couples move from Brighton into an up-market housing development in the Sussex village of Cold Hill. Jason Danes is an artist and his wife Emily runs a catering business. Oliver Penze-Wendell has recently been made redundant from a Brighton insurance company while his wife Claudette is a woman of leisure.
    Penze-Wendell tries to hide his financial problems from his wife, who is happy to spend her time scoffing entire boxes of chocolates and guzzling cheap wine. Meanwhile Jason Danes, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, is anxious about the success of his recent paintings.
    As the first residents of the new housing development, they meet hostility from older villagers who see them as intruders. Then both couples start seeing strange things and suffering odd experiences – namely the ghosts of the residents of the house that once stood where they live. Rather than comparing notes with those in a similar situation they snigger at each other’s bad taste in clothing, wine and use of terminology.
    As the strange and frightening events worsen Jason Danes sees something from his studio window. A construction worker is killed in a tragic accident and Jason initially feels guilty for having failed to prevent it. He then decides to paint a picture depicting the dead worker as a skiver – a sign of the ambiguous way in which these people view those below them.
    I wonder whether there will be a third Cold Hill novel. At the end of the book another couple move into the same housing development. Their surname is Middle. Many of us lower down the social order view the likes of the Danes and the Penze-Wendell’s with a degree of envy. After reading the novel I felt glad to live in a modest house in an Edwardian suburb, just west of the city-centre of another south coast city.

Easy Money?

 by Ben Soton

The Syndicate, Series Four. Created and written by Kay Mellor, BBC TV (2021–). Tuesdays at 9pm on BBC1, also available on BBC iPlayer. Stars: Neil Morrissey, Liberty Hobbs, Emily Head, Kieran Urquhart, Taj Atwal, Katherine Rose Morley.

We live in a society where a few people are very rich and most of us get by; from time to time some people don’t get by at all. This system is called capitalism.
    Some of us have been arguing for a system where everybody gets by all of the time and are able to expand their own horizons and talents to the benefit of society and themselves. This is called socialism or in its more advanced form communism.
    Meanwhile, the very rich people who benefit from capitalism have devised ways of keeping the rest of us under control. These range from sheer brute force, media manipulation – another word for lying – to more subtle methods of social control. It could be argued that one of these methods is the National Lottery.
    The idea behind the National Lottery is that if you spend £2 on a piece of paper you could possibly win the money to give you the lifestyle of the super-rich: yachts, luxury villas, cars that cost more than your house, watches that cost more than your car, the list is endless. There is a slight problem to this otherwise brilliant idea – it is bollocks. If you ever someone hear tell you that socialism is a good idea on paper but doesn’t work in practice, throw this argument back in their face.
    The National Lottery is a grand illusion, rightly described as a “tax on the poor” (Daily Telegraph 27/7/2009) and a “national disgrace” (Independent 17/01/2013).
    Lottery winning is the basis of Kay Mellor’s television franchise, The Syndicate. It’s fourth series brings another dimension into lottery winning – fraud.
    In this series the lucky winners work at a dog grooming parlour in Yorkshire, owned by the unscrupulous Graham Woods (played by Mark Benton). A shopkeeper, Frank Stevenson (played by Neil Morrisey), steals the ticket however, and runs off to Monaco. Meanwhile our somewhat miffed dog-groomers head after him to claim their winnings.
    The series shows society’s problems by zooming in on the lives of the characters. Our winners include Keeley (played by Katherine Rose Morley), a gambling addict, whilst her mother (played by Kim Marsh) scrapes by on a zero-hours contract. Meanwhile Collette (played by Emily Head) is a former student previously forced into prostitution to pay for her studies.
    What unites them is gullibility and the complete lack of awareness. For instance, Keeley believes she can win the money to pay for their airfare with scratch cards. This depiction is a possible sign of the BBC’s contempt for working class people and anyone outside London.
    But isn’t the Lottery itself based on gullibility? This paper subscribes to the view that human nature is not fixed but is linked to the social system under which we live. We do not blame individuals for wanting more than they currently have – after-all, a demand for higher wages is a demand for more money. Neither would we encourage theft. Is it that surprising however, that a shopkeeper might take the Lottery winnings for himself?
    The irony of this story is that to claim their winnings a group of workers must act collectively – the very opposite of what the Lottery encourages. The dog groomers should have perhaps considered collective action against their employer.
    Another irony is that when workers organise against their employer they are portrayed as greedy whereas when they win the lottery, they are heroes.

The Untouchables?

 by Ben Soton

Line of Duty Series Six, BBC TV, seven episodes. Premiered on BBC One on Sunday 21st March, 9pm; also available on BBC iPlayer. Stars: Kelly Macdonald, Martin Compston, Vicky McClure, Adrian Dunbar. 

 In a recent television drama, a serving police officer murders a woman and dumps her body in a sack. The officer had previously been accused of indecent exposure, although seemingly trivial this often leads to more serious sex offences and even murder. His fellow officers do nothing about it and try to cover it up. A group of women organise a vigil to remember the dead woman and are attacked by the police. Just rewind for a second – this is not a television drama but real life.
    It is ironic that the BBC have produced a television drama on the subject of police corruption; namely the long-awaited Series Six of Line of Duty. The success of the drama is its constant ability to keep the viewer wondering about the identity of a mysterious character only known as ‘H’.
     The series revolves around three untouchables who work for a department know as Anti-corruption 12(AC12). They are the Gaffer, Superintendent Ted Hastings (played by Adrian Dunbar), Detective Sergeant Steve Arnot (played by Martin Compson) and Detective Inspector Kate Fleming (played by Vicky McClure).
     Like all untouchables they live dysfunctional lives; unable to form or keep relationships and often estranged from wives and family. On numerous occasions throughout the series the viewer has been asked to pose the question of whether these three are as untouchable as they appear. In Series Five it almost looks like Hasting is the elusive H.
   Over the previous five series the trio have uncovered corruption, murders, rape, collusion with criminals and paedophilia within the police force – the sort of thing that only happens in real life.
     The police force in this country is known for its institutional racism, corruption and complete incompetence. In 2019 a number of police officers in Basingstoke were recorded making racist comments and ridiculing victims of crime. Although they were dismissed from the Hampshire Police such attitudes were only the tip of the iceberg; the officers concerned were simply stupid enough to get caught.
    Series Six starts with Fleming having left AC12 and a bored Arnott trying to find work elsewhere in the force. After the murder of an investigative journalist and evidence that Fleming’s boss is up to no good AC12 tries to use her as an undercover asset. However, Fleming has divided loyalties. AC12 once again find themselves up against a secretive cabal of bad apples; a common theme of many recent conspiracy theorists.
    The idea of a deep state conspiracy was is a feature of Trumpian conspiracy theories such as those put forward by the likes of QAnon. But such theories contain an element of truth. The concept of the deep state, although misused by the far-right, emanates from the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state as an instrument of class rule. What separates this from the conspiracy theorists of the far-right is that change comes from ending the rule of the capitalist class – not by voting for an anti-elite demagogue, who is himself a member the elite or through the action of a few untouchables. The state including the police exist to serve the interests of the ruling class; there is no conspiracy about it.