Kmflett's Blog

Afghanistan: Starmer ignores Suez & the Chilcot Report on Iraq & backs Blair

In recent weeks Keir Starmer has argued that the left needs to look to the example of Tony Blair to see how it can find ways of returning to Office. He didn’t mention the Iraq War and since the Occupation in Afghanistan ended in short order Blair has merely reiterated his love of endless warmongering on his website.

When the Commons debated the matter on 18^th August Starmer struck an interventionist note. He said in part:

…a wider strategy, developed with our UN security partners and our NATO allies, to apply pressure on the Taliban not only to stamp out a resurgence of terror groups, but to retain the liberties and human rights of Afghans. We must work with Afghans and neighbours to ensure that there is consistent pressure…

Clearly ‘pressure’ ends up meaning bombs and troops. After the end of the first New Labour era in 2010 subsequent Labour leaders Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, took the point made by successive Stop the War Coalition protests that the focus in such matters should be on aid and help for refugees not on military action.

Starmer is ignoring the lessons of Iraq 2003 but he has also passed by the important principles established by another right-wing Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell after Suez in 1956.

In July 1956 Egyptian leader Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal a key trade route. In late October Israel, Britain and France decided to invade Egypt to seize control of the canal. It ended in failure a few days after it began. It was not supported by the US and neither did it have the backing of the UN. Importantly Gaitskell opposed the war using the slogan ‘Law not War’ something one might think would appeal to ex-lawyer Starmer.

Britain’s role in Suez saw anti-war demonstrations and even some strikes.

The lessons from this were twofold. Firstly that Britain could not embark on military interventions without US support. Secondly that there must be UN backing for them too.

When it came to the Vietnam War in the 1960s while Harold Wilson helped the US in a number of militarily related ways he did not actually commit British forces on the ground in Vietnam.

Blair’s ‘humanitarian interventions’ in a number of countries bypassed these points but ended up saving many fewer lives than they destroyed.

Just as with Suez Britain’s support for an illegal war saw opposition on the streets with the Stop the War Coalition organising the largest demonstration ever in British history, against war with Iraq on 15^th February 2003.

While many on the left opposed the US and UK intervention in Afghanistan, as Jeremy Corbyn rightly reminded MPs in the Commons debate, Blair led it. 20 years on its clear, if it was not already, that the occupation had very little popular support. One might expect Labour to apologise and focus its efforts on aid and allowing refugees into the UK against the plans of Priti Patel. The last two may be done by Starmer but not the first.

The 2016 Chilcot report into the Iraq War underlined that it may well have been a lack of understanding of quite recent history, arguably a wilful one, that led then Prime Minister Blair into a false assessment of the role that Britain could and indeed should play.

One wonders if Keir Starmer has read that report? Alternatively he could just listen to the Sex Pistols God Save The Queen a key line of which is ‘there is no future in England’s dreaming’. Whether Johnson and Starmer like it or not the imperial dream is dead.

This post originally appeared in the Morning Star

E P Thompson on Raymond Williams (1961)

E P Thompson reviewed Raymond Williams Long Revolution in the New Left Review, 60 years ago in 1961. (NLR 1/9 and 1/10)

Thompson was unequivocal about Williams role in the new left:

This is to say that his work is very important indeed, and that—so far as we can speak of a New Left—he is our best man

He goes on to note

Raymond Williams is one of the very few intellectuals in this country who was not broken in some degree during that decade (1950sKF); and who maintained his independence from the attractive poles of cold war ideology

Thompson argued however that in identifying a popular cultural tradition Williams had avoided discussing Marx and Capital:

Oh, that book! Do we really have to go over all that old nineteenth-century stuff again? We have all felt this response: Marx has become not only an embarrassment but a bore. But The Long Revolution has convinced me, finally, that go over it again we must.

Thompson concludes:

The crisis, as Mr. Williams insists, is a crisis of consciousness and of human relationships. The human system of socialism is manifest on all sides, in our means of social production, in new patterns of feeling, in fragmentary institutional forms, so that it seems necessary and inevitable that we shall grow into it any day now. But for societies, as well as individuals, there may be a “river of fire”: an epochal transition in which men become aware that they are making history and in which institutions are broken and remade. “Revolution” and “growth” become incompatible terms at this point. Which term will Mr. Williams choose?

It is his greatest service that he has, more than anyone, made articulate the potential of the common good, as a general aspiration and in particular constructive ways. It is because this good is the common good that he avoids polemic and the language of class-power.

For Thompson Raymond Williams was on the left in the early 1960s (and remained so). The argument perhaps as now was to understand what that had meant and did mean

The Campaign for Real Conkers

Media Release. Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

31st August

2021 Conker Season declared open

The Campaign for Real Conkers, that opposes bans on conker playing and unnecessary rules and regulations in games has said that that the season has opened as usual on August Bank Holiday Monday and will run until mid-October.

Early indications are that 2021 will see a good crop of conkers.

The campaigners say that while they are maintaining their usual ‘anything goes’ approach to conker games, to encourage people to play without arbitrary rules, in 2021 some COVID-19 safety guidelines will still apply.

Campaign Organiser Keith Flett said, we anticipate a full and safe conker playing season over the next six weeks or so, until at least the so called World Conker Championships on October 10^th which the campaign traditionally boycotts

Guide on how to play real conkers safely in 2021

1] Select your conker. Do this yourself. DO NOT use a conker provided by someone else who may give you a poor specimen.

2] There is no specific kind of conker that makes a good game winner. Large conkers may more easily splinter for example. Some prefer conkers with flat and sharp edges

3] You may use the conker ‘as is’ known as ‘organic’. Alternatively you may seek to harden it by baking it, soaking it in vinegar etc. There is no guarantee that an artificially enhanced conker will perform any better than an organic one.

4] Drill a small hole through the conker. A nail will often achieve this. Again you must do this yourself

5] Thread the conker through the hole you have drilled. A strong chord, perhaps a shoelace is best

6] You are now ready to play.

7] Make sure that the chord is long enough to allow you to stand at least 1 metre plus away from your opponent. This would generally be the case as space is required for the conker swing.

8] Players take alternate turns to try and hit and destroy their opponent’s conker

9] Those with poor aim may hit the knuckles of their opponent more often than the conker so you may wish to wear gloves.

10] The winner is the player who determines their opponents conker unusable in further rounds, usually by causing it to splinter into two or more pieces

Play safely and enjoy!

On Jamborees

I note on twitter that the World Transformed event, to be held in Brighton in late September is being denounced as a ‘trot jamboree’

https://theworldtransformed.org/

The denouncers are it appears individuals who are often described currently as ‘centrists’ but are in fact just Labour right-wingers. What they know about Trotskyism or what the event itself has to do with it is perhaps something for another post.

It might be better to understand it as a gathering of strands of the Labour and radical left looking, in the main, at various issues on the current political agenda.

Obviously it will generally be to the left of Keir Starmer and the current Labour leadership but only in a one-dimensional society would that be worthy of further note.

The use of the term ‘jamboree’ is however interesting. The word does not example appear in either E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class or in Tony Benn’s Diaries. Generally its most often associated with the Scouts.

The implication when used critically however seems to have been that while the event may be fun it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The right-wing author A N Wilson in his book on the Victorians describes Chartists gathering before the Kennington Common protest for the vote on 10^th April 1848 as being involved in a jamboree. Covering a more recent period the late socialist historian Raph Samuel in the Lost World of British Communism describes Marxism Today events as jamborees. He was I’m sure no great fan.

That said looking at the TWT programme there seems to be space for both fun and serious political discussion so perhaps those looking for a jamboree may not have their expectations fulfilled.

Raymond Williams (b 31st August 1921) Why protest is essential in the age of mass media

Raymond Williams who died in 1988 would have been 100 today.

A Welsh Marxist and leading writer on literature and language, he was key figure in the first new left from 1960.

I remember him as a softly spoken, pipe smoker. I recall disputing with the Guardian on his death that they were not taking his significance seriously enough, but in the intervening 33 years, that significance has continued to grow.

Of the key figures of that old new left in March 1968 EP Thompson was lecturing on William Blake in America. Raymond Williams however was on the anti-Vietnam War protest in Grosvenor Square and wrote about his reasons why in The Listener, 25th April 1968.

Robin Blackburn in a New Left Review piece on Williams death (NLR 1/168, Raymond Williams and the Politics of a New Left) quoted the Listener article as follows:

‘Today in a score of countries, the protest march has become a regular part of political activity. In the past in Britain, as at Peterloo and in the marches of the Chartists, there was a style of demonstration that pre-dated liberal democracy, the march of men without votes representing that majority who were excluded from political decision, and a march through the streets with banners because this was still the quickest and most visible means of communication. Today the means of communication are much more developed. . . . Yet parliamentary democracy has become increasingly formal under the pressure of consensus. . . . Moreover the theory of representative democracy, with all its strengths and limitations, is being itself surpassed in practice by the pressures of modern organized capitalism to channel decisions to many non-elected bodies. And a key role in this replacement of representative democracy is being played by the modern communications system, which is not, and does not pretend to be, democratic at all, except in purely negative ways. When the German students, after the shooting of Rudi Dutschke, demonstrated against a press monopoly, they were taking into the streets, and for their own good reasons, what had been for many years a central part of New Left theory: that in any large and complicated society, the communications system in newspapers, broadcasting and television is a major political institution—in its supply of necessary information, in its capacity to select, emphasize or exclude, and in its power to influence and campaign. But this institution . . . is permanently up for auction to rich men, to the new communications combines, who then claim by simple purchase this immense political power. . . . Parliament itself has conceded many decisive areas of power, in economic planning and in communications, to wholly undemocratic institutions which it is in no way prepared to fight. The measure of the failure of the social democratic parties in Western Europe is that by compromising on just those issues, they’ve excluded themselves from any serious consideration as the means to democracy and socialism. It is in the gap left by that failure that the new movements are being formed. . . . It is necessary to say soberly and quietly that the decay and corruption of the political system, and the intolerable violence now actually directed against the poor of the world, will go on being fought by all effective means.’

London Socialist Historians Group

August 30^th

Contact Dr Keith Flett 07803 167266

As TUC calls for Autumn Public Holiday Historians say anniversary of Cable St is favourite

The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London has welcomed the call by the TUC for four more public holidays a year

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58379875

This includes a new holiday between September and Xmas.

The historians suggested four possible dates- convention dictates that the holiday would be on the nearest Monday

4^th October 1936 The Battle of Cable St. Mosley’s fascists stopped from marching through London’s East End

4^th November 1839 Chartist Rising in Newport. An attempt at armed revolution for the vote, peaceful means having failed at that point back to Peterloo. It failed, but only just

22^nd November 1990. The resignation of Margaret Thatcher

28^th November 1820. Birth of Friedrich Engels Manchester businessman and co-thinker with Marx.

A social media poll has so far indicated that marking the anniversary of Cable St was by far the most well supported option, with the date of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation in 1990 second. There were also many other ideas aside from the four poll options.

LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, the Battle of Cable St deserves to be marked with a public holiday. When ordinary Londoners came together to make a decisive stand against Mosley’s anti-Semitism and racism they made a point that resonates down the decade.

The poll is still open:

What we did on our holidays: the August Bank Holiday before and after 1965

The August Bank Holiday was set as the first Monday of the month by the 1871 Bank Holidays Act and only changed for an experimental period to the last Monday in 1965. The change was made permanent in 1971 in the Banking and Financial Dealings Act but does not apply to Scotland. It was primarily a result of pressure from the holiday industry who felt that a later holiday would extend the season.

The constant refrain that summer is over at the end of August seems odd in 2024. Meteorological summer does not end until September 22^nd. While schools return, September into October have been significant holiday periods for those with grown up children or none at all.

Before legislation in 1938 Bank Holidays were the only official paid holidays available to workers and were seen as a significant advance in working class leisure time.

The August Bank Holiday was the most popular of those agreed by the 1871 Act precisely because it was in summer and the weather was likely to be better for a trip out than the Easter holiday.

Railway companies ran excursions and extra trains to seaside destinations.

The nature of holidays, although still strongly influenced by school terms, has changed considerably in the last 40 years with short breaks at home and abroad more popular.

Recent discussion of bank holidays has focused on whether the UK should have more, if May Day should be maintained and if there should be an autumn bank holiday. Yet there is also something of an historical case now for moving the August Bank Holiday in England and Wales back to its original early August date.

The nature of work and of holidays has changed considerably since 1971 and I suspect that while the period around the current Bank Holiday remains a popular time to take a break, peak holiday time remains in the two weeks after schools break up (in many areas) in late July.

The history of Bank Holidays is still being written in practice as it were.

Beard Liberation Front

30^th August

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard Campaigners defend suit wearing

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has defended suit wearers, after the Sunday Times revealed that Marks and Spencer only sells suits at 110 out of 254 of its large stores after a significant fall in demand.

The retailer says that the fashion has changed to ‘smart casual’ invariably for men, a jacket with separate trousers.

The BLF says that while one of its founding principles in the 1990s was to oppose the then dominant dress culture of clean shaven men in suits, at the same time it also stands up for the right of people to dress and appear as they want.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, I’ve worked in the City of London for many years and in that time there has been a significant decline in suit wearing and an equally noticeable rise in beard wearing amongst male employees. In the context of 2021 though we’d say that if people want to wear a suit, that can be a convenient and comfortable style of dress, then why not. Obviously we also think they should wear a matching beard as well.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58374306

London Socialist Historians Group

August 30^th

Contact Dr Keith Flett 07803 167266

As TUC calls for Public Holiday between Sept & Xmas Historians suggest dates

The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London has welcome the call by the TUC for four more public holidays a year

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58379875

This includes a new holiday between September and Xmas.

The historians have suggested 4 possible dates- convention dictates that the holiday would be on the nearest Monday

4^th October 1936 The Battle of Cable St. Mosley’s fascists stopped from marching through London’s East End

4^th November 1839 Chartist Rising in Newport. An attempt at armed revolution for the vote, peaceful means having failed at that point back to Peterloo. It failed, but only just

22^nd November 1990. The resignation of Margaret Thatcher

28^th November 1820. Birth of Friedrich Engels Manchester businessman and co-thinker with Marx.

Vote for your choice here:

Pictures and a video have emerged of Michael Gove ‘dancing’ in an Aberdeen night club early on Sunday morning.

Gove dancing which may or may not be trend setting consists of him waving his arms around.

Gove was not wearing a mask (probably to the regret of other clubbers who had to look at him) and with COVID cases in Scotland rising in the last days one wonders what happened to his previous love of Vaccine passports (I have the NHS England one on my phone btw). He previously led a Government study on the matter and appeared keen.

However the Government is renowned for its do as we say not do as we do approach to such matters