Food for Thought

Review

 By Ray Jones

Revolutionary Democracy vol XIX no 2 Sept 13

£5 post free from NCP Lit PO Box 73 London SW11 2PQ.

REVOLUTIONARY Democracy is an Indian orientated Marxist journal but it always contains useful coverage of events from around the world, important historical pieces and deep theoretical contributions.

This issue Tahir Asghar provides in interesting update on the situation in Russia with particular reference to the de-industrialisation going on there. Eygpt and Turkey also get coverage.

Nexhimije Hoxha gives a fascinating account of the 20th Congress of the CPSU and an insight into Enver Hoxha’s reaction to it.

Clara Zetkin relates Rosa Luxemburg’s response to the Russian Revolution and the November revolution in Germany. With regards to theory, Ubaldo Buttafava offers a critique of neo-Trotskyist economics and Vitaly Pershin takes a look at Marxist aesthetics and the socialist realism of Geli Korzhev.

In one of the invaluable translations of Stalin common to Rev Dem, this issue includes a blistering 1940s attack by Stalin on “a political” literature and Soviet magazines that bowed to rank rather than talent in a speech to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Picasso's update

By Adrian Chan-Wyles

ON THE 29^th October 2013 the staff of the Picasso’s Coffee Lounge, Union Street, Torquay, refused entry and service to a female wheelchair user on the grounds of her disability, stating that the manager had taken the decision to exclude such people from the café.  There had also been a separate report that states the floor manager was over-heard berating an employee for not “looking like the right kind of person” to work there – and then sacking her, all within earshot of customers. Due to news of these events spreading across the internet, a campaign has begun for all right-minded people to boycott this café in the name of solidarity and socialism. 

Since then Mr Mark Lewis, the Manager of Picasso’s Coffee Lounge, (Torquay), was interviewed by Devon and Cornwall Police and stated that he banned the disabled woman in question because he was of the opinion that she “smelt”, and that he was concerned that her presence in his establishment would put his able bodied customers off their food.  Devon and Cornwall Police are of the opinion that no crime has taken place, and have refused to record this incident as a “hate crime” against a disabled wheelchair user.  Devon and Cornwall Police have been officially criticised in the past for failing to react to crime in the area. 

Obviously, with the police appearing to condone his behaviour, Mr Mark Lewis remains unrepentant about the incident and has written to the victim stating that his expressed opinion that she “smelt”, in no way was connected to the fact that she is a disabled person confined to a wheelchair.  In the meantime, this disabled person remains banned from the establishment in question and has received no assistance from her local MP – Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders – despite numerous letters asking for his help.

 It is important to note that with the ideologically-led cuts to the NHS and Welfare system, (to fund a tax cut for the rich), it has been reported across the UK that Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs have conspired to initiate a policy of “not helping” those of their constituents trapped in an ever downward spiral of poverty, sure in the knowledge that the most vulnerable members of society – that is to say, the victims of their policies – possess no resources to do anything about their behaviour.

As it stands, the medieval Judeo-Christian ignorance that defines disability as a corruption from the Devil, or a punishment from God, continues to operate within UK secular society.  Disabled people are treated as outsiders and their particular personal needs as some form of inconvenience for the able bodied public.  Mr Mark Lewis, infected with this primitive mindset, appears to believe that he can discriminate against a disabled person simply because his prejudice tells him that their different physical presence must equate with an infantile assumption that they “smell”.  His actions protect the ignorant masses from having to psychologically evolve beyond a primitive mind-set that 400 years ago saw old ladies who owned cats burnt to death in the name of God on the village heath.  Mr Mark Lewis has done the progressive cause a world of good by reminding it that through his shocking ignorance there is still much to do to reform UK society in the socialist model.

Religiosity is an ignorant poison that must be eradicated from the human psyche.  It is ironic that the artist Picasso was a life-long communist and ardent supporter of Joseph Stalin.       

Disabled woman barred at seaside cafe

By Adrian Chan-Wyles

ON THE 29^th October 2013 the staff of the Picasso’s Coffee Lounge, Union Street, Torquay, refused entry and service to a female wheelchair user on the grounds of her disability, stating that the manager had taken the decision to exclude such people from the café.  There are many similar complaints emerging from Torquay, and it is significant that Torbay has been linked with the fascist British National Party in the media, and in Mark Collins’ book [Hate], which exposes the British right-wing and its connection to the area. 

Compared to what is considered normal in the progressive cities of Britain, this is a shocking event in a civilised society, particularly as no one in the cafe raised a concern, and the manager, despite authorising this blatant act of discrimination, remains unrepentant (and unpunished) despite UK law being very clear on this point.  I understand that the local Police (and Member of Parliament) have been informed, but despite nearly a month going by, no action has been taken.

 This is not surprising, as outside the major cities there is a lack of will-power within less cosmopolitan areas to acknowledge that such discrimination exists, or to do anything about it. The Devon and Cornwall Police were criticised in a 2012 report from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary – which "indicated some cause for concern – specifically the under-recording of crime", and the local Member of Parliament (Adrian Sanders) is a Liberal Democrat who fully supports the current Con-Dem government and the vicious attack it has made on people with disabilities that has seen hate-crime against the disabled rise by 75 per cent in just one year.   

There has also been a separate report that states the floor manager was over-heard berating an employee for not “looking like the right kind of person” to work there – and then sacking her, all within earshot of customers. Due to news of these events spreading across the internet, a campaign has begun for all right-minded people to boycott this café in the name of solidarity and socialism. 

Picasso’s Coffee Lounge,

3 Union Square Shopping Centre Union Street,

Torquay TQ1 3UT

Tel: 01803 212 166

Complaints to the Manager Mr Mark Lewis - enquiries@picassoscoffee.co.uk

SEASON'S GREETINGS!

The New Worker on sale in London

The New Worker is available in London at:

•  Housemans Peace Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road N1
•  West London Trade Union Club, 33-35 High Street Acton W3
•  Battersea Food & Wine, 109-111 Falcon Road, SW11 

UK subscription rates

6 weeks....... £6.00
3 months..... £20.00
6 months..... £30.00
Annual.........£50.00

Send your cheque or postal order with your order to:

NW Subs
PO Box 73
London SW11 2PQ

Or order online

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A Miner’s Life

Ray Davies with his book at Bedwas Library launch

By Andy Brooks

  Ray Davies needs little introduction to New Worker readers. Seldom does a week go by without a letter from the veteran Labour councillor and peace campaigner or a report about the Côr Cochion Caerdydd (Cardiff Reds Choir) that Ray has  played a major part for many years.

But older readers will also remember his tremendous efforts in the anti-poll tax campaign and the epic miners’ strike from the New Worker reports from the late Denis Martin, the NCP comrade who worked closely with Ray on the Rhymney Valley Miners Support Group during the 12 month strike that tragically ended in defeat in 1985.

            Ray was persuaded by fellow members of the support group to write this memoir about how the rock-solid miners and the local community closed ranks around the pickets to raise the money and food that sustained the strike through the bitter years of the Thatcher era.

            Ray had first-hand experience of life in the pits as a boy miner before the coal companies were nationalised in 1947. The back-breaking work, appalling conditions and miserable wages that were the norm in those days are graphically described in the opening chapter which also paints a picture of life in a Welsh mining village in the 1940s.

            Ray, a union activist and a member of the Young Communist League from the start, was soon plunged into struggle and this continued throughout his life as a militant member of the Labour Party after he left the pits to become a steel worker.

            When Arthur Scargill and the NUM threw down the gauntlet to the Thatcher government that was determined to smash the miners’ union and destroy the mining industry Ray was at the fore-front joining the pickets and fighting to build solidarity with the miners who were fighting for the entire working class in their battle to stop the closures.

            The role of the communist movement within the South Wales Miners Federation that later became the South Wales Area of the NUM is covered in the narrative as well as the struggles within the Welsh Labour Party and the labour movement as a whole during the big strike. But the author mainly focuses on his personal experiences on the picket line, in clashes with the police and in the day-to-day problems of building a support group to give the reader a priceless window into the world of militant struggle that was 1980s Britain.

            Though this is a short book it nevertheless makes an important contribution to the labour history of south Wales. Peppered with illustrations and contemporary photos A Miners Life  is a fitting tribute to all the miners and all who stood by them during those hard months of struggle and at £6.00 a copy well within the means of the average reader.

            All profits from its sale will go to CISWO, the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation, to help ex-miners and their families affected by injury or illness and it can be obtained by sending £6, plus £1.50 postage and packing, to:

Ray Davies

172 Pandy Rd

Bedwas

Caerphilly

CF83 8EP

           

Alternatively copies are available from the Bedwas, St Cenydd, Abertridwr, Machen, Caerphilly Visitor Centre and the Winding House New Tredegar libraries. 

The Comintern and Africa

Review

By Andy Brooks

Pan-Africanism and Communism; The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919-1939: Hakim Adi, Africa World Press 2013,pbk, illus, 446 pp, £28.99

THE COMMUNIST International was established in Moscow in 1919 to build the international communist movement following the revolutionary upsurge that swept the globe following the Russian Revolution in 1917. For the next 20 odd years the Comintern exerted immense influence over the communist parties in Europe, Asia and the Americas that were, in theory, branches of a world party.

 The role of the Third International, as it was called until it was dissolved in 1943, has been subject of a number of scholarly books from bourgeois and progressive academicians over the years. But the role of the communist movement in Africa during this period has been sadly neglected.

One problem was the lack of access to original documents but this has been remedied by Dr Hakim Adi who traces the efforts of the Comintern during the inter-war period as well as the work of the of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW), established by the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern) in 1928 and its activities in Africa, the United States, the Caribbean and Europe.

Dr Adi says that the aim of the book is to promote discussion and combat some of the disinformation that surrounds the Communist movement and its connection with Africa and Africans during the period. He looks at the role of controversial figures like George Padmore, the pan-African writer who broke with the communist movement in 1934, and the part played by communists in the metropolitan heartlands of the British and French empires.

            The author draws on archives in the United States and Russia, including the newly-available sources from the Comintern Archives in Moscow to shed new light on the Soviet Union’s response to what was then called the “Negro Question” in this work that charts the embryonic efforts to build revolutionary movements in Africa and America.

            The clandestine efforts to distribute the Comintern’s Negro Worker journal, often through cadres in the Merchant Navy, are chronicled in this book as well as the movement’s problem in dealing with backward ideas that still had a resonance within the metropolitan parties of the colonial empires – like the British Daily Worker, that was criticised for using the word “nigger” in 1930.

This is a book is a compilation of ten years of meticulous research primarily aimed at students and academics and this is reflected in its price. This massive tome is essentially a work of reference that chronicles the work of the black pioneers of the working class movement through their correspondence and publications that will doubtless remain a source of reference to future scholars for many years to come. Every academic library should have a copy.