SOCIALIST UNITY

By a guest contributor

UNDER the headline “‘Neo-Nazi gran’ hired as aide to BNP member on London Assembly”, the London Evening Standard has exposed the fact that the notorious far-right activist Tess Culnane is working at City Hall as a PA to Richard Barnbrook. There is also good coverage of the case by Adam Bienkov at Liberal Conspiracy. It is however worth examining Culnane’s political record in more detail, since the employment of such an individual in the office of the BNP’s most prominent London politician tells us a lot about the BNP’s claim that it is now a mainstream party that has put its neo-Nazi past behind it.

Who is Tess Culnane?

A well-known figure on the far right in South East London for many years, Culnane has never shown any sympathy with Nick Griffin’s attempts to hide the BNP’s core fascist ideology and present a more respectable image in the interests of electability. On the contrary, she has always been a supporter of the hardline politics of John Tyndall, the veteran fascist ousted as BNP chairman by Griffin in 1999. When Tyndall died in 2005 a Guardian obituary described him as “a racist, violent neo-nazi to the end”. Culnane, for her part, hailed Tyndall as “a wonderful orator, a brilliant mind, a true patriot who inspired us all. A gentleman in every sense of the word”.

Culnane stood as a BNP candidate in the Downham ward in the Lewisham Council elections in May 2002 and then in a by-election in the same ward in November that year. She did particularly well in the by-election, gaining 519 votes (20.1%) and finishing third behind the Lib Dems (998 votes) and Labour (769). It was a mark of Culnane’s political status within the BNP that she was No.2 on the party’s list for the 2004 European Parliamentary elections in London and No.5 on the list for elections to the London Assembly held on the same date.

Culnane’s failed libel action

During the November 2002 Lewisham by-election the Lib Dems circulated a leaflet headed “Don’t be fooled by the BNP” which referred to the fact that leading figures in the BNP had convictions for violence and other crimes. “When you go to vote on November 7th,” the leaflet concluded, “ask yourself – is this the kind of person you want as your elected councillor?”

Culnane launched a libel action against Mark Morris, the Lib Dem candidate who won the by-election, and his agent on the basis that she personally didn’t have convictions for the crimes mentioned in the leaflet, but she lost the case, lumbering herself with some £100,000 in costs. She appealed but lost again, with the Court of Appeal finding that there was “no arguable basis” for overturning the verdict.

The case was reportedly the source of conflict between Culnane and the BNP leadership, who claimed that they had advised her against the libel action. The advice was sound – as the verdict showed, it isn’t easy for a notorious far-right racist to persuade a court that their reputation has been damaged.

Culnane splits from the BNP

However, the immediate cause of Culnane’s 2005 split from the BNP was that she refused to accept the BNP leadership’s demand that she should cease associating with other more extreme far-right organisations, including an openly Nazi groupuscule called the British People’s Party.

In October 2005 the BNP announced that the BPP was proscribed along with another Nazi group, the Nationalist Alliance, with which Culnane had also been involved. The BNP stated that these two organisations “are used by hostile media elements to link our party to them. We don’t need or want the skinhead and nazi image which the NA and BPP thrive on and so it is necessary for us to make it very clear that there is a complete separation”. It was declared “a serious disciplinary offence for any BNP member to attend any event organised by these groups, to bring any of their propaganda to our events, or to be a paid up member of any of these groups”.

The press report on the failure of Culnane’s libel action also stated that the BNP “says she is no longer a member of the party”. There was some confusion over whether Culnane had in fact been expelled, and she herself appeared uncertain as to whether she was still in the party. However, at the end of November, in a post on the white supremacist Stormfront website, Culnane resolved the situation by announcing that she would not be renewing her BNP membership, on the grounds that she refused to cease associating with the likes of the BPP. Indeed, she made it clear that she had more in common with these open Nazis than she did with leading figures in her own party.

“I will not be instructed”, she wrote, “to dis-associate myself from certain other true nationalists many of whom, in my opinion, have been unjustly proscribed and by rights should be in the highest echelons of the British National Party thus replacing certain people that are obviously unsuitable to hold their current positions in the party.”

In December the BPP’s e-zine Nationalist Week published a message from Culnane backing their open letter to the BNP objecting to proscription. “I am somewhat puzzled”, she wrote, “as to how, by any stretch of the imagination, the leadership of the BNP can possibly proscribe another White nationalist party.”

What Tess did next

The BPP was too small to give Culnane any effective backing in elections after she left the BNP, so she joined the National Front. She contested a by-election in the Lewisham Whitefoot ward on behalf of the NF in September 2007, getting 95 votes (3.6%). (Due to an administrative cock-up on the part of the NF she had to stand as an independent, though the ballot paper carried the NF logo next to her name.)

Culnane again stood for the NF in the London Assembly elections in May 2008 in the Greenwich and Lewisham constituency, where she got 8,509 votes (5.8%). This compared favourably with the BNP’s vote for the Londonwide list in Greenwich and Lewisham (9,764 votes – 6.6%), even though the BNP had a much more high-profile and effective campaign than the NF, while the BNP’s mayoral candidate Richard Barnbrook got only 5,170 first preference votes (3.5%) in the same GLA constituency. Culnane was also the NF candidate in the Haltemprice and Howden parliamentary by-election in July 2008, where she got 544 votes (2.29%).

Her involvement with the NF did not prevent Culnane from continuing her association with the BPP. In April 2007 she was a speaker at the BPP’s St George’s Day meeting in Hove, where she shared the platform with notorious Holocaust denier Lady Michele Renouf, against a backdrop of fascist symbols and posters bearing slogans like “Hang paedophile scum”. The BPP proudly posted photos of the event on its website, with the picture of Culnane captioned “Tess Culnane – respected British patriot”.

As late as September 2008, only a few months before she rejoined the BNP, the BPP announced that Culnane would be a featured speaker at its Nationalist Unity Rally in London. In the run-up to the meeting Kate Dermody of the BPP Women’s Division published a helpful summary of her party’s political views (”we have to witness our children being brainwashed into believing Hitler killed six million Jews despite OFFICIAL figures being put at less than 300,000 NATURAL deaths”), and at the rally itself “an original authenticated photograph of Hitler” was raffled.

It was quite clear that Culnane retained her links with the most hardline elements on the far right.

Culnane rejoins the BNP

Nevertheless, in January 2009 the BNP announced that Culnane had rejoined the party and that she would stand as the BNP candidate in a by-election in the Downham ward the following month (she got 287 votes – 10.6%). In a reference to Culnane’s split from the BNP over her insistence on consorting with openly Nazi organisations, the BNP report of Culnane’s return made passing mention of previous “clashes between people that at the time may have seemed important, but with the perspective of time, pale into insignificance”.

Presumably, as an incentive to rejoin the party, the BNP leadership offered Culnane some leeway on this issue, in line with that accorded to another unreconstructed Tyndallite, Richard Edmonds, who has been allowed to organise the Friends of John Tyndall as a vehicle for bringing dissident BNPers opposed to the “liberalising” of the party together with similarly minded fascists from outside the BNP.

In June 2009 both Culnane and Edmonds spoke at the annual Friends of John Tyndall Memorial Meeting. It was jointly organised by Edmonds, Rick Fawcus of the fascist marketing group Tyr Services and Anna Seymour of the England First Party, and was chaired by Keith Axon, formerly of Sharon Ebanks’ now defunct New Nationalist Party. The other speakers were Mike Easter, campaign manager for Chris Jackson’s failed 2007 leadership challenge to Griffin, Ian Edward of the NF, Steve Smith and Peter Rushton of the EFP and Tyndall’s widow Valerie, who told the meeting that before his death her late husband had become reconciled with Colin Jordan, his former associate in the White Defence League and National Socialist Movement of the late 1950s and early ’60s. Among those attending the meeting were Jim Lewthwaite of the Bradford-based Democratic Nationalists, the BNP’s former Croydon organiser Bob Gertner, another Croydon BNP hardliner Paul Ballard who was convicted of inciting racial hatred together with Griffin back in 1998, and the ubiquitous Holocaust denier Michele Renouf.

On rejoining the party Culnane was immediately put to work speaking at BNP meetings in London. Her speech to Bromley and Lewisham BNP in April 2009, a video of which was posted on the BNP website (it has since been removed, but can be viewed here), was particularly well received. “I like especially her comments about the behaviour of her neighbours,” one admirer wrote, “and the way black immigrants so often destroy the quality of people’s lives. ‘They have ruined the lives of my family since 1969′, she said – by bringing unbearable levels of noise and the constant fear of crime into their lives.” Culnane also indignantly related the tale of how her bus driver son was sacked after he told a passenger to “shut her black mouth” and his trade union refused to defend him. She claimed that this was an example of “the tragedy that’s hit my family because of multiculturalism”, attributing it to the fact “sucessive governments have done nothing to stem the tide of invasion into this country”.

Why did the BNP have Culnane back, and why did she rejoin? “It’s an odd choice on the surface for the respectability seeking euro nationalist BNP,” a local blogger wrote, “who have moved in an almost opposite way to Tess of recent years who seems far too much of an unreconstructed racist for whom the BNP were nowhere near as extreme as she would have liked them to be.”

However, from the standpoint of the BNP leadership, it was a problem for them that the most prominent figure on the far right in South East London was not a member of the party. Culnane’s personal following locally was enough to win her a fifth of the vote in the 2002 Downham by-election and a bigger share of the vote than the BNP’s mayoral candidate in the 2008 London elections. As for Culnane’s own motives, by rejoining the BNP she became part of an organisation that could at least mobilise a significant number of activists to support her in elections, which is more than the BPP or even the NF could do.

The BNP leadership’s decision to offer Culnane employment in Barnbrook’s City Hall office looks like part of a tactic of neutralising Tyndallite dissidents by incorporating them into the party apparatus, comparable to Griffin’s decision to co-opt Richard Edmonds onto the BNP’s Advisory Council in September 2008. Her new position will certainly make it impossible for Culnane to appear on the platforms of outfits like the BPP, or defect to the NF as Chris Jackson and Mike Easter have recently done, if she wants to keep her job.

Culnane may have renounced public appearances on the platforms of rival organisations to the right of the BNP, but there is of course no indication at all that her political views have changed. The fact is that Barnbrook’s office staff now includes an individual with a long record of links with unashamed Nazis. As Labour’s London Assembly member Murad Qureshi is quoted as saying in the Evening Standard report: “In this instance the BNP has revealed its fascist underbelly, and voters should not be fooled by the party’s attempts to present a more moderate image.” This point needs to be advertised by anti-fascists in London in the run-up to the elections in May.

“FREE NELSON MANDELA” ANNIVERSARY T-SHIRT OUT

27 years in captivity. Nelson Mandela was finally released by South Africa’s Apartheid regime on 11 February 1990 two decades ago. And this year the country, which he was democratically elected President of, celebrates 20 years of freedom as well as hosting Africa’s first World Cup. Philosophy Football’s 20th anniversary ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ T-shirt is the perfect kit for 2010, whatever your team. Available from HERE

During the magnificent campaign for Nelson Mandela’s release one song stood out, The Specials AKA’s ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ revisit it at You Tube HERE

Philosophy Football’s shirt both celebrates this message that inspired a generation to dance, march and boycott but also South Africa’ achievements in its two decades of freedom. Plus the shirt helps raise funds for Action for Southern Africa, www.actsa.org , the successor to the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

It seems ages since I last did one of these. There are plenty of new and newish blogs doing the rounds at the moment readers can get their teeth into. Without further ado …

First up is a rare departure for this blog. Normally I concentrate on socialist, Labour, feminist and Green blogging but just this once I’ll allow a LibDem to slip through the net. But with good reason. Giles Wilkes’ Freethinking Economist has rapidly established itself as one of the few must-read populist economics blogs out there (alongside the apparently defunct Duncan’s Economics Blog and the ever-excellent Stumbling and Mumbling). I think that’s reason enough for inclusion on this list!

Next on the conveyor belt of blogging goodies comes Red Rag, which is neither the blog-that-never-was that got Derek Draper into a spot of bother last year, nor the newish Tory-supporting effort that’s recently been touted in Conservative blogging circles. This Red Rag is very much in the mode of an attack blog, aiming its fire at the easy ride the Tories get in the mainstream press. It also tries to make a nuisance of itself, such as this interesting piece on the Tories’ treasurer, Michael Spence. If Red Rag gets an audience behind it, it could give the Tories a bit of a headache.

Reddebrek’s Bowl is not a million miles away from my own blog in its intention. The author, ‘Red Mike’ writes “I’m a male 20 something politically active student who enjoys reading, long walks in the woods and being pretentious” and promises “an eclectic mix of Left leaning rants, pop cultural rambles and the odd grumble about the state of the telly and book world.”

Time for a touch of greenery. Green Gabbles from Steve Gabb carries his personal musings about the Green party and green politics. His latest piece looks at Phillip Lee, the candidate who won the high profile open primary for the Tory safeseat of Bracknell and has since disappeared off the local political radar. Hopefully his inaction will see Labour and the Greens rack up decent votes. You can follow Steve on Twitter here.

This is another cheeky one stretching the definition of ‘new’ to the limit. Faithful to the Line has been going on and off since December 2008, and has recently started up again. Hopefully they will continue churning stuff out as the comment and opinion so far has been excellent. Show your encouragement by visiting, and visiting often.

The Novocastrian is the vehicle of Rob Carr, a “Labour supporting Christian living in Newcastle”. If religion isn’t your bag, don’t worry. Rob doesn’t do preaching. Instead his blog lately indulges attacks on the Tories, reflects on the John Terry saga, and some pretty revealing thoughts about weight and weight loss. You can follow Rob on Twitter here.

When you’re an independent political activist, there is always a temptation to try and fish in the waters of anti-politics by projecting yourself as somehow new or fresh. Vote Gareth Allen does just that, claiming to offer a “new approach to politics”. A pretty bold claim considering Gareth is standing on a number of social democratic policies. Nonetheless he typifies the kind of centre left voter/activist who Labour has alienated with its slavish submission to neoliberal dogma.

Time for another contribution from green politics. The collaborative blog, Bright Green Scotland does what you expect it to. It offers “news and analysis for Scotland’s green and progressive movement” and covers quite a wide range of topics. You can follow BGS on Twitter here.

And now for the last blog this month. Wind From Nowhere is the platform of long time cpgb supporter and Weekly Worker writer, Eddie Ford. Like other cpgb bloggers (such as the legendary Milton Keynes Communists), the bulk of material consists of stuff Eddie or other comrades have written for the WW. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (especially as the WW is generally the best written and least boring of the far left’s official publications), but it can be much of a muchness as far as blogging is concerned.

And that is it for another month. If you know of any new left blog (i.e. less than a year old) that deserves a shout out, plug them in the comments box or write to me at the usual address.

Despite their announcement, made little more than a week previously, it would appear that EDL will not now be staging their planned protest, allegedly against ‘Islamic extremistm’, in Bolton on 6th March.

In their recently revised statement (their initial statement demonstrated a very poor command of the English language by its author, contained numerous spelling mistakes and grammatical errors and has now been removed from their website no doubt out of embarrassment by the more literate members of the leadership) they state their reason for doing so as being the fact that “a Hindu religious festival is scheduled for the same day, at the same time and in the same location as their planned demonstration.”

Their statement further goes on: “We have received information that far-left groups were planning to attack Hindus whilst dressed in EDL clothing, which may be purchased freely from our internet shop. This cowardly attack, had it taken place, was to be blamed on our organisation with the intent of discrediting our stated aim of peacefully protesting against radical Islam.

“Due to the respect we have for the peace loving Hindu community, we deemed it only right and proper that we cancel our own plans to ensure their safety. We hope that the action we have taken will be taken as further proof that we stand only against Muslim extremists. No other decent, honest, peaceful person or group has anything to fear from the EDL.

“The good people of Bolton, who have shown us solid support, should be reassured that we will arrange another demonstration in due course. No street, town or city is off-limits to the English Defence League in our own land. We shall never surrender a single, solitary inch of our country to extremists. We shall defend our freedoms, our values and our culture against all who would destroy them.”

Needless to say the EDLers from Daubhill (an area of Bolton with a large Muslim community), who one of them said would be ‘on the rampage’ on the 6th March in Bolton, on the EDL’s own facebook page for the event, are not likely to be very happy to know that the ‘values or culture ‘ the EDL referred to in its initial statement calling off the event, and said they shall ‘never ever’ surrender (but which as now been replaced with they shall never surrender to extremists a ’solitary inch of our country to’ and to which a further sentenced has been added concerning defending our freedoms, values and our culture) embraces that of the ‘peace loving Hindu community’! This since most of them wouldn’t likely know the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu even if their life depended on it, and who ultimately are mostly racists in general and against all foreigners and not just Muslims!
Hence the EDL leadership’s dilemma in Bolton - the potential debacle of loads of their own guys indiscriminately beating up Hindus and others non-Muslim minorities in the town hall square - something which would be clearly recorded on video, since Victoria Square likely has more cctv cameras per square yard than most places in Britain, not least as a result of previous NF and fascist marches there in the past, a scenario which would be a PR catastrophe for the EDL. Hence also arising from this fact, their slander of the UAF in their initial statement, the words ‘UAF’ are replaced with ‘far-left groups’ in the revised statement (if it was not so obviously laughable a charge!) preparing to attack the Hindu Festival dressed up as EDLers had the EDL march taken place.

If they actually had anyone with any brains on the ground in Bolton (they claim to have several thousand supporters in Bolton as opposed to the zero locals in the UAF), and done their homework, then they would have sussed out what was going on in the town hall square before they planned their protest, also concerning all those cctv cameras. They would have also known the Hindu Forum were planning to cancel their event if the EDL protest was to be allowed to go ahead anyway, so even if people from the UAF or ‘far-left groups’ had been planning to do as they say, which of course is an outrageous accusation, might likely have found none of them there to attack anyway.

This failure of intelligence is surely doubly embarrassing for the EDL’s leaders should it become widely known amongst their rank and file, since had the EDL stuck to their guns, and the march not been banned by the police, the ‘peace loving Hindus’ they say they called their demo off in respect for, wouldn’t have been there for their own thugs to attack either, a fact which effectively means they called off their protest needlessly and prematurely, if at the much lesser PR damage of the proposed Hindu festival being cancelled by its own organisers, a decision which could have been more easily countered.

Further if the EDL’s ’spin’ concerning the cancellation of the Bolton protest, which we should all see as a big tactical retreat by them, having been done without their protest having been banned by the Council or the police, had any truth in it, all anyone needs to do in the future to stop the EDL protesting anywhere is to ask their nearest Hindu community to organise a religious festival in the same place and however many thugs the EDL might be able to muster are going to be asked to stand down. It is difficult to imagine this is either the truth of the matter or is an idea that is going to go down well at all with the EDL’s generally racist and football hooligan type rank and file foot-soldiers. As a consequence must lead to both demoralisation and internal conflicts as a result, also to likely reduced mobilisations at other such proposed events by these elements, who at some stage are going to start to work out that they are nothing but pawns in a bigger game played by people they don’t know or ever elected and who don’t seem to have the stomach for fighting themselves, against not only ALL immigrants and minorities, but Muslims either, if any Hindus are around. In short is going to really ‘do their heads in’.

Mark Krantz of the SWP conjectures that the BNP’s suit and tie brigade leaders are the ones calling the shots here not only out of fear of Bolton becoming a potential PR disaster too close to the forthcoming elections (which it would have been had they come anyway given the growing cross-community, trades union backed campaign beginning to build up against the EDL’s protest locally which would have been greatly strengthened by a national UAF mobilisation) but as part of a strategic retreat by the EDL in the run up to the elections generally for the very same PR and electorally orientated reason. However, if that were so, one has to ask why they are still planning to protest in Dudley on the 4th April, and why the word on the street in Daubhill today, is they want to re-schedule their visit to Bolton to May Bank Holiday Monday (3rd May), ie. in the same week as most likely the local elections and General elections will be taking place?

Whatever date they decide on, should they decide to re-schedule their protest in Bolton, we need to be in the town hall square to give them the mother of all unfriendly receptions to our town.

Their current retreat fortunately provides those of us locally with greater room to manoeuvre and to organise, which we should utilise to the full. Our first action should be a big united celebration in Victoria Square of Bolton’s rich and diverse cultural heritage on the 6th March as if the EDL were still coming, and as a dress rehearsal for any future visit by the EDL to our town which will show them our determination to stand up to the intimidation and threats of violence by their overtly racist hooligan supporters. We also need to go on the offensive against the EDL locally, especially in Daubhill and in other working class areas of Bolton were they are active, to counter their Islamaphobic propaganda and activities and to weed out and publicly expose their local racist and fascist leaders and organisers.

See you in Bolton on the 6th March.

Stephen Hall - South Lancs Respect Party organiser

Over the issue of Rod Liddle, I think that Sunny at Liberal Conspiracy seriously needs to get a grip.

It was perfectly responsible of Sunny Hundal to raise a question mark over whether Rod Liddle would be a suitable appointment as editor of the Independent, based upon questionable political attitudes Liddle had taken, arguably out of step with the liberal leanings of that newspaper.

But Sunny seems to have extended this to become almost a personal vendetta. Given that the purpose of Sunny’s campaign is to deny Mr Liddle a potentially lucrative appointment, then we are certainly in the area of life where the libel laws are designed to offer protection; and therefore Sunny Hundal needs to be very cautious about what allegations he makes.

It seems entirely reasonable to me from Rod Liddle’s perspective to have posted on the facebook group “If Rod Liddle becomes editor of The Independent, I will not buy it again” a comment saying:

Can I just point out that your letter to Mr Lebedev is defamatory, in quite a big way? I think I ought to warn you about that.

In particular, the proposed advertisement that the campaign group opposing Mr Liddle is intending to publish includes the allegation:

He has been arrested for beating up his pregnant girlfriend, made jokes about smoking at Auschwitz and is a climate-change denier. Does he represent the values of progressive, independent minded readers of this newspaper?

The source for the first part of this seems to be a story in the Times that said:

ROD LIDDLE, former editor of Radio 4’s Today programme, was arrested on election night after allegedly punching his pregnant girlfriend.
Police responding to a 999 call arrested Mr Liddle at the South London home he shares with Alicia Monckton and questioned him for several hours at a police station. Mr Liddle, who is a team captain on BBC Two’s Call My Bluff quiz show and associate editor of the Spectator magazine, accepted a caution for common assault and was later released.

Ms Monckton, 23, is reported to have dialled 999 during a row but when police arrived at the flat she declined to pursue a complaint. Mr Liddle, 45, was held under new domestic violence guidelines which allow police to question suspects without cooperation from victims. Last night he was reported to have said that he accepted a caution because it was the quickest way for him to be released and said that he never touched Ms Monckton, who is 20 weeks pregnant.

We can see here that the Times were themselves skating on thin ice, because the only factually uncontested part of their story was that Ms Monckton had dialled the police. The allegation of “punching” is guarded with “allegedly”, and Rod Liddle himself denies having laid a hand on her.

Domestic violence is far from a trivial matter, and should not be used as a political football. The truth is that the issues around relationships and rows are emotionally complex and draining for all concerned. There is a danger of being sanctimonious and moralistic, and not recognising that many loving couples occasionally flare up; and it is more common than you might think for the police to be called to domestic rows. Without minimising or condoning domestic violence, we need to have some sensitivity to the fact that isolated instances of violent rowing might sometimes occur in stressful situations without it being any part of a pattern of abuse, and that in most cases the best and only people able to pass judgement are the couple themselves.

The accusation from Sunny Hundal that Rod Liddle “beat up his pregnant girlfriend” seems to be deliberately “sexed up”; whereas, more accurately, Mr Liddle may have been cautioned only for common assault, which does not imply actual physical violence. We have no context to judge this incident by, but we do know that three years later Alica Monckton married Rod Liddle.

The original point that Sunny Hundal made, that Rod Liddle might be a bad fit for the Indy based upon his provocative and illiberal political views is sufficient. This other stuff, exploiting past difficulties between Rod Liddle and his wife for political point scoring seems mean-spirited and prurient to me; and Sunny getting all in a huff because Rod Liddle has mentioned that there might be an issue of defamation here is a bit rich, given that Sunny seems to be going out of his way to cast Liddle as a pariah.

Sunny Hundal is seeking to use the power of his blog audience to influence the appointment of the editor of one of the most respected newspapers in the land; fair play to him, but in seeking to exercise that power Sunny should accept the responsibility that comes with it.

If you have objections to Rod Liddle’s politics, then keep your criticisms of him at the political level. Don’t pillory the man himself.

Daniel Bensaid Memorial Meeting (1946 – 2010)

Daniel was one of the leaders of the May 68 movement in France, a member of the LCR and the NPA, and an author of books on marxism and history.

Tuesday 9 February, 7.30pm

Venue: ULU, Malet Street, WC1
Speakers: Gilbert Achcar, Terry Conway SR, Alex Callinicos SWP, Stathis Kouvelakis NPA

Strategies of Resistance & ‘Who Are the Trotskyists?’, a collection of works by Daniel Bensaïd including his History of Trotskyism. This 182-page book retails for just £6. The introduction is by Paul Le Blanc. To receive a copy of the book, post a cheque for £6 to Socialist Resistance, PO Box 62732, London, SW2 9GQ

Meeting organised by Socialist Resistance (the Fourth International in Britain) @ www.socialistresistance.org

The sacking of John Terry as England captain may be yet another example of the unfortunate power of the tabloid press; but it may also be that even had this matter not been so widely publicised, it might still have affected his capability to play the role of captain.

In my view the question of whom he did or did not sleep with is a matter entirely for Terry himself and his loved ones, and really is none of our business. But the question of whether or not he could continue as England captain is a different one, concerning whether this matter is likely to have an effect on the cohesion and mutual loyaty of the squad.

I can’t help recalling the gossip going around Bristol City many years back concerning perhaps the most charismatic player ever to play for City, Darius “Jackie” Dziekanowski. [pictured, in a derby against the Gas]

Jackie was a Polish international first introduced to Britain by Celtic, and who brought a touch of class to Ashton Gate that we were unaccustomed to; of course it helped that we also had Andy Cole in the team at the same time.

We can never know the truth of the rumours about Jackie’s womanising. (My nephew’s wife worked at Ashton Gate at the time, and could certainly testify that Jackie had several friendships among the women staff); but it came to be widely believed that Jackie was giving some of the other players’ wives extra companionship, rumours of similar behaviour had followed him down from Glasgow.

As a spectator of course you don’t know the ins and outs of what is going on in the team, but when opposing fans started chanting “Jackie shagged your missus” every time certain other City players got the ball, then it became noticeable to me that Jackie had the ball passed to him rather less often than previously. Eventually, one of the most extraordinary legends ever to grace Ashton Gate was put up for a free transfer.

So it may well be that John Terry could not continue as captain; not least because that would simply have further fueled the taboid feeding frenzy; but also there may have been issues between the players.

But this whole John Terry affair reveals something about our society. The celebrity obsessed froth we have whipped up is incompatible with any greatness of acheivement. The scurrilous yellow press are already undermining an England team that has yet to even be picked before the South Africa tournament, let alone kicked a ball. They are given no peace or privacy to perfect their craft and build their team; instead they are harried, probed and pilloried. How can they concentrate on playing sport at the very highest level, when their personal lives are under intense media scrutiny, and their love life is being discussed in every pub?

The sad truth is that however much so many of us dream of England winning the world cup again, we have created a culture of inflated-expectation, sense of entitlement and hubris that means, in truth, we don’t deserve to win.

Alistair Campbell was the spin doctor who spun us to war and as a result a great many innocent people died.

More here

Louis Proyect has done us all an unwitting favour by drawing attention to a priceless assessment of Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States” in the New Yorker by Jill Lepore:

Every fall, the freshmen troop into town tugging laundry bags stuffed with extra-long fitted sheets and trunks packed with aspirations, Scrabble, and socks. The next week, when they gather around the seminar table with their laptops cocked, the brashest are the kids who read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” in high school. It got them thinking and gave them something to argue about, aside from how to cram for the AP and whether the DBQ ought to count for more than the multiple choice. Zinn doesn’t come up in scholarly journals, but he introduced a whole lot of people who hadn’t thought about it before to the idea that history has a point of view. Kids can figure this out all on their own, but it’s nice to read it in a book. I suspect that reading “A People’s History” at fourteen is a bit like reading “The Catcher in the Rye” at the same age (history’s so goddam phony): it’s swell and terrible and it feels like something has ended, because it has.

Zinn wanted to write a people’s history because he believed that a national history serves only to justify the existence of the nation, which means, mainly, that it lies, and if it ever tells the truth, it tells it too fast, racing past atrocity to dwell on glory. Zinn’s history did the reverse. Instead of lionizing Andrew Jackson, he mourned the Cherokee. The problem is that, analytically, upending isn’t an advance; it’s more of the same, only upside-down. By sophomore year, the young whippersnappers have figured that out, too, which can be heartbreaking to watch, but it doesn’t make them any less grateful for what Zinn taught them, or any less fond of him for having braved it. Come September, the freshmen will be back, Zinn on their Kindles, zeal in their striped messenger bags, and I’ll be awfully glad to see them

I think that is a fair assessment of Zinn. A brilliant populist of left wing politics, and someone who helped expose the darker side of American history to a huge audience. But “A People’s History of the United States” is, in truth, a bit of a rant.

It certainly doesn’t live up to the charm and insight of A L Morton’s “A People’s History of England”. which Christopher Hill described as ‘The best history of England for the ordinary reader’. The strength of Morton’s book is that it contextualises the specific development of Engish, and later British, society and political economy as a complex process of development, and explains the elements of contention, and how the working people and the poor were both affected by, and helped to determine the outcome in its specific national detail.

 I have to admit that after reading Zinn’s book, in contrast, it gave me the impression that one damned thing happened after another, It has two further weaknesses in my view; one the rather caracatured view of the American ruling classes, as almost a conspiracy, where their democratic and republican ideology is almost presented as a trick to dupe the masses; the other failing is, despite its title, that Zinn’s book addresses very little towards discussing the national specificity of the United States.

 The interesting story of the USA is a creole people in rebellion against the metropolitan power, which resulted in the formation of one of the first modern  states to self-consciously create a national identity, and national-popular political ideology. The USA therefore did not fit comfortably within the dominant nineteeth century paradigm of European colonialism. They also crafted a national consciousness based upon civic identity and democratic liberalism, which set them massively apart in the early period of capitalist devlopment. The complictions of slavery and the theft of the land of the indigenous peoples were a worm in the apple; and of course the history of nations is also a contested process between the classes

Yet Zinn simply doesn’t interest himself in those aspects of American history that are exemplary, extraordinary or novel; because he is too intent on proving that America is just the same as everywhere else in the capitalist world. He also exhibits a crude underplaying of ideology, such that American approaches to the major wars are described as simple functions of economic self interest, and the idea that there may have been sincerely held pro-democratic or anti-fascist convictions is simply dismissed.

Anyway, it is an influential book, and you should read it for yourself, it is on-line here.

See also comment by Matthew Yglesias, Amy Goodman, The spook who sat by the door and Alice Walker

George Galloway, having spoken at the Progressive London conference that same morning, spoke in Brooklyn , New York, last Saturday.

An interesting report here in full from Desert peace, with photos.