Serbia: Far Right in dissarray

By Ilija Buncuk

THE EXTREME right is in retreat in Serbia today. They have not managed to launch any serious actions for years and they’ve split into a number of rival groups, which significantly weakens their strength.

          First of all there was a split in Blood & Honour Serbia/Combat 18 – the Serbian section of the neo-Nazi movement that was founded by Ian Stuart Donaldson and proud of its loyalty to the Combat 18 neo-Nazi terror group that takes its name from the first and eighth letter of the alphabet, AH – Adolf Hitler,

 Blood & Honour (B & H) emerged from the neo-nazi movement and the white power skinhead music scene in 1987. Ian Stuart Donaldson, the lead vocalist in the neo-Nazi Skrewdriver band, was one of its prominent leaders. But a few years after his death in 1993 B & H split into rival factions following arguments over direction and control of the profits.

This division was mirrored in Serbia too. Some disaffected members left the original organisation to establish Blood & Honour Serbia/Unity – the Unity fraction that is opposed to the Combat 18.

 On the Serbian section of the neo-Nazi Stormfront website the verbal duel between the supporters of two camps over who is the “phoney” and who is the “real” B&H went on for months. The newly established the Blood & Honour/Unity has also a new Jurišnik [Stormtrooper] faction. They had their own website, but it went down some time ago for unknown reasons.

Meanwhile Blood & Honour/Combat 18 no longer call themselves the National Alignment (Nacionalni stroj) on their posters and stickers, following the court-ordered banning of its political branch. They now call themselves the National Revolutionaries – Blood & Honour or Combat 18.

The split has seriously weakened Blood & Honour/Combat 18 but there are other reasons for its decline. Attempts to hold public gatherings in the past few years have failed because they were prevented by the actions of the anti-fascists. There have no neo-Nazi attacks on punk concerts in Belgrade since 2003 and in past few years they have not even organised their secret “White Power” concerts.

This is a partly because they are constantly under police surveillance. Their last “white power” concert, held near the city of Niš, was interrupted by the police.  These days Blood & Honour Serbia/Combat 18 actions have come down to the producing Nazi and racist periodicals and cartoons, sticking labels and posters on walls, secret visits to the cultural monuments of “national significance” and taking part in national socialist forums on the Internet.

On the other hand, Goran Davidović, who served a prison sentence for organising an attack on an anti-fascist platform in Novi Sad, has closed his New Serbian Programme (NSP) movement after a faction-fight within it.

 The NSP internet forum NSP has been taken down and it is still unknown whether there were technical problems or whether Davidovic closed it for some other reason.

All organisations of the extreme right in Serbia face stiff competition from Serbian Action (Srpska Akcija), which has only a few members but is very active. They attracted the attention of the public in August when they put a litter bag over the statue of national heroes in Nis – anti-fascist fighters in the Second World War.

 They published footage of that action on their website. Only a few newspapers reported the action and there was no response from the authorities or civil non-government organisations. One of the few public condemnations of the event came from the Young Communist League of Yugoslavia (SKOJ).

 Serbian Action was established by several former members of the reactionary Obraz movement. They had been supporters of Obraz leader Nebojsa Krstic who died in a car accident in 2001. But they walked out in protest at the "lack of clear ideological guidelines" of the new leadership under its current president Mladen Obradovic, to form their own organisation.

Like Obraz, Serbian Action is inspired by the actions of the pre-war clerical-fascist Yugoslav National Movement Zbor. It classifies itself as within the “Third Positionist” movement and alongside Charles Maurras and his Action Française, it considers itself as the successor of the ideological tradition of Codreanu's Romanian "Iron Guard".

 Leading Serbian Action activists present their movement on some extreme right Internet forums as "orthodox-nationalistic" . The Internet blog "Srpski Poredak" (Serbian Order), which is edited by the supporters of the ideology of Adolf Hitler, who also define themselves as "orthodox national-socialists", is close to Serbian Action.

Anti-communism won't pass!

Statement of Communist and Workers’ parties

 

 

On the post-Soviet Union area the anticommunist hysteria is in full swing again. On the eve of the anniversary of the Soviet power execution in Moscow in 1993 a court in Kazakhstan has suspended the activity of the Communist Party.

 

A ridiculous pretext has been found by the ruling regime to actually ban the Communist party of Kazakhstan. It was the participation of the 1st Secretary of the CC CPK Gaziz Aldamjarov in a meeting of an unregistered non-governmental union of citizens. Before that a number of party activists have been subjected to police persecution. One of the leaders of regional party organizations Nurijash Abdrimova was sentenced to a heavy fine only because she dared to address the workers of “KasMunaiGas” company who went on strike.

 

Suspension of the party activity is yet another act of outrageous tyranny on the part of Kazakhstan authorities. The semi-monarchic regime of Mr.Nazarbaev can’t tolerate the only opposition force in the country, which forms the class awareness, courageously struggles against mass dismissals and impoverishment of the working people and consistently fights for the friendship among nations.

 

Before that the parliament of Georgia upon the order of Mr.Saakashvili adopted a Law on persecution which says that former CPSU and Young Communist League members, as well as former employees of the Soviet Union institutions are banned to occupy state positions and to teach in the universities.

 

We express our solidarity with the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and the United Communist Party of Georgia. We resolutely condemn the barbaric and cave-age anticommunism of the powers in Kazakhstan and Georgia!

 

Communist party of the Russian Federation

Union of Communist parties-CPSU

Communist Party of Ukraine

Communist Party of Belarus

Party of Communists of Republic of Moldova

Communist Party of Armenia

Communist Party of Azerbaijan

Party of the communists of Kyrgyzstan

Communist Party of South Ossetia

Communist Party of Abkhazia

Transdnestrian Communist party

 

Also

PADS, Algeria
Communist Party of Bangladesh
Workers’ Party of Belgium
Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
French Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece
Communist Party of Israel
Lebanese Communist Party
Communist Party of Luxembourg
Communist Party of México
Communist Party of Norway
Communist Party of Pakistan
Palestinian Communist Party
Philippine Communist Party [PKP-1930]
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
South African Communist Party
Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party of Turkey

Virtual Field Visit: Israel's Enforcement of the Buffer Zone in the Gaza...

The Art of Revolution

Review 

By Andy Brooks

The Art of Revolution: John Callow, Grant Pooke and Jane Powell. Hbk, illus, 96 pp, Evans Mitchell Books, London 2011.

THE USSR collapsed, or rather was destroyed by the counter-revolutionaries at the helm of the Soviet communist party in 1991.  Along with it went the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and many other so-called communist parties that had clung to coat-tails of Gorbachovism.

The CPGB’s archives went to Manchester’s People’s History Museum. Other documents were piled up in the cellars of the Marx Memorial Library to languish in the dust until the work of cataloguing and preservation began in 2005.

It was then that an amazing discovery was made. Hundreds of posters from the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies were found amongst the bundles of old CPGB dossiers and pamphlets. A collection spanning the entire period of Soviet power from the October Revolution to Brezhnev’s days had come to light, including key campaigning posters from the early days of the German Democratic Republic and socialist Czechoslovakia.

With the help of the GMB union these posters have all been recorded and conserved at Marx House for art scholars and students of the world communist movement. Now a selection of these images has been published in a book produced with the support of the Marx Memorial Library, the GMB and TUink.

This book contains full colour images of over 60 Soviet and revolutionary posters from 1917 to 1953, together with a couple of very rare early examples of CPGB agitational art. While some of these posters are old favourites well known to veteran communists, many others are exceedingly rare and have probably not been reprinted since the day they were first issued.

The publishers have clearly provided a service to the working class in helping a new generation discover the graphic realism and political punch of proletarian art.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the text that accompanies the images. Three academics, John Callow from the Marx Memorial Library and Grant Pooke and Jane Powell, both from the University of Kent, provide a commentary that is technically superb but sadly politically flawed.

The cliché reference to the “Soviet Government, and latterly its satellites…” in the very beginning of the first chapter sets the tone for a potted history of the Soviet Union that accompanies the posters from the Stalin era and it largely accepts the bourgeois explanation of the “Great Purges” that accompanies them. Thankfully it is overshadowed by the detailed commentary on the artists and teams who produced the posters of the 1930s and 40s, which brings to life these gems of Soviet mass art for the modern reader.

This is not a systematic collection of political posters over the years. It simply reflects what was brought back to Britain by leading comrades such as R P Arnot and Andrew Rothstein from trips to Weimar Germany, the Soviet Union and post-war Czechoslovakia. This limitation accounts for a certain unevenness in the selection presented in this book though those posters that have been chosen clearly have been picked to illustrate the particular views of the authors. There’s no other explanation, for instance, for the curious elevation of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was shot for treason in 1937.

When it comes to the final chapter, largely devoted to Czechoslovak posters of the 1940s, we are treated to an openly revisionist narrative that consciously distorts the role of the leadership of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia  (KSČ) at that time.

 People’s power came to Czechoslovakia in February 1948 when the communists thwarted a bourgeois coup in parliament aimed at breaking up the KSČ-led coalition government.

            The authors accept that the right-wing moved first but then suggest that the KSČ, the largest party in parliament, was set to lose seats in the forthcoming 1948 election. This forced them to portray the right-wing manoeuvres as “miscalculations” based on “too much reliance upon the USA to rally international opinion to their aid”.

 The real motive of the Czech bourgeoisie – to bring down the communist-led government and replace it with one that would accept Marshall Aid – is never mentioned. The Marshall Plan – US imperialism’s project to rebuild war-shattered European economies with American “aid” to exclude communists from government and build a new trans-Atlantic alliance to confront the Soviet Union – is ignored.

 The Prague show trials are treated in a similar way. Former KSČ general secretary Rudolf Slansky and a number of other leading members of the Party arrested in 1951  are said to have been denounced as “bourgeois nationalists”. But we see the snake-like heads of three of them in the grip of capitalism, being beheaded by a worker armed with a hammer in a poster entitled We have captured dangerous vermin. In fact they were all charged with high treason.

 The authors says that the arrest, trial and subsequent execution of most of them was “in reality, an internal struggle within the ruling power” without saying what that struggle was about. They claim that “the root cause of the trials, aside from the animosity of North America, was the refusal of Marshal Tito to let Yugoslavia become entirely subordinated to Stalin’s will and the needs of the Soviet economy”.   

But this is meaningless without explaining what “Titoism” meant, or was supposed to mean, in Czechoslovakia or the other people’s democracies in 1940s eastern Europe.

In 1948 Czechoslovakia had been a major arms supplier to Israel and a training ground for the Zionist air force in 1948. A secret air-base in the town of Žatec, which the Zionists called “Ezion”, was also used to fly four surplus US air-force B17 Flying Fortresses to Israel, despite an official US arms embargo on all warring sides during the first Arab-Israeli war.  One of them bombed Cairo on its way to Tel Aviv.

 But there’s no mention of this or the fact that within the KSČ some wanted that relationship to continue for economic reasons or out of sympathy with the Zionist cause, despite Israel’s rapid alignment with imperialism. Nor is there any suggestion that some of those arrested were, like Tito, opposed to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance set up by the USSR in 1949 to counter Marshall Aid in eastern Europe.

Nothing is said about the continuing controversy that still surrounds the Slansky trial in the Czech republic. The revisionist leadership of the mainstream Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, a mass party with two senators and 26 deputies in the Czech parliament, endorses the rehabilitation of Slansky & Co that took place in 1968. But hard-liners, inside and outside its ranks, still uphold the original Slansky verdict. And even today’s bourgeois Czech establishment concede that Slansky was framed by a letter implicating him as an agent of imperialism planted by an agent of Okapi, a Czech émigré movement set up by the CIA to encourage subversion and sabotage in the new people’s republic.

The text is one problem. The other is the price. This slender volume is no bargain at £30. But at the moment copies can be obtained for £15 plus £2.50 directly from the Marx Memorial Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R ODU.

The Hidden Hand at Work

REVIEW

By Andy Brooks

The Poisoned Well: Sean Kelly; NCP pamphlet £2.00

COLD WAR propaganda and Trotskyist dogma would have us believe that everyone arrested during the Soviet purges of the 1930s was innocent. Western pundits would regularly portray the Soviet secret service as an incompetent and brutal instrument of terror and in the same breath charge it with organising legions of dupes in the western world for espionage purposes or to ferment civil unrest.

At the same time the public were fed with romantic tales of agents of imperialism like Sidney Reilly, the “ace of spies” shot by Soviet intelligence in 1925 after an abortive attempt to overthrow the Soviet government, and the fictional exploits of James Bond whose antics soon rivalled those of American comic-book super-heroes.  But a veil of silence was drawn over the army of western government informers and agents within the labour movement on both sides of the Atlantic.

Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union did the ruling class feel confident enough to boast about some of their real agents’ exploits. The release of documents under the “thirty year rule” revealed that the radical novelist George Orwell, the darling of the Trots, had been a police informer.  The BBC ran a series called True Spies in 2002 which revealed that secret service agents bugged, burgled and bribed their way into the heart of the unions throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Yet the story of the sinister role of intelligence agents within the communist movement has still to be published. This pamphlet redresses the balance by summarising attempts to sabotage the communist movement in America, Britain and other parts of Europe.

And it starts by looking at the extraordinary career of Morris Childs, the American communist trained at the Lenin School in Moscow, who became deputy leader of the Communist Party of the USA and the go-between who arranged the transfer of secret Soviet subsidies to the US party. From 1958 until 1980 Childs made 52 trips to Moscow.

 Morris was trusted by leading members of the Soviet party and became a close friend of Leonid Brezhnev. In 1975 the Soviet leader presented Morris with the Order of the Red Flag in recognition of his services to the international communist movement. What Brezhnev did not know was that Morris had been working for the FBI from at least the beginning of the 1950s.

Well if you want to know more order this pamphlet, which is a revised edition of two articles that first appeared in the New Worker in 2002, it can be obtained from:

NCP Lit,

PO Box 73,

London SW11 2PQ

Please add 50p for postage and packing.

Twin Towers ten years on

THOUSANDS of Americans attended the Ground Zero memorial service in New York last Sunday for those who lost their lives in the terror attacks of 11th September 2001. The solemn occasion, led by President Obama, was repeated at similar ceremonies across the United States and in the capitals of US imperialism’s allies across the world.

The movers and shakers of the imperialist world publicly express their grief at the 3,000 innocent civilians killed in the terror attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. They talk about the “war on terror”. They claim that the world has become a better place in the past 10 years. But they say nothing about the million or so equally innocent civilians who have died at the hands of US-led imperialism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya since 9/11. No one plays the bagpipes for them and their names will not be immortalised in bronze in New York or anywhere else in the United States.

US imperialism’s bid for global hegemony began with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Under cover of a bogus United Nations mandate, a trick they first used to attack north Korea in 1950 and one they have used time and time again ever since, Anglo-American imperialism attacked Iraq. Soon after they moved to violently break up the Yugoslav federation and attack the Serbs.

But the American plan for world domination, called the “new world order”, really kicked off after the Al Qaeda attacks in 2001; 9/11 was used by the US ruling class as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a plan for total imperialist control of the immense oil and gas resources of what they began to call the “Greater Middle East” region.

Arabs and Muslims who stood in the way were demonised as brutal religious bigots and savages while the crimes of those autocratic feudal leaders willing to serve imperialism were whitewashed by the imperialists and the “human rights” gang that trail behind them. The random terrorism of the oppressed is branded as barbarism while the systematic terror of imperialist occupation is routinely denied.

Piracy and hostage-taking by impoverished Somali fishermen is condemned as extortion while a blind eye is turned to the abuse of prisoners in concentration camps in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It’s not surprising to see the murder of a Basra hotel worker, beaten to death by British troops in 2003, so easily dismissed as a “very serious and regrettable incident”. His death will doubtless be blamed on individual soldiers and not on the underlying culture of imperialist military occupation that led to the atrocity in the first place. The imperialists spent billions of dollars in their drive to control the resources of the world. But at the end of the day what have they got to show for it?

Despite all the might of their aviation and the strength of their legions the Americans are on their way out in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US economy is in the doldrums along with the rest of capitalist world that is sinking into the biggest slump seen since 1929. Though they control a large part of global oil production they cannot change the rules of supply and demand or the fundamental law of value.

Ten years on the wild hopes of the imperialists lie buried in the dust of Iraq and Afghanistan along with the hundreds of thousands of victims who perished in the attempt to make the world a better place for the big oil corporations.

Oliver Cromwell

1599 - 1658

OLIVER CROMWELL, the leader of the English Revolution, died on 3rd  September 1658. Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon, was the leading Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War, which began in 1642 and ended in1649 with the trial and execution of Charles Stuart and the abolition of the monarchy. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was styled in English, was proclaimed soon after.

The fighting had taken a fearful toll in lives and property in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The death toll, including civilians, came to around 870,000, some 11.6 per cent of the pre-Civil War population. Material damage was immense, particularly in Ireland. In 1653, Oliver Cromwell became head of state, the Lord Protector.

Royalist hopes of a counter-revolution were smashed with the defeat of their forces at the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Cromwell represented the most militant elements amongst the Puritan bourgeois gentry. While in favour of reform they feared social upheaval that could overturn their own exclusive right to private property.

The democratic movement born from the New Model Army, the Levellers, was crushed by Cromwell’s supporters and the most militant regiments sent to Ireland. Attempts to set up farming co-operatives by the Diggers, many of whom were also former soldiers, were also suppressed.

The republic Cromwell led included England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the port of Dunkirk and colonies in New England and the Caribbean. During its brief life the Commonwealth became a force in Europe. Culturally it inspired the great poetry of Milton and Marvell and other radical and pacifist religious movements like the Quakers who are still with us today.

Oliver Cromwell was succeeded by his son, Richard. Richard was neither a politician nor a soldier. Unable to reconcile republican generals with the demands of the rich merchants and landowners to curb the influence of the New Model Army, Richard Cromwell resigned the following year. The government collapsed and the monarchy was restored in 1660. Oliver Cromwell’s death invoked genuine mourning. His funeral, modelled on that of the King of Spain, was the biggest London had ever witnessed.

Two years later his body was dug up and ritually hanged in public at Tyburn. All those still alive who had signed Charles Stuart’s death warrant, apart from a handful that managed to flee the country, were hanged, drawn and quartered. And the “good old cause” they had fought for was buried with them. It was clear that a great revolution had taken place. It is equally clear that it was incomplete.

For communists the English Revolution is a paramount importance. It influenced the thinking of the American revolutionaries. The Victorian utopian socialist and co-operator, Robert Owen, embodied some of the ideas of the Digger philosopher, Gerrard Winstanley, in his writings. And even today the question of the monarchy and the House of Lords is still unresolved.

A Russian sniper's story

Review

By Andy Brooks

Notes of a Russian Sniper: Vassili Zaitsev, Hbk, illus, 208 pp, Frontline Books, London 2010 £19.99.

Vassili Zaitsev was the Soviet sniper immortalised by Jude Law in Enemy at the Gates, the  2001 blockbuster movie set during the Battle of Stalingrad with a star-studded cast including Ed Harris as his Nazi counterpart and Bob Hoskins as Nikita Krushchov. Stalingrad has long been used in the West as a symbol of the sacrifice of the Soviet people in the struggle to defeat Nazi Germany in the Second World War. The film is remarkable for the visual power of the gritty battle scenes and realistic recreation of the ruined city. So film-goers could easily be forgiven for thinking that the movie, produced by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, was an accurate portrayal of Zaitsev’s wartime career.

            Far from it. Zaitsev, who died in 1991, would have turned in his grave had he lived to see Enemy at the Gates which depicts him as a barely literate hunter from the Steppes and reduces the Second World War to a sniper duel between two men. But while Zaitsev’s own account of his exploits in Stalingrad had been published in the USSR back in 1956 the first English translation was only published in 2003.

            This revised edition published by Frontline Books includes the original introduction by Marshal V I Chuikov and a pithy foreword that demolishes the anti-communist nonsense that is passed off as artistic licence in Annaud film.

            As a boy Zaitsev was taught to shoot and hunt in the woods by his family. A dedicated communist he served a pay clerk in the Soviet Pacific Fleet but volunteered to fight in the army when the Germans invaded in 1941. And it was in Stalingrad that his particular skill was recognised. With at least 242 kills to his credit Zaitsev ended up running a sniper school in the city that broke the back of the Wehrmacht.

            Library shelves are full of dusty memoirs of generals who portray war in terms of manoeuvres and tactics. This book sees war through the eyes of a rank-and-filer on the front-line in a struggle against a cruel and determined foe.

Though Zaitsev was like the millions of Soviet youth who rallied to the call to defend the Soviet Union his particular skill sets him apart from most other soldiers. 

            Snipers are a special breed. They shoot to kill in cold blood and without remorse. As Zaitsev says: “As a sniper, I’ve killed more than a few Nazis. I have a passion for observing enemy behaviour. You watch a Nazi officer come out of a bunker, acting all high and mighty, ordering his soldiers every which way, and putting on an air of authority. The officer hasn’t got the slightest idea that he only has seconds to live”.

            There’s plenty more of this as Zaitsev tells his story of the fight for Stalingrad which also includes a report of his experiences first published in Moscow in 1943 and Stalin’s famous “Not a Single Step Back!” Order Number 227 of 28th  July 1942.

            This is a book well worth reading. Don’t be put off by the publisher’s cover charge. It can be bought for far less on the web or obtained by ordering it from your local library.

The Burston School strike

by Robert Laurie

A HUNDRED years ago in February 1911 two schoolteachers arrived to take up new posts in the Norfolk Parish of Burston and Shimpling near Diss. This was not the first posting in the agricultural county for the couple Tom and Kitty Higdon. Kitty Higdon married her younger husband, also a teacher, in their native Somerset in 1896.

            For a while they taught at St James's and St Peter's School in London's wealthy Piccadilly. In 1902 they took up joint posts at Wood Dalling, north of Norwich with Kitty as headmistress.

Here they proved popular and effective teachers. Staunch Christian Socialists they did much to improve the harsh lives of their pupils, such as purchasing shoes and footwear out of Kitty’s own pocket and conducting cookery classes in her own kitchen.

The Higdon's were not content with private charity. Soon after arriving in Norfolk Thomas (himself the son of a farm labourer) was fined for assaulting a farmer who employed boys who should have been at school. He also spoke in public and organised for the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers' and Small Holders' Union, founded in 1906.

 This was no easy task. In the countryside the normal difficulties of getting workers to join unions in the face of employer hostility was heightened by the tied cottage system, which meant a dismissed worker was also made homeless.

In 1910 he and other labourers were elected onto the parish council. This was not to the approval of the farmers who employed the labourers. They were also managers of the school and resented the Higdon's continued demands for improvements to the fabric of the school.

Such a lack of deference did not go unpunished. Norfolk Education Committee launched enquiries into their activities. The threat of sacking was finally lifted but these "troublesome teachers" were transferred to Burston in the south of the county. Defiant to the end Kitty Higdon's final remarks in the school log book were later officially expunged from the record.

            Perhaps wary of the Education Committee, the Higdon's kept a low political profile at first, but they soon started making complaints about the state of their new school. In 1912 Tom published a short pamphlet, Bodies without abodes, a fictional indictment of the tied cottage system.

            The April 1913 Parish Council elections saw Tom Higdon return to the electoral fray. He topped the poll along with many farm labourers who were also elected. The man at the bottom was no less a figure than the Reverend Charles Tucker Eland, Anglican Rector and chair of the school's management committee.

            He was not a man to take electoral defeat gracefully. From a wealthy Essex gentry family he used his remaining post as chair of the school body to launch a barrage of complaints against the Higdons. Enormities such as lighting a fire for pupils to dry their wet clothes and showing gross "discourtesy" were supplemented by trumped up charges of assaulting two pupils.

            His Reverence persuaded the county Education Committee to sack them (despite glowing reports from the inspectors and a rejection of the assault charges) after an inquiry in which the National Union of Teachers failed miserably. Their last day was the 31^st March 1914.

As they were about to hand over the next day, 66 of the 72 children refused to attend school. Instead, led by a concertina band they marched around the Village waving banners and cards reading: "We want our teachers back" and "We are out for justice".

As is normal with the bourgeois press The Times understated the support when on the 2^nd April it reported that only 25 of the 72 pupils attended the march that day. Dismissed by the Rector as an "April Fool's Joke" the march was repeated in the afternoon and on the following days. Properly organised lessons were given by the Higdons on the Village Green.

Only six pupils remained at the official school. On the 22^nd April the parents of the striking children were heavily fined by the magistrates at Diss. Half-a crown each was a severe penalty for farmer labourers earning less than a pound a week. They were further warned of heavier fines if the trouble recurred.

In the words of The Times of the following day: "All the parents demanded a public inquiry as to why the teachers were dismissed. Some of them said they sent their children to school, but the children joined the strikers. One parent said his lad had joined the strikers and dared not break the rules."

 Repeated fines for non-attendance were indeed imposed on the farm labourers, who were in fact sending their children to the school of their own choosing.

The outbreak of the First World War in August with the resulting need for manpower put a stop to farmers sacking labourers for their insubordination but this did not stop the Reverend Eland from evicting labourers from the allotments he rented out to boost his ample stipend.

A national campaign by the labour movement ensured the striking pupils did not lack funds. Just one example of the campaign can be mentioned. In February 1916 the Higdons, some schoolchildren and their parents visited London sponsored by London trade unionists, where they spoke at four large meetings including a musical event at Bermondsey.

The hatred Eland brought upon himself can be seen in the case which took place in early 1917. The father of a former striker who was killed in the war objected to the Rector putting up a memorial tablet in the church as Eland had opposed the strike.

His efforts to have it removed failed so he smashed it with a coal hammer, an action resulting in the bereaved father being imprisoned. Later the diocesan court had it removed more officially. It was not only the established church that incurred the strikers' displeasure. When a Methodist lay-preacher spoke in favour of the Strike School he was rebuked by his church, prompting the departure of most of the village's congregation.

As summer turned to autumn a disused carpenter's workshop was used as a schoolhouse. The launch of national appeal for a more permanent building bore fruit within three years. The building which survives to this day was opened on the 13^th May 1917 by Violet Potter, the leader of children three years earlier.

George Lansbury, chair of the national appeal for the school and future Labour Party leader, unveiled the foundation stone while the militant Suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst also spoke.

Many branches of the Independent Labour Party, and the National Union of Railwaymen supported the building fund. Coal mining unions gave £401 of the £1662 raised. Many other labour movement bodies such as the Coventry Typographical Society and the Parkstone and Bournemouth Co-operative Society also contributed.

The departure of the Reverend Eland in 1920 was followed by his replacement by a less hostile Rector, who conducted services for the children of both village schools.

That they competed against each other on sports days demonstrates that the Strike School had become an established fixture of village life. Being the focus of a national campaign it was difficult for the powers to be anything but tolerant of the Strike School.

An annual rally was held by the National Agricultural Labourers' Union, which kept the school in the public eye. The Norfolk Education Committee was doubtless glad not to have the "troublesome teachers" on their books.

Thus the school continued for a quarter of a century. Apart from local children a few were sent by members of the Soviet Trade delegation to London. During the 1926 General Strike and lockout six children of Nottingham miners were boarded and taught for free.

The curriculum did not have classes on how to curtsy or forelock tugging to the gentry, but included trips to trade union rallies. When Thomas Higdon died in August 1939, the school had only 11 pupils. Kitty Higdon, then aged 75 was unable to continue and retired soon afterwards. The remaining pupils were transferred to the county school. She died in 1946 and was buried next to her husband in Burston churchyard near the school to which she had devoted her life.

The initial success of the campaign to defend the Higdons and the remarkable endurance of the school was a fine example of trade union solidarity. While Norfolk was one of the better organised areas the agricultural labourers were too weak in themselves to support the school for long.

Inside the Far Right

Review

By Owen Liddle

Matthew Collins: Hate, my life in the far right;With foreword by Billy Bragg
From Biteback publishers pbk, illus, 316 pp £14.99 but discounted to £13.50 if bought through www.hopenothate.org.uk and all good bookshops. All proceeds from copies bought from Hope not Hate go to the Searchlight Educational Trust

MATTHEW Collins was a teenager who grew up in south east London. He was not atypical, coming from a poor working class background, single-parent family and his father having left home when he was a small child.
He also hated the secondary school Thomas Tallis that failed to give him the education that he needed, thinking for example, that eating lemon meringue pie was a sign of sophistication. Where Matthew differed was that his anger and alienation turned into racism and lead him to join the National Front (NF) and quickly rise in their ranks.
I had wondered what had turned Matthew to the NF as I too have a lot in common with him: I also come from the same part of London and from a poor single-parent family; I also went to Thomas Tallis at the same time as Matthew and we both left school the same year (although I'm two years older) to go on and get shit jobs in the civil service.
Tallis was one of the better schools in Greenwich, despite having a high number of Trotskyite teachers and Colin Yardley, a Eurocommunist, had taken over as headmaster, and was busily ruining the school’s reputation as well.
Although it was a progressive school there was racial tension between the Afro-Caribbean gangs from Lewisham and the white gangs from the Ferrier (a large sink estate next door to Tallis) and I knew several fellow students who carried knives "for their own protection".
Despite this the vast majority of white kids were not racist, having grown up with and forged friendships with other children of several different races, most notably Afro-Caribbean's, Punjabis, Cypriots and Chinese. Matthew’s hatred stopped him from having different race friends and so learning about their culture and more importantly the things common to all of us, being poor and hard up.
Time and time again he mentions that the NF and BNP thugs who he'd go out with knew nothing about the people whom they were trying to beat the shit out of. With Thatcher doing away with national pay bargaining and constantly attacking the National Union of Teachers both Matthew and I were glad to leave Tallis behind us. A large number of teachers also left at the same time and those who stayed wished they could have left as well.
Mathew was already an NF member when he left school, as his new comrades in the far right were the only ones who would take his racist view point seriously.
He was soon being mentored by the then leader of the NF, Ian Anderson, as he was thought of as being one of their most intelligent members and a possible future leader.
Taking six months sick leave from the civil service, he was soon learning how to organise meetings, produce Nazi magazines and was soon flogging them as well as hard core porn to the right-wing faithful.
Some of Matthew’s tales of his time in the NF will be familiar with any one involved in small political parties. Problems like the battle with constantly breaking down print presses, the failure to understand modern technology, and sitting through meetings where the party hierarchy waffle on, massaging their egos, while every one else tries to stay awake. There is also the familiar backbiting and clash of egos but the right wing took this to extremes by actually thumping each other.
Matthew’s epiphany came when he organised a group of NF and BNP hooligans to gatecrash a meeting of anti-racists at Welling Library. In what became know as the battle of Welling Library he tells of how he led his Nazi horde into the meeting and started punching and kicking anyone they could lay their hands on, mostly middle-aged Asian women.
One pregnant woman had to lock herself in the toilets to avoid getting a good kicking. Having felt sick at what his comrades had done he ended up phoning Searchlight anti fascist magazine anonymously to pass on information to them.
Matthew grew increasingly disillusioned with the psychopaths, alcoholics and violent Nazi nutters of the far right. He realised that the realities of the fascists taking over in a military coup were pure fantasy born of blood-crazed, ignorant, paranoid minds who would never understand, as he had come to, that society’s problems were down to class not race.
He began to hate the far right everything they stood for, like the links they were trying to forge with other right-wing paramilitaries like the UDA and American Nazi groups. He was making more and more phone calls to Searchlight. This led him eventually to meet up with Searchlight activists and become one of their moles in the far right.
As a reward for his spying he was given book tokens and told to go educate himself. This was only partially successful as he may have used them to buy Billy Bragg CDs.
Matthew’s book is a thoughtful, candid and very personal look into the British far right. Despite the serious and often brutal nature of the book there are several laugh out loud moments, I practically liked the Eddie Whicker guide on how to post a turd through the mail.
The only possible criticism is that he may have used a bit of artistic exaggeration as according to accounts from the anti-fascists at the battle of Welling library, it was not as one-sided as Matthew’s recollection.
But that's not to take away the poignancy and relevance of the book and recent events have reminded us that the disillusioned and disenfranchised youth can turn to mob mentality and violence.
In fact this book should be on the school reading lists. But the middle class trendy pseudo-lefty teachers would probably object to the language and the violence contained in the book, totally missing the point and again that would be letting down another generation of kids, much as they did at the school Matthew and me were from.

Stalin's Wars

BOOK REVIEW

By Eric Trevett


Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War 1939-1953. Geoffrey Roberts: Yale University Press 2008,496 pp, illus. £15.20




THE BOOK Stalin’s Wars is a valuable contribution to the discussion around getting a clearer assessment of Stalin and the Soviet Union.
The book covers the years 1939-53 and includes a detailed account of the major battles of the Great Patriotic War, which started in Russia in 1941.
Geoffrey Roberts is a bourgeois military historian who has done his research through the archive files in Moscow and is trying to be objective. He was born in Deptford, south London, and is a professor at Cork University in Ireland.
In his preface Roberts makes the case that Stalin was an effective and highly successful war leader. He made many mistakes and pursued harsh policies. Millions of people died as the Germans advanced but Stalin kept his head and without his leadership the war against Nazi Germany would probably have been lost.
Roberts does explode a slander that began with Kruschov’s “secret” speech to the 20th CPSU congress in 1956. Kruschov said: “It would be incorrect to forget that after the first severe disaster and defeats at the front, Stalin thought this was the end. In one of his speeches in those days he said: ‘All that which Lenin created we have lost forever’. After this Stalin for a very long time actually did not direct the military operations and ceased to do anything whatever. He returned to active service only when some members of the Political Bureau visited him and told him that it was necessary to take certain steps immediately in order to improve the situation at the front.”
Roberts reports that Kruschov went on to elaborate this story in his memoirs, claiming that Beria, Molotov and Mikoyan were the Politburo members in question. But, as Roberts points out, citing different accounts by Roy and Medvedev, this is was a very unlikely story because Molotov and Beria were among the most submissive of Stalin’s inner circle and would not have dared be so forthright.
Roberts quotes the direct report of Yakov Chadev, which paints a very different picture. In an interview in 1982 Chadev said: “During those days of crisis, of critical situations on the front, Stalin controlled himself very well on the whole, displaying confidence and calmness and demonstrating industriousness.”
Roberts also quotes Molotov’s account of the incident at the dacha: “Stalin was in a very agitated state. He didn’t curse but he wasn’t quite himself. I wouldn’t say that he had lost his head. He suffered but he didn’t show any signs of this. Undoubtedly he had his rough moments. It’s nonsense to say he didn’t suffer. But he is not portrayed as he really was… As usual he worked day and night and never lost his head or his gift of speech. How did he comport himself? As Stalin was supposed to, firmly.”
Then there was Zhukov’s account: “Stalin himself was strong-willed and no coward. It was only once I saw him somewhat depressed. That was the dawn of 22nd June 1841, when his belief that the war could be avoided was shattered. After 22nd June 1941, and throughout the war, Stalin firmly governed the country.”
Roberts continued: “When Lazar Kaganovich, another Politburo member, was asked if Stalin had lost his nerve when the war broke out, he replied: ‘It’s a lie!’…
“Perhaps a better guide to Stalin’s personal response to the German attack is the contemporary evidence of his actions during the first days of the war. According to his appointments diary, when war broke out Stalin held numerous meetings with members of the military and political leadership.
“The early days of the war required many decisions by Stalin. On the day war broke out he authorised 20 different decrees and orders….”
This must be contrasted to performance of western European leaders who fell apart and capitulated to the German war machine.
Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini and Roosevelt – they were all replaceable as warlords but not Stalin. In the context of the horrific war on the eastern front Stalin was indispensable to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
To fully appreciate the contents of Geoffrey Roberts’ book it is essential to have some knowledge of the history of the whole of the 1930s. That decade began with capitalism in crisis; millions were out of work; in the United States one in four of the workforce was unemployed. The response of the capitalists was to turn towards fascism.
Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria all had fascist governments and even Britain had a strong presence of people who admired Hitler.
In the second half of the 1930s the elected government of Republican Spain was overthrown with the direct assistance of the Nazis. The town of Guernica was destroyed by Nazi bombers.
The International Brigade predicted that the bombs that dropped on Madrid would be falling on London before long if fascism was not defeated in Spain – and they were proved right.
The governments of Britain and France sought to appease Hitler, paving the way for German rearmament.
Roberts gives a fair account of the Russo-Nazi non-aggression pact. In spite of the heroic Soviet endeavours and those of the workers and peace movements of the capitalist countries, especially those of Britain and France, they were unable to prevent the collaboration of their governments. All the capitalist governments had within them pro-fascist elements who were in contact with the Nazi regime.
The pact with Ribbentrop was signed after the western powers had signed the Munich Agreement in September 1938. After that Great Britain and France claimed they could not join an anti-Nazi alliance and when Stalin invited them to do that they sent only a minor diplomat. Clearly they had had no intention of any serious response to Stalin’s call for unity against Hitler.
Stalin, through the Comintern, warned communist parties and the labour movement that the Soviet Union would have to take steps to safeguard its own future but this would be in the long-term interests of the working class.
Much is made of the failure of Stalin and the Soviet high command to resist the onslaught of the Nazi armies in the Soviet Union in 1941. But in reality even if they had been prepared they could not have repulsed the Nazi offensive. The official thinking in Britain at the time was that if the Soviet Union survived for six seeks it would be an achievement and if they lasted out for three months it would be a miracle.
Trotsky also had this view and he tried to make this a death wish by promoting acts of industrial sabotage and spreading disaffection and defeatist ideas designed to demoralise.
Roberts is critical of Stalin’s purge of senior Red Army officers in the 1930s. Many of those purged were veteran officers of the old Czarist army in which there was a culture of admiration for German militarism.
But the new Red Army nurtured and produced many fine generals from the working class to replace those who were purged. These included Marshall Zhukhov who won the Battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and Leningrad. The battle of Kursk involved 4,000 tanks and it was where the German Panzer tanks met their match.
Roberts reports that at one of the lowest points in the war, on 7th November 1941 when German forces were advancing through Soviet territory and the Red Army was taking severe casualties, Stalin addressed troops parading through Red Square. He said: “Remember the year 1918, when we celebrated the first anniversary of the October Revolution. Three-quarters of the country was … in the hands of foreign interventionists. The Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East were temporarily lost to us.
“We had no allies, we had no Red Army … there was a shortage of food, or armaments … Fourteen states were pressing against our country.
“But we did not become despondent, we did not lose heart. In the fire of war we forged the Red Army and converted our country into a military camp. The spirit of the great Lenin animated us ….
“And what happened? We routed the interventionists, recovered our lost territory and achieved victory.”
Roberts sometimes refers to Stalin as a dictator but Stalin always worked in the collective and this is referenced in his daily communiqués that he gave to the armed forces. These statements were the product of the leadership collective.
In the 1930s every country in the western world, without exception had a considerable number of willing and influential people favouring an alliance between themselves and Hitler in a crusade to destroy the Soviet Union.
Indeed France and Britain had expeditionary forces ready to go to the aid of Finland, which had refused to allow the Soviet Red Army authority to occupy a part of Finland essential to ensure the defence of Leningrad.
On the issue of the shooting of the Polish officers at Katyn, Roberts comes down on the side of blaming the Soviets. He puts a lot of store on the questionable fact that a letter had been found dated after the blame was being attached to the Nazis. This issue remains unresolved but the probability is that it was a Nazi atrocity. More to the point, the ammunition used was German.
Geoffrey Roberts is good on the controversy over whether the Soviet Union should have aided the uprising in Warsaw. He argues that the uprising was authorised by the Polish government in exile in London in an attempt to establish authority before the Soviet occupation of Warsaw, which they believed to be imminent.
At that time the Red Army had already twice tried to breach the Nazi defences of Warsaw and had been repulsed. It was therefore absolutely necessary to build up the forces that would overcome the resistance of the Nazis.
He reports that the Red Army was always well led and well disciplined.
Roberts is also good on the interplay between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, which is quite fascinating. Churchill was always the more treacherous compared to Roosevelt – witness his letter from in the War Cabinet before the battle of Stalingrad had been won, expressing his fears that there might be a run of communism across Europe.
Again in 1945, Churchill told Montgomery to be ready to hand weapons back to the Nazis if the Red Army reached where the western liberation line had stopped.
It may surprise many readers to learn how keen Stalin was after the war to see Germany broken up. He feared that Germany would become a threat again within 30 years. And the recent alliance between Britain and France within Nato have been a reflection of this old fear of Germany – not so much on the military but on the political and economic front.
Another good feature of the book is the glossary of events from 1939 to 1953. One of the best quotes is attributed to W Averell Harriman, the US Ambassador to Moscow, describing Stalin: “He had an enormous ability to absorb and act on detail. He was very much alert to the needs of the whole war machine … In our negotiations with him we usually found him extremely well informed.
“He had a masterly knowledge of the sort of equipment that was important for him. He knew the calibre of the guns he wanted, the weight of the tanks that his roads and bridges would take and the details of the type of metal he needed to build aircraft.
“These were not characteristics of a bureaucrat but rather those of an extremely able and vigorous war leader.”
All in all, this book requires a knowledge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from its inception. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia inherited a country where 80 per cent of the population was illiterate, the working class was proportionately small and poverty and superstition were prevalent.
Stalin carried on from where Lenin left off. He renounced the term “Stalinist” and always claimed to be a Leninist. Under his leadership the Soviet Union changed from being the poor house of Europe to being a commonwealth of nations from which skilled and educated people of all professions emerged in great numbers.
His ability to inspire and teach remains unsurpassed and this is what has to be borne in mind when reading the revisionist Kruschov’s so-called secret speech at the CPSU 20th Congress, as well as Geoffrey Roberts’ book
Roberts says that Stalin made a lot of mistakes. But in his conclusion he says: “To make so many mistakes and arise from the depth of such defeat to win the greatest military victory in history was a triumph beyond compare.”

Twenty years ago...

in the NEW WORKER


ROVER plans to axe 1,260 non-manual jobs, 12 per cent of the group’s workforce. It brings the total number of Rover jobs lost in the last 18 months to 3,500.
Around 500 will go at Longbridge, 400 at Solihull, 180 at Cowley, 110 at Swindon and 70 at Gaydon.
The recession has hit motor companies world-wide. In Europe only German new car sales are up significantly fuelled by re-unification.
Rover claims that this latest round of job cuts are part of a long-term restructuring, “emulating Japanese manufacturing efficiencies” as a company statement put it.
Even so, Rover has said it will put 12,000 production workers on a four-day week because of falling demand for key models.
Rover has been increasing its share of the market, but the market itself is shrinking fast.
Last month Ford announced it was halting production at Harewood. But it will retain the plant’s 6,500 assembly workers, already working short-time on full pay.

**************************

A SENIOR European Community official has met the Albanian government which has been desperately seeking imperialist aid to stave off famine.
The Ramiz Alia government, a coalition of anti-communist nationalists and Alia’s revisionist wing of the former Party of Labour, faces an economic crisis provoked by the so-called reforms of this year.
This has seen the abandonment of the socialist constitution, the break-up of the co-operative farms and the beginning of the restoration of capitalism in the small Balkan republic.
The talks between the EC Foreign Affairs Commissioner Frans Andriessen, and Albanian Prime Minister Ylli Bufi centred around Albanian appeals for urgent supplies of food and medicine.
The Albanian premier warned the EC official that government wasn’t bailed out soon the people would lose confidence in what he called the “democratic reforms” and the subsequent backlash could jeopardise its very existence.

Unions remember Tolpuddle

by Alex Kempshall

Thousands of trade union and labour movement activists marched through the small Dorset village of Tolpuddle last weekend. They marched behind the banners of the Tolpuddle agricultural branch. Southampton Unite and Unison workers were at the head of the march with their banners shouting the slogan “Cut my pay – no way” a protest against Southampton Council's attempt to cut the pay of it's workers.

The keynote speeches were delivered by TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, and Tony Benn. Nigel Costley, South West TUC Secretary set the scene by reminding the rally that “We come here to remember and honour the Tolpuddle Martyrs. We come here to refresh out commitment to what they believed in – Unity, Solidarity, Trade Unionism and we also come to celebrate the fact that protest and campaigns that were waged by the unions then resulted in victory when the government backed down and performed a u-turn. It was possible then and it is possible now.”

Sharan Burrow spoke of the importance to renew our commitment to a decent world, social justice and to the rights of union members. She reminded us that “The crisis that was born of greed, the greed of profits from the bankers and shareholders of those incredible products which had nothing to do with the real economy... It is a crisis that is undermining every community throughout the world. The bankers are forcing governments from Spain, to Portugal, to Greece, the US right through to the poorest countries of the world demanding that people pay with their services, public sector jobs, their very way of life.”

She went on to point out that “The people of Spain are standing up against it, people in Portugal, Romania, in Africa, the US, Asia are standing up to the demands of Conservative governments. It's the time for solidarity, it's the time for a shared commitment to collectivism. Solidarity is about sharing the wealth, building the common good.”

Brendan Barber in speaking about the big challenges that the trade union movement is facing and that the rally was about celebrating what the Tolpuddle stands for said “All these values of solidarity we're going to need that in the months ahead” and asked the rally to send a message of solidarity “to the trade unionists of Southampton, the teachers and trade unionists in the Civil Service who took industrial action on June 30th, to the half million people who marched on the 26th March to tell the government that there is an alternative.

Brendan warned the rally “That we are facing a government that is absolutely committed to cut public spending whatever the consequences but that we know the price is going to be paid by the poorest and weakest for a crisis that was caused by the richest and powerful. The price we risk paying is the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, the services we rely on from Sure Start centres to the vital caring services for the elderly and the living standards of just about everyone, with wages held down and inflation let rip and the threat to our pension system.”

He went on to say “We mustn't allow this government to try and divide public and private sector workers” citing the case of pensions where both government and major companies like British Airways were attempting to move pension indexing from RPI to CPI resulting is a 15% reduction in pensions.”

He called upon the movement to win that battle of ideas he pointed out that “Over the last thirty years we've seen the growth of inequality, living standards squeezed, we've seen our economy double in size yet for most ordinary people their earning levels have hardly increased at all.”

In the months ahead he said that there were going to be some major industrial battles to defend decent pensions, pay, living standards and protect jobs and concluded by saying that he was “confident that we will see the return of a Labour government committed to decent values and justice for the British people”

The weekend was more than just the Sunday march and rally there were may stalls from the trade union and solidarity movements. A radical history school dealt with topics such as the poor law, risings against enclosures, transportation including crime and punishment. The Prison Officers Association organised the Tolpuddle Freedom Hike from Dorchester Prison to Tolpuddle to raise monies for the POA Freedom charities. On each of the days from Friday through to Sunday a whole host of musicians and comedians entertained at the event organised by the South West TUC.

The Fall of the House of Murdoch

NONE of us were sorry to see the News of the World go under last week. The arrest of Rebekah Brooks, News International’s chief executive, for questioning in connection with corruption issues after a number of Rupert Murdoch’s chief henchmen jumped ship, will have brought wry smiles to veteran Fleet Street printers who fought the Murdoch empire to preserve free trade unions during the Sun dispute in the 1980s.
With a bit of luck the resignation of two high-ranking chiefs in the Metropolitan Police and the mysterious death of a former News of the World journalist who had spilt the beans on the phone-hacking scandal will end the sinister domination of the British media by this oligarch once and for all.
For over three decades politicians across the mainstream bourgeois consensus grovelled at the feet of Rupert Murdoch and his minions. Tory and Labour governments alike sanctioned the monopolisation of information by News International, which targeted working people with its relentless stream of racist and imperialist propaganda laced with vicious celebrity gossip that we now learn was obtained through phone hacking and pay-offs to the police on an industrial scale.
News International may have thought that it could fight off the legal challenges from high-profile victims like Hugh Grant and Max Mosley but it was on a certain loser once the depth of its corrupt involvement with the forces of law and order was exposed to wider public scrutiny.
The Establishment has now closed ranks to condemn the excesses of the Murdoch-owned media and Cameron, Miliband and Clegg are leading the pack in condemnation and demands for more regulation.
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was right to lead the attack and question the link between the Prime Minister and his former aide, who had been a senior member of Murdoch’s entourage. It is also clear that by any standards, even those of the bourgeoisie themselves, that News International is neither fit nor proper to own any newspapers or TV stations in Britain.
But there’s a hidden agenda behind the furore that has forced Parliament to summon Murdoch and his cronies to the Select Committee this week and that is to re-impose the media censorship we had to put up with until the 1970s under the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and the odious D-notice regime.
While there’s clearly a need to reform the toothless Press Complaints Commission, which does nothing to protect those who cannot afford to go to court, demands for more “regulation” can only stifle the freedom of the media. There is, in fact, no need for it. The issue is not whether what is reported was true but how the information was obtained in the first place.
Phone-hacking, mail interception and bribing the police are against the law and some journalists have already been convicted. More will undoubtedly follow.
There’s certainly a case for repealing Britain’s draconian libel laws that impose self-censorship on much of the media and can only be used by those rich enough to pay the immense legal fees court actions incur. The media must be free to comment on what it likes and report what it believes to be true. But that can’t continue to be monopolised exclusively by the representatives of the big bourgeoisie.
If nothing else the News International scandal shows the need for the unions to pool their resources to provide a voice for the labour movement to counter the barrage of propaganda rammed down our throats every day in the bourgeois media.
Our unions spend millions on bland house magazines that are rarely read even by their own members. The Labour Party, which dumped its own weekly in 1988, will spend millions at election time and rely on the half-hearted support of the Mirror Group rather than help fund an independent trade union and co-operative journal like the old Daily Herald, which they sustained for over 50 years.
But with new technology it can be done and it needs to be done because there’s plenty more like Murdoch ready to take his place.


New Worker editorial

Who's afraid of Jean-Jacques Rousseau?

By Ray Jones

JEAN-JACQUES Rousseau (1712-78) has long been considered to be one of the leading “philosophes” who provided the theory behind the great French bourgeois revolution of 1789 and who gave the revolutionary Jacobins their ideological basis for this world-changing event.
But these days he is largely ignored by our media and little known generally. It’s even been suggested lately by some bourgeois academics that perhaps he wasn’t so important after all.
It might be argued that Rousseau’s lack of limelight is at least partly the result of his success. Reading his main political works, Discourse on Inequality and On the Social Contract, much seems very familiar and common to the ideas we hear about us all the time – to the point of being almost boring.
They are written in relatively simple language (Rousseau was also a renowned novelist) but have been interpreted in many different ways and perhaps this hasn’t help his profile either.
But these factors surely don’t fully explain his relative neglect – after all he has been called the father of modern political philosophy.
That Rousseau was an influence on the French Revolution is undeniable. Maximilien Robespierre, a main leader of the revolution, wrote of him in his diary: “Divine man! It was you who taught me to know myself. When I was young you brought me to appreciate the true dignity of my nature and reflect on the great principles which govern the social order…”
Rousseau’s main ideas were accepted by the Jacobins: the basic equality of humans; that morality is innate within us; the importance of reason; that we originated in a “state of nature” prior to society; that society is a Social Contract that we enter into for our own good.
Perhaps Rousseau’s best known quote is, “Man was been born free and everywhere he is in chains”. This was a rallying call for the revolution and much of his writings were banned.
Rousseau believed that from a very simple society, little more than families, the development of the division of labour and private property had caused the growth of the unfair and oppressive societies he saw about him.
And although he did not think it possible, or desirable, to revert to a “state of nature” (and perhaps he didn’t think of it as an actual historical period) he believed it was possible to reorganise society and make a better world.
The object for Rousseau is to organise society so that the citizen and the magistrate complement each other, working together so that peoples’ innate morality can come through and the societies’ “General Will” could be implemented. The General Will being a collective construction not dependent on any individual but which all individuals follow for the good of all.
He believed the best form of this society would be a democratic republic – although he did not rule out other forms, even monarchy, being used in particular circumstances or a certain period of time. He also thought that it would only really work well with a small population in a small area where personal contact and communication were easy – similar to the ancient Greek states and early Rome which he, and the Jacobins thought well of.
It’s easy to see how revolutionary and incendiary these ideas were in a country still mired in the injustice and rigidity of late feudalism.
The growing petty bourgeois and intellectuals of France were groaning under the heavy taxation enforced by the King, whose failed wars had ruined the economy, while the aristocracy and the clergy paid almost nothing. The peasantry and the town poor, who were near starvation due to crop failures and oppressed by savage feudal laws and customs, were more than ready to follow them.
Rousseau’s personal example on religion was also radical. While believing in a creator God he was willing to switch from the extreme protestant Calvinism of his home city of Geneva to Roman Catholicism when he moved away and change back again when he wanted to regain his Genevan citizenship – just about as big a leap as you can make inside Christianity.
Robespierre and his supporters showed their religious rebellion by building the cult of the Supreme Being, a Deist movement, to replace the Catholicism which was a pillar of the old regime. But that did not stop him attacking those on his political left for atheism.
Clearly, for its time, Rousseau’s thinking was democratic and could legitimise the overthrow of tyrants. He supported the freedom of individuals but this freedom could only be within Social Contract and the General Will.
People who attack the General Will and the state (the “fabric of social right” as Rousseau puts it) cease to be citizens and become enemies of the state. They have declared war on it and if they are a real danger may be killed.
In May 1791, when the King was still on the throne, Robespierre made an impassioned plea against capital punishment and for the rights of the individual (to be fair most of his speeches seem to have been impassioned). In 1792 however he was arguing that then imprisoned King should not even be granted a trial but be summarily executed on the Rousseaunian grounds that the King had become an enemy of the state.
The King, he argued, had been dethroned for his crimes by the people and the General Will had been expressed. To give him a trial would be to open the matter to doubt; to do so and find him innocent would be in effect to find the people (the General Will) guilty which would be senseless. If it was not possible to find him innocent a trial would be a farce.
By 1794 Robespierre was calling in the Convention for the use of terror against the enemies of the state (the Republic) while using reason with the people. Nature, he said, echoing Rousseau, has imposed on every being the law of self-preservation. Just so with the state; the Republic must crush all internal and external enemies or be crushed. Terror is vital to insure that justice reigns: “The government of a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.” And this perhaps takes this Rousseauian theory to its limit on the subject.
Marx and Engels acknowledged the dialectical style of Rousseau and his importance for the French Revolution but were doubtful about the Terror which they thought was a tactic which came from weakness rather than strength.
Basically Rousseau was an idealist who did not have materialist roots to his philosophy, He realised that people were not naturally bad or sinful but erred in the other direction in thinking they are innately moral. He saw that problems arose from the division of labour and private property but didn’t realise they were the source of the main contradiction in society.
While Rousseau’s “state of nature” and Marx’s “primitive communism” can be compared, Marx saw the progressive historical stages of society (slavery, feudalism, capitalism, communism) based on the means of production which Rousseau was not, understandably, able to.
Some have equated the General Will with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat but the former is idealistic, semi-mystical, concept based on innate morality and a misguided idea of equality where as the latter is based on class realities and interests.
Nevertheless the ideas of Rousseau and his fellow “philosophes” served the need of the bourgeoisie in it hour of need. That they are ungratefully played down now is typical. In the same way they play down the role of Cromwell and the English Revolution, preferring to talk of the Glorious (and peaceful) Revolution of 1688.
They want to forget the revolutionary methods and theories which brought them to power and all their promises of liberty, equality and fraternity, which they have so obviously failed to deliver.