Kmflett's Blog

Monday 2nd December 5.30pm, Aidan Beatty. Gerry Healy & the WRP. Violence, Gender & the Perils of Trotskyism. On Zoom. Booking essential https://www.history.ac.uk/events/gerry-healy-and-wrp-violence-gender-and-perils-trotskyism

In October 1985, the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), a longstanding if notorious fixture on the British far-left, fractured in a very public split.  While disillusionment after the miners’ strike as well as fears over the party’s finances were the roots of this split, the immediate cause was a set of shocking revelations regarding the party’s leader, Gerry Healy, and his sexual abuse of female members.  Healy’s abusiveness has since come to dominate the memory of the WRP across the Left.  Drawing on archival research as well as extensive interviews with former members of the WRP, this paper seeks to tell both the general history of the WRP as well as recounting the long-standing patterns of sexual abuse and violence that existed within the organisation.  A standard refrain about the WRP, voiced both by many former members as well as hostile critics, is that it was a “cult”, with that term becoming a kind of shorthand for so many of the party’s excesses. While this certainly carries weight, “cult” is also too politically easy an assessment.  I instead argue that the WRP provides a cautionary tale about Leninism and the history of the party raises serious questions for the Left about party organisation, gender politics, and the need to put the “democratic” back into democratic socialism.

All seminars are free to attend. Registration required, details to follow. Organised by the Socialist HIstory Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research & the London Socialist Historians Group

In Victorian times the six day working week was common(although regular employment was less so). Sunday was a day off and for some artisanal workers so was ‘Saint Monday’.

The fight for the eight hour day and a limit to working hours was prolonged but it was eventually won. Of course the pattern of working life varies, and many will work at least some weekends, but with other days off in lieu.

Of course employers constantly seek ways to increase the exploitation of workers as much as unions resist.

Recent statements suggest a new offensive is underway.

Elon Musk is the unelected co-chair of what will become the Department of Government Efficiency in the US in January. He has advertised for people to work in the department for 80 hours a week unpaid. The independently and idle wealthy may apply. He also said that any US Government employee who does not work five days a week in the office will be sacked. Reports suggest that many of those employees who don’t come to the office are services veterans with impediments. Jacob Rees Mogg supports Musk although his new TV series seems to feature him mainly at his Somerset Mansion.

Probably more serious than Musk Narayana Murthy founder of InfoSys and Rishi Sunak’s father in law has extolled the virtues of the 70 hour week and complained that a move in India from a six to a five day working week. The International Labour Organisation has noted that Indians already work longer hours than many in Western European economies.

The answer to Musk and Murthy: join a union

I’m certain there are people who know more about this subject than me, but I felt motivated to a brief post because in the obituaries of John Prescott there is mention that he was at Ruskin College in Oxford but no mention of his tutor Raphael Samuel.

John Prescott had been involved in the 1966 seamen’s strike and wrote (as Jim Prescott) Not Wanted On Voyage. The strikers were denounced as Communists by Harold Wilson but Prescott was a Labour candidate. The right-wing leadership of the National Union of Seamen did not approve of Prescott’s politics but were prepared to sponsor his development.

Hence he went to Ruskin College then an institution where working class activists could broaden their knowledge. Prescott’s tutor was the late Raphael Samuel one of the leading post-1945 UK socialist historians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Samuel

Prescott said that Ruskin ‘opened my mind, opened my eyes’ (Times Obit 22nd November)

I was on nodding terms with Raphael Samuel- he was from an earlier generation of the left- but we never discussed Prescott. As he died too young in 1996 before Prescott became Deputy PM in 1997 it probably didn’t occur, although Samuel had written a piece backing Prescott for the Labour Deputy Leadership in 1992 (he came second to Margaret Beckett).

I was not in touch with Prescott but we met in a BBC TV studio, while waiting to go on an Andrew Neil show (about different issues) and I asked him about Raphael. He told me, in summary, that he had fond memories and that Raphael was quite a presence at Ruskin.

There is a story not evidenced that Samuel had to persuade Prescott to sit his final Ruskin exam. He duly did and went on first to do a degree at Hull, then to become a Labour MP and in 1997 Deputy PM.

An interesting by way of Raphael Samuel’s influence

Tory donors JCB gave workers day off to attend farm protest rally

The Mirror (21^st November) has the story. While there were certainly tenant farmers who made their own way to the London protest as well as big landowners like Jeremy Clarkson in some cases people were paid to attend. What the Tory media call rent-a-crowd

Tory donors JCB gave staff at their farming businesses in Staffordshire a day off to attend the rally, where Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch addressed the crowd.

Lord Bamford, a major Tory donor who let Boris Johnson stay in his guest house rent free for several months, posed for pictures with staff headed to the rally, which were posted on social media.

The death of John Prescott at 86 has brought rightly a range of tributes and a reminder that he was not well regarded by the left in the New Labour years. Later he was the only one from that period to defend Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour leader.

An interesting insight into what he was doing as a Minister in the early post-May 1997 period can be found in official Government papers available at the National Archives

The 1997 Labour Government headed by Blair promised to address the years of Tory anti-union laws by reinstating what it claimed would be a level playing field at work. The bigger issue was the introduction of a National Minimum Wage. This was opposed by many business interests on the basis that it could not be afforded, (a strong echo is to be found in 2024) would not work and so on. However it was implemented and remains in force, albeit many would argue it should be higher.

The second was a Parliamentary Act on Employment Relations. Its notable that this did not become law until July 1999. It was not seen as a priority and there was a fair bit of time spent listening to business about it. It did not repeal any Tory anti-union law but instead gave legal force to trade union recognition and representation. It was a step forward from the Thatcher years but a very modest one.

Cabinet Papers available at the National Archives give an indication to what had been going on.

In the autumn of 1997 there is a file note of what is described as a ‘long and fractious discussion’ between Tony Blair and John Prescott on Fairness at Work. Prescott said that changes had been bought as a package by the TUC and if changes were planned this would need to be agreed by the Cabinet. Blair responded that the changes were practical ones because of what he claimed were genuine problems in how they would work. Blair wanted to allow a right of appeal to the measure, eventually implemented, which would mean that if 50% of workers voted for union recognition it would be automatically given. Prescott again argued that he did not think what the TUC had put forward was up for negotiation.

Employment rights were not part of Prescott’s Ministerial brief and the matter does not appear again until we find a file note from Peter Mandelson on 9th March 1998. It says ‘Union Recognition. Moving in the direction of the CBI. Ideal response for the TUC to be grumpy but not refuse to co-operate’.

Alex Cunningham the 2023 winner stepped down as an MP in July

Beard Liberation Front

21st November

contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett: @keithbeard.bsky.social

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it is facing an unprecedented challenge in drawing up its annual shortlist for the Parliamentary Beard of the Year.

The General Election on July 4^th 2024 saw the departure of a large number of existing MPs- mostly clean shaven Tories- and the arrival of an equally large number of Labour and LibDem MPs.

While the existing Parliamentary Beard of the Year holder Alex Cunningham has stepped down as an MP the campaigners say they are open to nominations for the 2024 shortlist.

Politics is a disputatious activity and the shortlist invariably draws comment from partisans. However a nomination should provide a brief reason why the MP nominated should appear on the shortlist

The shortlist is NOT about the politics of the MPs on the list. It’s about whether their activities during the year have provided a positive image of the hirsute during the year. Obviously this can be disputed- how positive or otherwise- so the shortlist will go to a vote with the winner announced in mid-December.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, there is no question that the Parliamentary Beard of the Year shortlist is a challenge with so many new MPs. We will review nominations and aim to publish a finalised list in the near future.

The future of the left: in the London HQs or the provincial grassroots?

Andy Beckett recently wrote in the Guardian about the future of the left and in particular the left outside of the Labour Party, a substantial, if disparate grouping although certainly united on a key issue like Palestine.

Letters in response to Beckett make interesting and sometimes infuriating readers.

My Fletter (unprinted, no complaints, the Guardian have printed a lot for me) makes the point that its where the left comes from that is perhaps really important for the future

Why disunity on the left spells trouble for Labour | Labour | The Guardian

Andy Beckett is right that Keir Starmer’s Great Moving Right Show means there is ample space to the left of Labour for a new socialist political project. This need not be only or even purely electoral but in that arena a common point is that with a first past the post system its very hard to make a breakthrough in Westminster politics. Yet with Labour and the Tories mustering only 60% of the vote between them that is not quite right and explains why there is space for Green, Independent Left and Reform MPs in the Commons.

Beckett also makes the point that in the last 20 years or so there have been a number of attempts to build a new left force. Some have achieved success but none have been sustained. Historically there is nothing unusual about this. After the demise of Chartism around 1860, there were attempts to develop a successor but until the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabians and the Independent Labour Party in the 1880s and 1890s did any really come off. 

Looking at the ILP, founded in Bradford in 1893 E P Thompson made the point that it was founded not in London Head Offices but in those ‘shadowy parts known as the provinces’. Neither did it originally arise with a specific electoral focus but grew out of struggles for better wages and conditions for a range of workers in the North of England. Building from the bottom up worked even if when the Labour Representation Committee was formed in 1900 those London HQs did feature.

Palestinian protests, the ICC & the Rules Based International Order

There will be another London demonstration in support of the Palestinians at the end of November. The latest in what is now a long series of very large protests since October 7^th 2023 attracted 250,000 people. As several people have pointed out it is an astonishing record of mass mobilisation arguably unparalleled as far back as the first mass protest of the modern era at Peterloo on 16^th August 1819 in terms of the frequency and size of protests.

Its impact can be seen in the decision by the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant and Hamas leader Deif who Israel, which does not recognise the ICC and has no regard for the rule of international law, has likely already killed.

Israel, which like the US (but unlike the UK) does not recognise the Court has so flouted what used to be known as the rules based international order, and created in doing so such a powerful opposing protest movement that to retain any credibility it had to act.

Of course there is a problem

Perry Anderson in New Left Review 143(Sept/Oct 2023) wrote on the Standard of Civilisation a detailed analysis of the theory and practice of international law.

He notes:

Naturally enough, the icc—staffed by pliable personnel—declined to investigate any US or European actions whatever in Iraq or Afghanistan, concentrating its zeal entirely on countries in Africa, according to the unspoken maxim: one law for the rich, another for the poor.

The problem comes when Israel so rips up any concept of international law including the one bit that had until then actually worked that something had to be done. The ICC has duly done something. But if trying to uphold any concept of a rules international order is condemned by the US where does that leave the legitimacy of US imperial endeavours.

Expect protests to continue and grow and more history to be made.

Striking seafarers 17th May 1966 (Socialist Worker)

John Prescott, from ship’s steward to Deputy PM via Ruskin College

The funeral of John Prescott who died aged 86 takes place in Hull today. It sees a gathering of New Labour figures including Blair and Brown

John Prescott may have been Blair’s deputy but he, unlike many from that era, remained an ally of Jeremy Corbyn.

Perhaps he recalled his joint authorship of the pamphlet ‘not wanted on voyage’ about the 1966 seamen’s strike (Prescott was a ship’s steward).

Then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson argued it was produced by a tightly knit group of politically motivated men (he meant the Communist Party) but actually he was criticising an activist who went on to be a leading Labour Party figure.

Government Papers recently released at the National Archives reveal the role the Government and the security services played in the dispute. John Prescott’s name is not mentioned but he was part of a group of union members pushing their right-wing union leaders to do better.

The papers reveal Wilson’s understanding that the seamen’s union was not well led and that there were real issues that needed to be addressed. They also show that the role of the Communist Party was principally that of providing some leadership and organisation where the union could or would not. The CPGB had very few seafaring members and none at all at senior levels in the union.

Wilson recognised the role the Communist Party was playing but his concern was to settle the dispute because of the impact it had on the economy. The CP was not necessarily a block to this, having wider political ambitions. However the papers make clear that Wilson was not aware of the scale of the security services infiltration of the CPGB. It was only with difficulty that Wilson fended off calls for a inquiry into the dispute from Tory leader Heath. Such an inquiry would likely have exposed numbers of security service agents and informers.

It was the dispute that provided the catalyst to Prescott’s future career. The seamen’s union leadership were not prepared to countenance a union role for him, even though he was highly effective in Hull

Rather after the dispute the NUS sponsored Prescott to go to Ruskin College where he was tutored by the late socialist historian Raphael Samuel and to his credit he never forgot that period or the influence of Raph on his ideas.

Meeting Prescott in the BBC Politics TV studio on Millbank on one occasion (we were appearing on the same programme with Andrew Neil but on different subjects) we had time to compare notes on Raph, who Prescott remembered well and with some affection.

Nigel Farage turned up at a farmers protest in central London on 19th November and was pictured in the environs of the protest lecturing anyone he could collar.

He was barred from speaking at the protest rally because the organisers said his presence was divisive, indicating that despite the appearance of Jeremy Clarkson there were genuine farmers with genuine issues present not just big landowners.

Farage himself came dressed as a farmer and it may well be that before long he’ll secure a role in the Archers

Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Song by

The Kinks

They seek him here
they seek him there
His clothes are loud
But never square
It will make or break him so he’s got to buy the best
‘Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion

And when he does his little rounds
‘Round the boutiques of London town
Eagerly pursuing all the latest fads and trends
‘Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion

Oh yes, he is (Oh yes, he is)
Oh yes, he is (Oh yes, he is)
He thinks he is a flower to be looked at
And when he pulls his frilly nylon panties right up tight
He feels a dedicated follower of fashion

Oh yes, he is (Oh yes, he is)
Oh yes, he is (Oh yes, he is)
There’s one thing that he loves and that is flattery
One week he’s in polka-dots, the next week he’s in stripes
‘Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion

They seek him here
They seek him there
In Regent Street
And Leicester Square
Everywhere the Carnabetian army marches on
Each one a dedicated follower of fashion

Oh yes, he is (Oh yes, he is)
Oh yes, he is (Oh yes, he is)
His world is built ’round discotheques and parties
This pleasure-seeking individual always looks his best
‘Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion

Oh yes, he is (Oh yes, he is)
Oh yes, he is (Oh yes, he is)
He flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly
In matters of the cloth, he is as fickle as can be
‘Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion
He’s a dedicated follower of fashion
He’s a dedicated follower of fashion