Alexandra Ocasio Cortez the radical US politician has got a lot of publicity for wearing a tax the rich dress at an upmarket function in New York.
I may organise the Beard Liberation Front which is partly about style but personally, as most who know me have long since realised, I’m anti-fashion.
That does not mean I’m against political stunts and general displays of joyful celebration. As Lenin might have said ‘down with miserabilism’.
The fashion industry and the appalling conditions most fashion garments are produced in around the world should be enough to warn socialists off.
But that doesn’t mean the left cant use a politics of style. Diane Abbott’s appearance in Vogue (I’m not a subscriber) got a deal of praise and rightly so.
AOC pointed out that the tax the rich dress was borrowed and served an important function. It provoked debate on the issue at an event attended mostly by those who do not want to tax the rich because it would hit them personally.
In short AOC was revolting into style.
It wont change the world but as a political stunt it worked or we wouldn’t be discussing it
Charlotte Johnson Wahl (1942-2021) Labour voter & CND supporter
Charlotte Johnson Wahl has died at 79. An accomplished portrait painter who has exhibited her work, she was also previously married to Stanley Johnson and is the mother of Boris Johnson.
Her family background and views suggest someone firmly part of the British Establishment, indeed far more so than the Johnson variant.
She was a member of the Fawcett family well known campaigners for women’s suffrage and human rights and against racism.
Her father Sir James Fawcett was a member of the European Commission of Human Rights. Her mother Beatrice was the first translator of Thomas Mann into English.
In short the Fawcett’s were (and no doubt) a classically liberal part of the English if not the British Establishment.
Boris Johnson’s biographer Sonia Purcell notes that Charlotte certainly in younger years was a Labour voter, CND supporter and attender at anti-apartheid protests. Purcell suggests some of this may have made its way into the Johnsonian worldview. I’m not so sure not least because material being determines consciousness (in the main)
Update
The London Review of Books (September 2020) published an account of Charlotte Fawcett’s CND activities(thanks to Ian Birchall for the link)
Over the Easter weekend of 1961 we took part in the CND march from the Atomic Weapons Research Centre at Aldermaston to London. The march, which had first taken place three years earlier, was already becoming an annual tradition. We went through Slough, and one slogan we chanted was a riposte to John Betjeman’s poem, with its call for ‘friendly bombs’ to fall on the town: ‘Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Slough – think now!’
In the summer Charlotte worked in London as a volunteer for the Africa Bureau, an anti-colonial think tank and part of the anti-apartheid movement, selling tickets for a benefit concert which starred the cast of Beyond the Fringe. At the gig, Peter Cook performed his Harold Macmillan routine, comparing the four-minute warning before a nuclear strike to Roger Bannister’s mile record (‘I’d like you to know that in this great country of ours a man can run a mile in four minutes’). In August I joined the Fawcett family at the villa they’d rented in Tuscany. Charlotte and I hitched back to England over several days, travelling in vehicles of every kind, from trucks to two-seater sports cars. We slept outside in northern Italy and France, and spent a restless night on the stony beach at Dieppe.
Our next political outing was in September 1961, in an action organised by the Committee of 100. The previous year, Bertrand Russell had given up the presidency of CND to play a leading role on the committee, whose members hoped to drive disarmament forward by means of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance. Two sit-down protests in London had drawn thousands and the Macmillan government reacted to the plan for a third – which was to culminate in a sit-down in Parliament Square – by banning the rally in Trafalgar Square that was to precede it. In the week leading up to the action, a third of the Committee of 100, among them Robert Bolt, Arnold Wesker and Christopher Logue, as well as Bertrand Russell and his wife, had been sent to jail, accused of inciting ‘members of the public to commit breaches of the peace’.
Will new Brewdog Chair Allan Leighton see the recognition of a union?
Allan Leighton is a name well known to those who follow what goes on at the top of British industry. He has held a succession of roles, currently being Chairman of the Co-Op.
He has now also been appointed Chair of Brewdog. He probably wont be devoting too much time to the Company but it will be interesting to see what impact he has.
Leighton was one of New Labour’s favourite businessmen (not particularly a recommendation btw but certainly better than being the equivalent for Boris Johnson). He was Chairman of the Royal Mail from 2002-2008 (prior to its privatisation by Vince Cable) and brokered agreements with the CWU to resolve disputes.
The key thing to understand here is that he saw dealing with unions and reaching agreements with them as a way of providing an industrial relations framework that could keep companies going without disputes. That doesn’t mean that the deals he brokered were particularly favourable to employees. Rather there was a mechanism where they could raise issues and see how they were dealt with.
It will be interesting to see whether Leighton suggests that Brewdog deal with its well-publicised employee relations issues by recognising a union
IgNobel Winner which claims Organic Beards protect against punches stereotypes beard wearers
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that a study, which has won a 2021 IgNobel, by researchers at the University of Utah stereotypes the hirsute.
The study argues ‘that hair is indeed capable of significantly reducing the force of impact from a blunt strike and absorbing energy, thereby reducing the incidence of failure. If the same is true for human facial hair, then having a full beard may help protect vulnerable regions of the facial skeleton from damaging strikes, such as the jaw. Presumably, full beards also reduce injury, laceration, and contusion, to the skin and muscle of the face’
The researchers did not test their theory by whacking men with full beards in the face, prudently for them. Rather they constructed a model using sheep wool to test their thesis. A link to the full results is below.
They suggest that ‘men with full beards are reportedly perceived as being more masculine, socially dominant, and behaviourally aggressive in comparison to clean-shaven men’
The campaigners say that perception is not proof however. While the research findings cite Darwin, himself the wearer of a full beard in his later years, he regarded beards as an ‘ornament’ serving no practical use in modern society.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, while the study is interesting it does stereotype men with organic beards as masculine types not averse to the occasional punch-up. In reality not just biological but also cultural and social factors at a play. Men with organic beards are just as likely to be pacifists as pugilists.
Impact Protection Potential of Mammalian Hair: Testing the Pugilism Hypothesis for the Evolution of Human Facial Hair
by George Charles Beresford, sepia-toned platinotype print, 1905
Despite Starmer’s efforts Labour will always have a left
The efforts of Labour Party HQ to remove the left from the party are perpetual. Arguably the first occasion was the formal refusal to recognise the young Communist Party as an affiliate in the late 1920s. The most recent purges have included Socialist Appeal and various groups opposed to the expulsion of critics of the current leadership.
The reality is however that the left was present at the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and will be around for as long as there is a Labour Party or equivalent organisation.
Two left organisations were present at the LRC meeting in Farringdon St in 1900, the Independent Labour Party a broad socialist organisation and the Socialist Democratic Federation, dating back to the early 1880’s and styling itself as Marxist.
The ILP stayed in Labour as an affiliate until 1932. The SDF had disengaged by 1910 and some of its members were amongst the founders of the Communist Party in 1920. Members worked with Labour and Saklatvala was elected on a joint Labour and Communist ticket as MP for Battersea North in 1922.
Labour excluded both the ILP and the CP but the left remained present.
Those around Nye Bevan both before 1939 and again after 1945 formed a left group in Parliament and in the wider party. Expulsions and battles with the Labour right were a common feature. Bevan died in 1960 but the successor to his Parliamentary seat Michael Foot himself became a leading left-wing critic of the Labour leadership particularly around issues of nuclear disarmament.
One way of understanding how the Party has worked and on occasion got elected is that leading left-wing figures are eventually accommodated and go on to become Party leaders.
Harold Wilson who in the 1950s had been a supporter of Bevan succeeded Hugh Gaitskell as leader in 1963 as the left candidate. Likewise Michael Foot became Labour leader in 1980 but led the Party to defeat at the 1983 Election. He made way for someone with a fiery socialist background, Neil Kinnock.
Starmer himself was a leading figure in a magazine called Socialist Alternatives in the 1980s. It was a broad organisation but it had a revolutionary socialist ethos. He has yet to be expelled however.
The impetus to reform market capitalism to reduce inequalities and make it fairer is something that can be seen in various forms across the world, whether a party is seen as social-democratic like Labour or perhaps describes itself as radical or Green. It makes sense to many that it must be easier to make capitalism better than replace it with a socialist society through a revolution. What however is the extent of change needed? Will it challenge capital’s profits or not?
This tension is played out in a minor key in the Labour Party which helps to explain why however many times the right purges the left it invariably re-appears.
Writing in New Left Review as long ago as 1960 Ralph Miliband noted:
the Labour Party has given the distinct impression that it was less and less sure, not about its ultimate purposes, but that it had any ultimate purpose at all.
That does seem to sum up Starmerism. However material conditions, for example the decision to cut Universal Benefits, create demands for radical policies and real change. This will be promoted by the left but it comes from the pressures capital itself creates in society whether the Labour leadership recognises it or not. If it doesn’t offer at least a promise of change as demanded by the left, it fails.
Tony Benn on the immediate aftermath of 9.11 (Diary 13th September 2001)
22 Years On there are many analysis and views of 11th September 2001 but very few it seems (beyond those tragically directly caught up in it) about what the immediate impact was.
I’m not an end of days millenarian but I do recall wondering if things were going to go on much longer without a war given that capitalism is a system of perpetual crisis. There were wars of course but in a sense following the post-1945 model, by proxy. The war on terror took place in Afghanistan and Iraq not in the US or Europe.
Tony Benn captured well in a diary entry immediately after 9.11 what it felt like.
I don’t think we’ve quite taken on board this completely new world that has been created. The United States is going to go all out, possibly with NATO, to invade Afghanistan, try and kill Bin Laden…
….its a completely different world. Everything’s changed. Fears have increased, hope has diminished..
…A minor bit of news. Iain Duncan Smith has overwhelming beaten Ken Clarke for the leadership of the Tory Party
The Ambridge Socialist has backed Eddie Grundy’s plans to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Joe Grundy who was born on 18th September 1921 and died as he watched the first batch of Grundy cider being produced in October 2020.
Eddie is trying to make sure that Grundy produce wins the Flower and Produce show to celebrate Joe’s 100th. He has been trying to persuade potential challengers not to enter. While this may be thought sharp practice if not cheating, this of course is the usual practice of the Ambridge ruling class.
Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said, we’ll be raising the red flag to mark Joe’s 100th but we understand that in Ambridge winning the Flower and Produce show is key part of the class war that Joe loved so much
The Ambridge Socialist poll. How should we mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Joe Grundy on 18th Sept?
Susan and Neil won’t find true lurve until there is a shower scene
The shower scene is the classic way in the Archers of letting people know that two people are in lurve. Susan and Neil have been in negotiations all week about lurve. We say: get in the shower.
Brian and Jennifer are writing letters
Alice is due to come out of Rehab and in preparation Brian and Jennifer are writing letters detailing Alice’s strengths and weaknesses. This could go on for a while. Indeed it already has. It’s a story that needs to be told but surely its about time to feature responsible community drinking in the Bull and explore the heritage of Shires one of the great regional beers
Emma Raducanu’s tennis victory is a ‘national moment’. Will Tory privateers leave C4 alone?
I’m not a great fan of British sporting success because it tends to encourage the types who wear Union Jack underwear. At the same time when someone who came to London as a migrant aged 2 pulls of a startling victory,, as Emma Raducanu did at the US Open tennis on Saturday evening, there is a sense of a shared national moment for many. Something that unites if only briefly. The unity is around an amazing sporting success not a desire at least on my part to wave even the smallest flag.
Even the usual right-winger snipers and whingers on GB News haven’t yet managed to work out a critical line.
Amazon have been showing the tennis on a subscription basis but I watched it in my local beard and beer bar in Tottenham on Saturday night on free air to TV (the bar doesn’t show Sky etc, its just too small to make the cost worth it). Channel 4 which at the moment is a State-owned broadcaster bought the rights from Amazon and screened it so that everyone interested not just a few thousand could see it live. Channel 4 reported the peak audience had been 9.2m a significant decision given the short notice of the screening
The Tories of course want to privatise Channel 4- no doubt for the benefit of some of their mates. Sports Minister Oliver Dowden tweeted congratulations to Raducanu. Perhaps he’d also like to tweet thanks to Channel 4 and tell Johnson to leave it alone.
Last Night of the Proms, Rule Britannia & how the Chartists saw slavery
Chartist words to Rule Britannia in 1848:
Britannia’s sons, though slaves ye be…
Britannia’s sons,though slaves ye be,
God your Creator made you free,
He, life and thought and being gave,
But never,never made a slave.
All men are equal in his sight,
The bond,the free, the black, the white,
He made them all, them freedom gave,
He made the man- Man made the slave
These words attributed to the Chartist Thomas Cooper, were sung at a Yorkshire Chartist camp open air meeting in February 1848 held to support the French Revolution of that year. They are quoted in the Dignity of Chartism, a collection of the writings of the late socialist and feminist historian Dorothy Thompson.
The references to God are a reminder of the strong religious element to some of English radicalism (much criticised by Engels) although there was also a freethough tradition associated with the followers of Robert Owen. The emphasis on ‘men’ is a reminder too that while there were many female Chartists the immediate demand was for adult male suffrage.
Finally as Rule Britannia is sung again at the Last Night of the Proms these words remind us that many saw slavery relating to the labour relationship and to black and white even in 1848
A history that is too complex one suspects for most Culture War Tories
