The London Cables

Labour leaders and US imperialism

              

                                           By Neil Harris

BRADLEY MANNING, in solitary confinement since his arng, in solitary confinementrest, is facing a court-martial in the spring of 2013.  If he is lucky enough to escape the death penalty he will be serving a long prison sentence, under the same kind of harsh conditions he has faced up till now. If the allegations are true; that he leaked some 250,000 US State Department “cables”, then his sacrifice means we owe him a great debt. It is our duty to make full use of this remarkable and unique resource: essentially a series of confidential reports sent back to Washington by US Embassy staff from around the world. At the time of the original disclosure, the bourgeois press published a small selection of these without criticism, effectively repeating the official State Department worldview, as if it was true.

Now we need to start taking a closer look at the “cables”, starting with some 3,000 reports sent back from the American embassy in London. Unexpectedly this has provided us with a unique insight into the craven and often grovelling relationship between some Labour and trades union figures and the London representatives of US imperialism. None of this is new; “The Special Relationship” which acknowledged that British imperialism was to be subordinate to America’s has been endorsed by old style Labour leaders like Atlee and Gaitskell all the way to Blair and Brown in our era. It didn’t take long for aspiring young Labour politicians to realise that the path to power involved regular trips to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square or, if you were really going places, a meal at a fashionable restaurant, on expenses.

So for example, there is an unclassified report dated 10/12/09 from the Ambassador himself, detailing a discussion with Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the TUC. This was in the lead up to the 2010 election and not surprisingly the American was interested whether this would be in March rather than May as everyone assumed; “highly unlikely” replied Barber who then explained how Brown needed positive news from the budget and was hoping for some early signs of economic recovery. He went on to say rather naively, how he didn’t regard Cameron as anti-union as Thatcher had been, saying: “The Tories have actually been courting the unions, because they need union support in any effort to reduce public sector employment as a deficit fighting measure”. Barber actually seemed to welcome a hung parliament in the vain hope that the unions might be able to exert some kind of influence.

The influence of Barber and others behind the scenes is far more tangible in a 2006 report on the Brighton Trades Union Congress or, as it is rather quaintly put, the “British Trades Union Movement’s annual convention”. The embassy observer’s main worry seems to have been that, “On the international front the members were at their most leftist, supporting perennial resolutions in favour of Cuba and Venezuela and more narrowly denouncing MOD plans to replace the Trident nuclear deterrent.”

At this point the embassy man felt he needed help, and turned to a fellow countryman for advice: “An observer from the AFL-CIO (protect), explained that Barber tends to allow the left-wing to dominate the international agenda, because it is of little consequence to the unions”. He noted with some satisfaction that, “despite the anti-American flavour of many of the motions, the AFL-CIO retains its honoured position as the only union invited to address the congress every year”.

The year 2009 was busy for everyone: in August Lord Mandelson, always a welcome guest at the embassy himself, must have still been on his holidays as he sent his special advisor Patrick Loughran to give the Americans a briefing on the forthcoming Labour Conference. Acting Political Minister, Counsellor (PolMinCouns) Robin Quinville reported on the meeting in a cable dated 1^st September and headed “confidential/NOFORN”, meaning no access to foreigners.

Loughran set out in great detail everything that would happen at  conference due on the 27^th September, including  how Labour’s “core campaign message and its three major themes” would be launched and in the process laying out in full detail the Labour strategy for the election campaign itself. This he summarised as: “Labour invests, Conservatives cut”. To make it clear he said: “The key electoral message is all about the economy.”

He complained that, “Labour does not have the money to compete aggressively in a close election, including to hire the necessary staff and it does not have the energy to attract the necessary volunteers.” He regretted: “This is the first election since 1997 that Labour is fighting on the back foot.”

The expenses scandal was obviously a worry, not for moral reasons but mainly because of the large number of enforced retirements and the new candidates needed to replace them. Times had changed: “Previously the central party was able to vet these candidates thoroughly and even parachute in senior party leaders who had not previously held a seat.” Now due to its weakened position the Labour leadership had lost control.

On Mandelson, clearly still of great interest to the Americans, he said: “He’s loving being in government” and predicted that he would stay in the Cabinet if Labour won the next election. “He’s no longer a toxic asset, he’s more mature…Mandelson did what he needed to do to, modernise the Labour Party with Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. He had however the role of leading the revolution internally in the party and championing the change and that created a lot of enemies within the Labour party who were opposed to change. That dust has now settled.”

Asked about the timing of the election he revealed: “A May election, timed with the next local elections makes sense,” but said “elections just are not in focus yet”.

What is remarkable is not that conversations like this went on (New Labour would have been briefing friendly journalists with some background information anyway) but that these social democrats imagined that crucial and confidential information like the date of the election and their campaign strategy were secrets that would be safe in American hands.

Back in May 2009, in a recurring theme, Prime Minister Brown was in trouble – his Cabinet colleagues were plotting against him.  PolMinCouns Gregory Berry sent a “confidential/NOFORN” report on the 6^th May, detailing discussions that had taken place at the House of Lords with the Deputy leader of the Lords, Brian Davis and Lord Grocott, the special advisor to the leader of the house “with whom Poloffs (political officers) met along with other Labour lords”, entitled: “A resilient Gordon Brown is down but not out” and which begins rather excitedly: “Westminster seethed with rumours over the May bank holiday weekend…”. Unfortunately the report doesn’t quite live up to its billing, although it did set out a detailed and accurate briefing on the threats to Brown’s leadership, the likely outcomes and broadly dismissing the chance of any change.

The lords admitted that Labour would be in difficulties in the forthcoming local and European elections but shared with the Poloffs their hopes for a Labour victory. Lord Charles Falconer, described as a “leading Labour advisor to former PM Tony Blair”, accepted that after the 2010 election large cuts to public expenditure were coming but set out his hopes that “voters can be convinced those cuts should be made by a progressive, left of center government, rather than by a pro-business, Tory government”.   

The lords were asked their views about the British National Party, then seen as a threat. Falconer disagreed with the view that disaffected Labour voters would defect to them, stating that he saw the Conservatives as the likely focus of opposition. This was reported in contrast to the concerns expressed that the BNP would “steal Labour votes” as “leading Labour MP Jon Cruddas told us”, on 1^st May during a detailed briefing on the threat from the BNP and the Greens.

The close embassy interest in Labour Party affairs is always surprising; one unfortunate Poloff had to attend the Labour Party spring conference in Birmingham in 2008. He reported that delegates had complained that this had clashed with Welsh celebrations of St David’s day on the Saturday and with Mother’s Day on the Sunday. The officer commented wryly:  “This put many prospective attendees in the position of choosing between the Labour Party and their Mums – judging by the turnout, Mum won in many cases”. Given that the report was headed: “To Secretary of State in Washington, the European political collective priority, Dept. of Commerce WashDC Priority”, it is hard to imagine how this was received at the other end. But it must have been considered important as the cable was classified “Confidential/NOFORN”, by Ambassador Tuttle himself.

Apart from reporting Brown’s speech and talking to delegates to evaluate its reception, the political officer also attended the workshop on “reaching out to the Muslim voter”, complaining that, “Ten people including the Poloff showed up an event aimed at improving outreach to Muslim communities (embassy comment – given Labour’s loss of Muslim support following the Iraq war, the low turnout by party activists at this event was inexplicable. End comment).”

This thoroughness is also present in June of that year when the same official sent a most detailed assessment of the disastrous European elections: “Labour loses election in Wales for first time in 91 years – end of an era?” What follows is an intelligent and fairly rapid analysis of Labour’s position in its old stronghold and the effect this would have on the next general election, although it is fair to say it did lack the kind of class analysis we would have chosen to give it. In the course of researching this he spoke to Daran Hill, who he describes as “a political consultant with centrist leanings”, Graham Benfield “the chief executive officer of an umbrella organisation funnelling Welsh government funds to 30,000 voluntary associations” and “MP Hywel Francis, chair of the Welsh affairs committee”.

Berry’s interest in Welsh affairs didn’t stop there; he reported on Carwyn Jones’ victory as Labour leader in December 2009 and his resulting appointment as First Minister in the Welsh Assembly. The balance of power, Jones’ biography and those of his unsuccessful rivals are there in full detail. Something clearly irritated his superior who added a sour paragraph to the end of the cable: “The Welsh Assembly has no power over foreign affairs, so Jones’ views will not have a great impact on UK policy. He opposed Britain’s participation in the Iraq war and has criticised UK Labour’s handling of the Afghanistan war. His greatest influence on foreign policy will be through further devolution which could shake up Westminster policy-making. That, however, is far off.” That didn’t stop Ambassador Louis B Susman, who had also signed the cable and may well have authored the paragraph, from attending a large lunch held in his honour in Wales on the 9^th March 2011, and where he posed for photos with Carwyn Jones the first minister.

Scotland also makes a number of appearances, notably when Labour lost Glasgow East to the SNP in July 2008 because it “fuelled speculation that Brown could face a leadership challenge this fall”.  Headed: “A political body blow to Gordon Brown as Labour loses Scottish by-election”, this went beyond the usual “confidential/NOFORN”, with a “Sensitive” classification added by Political Counsellor Rick Mills.

This was probably justified because the main source for the report was “Nick Brown MP, a close advisor to Brown and his Deputy Labour Whip in the Commons”, and close enough to the US Embassy that he “told Poloff the morning after the vote” that “there are no quirks we can use to explain this defeat away”. He accepted that the party has to see the vote as “a referendum on Labour – that we lost”.

Nick Brown went on to detail the likely threats to Brown’s premiership, including a letter going the rounds of the back benches but that he was confident the PM and his allies would be able to “slap down” the effort “if it got off the ground at all”. He then set out Brown’s strategy to deal with these challenges; to “hunker down” over the summer holidays and return with new policies in the autumn.

The Political Officer saw both the SNP and the Tories as victors and even took the time to speak to “Michael Fabricant, a Tory MP” who gave him the priceless information: “The third place finish is important to the Tories because it indicates that Cameron’s appeal and message is making inroads even in traditionally Tory-hostile Scotland.”

In all these cables the role of the political officer is central. Unlike our diplomatic service, which still cherishes its gentlemanly amateurs, hierarchy and class divisions, the Americans are organised with business-like efficiency and professionalism. Candidates for the “Foreign Service Officer (FSO) test”, first register for one of the five “cones” or career tracks; Consular, Economic, Management, Public Diplomacy or Political. In a system where ambassadors are often political appointees without experience, these professionals are crucial advisors and managers. Once chosen, the track is generally for life and of these, political officers clearly regard themselves as an elite.

The careers advice for prospective FSO’s describes the Poloff’s role as follows: “A political officer makes and maintains contacts in the national and local government and keeps in close touch with political parties, think tanks, non-governmental organisations, activists and journalists”. While some of the cables reveal a lazy re-writing of open access press reports, others are well researched assessments, based on confidential briefings from those who should know better.

Part journalist, part talent scout and spy: “Political officers will use the insight gained from local contacts and experiences to report on a variety of issues that may be of interest to Washington. Good political officers do not just report on what they see. Their job is to analyse, advise and influence…They are patient knowing that the results of their work may not be evident for years.” 

In the second part of this article we will examine just how this patience works out in practice and how the influence of the US Embassy extends from the top of the British political establishment down to activists in our local communities.

 

Revolutionary Democracy

Revolutionary Democracy Vol XVII No 2, September 2011.

£4 inc postage from NCP Lit PO Box 73 London SW11 2PQ.

By Ray Jones

Its been a long break but Revolutionary Democracy is back with its usual broad range of articles from India and around the world.

Near the beginning there is an in depth study of the Maruti Suzuki strike from the Workers' Unity Trade Union which sees it as opening up the possibility of a working class offensive against the anti-working class regime of capital.

Peoples' China gets several mentions including a document of a reception of a delegation from the Chinese Communist Party in Moscow in 1949 and details of China's foreign investment from the Information Office of the State Council of China.

Articles on Denmark's election results and the Breivik massacre in Norway give an insight into the politics of northern Europe.

The issue ends with culture in the form of poetry by the Cesar Vallejo from Peru.

Winner take all?

 Review

by Daphne Liddle

 

Winner Take All – China’s race for resources and what it means for us: By Dambisa Moyo Allen Lane; hardback £20 (£12 from Amazon) 272pp including index and notes. ISBN 978-1-846-14503-2

Dambisa Moyo is a young African economist, born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia. She has studied classical capitalist economics at Oxford and Harvard and worked for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs. But she sees the world of international capitalism very much through the eyes of an African and understands the impact of capitalism on Africa and what we call the Third World.

 She has already written a few books, including Dead Aid – a parody of Live Aid, explaining how western aid to African countries is destructive to those countries’ attempts to achieve economic independence and keeps them poor and dependent.

 Her book Winner Takes All is aimed at western capitalists as a warning that our planet’s resources are limited but the demands on them are steadily rising as living standards in places like China and Brazil rise, and that China is the only world player that is acting in a planned and organised way to secure for itself the supplies it is going to need in the future.

 But it is a very useful book for those comrades who are struggling to work out whether modern China’s relations with global capitalism are a good thing or a bad thing. Has China sold out to the West? Or is China freeing the Third World from the shackles of imperialism and perpetual poverty and allowing it to progress and develop; for living standards in the poorest places on earth to rise – and in the process to develop a potentially powerful proletariat?

 Moyo begins with a summary of the basic resources that are going to be in serious short supply soon: land, water, oil, food and minerals.

 She also discusses the growing world population, at seven billion now and set to rise another two billion within a generation. World demographers expect that rise to level off later this century as education living standards rise throughout the world and women chose to have fewer babies. But in the meantime the increasing demand on resources comes not only from the increasing numbers but from the rising living standards and expectations of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America who justifiably want the same living standards that we have.

 Then Moyo explains how China behaves differently to other major economic powers; how is can plan strategically because capitalism in China is tightly controlled by the state. The Chinese state has a major stake in all the major capitalist enterprises and its five-year plans coordinate the whole country’s economic activities, giving it an ability to plan for the future that western governments can only dream of.

Chinese companies do not compete with each other but work together with the support of the state. Western capitalists howl that this is unfair practice.

 This is what has enabled China’s rapid and sustained growth while the western economies have been rocked by banking collapses and recession.

 She writes: “China is now the main trading partner of many of the most influential economies in both the developed and developing world. In just a few short decades it has become the most sought-after source of capital infusions. Indeed, rich countries and poor alike do not wait for China to come calling; they actively court and seek out Chinese investments.

 “China now funds foreign governments (providing loans and buying their bonds), underwrites schools and hospitals, and pays for infrastructure projects such as roads and railways (particularly across the poorest parts of the world) catering to the needs of the host nations and making China an altogether more attractive investor than international bodies such as the World Bank, which often tie loans to harsh policy restrictions.”

 Moyo points out that in international markets China does not play by the capitalist rules. It pays above market prices for resources that it knows will later be in short supply in order to establish friendly relations with developing countries that are rich in resources but poor in terms of living standards.

 Western powers have accused China of developing a new colonialism – ignoring their own record on this. But China’s deals with Third World countries do not come with strings. They allow these countries to develop economically and wherever they invest living standards begin to rise; education and health improve giving these countries more, not less, control over their own destiny.

 Moyo also deals with accusations that China is shipping in its own workforce to other countries. She says that allegations that China is using its own prison population as slave labour in Africa have no evidence to back them up. Chinese companies do bring in skilled and technical workers but in virtually every project more local labour is used than imported Chinese labour – creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.

 Her final chapters are a call to western governments to come to their senses, get together and start planning for the control and conservation of resources in the same way that China is doing. If not, she foresees serious conflict in the future over resources. She berates western capitalism for being unable to see or plan beyond the short-term.

 Throughout the book she writes very clearly and explains economic terms like monopsony (the mirror image on monopoly, where there are many suppliers but only one buyer) and uses plenty of well-sourced statistics.

 She assumes all governments, including those in the West, are seeking to improve the general fortunes of their populations. But she does not see that the very nature of capitalism – competitive and driven by the need to maximise profit at every turn – makes the long-term strategic planning that she calls for impossible.

 Some readers will be relieved to learn that there is at least one rising economic power that is taking seriously the future of this planet and its resources and is, because of its political structure, capable of doing something about it.

The Labour Right on the offensive

                

                                       By Neil Harris

THE GROWING concerns of the trade union movement about “Progress”, the wealthy Blairite faction operating inside the Labour Party, are well founded but this is not the only threat to working class representation in Parliament. At the 17^th May 2011 National Executive Committee meeting, it was agreed to accept funding from the Lionel Cooke Memorial Fund , “ to train and support up to 75 people interested in standing as parliamentary candidates”. Not surprisingly, concern was expressed when it was indicated that this would be open to non-party members.

Had trade unionists on the NEC been aware of the background and ideology behind the trust, the concerns would have been greater. The fund was established in 1956, following the death of Lionel Cooke, a prosperous Brighton businessman and an admirer and ally of Hugh Gaitskell the right wing Labour leader.

Gaitskell had always been an enemy of the working class, establishing the “XYZ club” just before the Second World War and of which he was to remain the secretary until his death. The purpose of the “club” was to offer wealthy City businessmen the chance to wine and dine with Gaitskell and others on the Labour right and as a result get an opportunity to “explain” to them the concerns of the City.

In reality this was a secret conduit funnelling money and support to Gaitskell and his cronies, outside Labour Party democracy.  Cooke’s fund is firmly in this tradition, over the years it has gone out of its way to avoid publicity where most trust funds try to encourage applications from as wide a field as possible.

From 1956 until 1981 the trustees were all drawn from the traditional Labour right and the proceeds went to their pet projects.  In 1978 for example, the money was divided between summer school scholarships for their protégés, Socialist Commentary (the house journal of the pro-European, Atlanticist right) and the Campaign for a Labour Victory, a Cold War organisation aimed at fighting communists and trotskyites in the labour and trade union movement.

In 1981 it all changed when directors Lord Sainsbury (senior), Bill Rodgers, and David Owen defected to the breakaway Social Democratic Party (SDP), although they remained on the board of the trust. From that point on the money went to the SDP and the right wing Social Market Foundation, until 1996 and 1997 when the fund paid out £15,000 each year to Tony Blair’s personal office in the run up to the election.

In the 1990’s Peter Mandelson had been tramping up and down the length and breadth of the country, attending countless selection meetings to ensure that candidates of the left were not chosen. Today, the parliamentary Labour party reflects his hard work.

Now that the fund has reverted to the Labour right (with directors like Margaret Jay, daughter of former premier James Callaghan), they are actively using it in the same way; to select and promote a new generation of candidates acceptable to Labour’s right wing and  ready to be parachuted into the constituencies in good time for the next election.

While the “Future Candidates Programme”, with its snappy slogan “Champions to win”, aims “to build and support a diverse pool of talented individuals from which local Labour Party members can select their candidates for the next general election”, it should be no surprise that there has been virtually no open publicity amongst the trade union and co-operative movement, except perhaps by word of mouth amongst the right wing.

            Among the listed requirements are that candidates should “have campaigning experience with the Labour Party although this is preferable rather than essential”, but nowhere is there any mention of union membership or experience. To make sure that candidates get the point, the information pack sets it out: “To apply for the Future Candidates Programme you do not need to be a Labour Party member but should be willing to join should you be selected to take part”.

For the completely clueless there is a strong hint in the guidelines for candidates: “You may wish to visit the following web pages for further information about the Labour Party – What is the Labour Party/ History of the Labour Party”.

The first round was completed in July 2011, when 125 were chosen from over 1000 applications and it was considered so successful that a second application process was started and runs until 12^th October 2012. There is now a very real danger that selection onto the programme will become a requirement for selection as a candidate for election both to Parliament and local councils. On the other hand, participation on the programme may also give activists a better idea of the real politics (or lack of politics) of potential candidates.

A history of Burston -- a history of struggle

By Robert Laurie

THIS WEEKEND saw the Norfolk village of Burston celebrate the establishment of the famous Strike School on the village green. In 1914 two popular teachers, the husband and wife team of Tom and Kitty Higdon, were dismissed from their posts at Burston on trumped up charges of assaulting a pupil and “discourtesy to the Managers”. They did not go quietly.

On the day of their departure (1^st April) the vast majority of their pupils (66 out of 72) refused to attend school in protest and held a lively procession around the village lanes. What the local Rector airily dismissed as an “April Fool’s day joke” was no flash in the pan. Instead it led to most of the pupils leaving the County Council run school permanently and the establishment of the Burston Strike School, which was to endure for the next quarter of a century.

 At first the two teachers taught their pupils on the village green, moving into a disused carpenter’s shop as winter approached. Repeated fines for non attendance at the official school were levied on the parents, who were mostly farm labourers. These punishments, which were of doubtful legality as the parents were actually sending children to a school of their choice, proved no deterrence. Attempts by farmers to sack and evict their rebellious workers were halted by wartime labour shortages.

 Press publicity brought nationwide support from trade unionists, first to pay the fines and later to build a new school on the village green,  which was opened on the 13^th May 1917. 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. Contributions came from many branches of the Independent Labour Party, the National Union of Railwaymen and particularly the coal mining unions, who contributed a quarter of the cost.

The school continued throughout the twenties and thirties. In 1920 the Rector who had been the main opponents of the Higdons left and was replaced by a more agreeable clergyman. Relations with the county school improved after his arrival. By 1930 both schools had equal numbers and had friendly contests on sports days. In addition to local pupils, two members of the Soviet Trade Delegation in London sent their children to be educated at Burston. During the 1926 General Strike children of Nottinghamshire miners were educated and boarded free of charge. The school finally closed in 1939, when it had only 11 pupils, after the death of Tom Higdon. His widow, then aged 75, was unable to continue.  The school survives today as a museum.

The real reason for the sacking of the Higdons was not the false allegations of assault. Instead it was their work on behalf of the agricultural labourers’ trade union that incurred the wrath of the farmers and gentry who ruled the roost on the parish and county councils.

By the early 20^th century Norfolk had been for long an almost exclusively agricultural county. In the middle ages the county had a large and prosperous textile industry which did not survive the industrial revolution. The county’s flat landscape ruled out water power and the lack of local coal meant a factory-based industry was uncompetitive. The lack of alternative employment meant that agricultural wages in Norfolk were the lowest in England and Wales; only the northernmost part of Scotland was worse. In 1902 the average wage in the county was only 15 shillings and three pence (76 pence or less than £100-a-year today).

 The “Great Depression” of 1873-96 hit agriculture particularly hard. Grain imports from the United States and Canada were especially damaging to an arable area such as Norfolk. Low grain prices benefited livestock and dairy farmers. Farmers in the county, many of whom were teetotal Methodists, made ends meet by selling grain to local and London brewers.

Norfolk was a comparative stronghold of agricultural trade unionism. Joseph Arch founded the Warwickshire Agricultural Labourers’ Union in March 1872, in May of that year a conference of this and other county unions formed the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union with other local unions joining in the coming months. A London Central Aid Committee had been established by London trade unionists in April specifically to assist the agricultural labourers. This did much to encourage the isolated labourers. The next two years saw a great deal of conflict between farmers and the labourers until the labourers were defeated, setting back trade unionism in the fields for decades.

 At first the mere existence of trade unions persuaded some farmers to increase wages. Highly localised strikes, particularly at harvest time brought wage increases. Older forms of protest such as rick burning and letting sheep into the cornfields of stubborn farmers took place. Needless to say the farmers fought back. In addition to reducing “slack period” wages after the harvest, troublesome workers could be sacked. Given that farm labourers lived in tied cottages, dismissal equalled homelessness and being forced to leave their village.

Needless to say the law was on the side of the bosses. The Master and Servant Act, which made breaches of contract by employees a criminal offence, while breaches by the employer were merely a civil matter, was much employed to prosecute strikers. Repeal of this Act, was a major goal of the NALU. In one well publicised case an old woman had her parish relief withdrawn for the crime of having a son in the union. The farmers themselves, especially the large owner occupiers formed county-wide Farmers’ Defence Associations binding farmers not to employ trade unionists or concede wage rises. By a combination of lock-outs, mechanisation and selective pay rises for non-unionists in 1874 the farmers were able to claim victory.

 In one respect the NALU shot itself in the foot: like many contemporary unions it supported emigration schemes on the grounds that this would raise wages for the remaining workers. This may well have benefited the departing workers who could set up as farmers in Canada or New Zealand but removing trade unionists from the scene does not help building class solidarity. Internal squabbles did not enhance the appeal of the union to the demoralised labourers. Although the NALU did not finally give up the ghost until 1896 membership fell from 86,000 members in 1874 to 20,000 in 1880. 

                One remaining stronghold was Norfolk. In 1885 Joseph Arch was elected as MP for the county’s North-West seat, the first agricultural labourer to do so. Elected on the “Liberal and labouring class interest” he was defeated the next year by only 20 votes by the Tory son of a local landlord. He was returned at the 1892 election, retaining it in 1895 and retired to hand over to another Radical in 1900. In the 1900 Khaki election, which was won by the Tories, the six rural Norfolk seats returned five Radical MPs and only one Tory.

The term “Radical” was perhaps a misnomer for Arch. Not only did he oppose land nationalisation he was proud of being the MP of the Prince of Wales, whose Sandringham estates were in his constituency. His 1898 autobiography even had a preface by the Countess of Warwick, mistress to the Prince. After the defeats of 1874 farm workers’ hopes focused on extending the franchise. In 1877 the NALU established a Norfolk County Franchise Association which not only played a part in winning the vote but also strengthened the labourers’ links with the Liberal Party.

 Once the vote was won, the rural working class vote had to be wooed. The Liberal Party had to come up with policies that appealed to both farmers and their employees. They found one in Joseph Chamberlain’s “Three Acres and a Cow” policy that would allow local authorities to purchase land to provide cheap allotments for farm labourers.

This helped gain the 1885 Liberal victory at little cost: any allotments would be purchased from landowners. Keeping both employers and employed happy was a difficult balancing act. Farmers were staunch Liberals as well and indeed were so long before their workers gained the vote. Nonconformist farmers disliked paying tithes to support the Anglican Church. Tenant farmers often had conflicts with their landlords over rents and they also could be evicted from their farms if they did not vote the right way.

Shortly after the 1906 Liberal landslide The Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers’ and Small Holders’ Union was formed. While the founding meeting was attended by working men, a Liberal MP was elected treasurer. It might seem odd for a bourgeois political party to actually support the formation of a trade union but they were anxious to consolidate their working class support and worried about the losing it to Labour, which had gained 29 MPs.

A long unsuccessful strike involving about 80 farm labourers demonstrated that the Liberals wound up the strike on the grounds that strike funds were running low, rather than broaden it, as the Norwich branch of the Independent Labour Party argued would bring victory. Such a move would have alienated other Liberal voting and funding farmers. At the annual general meeting after the strike the Liberal leadership was replaced by ILP supporters. This comparatively small dispute was one of many where workers became disillusioned by the Liberal Party.

Labour and agricultural trade unionism did not have an easy ride in the countryside after World War One. Of the 203 rural Parliamentary Constituencies only 45 had a District Labour party in 1921. In a by-election at Ludlow in Shropshire caused by the incumbent being promoted to the House of Lords, local activists, against the wishes of party HQ contested the election. Despite an energetic campaign Labour not only lost their deposit, but were pelted with dung by farm labourers who either had never heard of Labour or thought they would nationalise women.

In Norfolk a NALU stalwart, George Edwards, was twice elected for Norfolk South (which included Burston) in 1920 and 1923, but his tenuous hold on the seat demonstrates how weak rural Labour was. In Norfolk North the Noel Buxton who was the Liberal MP 1910-18 regained it in 1922 in the Labour interest. Even those few rural seats held by Labour tended to have a mining population.

“Remember the Ballot is Secret” was a necessary warning on Labour Party cards until the 1930s. Urban Labour supporters canvassing in the countryside were shocked to discover villages listening to loudspeaker messages from behind their curtains rather than risk being seen attending a Labour meeting. Hiring halls, which were owned by farmers, was out of the question. On election day polling stations were often decorated with the Union Flag, the same symbol used by the Tories. When in 1934 the TUC sought to commemorate the centenary of the farmer labourers of the Dorset village of Tolpuddle, who were transported to Australia to organising a trade union, they found it impossible to find any local unionised firms with whom to provide the transport and catering.

It was not until the 1945 landslide did Labour make any inroads into the countryside. Today mechanisation of agriculture has greatly reduced the number of farm workers and rows of cottages have been converted into expensive houses for commuters or second homes.  

US planned genocide in Korea

                                  By Neil Harris

THE KOREAN War was at its fiercest in 1951, following the “third phase offensive”, which began on New Year’s Eve 1950. The Korean People’s Army, aided by Chinese volunteers, had driven the Americans back across the 38^th parallel, although the war was not to reach stalemate for another two years. The Americans were panicking and as General Macarthur admitted in his memoirs, planned to use nuclear weapons in the hope that the radioactive fallout would hinder the North Korean war effort. A recent find in FBI archives has escaped the shredder and made it to the internet, shedding a new and sinister light on this episode.

The happy accident of FBI involvement saved the document (100-HQ-93216, serial 461), which would probably have disappeared if the lead agencies; the US Army and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had the decision over whether to declassify.

The FBI had come to have a role in all this after it was given the job of vetting state employees in nuclear weapons development. J Edgar Hoover, building up his anti-communist FBI empire, developed this into a liaison role between agencies and soon the FBI had an office in every atomic facility and an element of control over the development process.

            McCarthyism was in full swing; state employees were feeling the pressure from politicians and anti-communist witch-hunters, and all the time the FBI was watching and listening.  The United States Government office memorandum is dated 20^th April 1951 and reflects this. Both are as forgotten now as the cause of the memo: a V P Keay wrote to a Mr A H Belmont, about Representative Albert Gore (Democrat) and a rabble-rousing speech he had made in the US Congress. This demanded the creation of “a belt containing radioactive material being laid down across Korea which would dehumanise the area” and which seems to echo Macarthur’s plan to use atomic bombs to form dead zones and prevent supplies and reinforcements getting to the front.

Representative Gore was pushing this in the press and may have been doing so on behalf of the military. In the memo, it looks as though he had confronted a Dr Paul McDaniel of the AEC and when he wasn’t happy with the answer he got, brought it up with an “Agent Bates” from the FBI’s “liaison section”.

McDaniel said that a commission set up in 1948 to “examine the possibilities of using radiological warfare in such a way”, had submitted its final report on the 11^th  April 1951 and indicated  that while “it was possible for an area to be completely ‘dehumanised’ by using radiological agents, ‘it was not practicable’.”

A list of reasons were given: the AEC didn’t have “sufficient waste materials” and currently didn’t “have provision for producing such agents”, nor did it have the ability to ship them and anyway the AEC had no intention of “greatly curtailing the present production of plutonium” in order to create them. In any case “research would have to be done to develop a radiological agent of sufficient strength to last long enough”. In short, they were quite busy enough building hydrogen bombs and the FBI took the hint.

McDaniel was, in any event sceptical: “He pointed out that as a practical matter any zone that could be ‘dehumanised’ would be of no use to our forces for advancing and could be flown over or gone around by the enemy”. The writers of the report were more hopeful, indicating: “Such a possibility as the use of radiological agents should not be completely abandoned but should be kept in mind for future discussions,” which of course it was, because in the era of Ronald Reagan, the Americans developed the neutron bomb, which was a refinement on these rather crude ideas, in that it was designed to kill people but leave property unscathed.

And so from April through to May, the document passed from office to office, each time acquiring a new stamp, date and initials. Every so often a bureaucrat would add an underlining here or a scribbled emphasis there. Nowhere did anyone record any objection or see anything wrong in what was proposed. One even added the helpful suggestion, written in by hand – “Biological warfare” – and presumably the FBI took this up with other agencies, who were to be more careful with 60-year-old documents.

The half-life of plutonium is about 24,000 years, which means it would have been over 100,000 years before there would be any appreciable reduction in the amount of radio-activity, although there would still be a soup of various decaying radio-active elements long into the future. In any event plutonium is a highly poisonous chemical in its own right. The Americans, of course, would have just left the Koreans to sort it all out as they did in Vietnam with Agent Orange.

A "routine re-posting in the Republic of Korea"

  

                                        By Neil Harris

AT THE BEGINNING of June, CBS news agancy reported that Brigadier-General Neil H Tolley, had been replaced as commander of Special Operations Command, Korea (SOCKOR).  Tolley, who took up his post in October 2010, had, according to an official spokesman for US Forces Korea, been moved as a result of a routine re-posting, at the end of his normal term.

Tolley was not simply some minor figure; as commander of SOCKOR he had command of US Special Forces, the UN Command Special operations component in Korea and had the role of deputy commanding general of the Combined Unconventional Warfare Task Force, based at Yongsan Army Garrison. His job title included directing the employment of US Special Forces, exercising operational control, targeting, plans and training. In reality this meant that he had control of all Special Forces in the theatre of war, including south Korea’s, which are subordinate to American control.

At the end of May Tolley made the mistake of attending the Special Forces Industry conference in Florida, a four-day junket where private suppliers and contractors get a chance to network with the military under the guise of an academic conference. Unfortunately for Tolley, when he agreed to partake with other commanders in a panel discussion at the afternoon session on the 22^nd May, he may not have realised that his remarks would be noted down by reporters present as accredited observers. The session had been designed “to provide attendees with awareness of key acquisition requirements, operations and technology issues in the context of SOF’s current theatre missions”.

One American freelance defence reporter, David Axe, reporting for The Diplomat and his own blog, took a fairly detailed note of the General’s remarks and posted his article on the 28^th May. Within a day he had been forced to take down the article after being subjected to a barrage of denials and accusations from the US Military.

Axe’s article quoted the General as boasting: “US special forces have been parachuting into North Korea to spy on Pyongyang’s military facilities”. He continued: “We don’t know how many we don’t know about…the entire infrastructure is hidden from our satellites”.

The General set out how the troops parachuted in “with minimal supplies in order to observe the secret facilities without being detected themselves. They use a lightweight sensor able to characterise what’s in a facility from a standoff distance. They benefit from a high frequency radio whose signal cannot be tracked back to its origins….and a wireless power transmission system”, which means the troops would not need to carry heavy batteries.

Little did Axe realise the pressure that he would be put under – but as a result of the publicity and a refusal by the conference organisers to provide a transcript when he requested it, a number of other journalists present came forward with their own notes. One set out the Generals exact words as follows: “Concealment of their entire military infrastructure is hidden from satellites and other aerial reconnaissance and that is an issue for us, so our ISR platforms are not as effective as we need them to be. So we put humans in there, without going into too much detail of our war plans, we send ROK (Republic of Korea) soldiers, Koreans, to the North and US soldiers, to do the old special reconnaissance missions. We used to do it in the 80’s in Europe. It’s roughly the same kind of thing.”

 An even more unlikely source, Steve Herman of the Voice of America, contacted Axe to confirm that he had not misquoted the Generals observations and as a result, a Lieutenant Colonel Gregory from US Forces Korea, eventually admitted to Axe that the General had made the remarks as reported. A month later and the Brigadier-General is awaiting his new posting.

Kick out racism in sport!

By Daphne Liddle

THE FIGHT against racism in sport has come a long way since the launch of the “Let’s kick racism out of football” campaign in 1993 and there have been many advances and achievements since then. But it would be a serious mistake to imagine that the problem is solved and that racism in sport has been defeated.

 This was the message of a symposium organised in London on 4th July by lawyer and poet Dave Neita and independent development consultant Michelle Moore. It brought together Professor Ben Carrington, an internationally respected authority on the intersections of race, gender, class and nation within sport and a panel of experienced experts in the field to debate the issue: “Does sport promote or challenge racism?” in front of a large audience of people, most with experience and concern about sport and combating racism.

 The panel included Paul Elliott CBE, a black footballer who made his professional debut at Charlton Athletic Football Club in 1980 and went on to play for Luton and Aston Villa and Celtic, where he won the Scottish Footballer of the Year award in 1989. Later he moved to Chelsea where he became the club’s first black captain. Paul is a trustee for Kick It Out and has been awarded an MBE and then a CBE for services to equality and diversity in the game.

 Also on the panel was Tasha Danvers, a British Olympic bronze medallist in the 400 metres hurdles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She is now engaged in coaching and is a 2012 Olympic Games ambassador.

 Keme Nzerem is an award-winning journalist employed by Channel Four News as a news anchor and sports reporter. He reported on the election of Barack Obama in 2008. He also reported from the Gulf Coast when Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and visited Guantanamo Bay to investigate the legal rights of the detainees.

 Michelle Moore has held a range of academic, vocational, pastoral and advisory posts and specialises in the areas of primary and secondary education, developing a schools engagement strategy for the Black Cultural Archives. She has also worked for Charlton Athletic Football Club and developed community sports education programmes.

 Dave Neita is known as the People’s Lawyer and is also a poet. He has specialised in representing excluded individuals and marginalised groups, including thousands of South African asbestos miners seeking compensation.

 Paul Mortimer began his football career with Farnborough Town in 1986 and joined Charlton Athletic the following year. He later played for Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Bristol City. Since then he has worked as a coach at Arsenal, Brentford and Wimbledon. He has now returned to Charlton Athletic where he coaches the club’s women’s team and is an ambassador for Show Racism the Red Card.

 Also on the panel was Bart Oojen, policy officer in the Sport Unit for the European Commission since 2009 and has a long record of fighting violence, discrimination and intolerance as well as supporting social inclusion, equal opportunities and dual careers.

 David Neita opened the proceedings by introducing the panel and the topic. He said we cannot assume the battle against racism in sport has been won – “we should take racism as seriously as this Government takes terrorism”.

 Ben Carrington began his key-note address posing the question: “Does sport promote or challenge racism?” and went on to say that although we have come a very long way between 1912 and 2012 sport does not automatically deliver positive outcomes.

 He cited the raised fist Black Power salute given by John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics to draw attention to inequality and poverty in Black communities in the United States. The gesture certainly raised the issue of racism faced by Black people in sport and in general but it cost Carlos and Smith dearly in the short term as their sporting careers were halted for some years. But in the long term their names are now in the history books.

 Carrington also refuted the idea, now being promoted, that the descendants of black slaves are some sort of sporting super race because of the adversity in simply surviving faced by their ancestors. “This is again defining black people by their physicality: ‘They are naturally good at sport’, implying they are not so hot at mental ability. And does it mean that athletes like Paula Radcliffe are really black?”

 “There’s a lot of misinformation and mistaken assumptions about racism and sport going round,” he said, “At the moment there’s a conflict between nationalism and cosmopolitanism arising from the recent UEFA Cup finals. The media in Britain were promoting the idea that Britain is way ahead of some other European countries – Poland and Ukraine for example – in combating racism and that we should be teaching the rest of the world.

 “But we’ve still got serious problems in our own backyard.”

 And he cited the incident in October last year, when Liverpool were playing at home to Manchester United, Liverpool player Luis Suárez was accused of racially abusing Patrice Evra and the Football Association opened up an investigation into the incident. According to Evra's testimony, Suárez said in Spanish that he had earlier kicked Evra "because you are black", said "I don't speak to blacks" and used the word "negro" five times in total as they argued. Suárez had claimed that his use of the word “negro” to address Evra was conciliatory and friendly, but the FA rejected this claim as being "unsustainable and simply incredible given that the players were engaged in an acrimonious argument”.

 On 16th November the FA announced it would charge Suárez with "abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour contrary to FA rules", including "a reference to the ethnic origin and/or colour and/or race of Patrice Evra."

 Liverpool FC released a statement announcing Suárez would plead innocent, adding that they would "remain fully supportive" of him. On 20th December, the FA concluded a seven-day hearing, handing Suárez an eight-match ban and a £40,000 fine for racially abusing Evra.

 More disturbing than Suárez's remarks was the statement put out by Liverpool FC, which claimed the club was "very surprised and disappointed" at the ban and cited Suárez's mixed race family background, as well as his involvement with multicultural projects.

 Some Liverpool players displayed their support for Suárez, wearing T-shirts with his name. But the club opted not to appeal against the ban.

 On 11th February 2012 Liverpool played Manchester United at Old Trafford, which was Suárez' and Evra's first meeting since Suárez's ban. During the traditional pre-game handshakes, Suárez avoided shaking Evra's hand, leading to Evra grabbing Suárez's arm. Suárez ignored Evra and continued down the line causing Evra to throw his arms up in protest and Rio Ferdinand, whose brother Anton was the victim of a separate racial abuse incident with Chelsea captain John Terry, to avoid shaking Suárez's hand.

 Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish continued to defend Suárez's provocative behaviour.

 This led to Suárez and Dalglish facing fierce press condemnation. In a statement released by Liverpool Managing Director Ian Ayre, Liverpool also condemned Suárez, stating that Suárez had misled the club by claiming before the game that he would shake Evra's hand. The next day, Liverpool's club owners, and shirt sponsor, Standard Chartered, forced both Suárez and Dalglish to issue formal apologies for their conduct.

  Ben Carrington also mentioned the incident between John Terry and Anton Ferdinand, which is currently before the courts. And he cited the remarks by FIFA boss Sepp Blatter that the problem of racism in sport had been “overstated” and that it could be resolved simply with a friendly handshake at the end of a match.

 This remark provoked outrage, including from David Beckham who declared Blatter’s attitude as “unacceptable” – showing that the consensus position on racism in football in Britain and other western European countries has moved a long way since the 1970s and 80s, when it was common for racists to boo black players, make monkey noises and throw bananas on to the pitch. Now most top west European clubs have a high proportion of black players. But there are still very few black managers or football club board members.

 But also now racism is taking different, less overt forms. The Daily Mail is talking about “plastic British athletes”, implying that young athletes are migrating from poorer countries to gain British citizenship in order to have a chance of competing in the Olympics. The racism in this sort of article is disguised but the Mail made no complaint a couple of decades ago when Zola Budd’s application for British citizenship was fast forwarded so that the white South African runner could side-step the sporting boycott of Apartheid South Africa.

 Following Ben Carrington’s speech Keme Nzerem questioned other members of the panel about their experiences.

 Paul Elliot told the meeting of his early experiences in sport while a teenager. Trainers had assumed he would not enjoy swimming simply because he was black and that he would also feel the cold more than white players. When he first joined Charlton Athletic, a club at the forefront of combating racism in football, another player had joked about him eating “coonflakes”.

 “As a player, growing up was very difficult, we were told not to be too sensitive, to rise above it all and grin and bear it. So I kept quiet in a way that I would not do now.”

 But he also spoke of the power of football to engage with the general population and change attitudes as almost nothing else can – with giant signs saying: “Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football” the public mood has changed and overt racism is no longer acceptable. Now footballers can stand up and speak up and say: “I am not prepared to put up with this,” and walk off the pitch if necessary and be backed up by their white colleagues.

 “Nowadays racists are changing their approach; they claim to have black relatives or friends and this means they couldn’t possibly be racist,” he said.

 He also warned: “There is still a lot of racism out there in the youth teams and the amateur sports. We must fight it at that level.”

 Paul Mortimer also spoke of people who claim not to be racists – who will say one thing to your face but something very different behind your back.

 He related how he had tried to explain racism to his young son. “Then one day I joined a golf club, as many professional footballers do, and took him with me on my first visit. When we walked in it was just like the scene in the westerns where the villain walks into the saloon and suddenly everything goes quiet. My son was puzzled; he asked me: ‘is this because of us?’

 “I told him: ‘Yes. But look at their faces, they’re all looking at the floor, they’re embarrassed by their racism.’ We walked through the room and no one would look at us but my son started laughing because they were scared to look at us. We went straight through and had a game of golf and there was no problem.”

 Mortimer spoke of his work going into schools and educating the police in race awareness.

 Tasha Danvers agreed that racist attitudes now are more difficult to pin down and many racists are in denial they but they are still there. One contributor from the floor gave an example of a recent race where the white girl who had come second was immediately surrounded by press and cameras congratulating her, while the black girl who had won the race was totally ignored. Black athletes are more likely to be passed over while their white colleagues will be given more chances and opportunities. And when they do triumph there is a suggestion that the success comes more easily for them because of their genetic ancestry and they have not had to try so hard.

 The topic of hidden racist attitudes came up in debate many times. “Big Ron” Atkinson was mentioned and his ill-judged remark, describing a player as “what is known in the trade as a lazy nigger” when he thought the microphone had been turned off after an interview. The worst part about it was that the remark implied this description was commonplace behind the scenes “in the trade”.

 And again the topic of Suárez's racist remarks and ban came up and the ripple effect: that the manager had backed the racist behaviour of the player, the club had backed both and the fans had backed the club – involving hundreds in the tacit support of racism.

 It is vitally important to challenge incidents of racism wherever they occur and fines and bans can be an effective deterrent. But in the long run it is most important to engage those who make racist remarks and get across to them the harm it does and how it feels to be on the receiving end.

 Black people do not have to conform to any stereotype to be accepted. Mohammed Ali’s quote: “I do not have to be what you expect me to be,” was mentioned.

 Paul Elliot compared the situation to Fidel Castro still wearing his military uniform decades after the Cuban revolution: “It is because the struggle is not over. The struggle goes on. It is the same here fighting racism. We have come a very long way but there is still a lot more to do. The struggle goes on.”

 It was not mentioned in the meeting but Charlton Athletic is still playing a leading role against racist discrimination. Last year the club appointed Chris Powell, a young black former player as its new manager. And the team hardly dropped a point all season and won promotion as a result with over 100 points. 

Spotlight on the US State Department

By Neil Harris

THE UNITED States State Department and its subsidiary USAID, has a long record of destabilising governments America doesn’t like, with a range of techniques for stealing elections and fermenting demonstrations. Its successes range from toppling Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia through the various “colour” revolutions in the republics of the former Soviet Union. During the last year it has been increasing its propaganda attacks against governments it seeks to overthrow, this time making use of new media and social networking tools. While the technology may be new it has been recycling some familiar cold war methods and in some cases a few rather elderly cold war personnel too.

On 21^st May 2012 tenders were invited for a “full-time, 24/7 service” from “global news coverage service providers”. This looks very like the old news agencies that were used to plant anti-Soviet stories in apparently independent newspapers around the world. This time, however; “on retrieving these packaged programmes, the State Department will distribute this video content to media organisations through an array of traditional and new media platforms”. www.sourcewatch has described these “video news releases” as “designed to be indistinguishable from independently produced news reports that are distributed and promoted to television newsrooms”. The State Department is looking to exploit these clips via “traditional fibre, terrestrial and satellite based as well as file based and internet delivery platforms”.

On 12^th June, more tenders were invited for a contractor to provide “logistical, administrative and financial services to journalists, selected to travel to the US on two-week “TV Co-ops.” Again the intention is to insert pro-US video clips into foreign TV stations with the appearance that these came from non-US sources. The contractor will be using State Department money to pay for the journalists’ free flights and hotel rooms together with all TV production costs thrown in, “to communicate and promote US policies and American values”. All the same, the contractor “shall exercise the utmost discretion, in regard to all matters relating to their duties and functions”.

Meanwhile internet propaganda is being re-organised by Jared Cohen, who was a State Department advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton and now works for Google as “Director of Ideas”.  Cohen worked for Policy Planning at State from 2006-10 and during that time led technology delegations to Iraq, Russia, Mexico, Congo and Syria.

During the June 2009 protests in Iran, a country he knows well from when he lived there, he tried to persuade the founder of Twitter to reschedule routine maintenance of the site to keep the messages coming.  At the start of the Egyptian “revolution”, he was in Egypt holding discussions with leading dissidents.

Condoleezza Rice’s view on his abilities is clear: “He would use his position at policy planning to begin to integrate social media into our diplomacy tool kit. That would pay off handsomely some years later, when Twitter and Facebook became accelerants of democratic change in the Middle East.”

            Now Cohen, founder of Movements.org while at the State Department, has merged his internet activities with those of 89-year-old Robert L Bernstein, former president of Random House and publisher of Sakharov, Havel and Bonner amongst other Soviet and East European dissidents. He formed “Human Rights Watch” in 1978 but fell out with them when they criticised Israel’s appalling record on human rights.

            His new organisation and website, “Advancing Human Rights”, is only directed against America’s enemies, and in particular those in the Middle East. “Cyber-dissident.com”, a Bernstein subsidiary has a strong supporter in Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident and now an Israeli politician. Amongst Bernstein’s other activities is being Emeritus Chair of “Human Rights in China”, which has well-funded offices in New York, Hong Kong and Brussels.

 The new joint organisation will be providing “connections, technical advice and support to dissidents abroad”, as well as publishing a series of e-books.

What this means in practise was spelt out by State Department spokesperson Victoria Nubard, at a 6^th January  press briefing; “I’m not going to get into the specifics here – but I will tell you that we fund a range of programmes and initiatives that empower Iranians to access unfiltered information, to speak freely and to speak safely online. Yearly we spend nearly $70 million a year on these programmes both in Iran and around the world.”

She elaborated: “At the same time, we’re also developing and distributing new technologies – more than 20 of them – to empower activists around the globe to access unlicensed content on the internet and to communicate with each other and to tell their stories. And to date, we’ve funded the training of more than 7,500 activists around the world in these programmes.”

On 14^th March, State Department spokespersons also revealed the extent of their activities in the Middle East: “In 2008 to 2011, State and USAID spent £76 million on internet freedom programming and will spend $25 million in 2012 to provide training and tools to civil society activists in the Middle East and throughout the world”.

They spelt out the nature of assistance: “Tools that have received support from State Department help provide unfettered internet access for hundreds of thousands of individuals in the Middle East. We also support development of mobile security software to provide safer ways for activists in repressive societies to communicate and technology to enable them to post their own content online and protect against cyber-attacks.”

We can get some idea of the likely targets of US attack, from the US Broadcasting Board of Governors who run the US funded Voice of America, as well as Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television in the Middle East. Last summer they put out an invitation for tender for a contractor: “to develop a new model capable of predicting internet usage and growth in 32 countries”.

The aim of this new programme is to provide weekly estimates of how many people are accessing the internet, which platforms they are using and how that is likely to grow. A technique of plotting net traffic and predicting its growth would be a valuable tool in spotting early trends indicating social disorder and upheaval. That would enable the US to help its friends by warning them of growing instability and enable it to exploit the same instability amongst its enemies, before those countries realise there is a problem.

The countries of interest to America, and which it estimates will be subjected to instability that it will need to influence over the next five years are: “Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Georgia, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Sudan, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.” 

With thanks to Sourcewatch and Spinwatch.

Unity, the magazine of Unite Against Fascism

Review

By Caroline Colebrook

THE FIRST edition of Unity, the quarterly magazine of Unite Against Fascism has at last appeared, giving us now three major anti-fascist and anti-racist journals in this country, the other two being the monthly Searchlight and the bi-monthly Hope not Hate.

 Unity is £3 for 32 pages and its first edition, Spring 2012, is focussed on the local elections that happened in May.

 The cover picture depicts Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager who was murdered by racists in 1991 and leads to a story on page four by UAF joint general secretary Weyman Bennett entitled “The murder that exposed racism in the justice system”.

 There are campaigning articles on the elections and the launch of “Griffin must go”, a report of the UAF national conference in London, an article on the history of the UAF and its predecessor, the Anti-Nazi League.

 There is a very good article on Paul Robeson, and articles on combating homophobia, fighting the extreme right wing in Catalonia and on fighting racism in football. There is a contribution from Love Music Hate Racism.

 And there is an introduction by Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers.

 There are plenty of full colour photos, graphics and advertisements for UAF merchandise.

 But none of the articles is very long – around 500 words is the maximum with most at about 300. So all topics are covered rather superficially.

 It is a great magazine for handing out in large numbers to young people who are not yet involved in anti-fascist activity. For anyone who is already involved it will not tell them anything they do not already know.

 In that sense it is complementary to Searchlight which covers issues and give analyses in much greater depth and supplies up to date information and intelligence on the fascist and racist organisations. The two journals are not in competition; they aim at different readerships.

  Unity can be obtained from the UAF national office at PO Box 36871, London WC1X 9X, phone 020 7801 2782 and email: info@uaf.org.uk

Joint statement in solidarity with the Communist Party of Greece

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Message of solidarity with the KKE

 The parties signing this statement believe that the struggle which is being waged by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is of extreme importance to all the peoples of Europe and the world, and for all the Communist Parties. This consistent struggle of the Greek communists against the EU and NATO, and their militant action aimed at making the capitalists, and not the working people, pay for the crisis, play a key role in the process of raising of the consciousness of the peoples of Europe and also worldwide. The bourgeoisie is disturbed because the KKE is not participating in the bourgeois governments, because it does not compromise with governments that, under conditions of capitalist crisis, will only serve to give a respite to the capitalist system so it can save time and maintain its barbarism against the people. The KKE has not been submitted, nor will be, to the interests of the bourgeoisie and that is why they are trying to create difficulties to the KKE in face of the June 17 elections. We are confident that the Greek working people will thwart this plan. Our parties, each in our own country, we promote a movement of solidarity with the struggle of the Greek working people and the KKE. The struggle of the KKE is also our struggle. The struggle of the working people, the self-employed, small and medium farmers and youth in Greece are also the struggle of our peoples, a struggle that, through the social and popular alliance, is not aimed at the salvation and perpetuation of capitalist barbarism, as is done from the reformist positions, but to overthrow the power of capital and building a society without exploitation, for the construction of socialism. 

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 The Parties 

Communist Party of Australia

Communist Initiative of Austria

Belgian Workers Party (PTB)

Brazilian Communist Party (PCB)

Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia

New Communist Party of Britain

 Communist Party in Denmark

Communist Party of Denmark

Communist Party of El Salvador 

Pole of the Communist Renaissance of France (PRCF)

Union of Revolutionary Communists of France (URCF)


Communist Workers Party of Finland


Communist Party of Honduras


Communist Workers Party of Hungary


Popular Left Communists-Communist Party of Italy (CSP-PC)


Popular Socialist Party of Mexico

Communist Party of México

Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP-1930)

Communist Party of the People's of Spain

Communist Party of Turkey

Communist Party of the Russian Federation

Socialist People's Front of Lithuania

Communist Party of Malta

Communist Party of Nepal (ML)

Communist Party of Pakistan

Communist Party of Palestine

Communist Party of Sweden (SKP)

Communist Party of Turkey

Communist Party of  Venezuela 

New Communist Party of Yugoslavia

Pages from the past

THE CHARTIST movement was the first mass movement driven by the working class. It grew following the failure of the 1832 Reform Act to extend the vote beyond those owning property. In 1838 a People's Charter was drawn up for the London Working Men's Association (LWMA). The Charter had six demands: universal male suffrage, elections by secret ballot, abolition of property qualifications for MPs, payment of MPs, equal electoral constituencies and annual parliaments.

            Millions signed Chartist petitions which were repeatedly rejected by Parliament. Chartist leaders were arrested, jailed or transported to Australia and the movement eventually was wound down in 1858. But the demand for reform continued and by 1918 every one of the Chartist demands apart from annual parliaments had been achieved.

Past Pixels was set up in 2009 to make images of working class struggle more widely available to a newer generation and over the years it has carved a niche for itself with a series of greeting cards dedicated to the working class movement

William Cuffay

            A new set of cards of images of leading Chartists, taken from original photographs, engravings and lithographs, has now been produced to commemorate their struggle for social justice.

            Dorothy Thompson, the immensely influential Chartist historian, helped Past Pixels select the images for reproduction. She identified Feargus O’Connor, William Cuffay, James “Bronterre” O’Brien and John Frost as her favourite five Chartists. Sadly she died in early 2011 and this set is published in her memory.

There’s a short commentary about the image of the back of each card and Past Pixel cards can be ordered online at http://www.pastpixels.co.uk or from an increasing number of retail outlets. Further information about all the cards can also be obtained  by writing directly to: Past Pixels, PO Box 798, Worcester, WR4 4BW


photo: William Cuffay after William Paul Dowling,Lithograph, 1848 NPG D13148 copyright National Portrait Gallery.