Trotsky vs Baldwin: is 'gradualness' the British way?

The suffragettes: one of those inconvenient truths for Baldwin

Here's my brief introduction to Counterfire's re-posting of a classic Trotsky article from 1925:

Leon Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and, for several years afterwards, a leading figure in the socialist government of Russia's new workers' state. He was also a prominent voice in the international communist movement that mushroomed after 1917, writing about a wide range of international topics.

Analysis and action went together: he commented on major political developments with a view to influencing socialists in the countries he was writing about, hoping to influence the strategy and tactics they would pursue.

Britain had been shaken by strike waves and demonstrations after the end of World War One. In 1919 the country came closer to a revolutionary situation than at any other time in the 20th century. There was a period of fluctuating, sometimes dramatic, class struggle until the defeat of the General Strike in 1926.

This was part of a wider European upsurge that involved a number of countries, most significantly Germany, experiencing revolutionary upheavals. This wider upsurge was also the context for the growth of Communist Parties and for intense debates in the labour movement, which involved large reformist parties (like Britain's Labour Party) as well as the newer Communist Parties. In Britain the Communist Party was launched in 1920 and played a dynamic role in working class movements for the next several years, though it didn't have more than a few thousand activists.

Trotksy's published writings on Britain in the 1920s include the 1925 article re-published below. He begins by mocking the then Tory prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, who was a huge figure in interwar British politics, and responds to Baldwin's dismissal of socialist ideas. Baldwin had returned to 10 Downing Street after the collapse of the first ever (but short-lived) Labour government in the previous year. At the time of Baldwin's speech - to which Trotsky was responding - there was consequently a fair amount of confidence and bounce in Tory ranks, but also an anxiety that stemmed both from several years of working class resistance and the spectre of communism emanating from Russia.

Trotsky moves on to the substance of his article. This is partly to do with the nature of how modern capitalist societies develop, and especially the way that wars and economic crises are engendered by them. But it also concerns something much more hopeful: if capitalism makes war and crisis inevitable, it also makes resistance - and indeed revolution - inevitable. And Britain - for all its fabled 'gradualness' - is not immune to that.

Trotsky documents how Britain's history is not the story of peaceful, gradual progress that Baldwin espoused, but a history of war, conquest, conflict and class struggle. He is especially scathing about the acutely violent record of British colonialism. He also notes how the English Revolution of the 1640s had been a vital motor of historical progress in Britain, a fact obscured by Tory fantasies of timelessness and social peace.

Trotsky goes on to sketch a radical, and truly bracing, alternative popular history of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which highlights the impact of wider international changes (especially the French Revolution) and the role of popular movements and workers' struggles. In this historical framework, Trotsky reasserts Marx's central idea that history is driven forward by class struggle and that hope lies in the self-emancipation of the working class. This, he shows us, is as relevant to supposedly 'gradual' and 'peaceful' Britain as to anywhere.

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Democracy and capitalism - an unstable compound

Paul Foot’s ‘The Vote’ is rightly regarded as the summation of its author’s life and work. Foot was a journalist, writer and campaigner with an unwavering commitment to revolutionary socialist politics for over four decades, who wrote about ‘The Vote’s key themes – democracy, the Labour Party, socialism, capitalist power – recurrently throughout his adult life.

I first read the book when it was published in 2005 (posthumously, as Foot had died the previous year, aged 66), but recently re-read large chunks of it. I thought I’d share some observations on the book and its key ideas.

‘The Vote’ is divided, as the subtitle ‘How it was won and how it was undermined’ suggests, into two parts. The first half is an inspiring account of the mass struggles of (predominantly) lower classes to win democratic rights, from the Levellers in the English Revolution of the 1640s to the suffragettes.

The second half is the less glorious (though complex) history of the Labour Party in the 20^th century, and how it has failed in office to deliver on socialist - or in the eras of Wilson, Callaghan and Blair, even mildly social democratic - aspirations.

Democracy and capitalism

For many writers the Chartists would have been the obvious place to start, but Foot was astute in seeing that the story stretches back further than that. In fact the Putney Debates in 1647 marked the commencement of the long, on-going debate about democracy and its relationship to wealth. The notion that everyone – or at least every man – should have a say in political decisions, through the power of the vote, was profoundly revolutionary.

In the seventeenth century power belonged to those with money and property. Politics was a matter of discussion among that layer of society, while everyone else was firmly shut out. The bourgeois revolution of the 1640s secured the power and privileges of a rising capitalist class, but this did not extend to the great mass of people.  

And so it would continue until the 19^th century, when movements for reform – above all Chartism – would win the vote for growing layers of society. The vote was seen, on all sides of the debate, as inextricably linked to all sorts of possible social, economic and political changes. Obtaining the vote would empower the masses – a prospect that inspired revolt while terrifying the ruling elites, who used ferocious violence when challenged. But this meant there was a glaring lack of legitimacy in the power of those who ruled: the rulers had no mandate, the ruled had little stake in the system.

The vote was not an end in itself, but a means to social change; the struggle for it was not, in the peaks of struggle at least, a single-issue campaign but part of a broader effort to transform society. This is seen most powerfully in Chartism, with a clear list of democratic demands but animated by the hope that they could be used to redress inequality and alleviate poverty and suffering. It was a movement of an emerging working class, increasingly forged in factories and other workplaces, congregating in the growing industrial cities. 

The struggle between democracy and the power of those with money and property – or, from the mid-19^th century onwards, the struggle between democracy and capitalism – is the great theme of Foot’s book. It connects everything and provides a thread running through the numerous disparate tales of resistance and reform and, later, the series of Labour’s disappointments and betrayals.

The book’s first half reminds us that people taking collective political action can - against tremendous obstacles – achieve real social reforms. The power to achieve change lies in the actions of ordinary people.

The book’s second half is full of illustrations of how the vote alone has not proved sufficient. Labour politicians so often proved to be in office but not in power, impotent against ‘market forces’ and capitalism’s subordination of everything to the pursuit of profit.

Parliamentary democracy and the Labour Party, as the vehicle for the working class to make use of suffrage, have failed to challenge the power of capital. Consequently the vote, while a great leap forward, has turned out not be a guarantee of any sort of democracy worthy of the name.

Distinctive features

There are, I think, a number of particularly significant things about Foot’s book when it is placed in the context of other socialist literature about these issues. Three things stand out for me.

Firstly, the history of the Labour Party is illuminated in a special way by following 250 pages about the struggle for democracy.  It provides a specific context for Labour Party history that elevates it above parliamentary intrigue and trivia, while simultaneously making it more interesting than a straightforward tale of decline and betrayal.

We are reminded of the aspirations that have prompted people to look to the Labour Party, or indeed to devote an enormous amount of time to it, as a vehicle for social change. Its history – rooted in working people’s desire for political representation, and for that to lead to social reform - is located as part of a long, historic struggle for democracy as a means to social transformation. Foot captures the tensions between aspiration and reality, between progressive policies and the ways they are undermined in office.  

Secondly, Foot’s history of the Labour Party is richer and more nunaced than might be expected from a dedicated revolutionary. He traces the ups and downs, the debates, and the genuinely meaningful reforms – notably in 1945-51 – with a sort of critical sympathy. It doesn’t feel remotely like he is out to damn the Labour Party. Instead he is scrupulously fair.

It is the accumulation of evidence, and the trajectory of the Party’s development (especially with Blair’s ascendancy), that makes it so abundantly clear that it is, ultimately, a hopeless enterprise for socialists. But, along the way, there are many Labour figures who Foot praises, many moments which illustrate why some socialists might keep faith with Labour, and a solid grasp of Labour’s role in creating the post-war settlement which has been systematically under attack since the late 1970s. Foot concluded that the rot was so deep that Labour could not return to being a genuine social democratic party – never mind a socialist party, which it never had been – and that socialists must look instead to extra-parliamentary and trade union struggles.  

Thirdly, Foot gives the suffragettes – especially the more radical and socialist elements – the credit they deserve. Ian Birchall, in his excellent biography of Tony Cliff, commented in a footnote that the whole chapter called ‘Women’ in Foot’s book was a sustained polemic against Cliff’s dismissive approach to the suffragettes. Cliff’s own book, 'Class Struggle and Women's Liberation', has many merits, but on this particular topic Foot was certainly right. Kate Connelly’s marvellous book on Sylvia Pankhurst, published last year, extends Foot’s interpretation and I recommend it for its account of the left-wing elements in the suffragette movement (and for so much else).

Foot, in this chapter, articulates the complexity of the suffragettes’ politics, alert to the differences within the movement, and also how elements of the movement articulated – as the Chartists had done – a political vision that envisaged suffrage as interconnected with economic and social demands. It is the longest chapter, affirming the hugely important place the suffragettes have, or certainly should have, in the history of struggles for democracy in this country.

Finally, a brief word of recommendation. If you haven’t read ‘The Vote’, search it out and read it. It is an unashamedly 'grand narrative' history with lots of fascinating detail, a broad-sweep history of British politics over 350 years that somehow manages to be subtle and nuanced. It is a great document of radical and inspiring ‘history from below’ that also has some hard-hitting truths about modern politics, all in an immensely readable style.

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Why we should reclaim our radical history

Socialist and suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst

'It’s about time that we stopped being an ungrateful and forgetful nation. Events like the Peterloo Massacre should be commemorated properly. Visionary and brave groups such as the Levellers, Chartists and Suffragettes shouldn’t be afterthoughts when talking about British history, they should be treated as a fundamental part of it.'

That paragraph is a strong conclusion to a good article in the New Statesman, headlined 'The Peterloo Massacre, the Levellers and the Chartists: why have we forgotten our radical history?' It might surprise you that these words were written by a Tory. David Skelton's celebration of democratic mass movements and their positive role in British history - accompanied by a passionate plea for them to be studied and admired more widely - is certainly the best opinion piece by a Tory I've read in some time. This, I grant you, is not the greatest of compliments, but it's interesting that even a Tory can express a vision of British history a thousand times better than Michael Gove's miserable vision.

Skelton also makes clear his contempt for the behaviour of the British state in massacring protesters in Manchester in 1819, referring to Peterloo as 'one of the most disgraceful, and totemic, moments in British history'. He explains:

'The Peterloo Massacre, in which fifteen people were killed and hundreds injured when the cavalry charged a peaceful demonstration for parliamentary reform, happened on this day in 1819. Lord Liverpool’s already reactionary government grew even more repressive. The massacre inspired generations of radicals to keep up the fight for reform and inspired Shelley to write one of the greatest political/ protest poems ever written, ‘The Mask of Anarchy’.'

Skelton's main point is that there are mass movements which have influenced the course of British history, but these are rarely studied, celebrated or commemorated as they should be. The development of democracy and reform has not simply been the concern of politicians or great leaders, but has been driven from below and - as seen in 1819 - often in the teeth of violent state repression (also think, for example, of the imprisonment and force feeding of suffragettes).

A history of mass protest

Skelton is absolutely right. It's hard not to wonder, though, why none of Skelton's examples are more recent than the suffragettes. Perhaps it is easier, if you have Conservative politics, to celebrate those struggles which happened a very long time ago than those which are somewhat fresher. Similarly, we often find right-wing commentators eulogising democratic movements abroad while remaining quiet about protests at home - or indeed backing the forces of 'law and order' attacking such protests.

I prefer to see the Levellers, Chartists and suffragettes as part of a rich and inspiring history of protest which also includes poll tax non-payers, anti-war marchers, student protesters and Occupy activists.

It is also a rather selective history. The criterion seems to be that movements have been for democracy. The overarching story here is one of democratic reform, progressively advancing through this country's history - from the English revolution, via the Chartists, to women receiving the vote on equal terms with men in 1928.

I much prefer this active people's history to a history which presents the advancement of democratic reform as a result merely of the actions of politicians. It is far closer to the truth and acknowledges the struggles and sacrifices of many ordinary people, while showing that such advances have been bitterly contested by the old order.

But it leaves out countless struggles over social and economic issues which don't neatly fit this narrative, while presenting a smooth vision of progress that belies the complex reality. A rounded people's history would also include the great strike waves of the New Unionism in around 1889/90, the Great Unrest directly before World War One, and the early 1970s.

It would include the Luddites two centuries ago as well as the Levellers nearly four centuries ago. There would be a place for international solidarity movements, from Spain in the 1930s to Vietnam in the 1960s, which have shown the breadth of political horizons and depth of compassion of many in this country. And much, much more.

Their democracy and ours

This brings us to the key point. It's not just about democracy in the narrow parliamentary sense - voting once every few years for politicians to make decisions on behalf, though in truth even they are in office but not in power as the state machine and big business operate with scant regard for democracy. Mass democratic movements have, without exception, raised a range of social, economic and political questions. They can't easily be placed in a box marked 'democratic reform'.

All of these movements have contained different strands and expressed a range of views and aspirations. Some leaders have encouraged people to settle for mild reform, holding back from a more far-reaching challenge to the power and wealth of governing elites.

The English Revolution had its moderates and radicals. What characterised the most radical and far-sighted elements was an understanding that real democracy was linked to challenging the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

The clash of positions within the English Revolution was captured in the Putney Debates of 1647, when the Agitators linked democracy and social equality, but the moderate Ireton replied:  'no man hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom... that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom.'. In other words: only those with property or wealth should have a vote. Democracy was to be separated from the aspiration to create a more equal society serving the interests of the many.

Chartism was not simply a democratic campaign, but the first working class mass movement anywhere in the world. Its demonstration of the potential of collective action by the early industrial working class inspired Frederick Engels when he wrote 'The Condition of the Working Class' in 1844 and, a few years later, both Engels and his close collaborator Karl Marx when they penned 'The Communist Manifesto'. Most Chartists were motivated by the idea that greater democracy could bring social justice: an end to appalling poverty, greater equality, better working conditions.

The more radical suffragettes, like Sylvia Pankhurst, linked the fight for votes for women to economic struggles. World War One brought many women into the workforce - including traditionally 'male' jobs - and broadened their ideas about what role women could play in society.

There were campaigns over issues like housing during and immediately after the war, which involved women in a huge way. During this period left-wing women activists fought for the vote, but also organised against the slaughter of the war, agitated for better housing and services, and built solidarity with the Irish struggle for independence.

Making history live and breathe

We should be inspired by all of this history. We can learn from it, share it with others, celebrate it and commit to building on the traditions of mass protest we have inherited. Crucially, we should link the struggle for democracy - which is unfinished - to the myriad battles over the conditions we live in.

The near-absence of radical history from education and mainstream culture, which Skelton rightly bemoans but can't explain, is no quirk or accident. It is political. They don't want us to know about this stuff.

Learn about the Levellers and confront the modern-day Iretons who seek to protect the privileges of the few. Be inspired by the Chartists and build the People's Assembly as a movement that asserts real democracy while fighting cuts. Celebrate what the suffragettes achieved and oppose 21st century sexism. There's no better way of making history live and breathe.



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Emily Wilding Davison centenary - fighting for liberation

Here, first, is something from Philosophy Football to tie in with International Women's Day (8 March) and the centenary of Emily Wilding Davison's death. Below you will find the details of an event I'm helping organise in Newcastle to mark the centenary. I hope the locals among you can get along next Thursday, not only to mark an important centenary but to discuss the continuing struggles for equality, real democracy and women's liberation. Both the Philosophy Football shirts and the Newcastle event are linked to the Emily Wilding Davison Campaign.

 

Via Mark Perryman at Philosophy Football:

One hundred years ago the Epsom Derby was disrupted by perhaps the most famous protest at a sporting event in history.

 

Britain at the time was bitterly divided. The early trade unions were striking against poverty wages and appalling working conditions. The cause for Ireland's freedom was attracting support on both sides of the Irish Sea. And from the Suffragettes there was a massive wave of non-violent direct action.

 

For these Suffragettes the Derby was absolutely a legitimate target for their protest. Horse-racing was the sport of the Establishment, Epsom a day out to celebrate tradition - one that denied women the vote. The King and Queen would be in attendance to watch the King's horse race for glory.

 

When Emily Wilding Davison ran on to the racecourse a century ago she hoped to stop the race and ensure that women's voices be heard.  When the horse racing at full speed collided with her the chances of survival were virtually non-existent. She never regained consciousness and four days later she lost her battle to live.  

 

Emily's heroic, yet fatal, action formed part of a protest movement that involved many thousands more women.  From smashing every shop window in London's West End to blowing up post boxes, via disrupting Parliament's proceedings and heckling MPs at public meetings this was a campaign few could ignore.

 

So instead imprisonment. When the demand by the women that they be treated as political prisoners was also ignored, the Suffragettes responded by going on hunger strike. Again their punishment was more repression. Brutalised by force-feeding, these ferociously brave women still refused to abandon their cause.

 

Philosophy Football have produced a set of commemorative designs featuring the colours purple, green and white. These were hugely symbolic for the Suffragette cause. Purple was for dignity, white for purity and green for hope. Deeds not Words and Dare to be Free were the twin ideals - worn as brooches, on sashes, carried as banners - that shaped the Suffragette movement.  

 

A century later we can wear them again as T-shirts. All designs available from Philosophy Football -

the shirts are in support of the Emily Wilding Davison Centenary Campaign.


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Thursday 14th March, 7:00pm
DEEDS NOT WORDS: Emily Wilding Davison Centenary Event
Black Swan, (next to Newcastle Arts Centre), 69 Westgate Road, Newcastle, NE1

 

See Facebook Event 

One hundred years ago militant suffragette Emily Wilding Davison was killed after running in front of the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby. She sacrificed her life in the struggle for women’s rights and democracy. The campaign to get a minute’s silence at this year’s Derby will be holding this event celebrating the life and struggle of Emily Wilding Davison.

SPEAKERS: Kate Connelly (memorial campaign co-ordinator and author of forthcoming book on suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst), Yvonne Ridley (writer and broadcaster), Florence Anderson (Labour councillor in Sunderland and formerly a leading Women Against Pit Closures activist), Penni Blythe-Jones (organiser of the centenary programme in Northumberland). Chaired by socialist and feminist activist Lizi Gray. PLUS: songs by folk choir Werca’s Folk (Director, Sandra Kerr)

 

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Newcastle event: Neil Faulkner's radical history

Picture: Haitian Revolution

A history of the world in 45 minutes

Thursday 10 May - 7pm
Top floor, Bar Loco, 22 Leazes Park Road, Newcastle, NE1 4PG

Neil Faulkner, radical historian and archaeologist, is visiting Newcastle to give his fascinating (and ambitious!) talk, and to answer questions.

The event is hosted by Newcastle Counterfire and entry is free.

Neil is the author of the long-running 'A Marxist History of the World' series, which appears weekly on www.counterfire.org - and which will later be published as a book.

Please RSVP on the Facebook event page here

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Hobsbawm, revolution and class

It won't, I think, be too controversial to observe that Eric Hobsbawm's record as a historian is superior to his record as an analyst of contemporary politics.

From sticking to the official Communist line when many of his fellow left-wing intellectuals rebelled against it (and formed the New Left) after 1956, to his claims about the allegedly disappearing working class in the 1980s, he has generally fared better when his eyes have been fixed firmly on the past. This disjunction between historian and political analyst (and activist) continues with an interview he's given to the BBC World Service.

For now, I'm relying on the website article for Hobsbawm's perspective. The full interview may give a more rounded picture, though his views seem fairly clearly defined. The historian compares 2011 to another landmark revolutionary year: 1848. But he's on surer ground analysing 1848, a year of democratic political revolutions and uprisings in several European countries (which half a century ago he wrote about insightfully in his classic 'The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848') than when assessing the meaning of 2011.

He does make a few valid points. Hobsbawm is surely right to note that a political revolution's effects often show up many years later, so early setbacks or even defeats should not lead anyone to despair. Revolution is a process not an event and we have to take the long view - and it is therefore well worth examining past revolutions and their legacy.

He is also correct to note the centrality of a layer of young people to the Arab revolts - and resistance elsewhere - and the similarities between movements in different parts of the world. Many of these people have, however, been young unemployed graduates or young workers not students.

The interviewer tells us: 'with the possible exception of Tunisia, he sees little prospect of liberal democracy or European-style representative government in the Arab world.' Why is that? It's not entirely clear, but we're later offered this quote from Hobsbawm, referring to the Iranian Revolution of 1979:

"The people who had made concessions to Islam, but were not Islamists themselves, were marginalised. And that included reformers, liberals, communists. What emerges as the mass ideology is not the ideology of those that started off the demonstrations."

This appears to be why he doesn't believe a Western-style bourgeois democracy will follow the Arab Spring, i.e. Arab societies are too in thrall too Islamist ideology for that to be possible. The rise of Iranian-style Islamism, or at least a modified version of it, is presumed to be the successor of this year's uprisings.

It's a surprisingly simplistic view that ignores the fact that Islamism is itself complex and varies across different settings, e.g. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is very different to a Khomeini-style theocracy, while the balance of forces between Islamist currents and other political forces in Egypt and Tunisia today is different to Iran thirty years ago. Nobody would deny that Islamist parties have the upper hand in Egyptian electoral politics, but let's not limit ourselves to the ballot box - especially at a time when the action on the streets is, on a daily basis, challenging a narrow notion of democracy as limited to putting a cross on a ballot paper.

Hobsbawm neglects what is actually currently happening in Egypt, which is not an Islamist takeover but a battle between those wanting to extend and deepen the revolution against ruling elements (the military council, supported most of the time but not always by political leaders in the Brotherhood) who want to curtail the revolution and defend the status quo.

The real danger posed by the Brotherhood is not an Islamist dictatorship but reformist compromise. And there are considerable tensions within the Brotherhood, notably with many of the youth dissenting and supporting the ongoing revolutionary movement. Viewing Islamism as a monolithic bloc - across time and space - won't help us.

Hobsbawm locates the motor of resistance, from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street, in a new middle class:

"What unites them is a common discontent and common mobilisable forces - a modernising middle class, particularly a young, student middle class, and of course technology which makes it today very much easier to mobilise protests."

It is rather jarring, in 2011, to witness someone referring to a 'student middle class'. Haven't we reached the point where it's obvious that students are not necessarily from middle class backgrounds? This is as true in Arab countries - many of which, including Tunisia and Egypt, have high student populations - as in the West. Even when students are from propserous backgrounds, it's possible for them to face a distinct lack of such propserity after graduating.

This observation is no mere slippage in terminology. It is linked to an argument Hobsbawm has put for at least three decades: the working class is disappearing. The Chinese working class is today bigger than the global working class in 1848, but I suspect that is something Hobsbawm wouldn't acknowledge - partly due to a narrow conception of what it means to be working class, partly due to confusion about 'Communist' societies. Hobsbawm says:

"The traditional left was geared to a kind of society that is no longer in existence or is going out of business. It believed very largely in the mass labour movement as the carrier of the future. Well, we've been de-industrialised, so that's no longer possible. The most effective mass mobilisations today are those which start from a new modernised middle class, and particularly the enormously swollen body of students."

This under-estimates the role of workers in resistance both in the Arab world and the West: as John Rees notes in his end-of-2011 retrospective, at key moments the power of the organised working class has merged with broad street-based movements, most crucially in toppling Ben Ali in January and again in the final two days before Mubarak fell in February. Likewise, Hobsbawm overstates the role of students - important, undoubtedly, but he seems to be assuming anyone under 30 is a student - and fails to grasp that students have been most powerful when combining with other social groups.

His comments also echo claims he's made previously which rest on assuming that 'industrial' and working class are synonymous. Someone as well-versed in Marx and Engels' writings as Hobsbawm must know that is very different from how the marxist tradition's founders defined class relationships. It's worth quoting Terry Eagleton, in his review of Hobsbawm's recent book 'How to Change the World':

'It is true that the industrial proletariat had dwindled [by the 1980s], but Marx himself did not think that the working class was confined to this group. In Capital, he ranks commercial workers on the same level as industrial ones. He was also well aware that by far the largest group of wage labourers in his own day was not the industrial working class but domestic servants, most of whom were women. Marx and his disciples didn’t imagine that the working class could go it alone, without forging alliances with other oppressed groups. And though the industrial proletariat would have a leading role, Marx does not seem to have thought that it had to constitute the social majority in order to play it.'

In any case, the really interesting and productive questions to explore concern how the working class has evolved, and what that means for the nature of resistance, rather than repeating the old line about a disappearing proletariat.

Hobsbawm also ignores the mass participation of the kind of poor people who, even by the broadest definitions, couldn't possibly be categorised as 'middle class' in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. It's true that middle class elements often (but far from exclusively) played a leading or catalysing role in the upheavals, but when millions took to the streets throughout Egpyt it was in large part because the poor joined in on a massive scale. Yet Hobsbawm seems to be simultaneously writing off the working class as an objective entity and dismissing any subjective agency from anyone who isn't identifiably 'middle class'.

Hobsbawm is also on shaky ground when he traces the Occupy movement back to Barack Obama's election campaign. I'm not aware of anyone inside the Occupy movement claiming this, so it stretches credibility. One of his reasons for making this connection seems to be the role of social media in mobilising activists. I think he has an exaggerated view of the internet's role - in relation to both the Obama camapign and Occupy - but it also obscures the political differences between these two cases, by focusing on form (social media) at the expense of political content.

An important difference is that the Obama campaign was geared entirely to the realm of established electoral politics, which the Occupy movement tends to ignore or even reject. Some of the impetus behind the US-based movement is in fact widespread disenchantment with the Obama administration - which tends not to be targeted as the problem, but it definitely isn't seen as the solution either.

It is reasonable to observe that the 'traditional left' has been marginal to the wave of protests, occupations and uprisings in 2011. It is perhaps unsurprising, considering his background, that Hobsbawm pins this on the supposed decline of the working class rather than paying attention to, say, the impact of the legacy of Stalinism on people's perceptions of socialism and left-wing organisations.

But if we simply account for the left's marginalisation by alluding to a vanished class of industrial labourers, we can't even begin to consider how the left might be rebuilt. Indeed the logical conclusion of Hobsbawm's line of reasoning is that the left cannot be built. Socialism becomes nothing more than a nostalgic fetish, a nice idea but without a material basis.

Renewing the left - and successfully building on the inspiring resistance of this year - requires a recognition of the continuing existence (and potential for collective struggle) of a changing working class. It rests, too, on an accurate understanding of what social forces are involved in today's struggles, and how they can combine to powerful effect.

There are possibilities and pitfalls in the current movements. To build on those possibilities, and avoid the pitfalls, will require strategies for winning based on an accurate view of current conditions - not the erroneous picture Eric Hobsbawm gives us.

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Cable Street: they did not pass

Via Philosophy Football:

'Seventy-five years ago, on 4 October 1936, the people of the East End united to stop Sir Oswald Mosley's blackshirted British Union of Fascists from marching through their community. An estimated 100,000 gathered to prevent this parade of anti-semitic hate behind the slogan 'They shall not pass'.

After hours of confrontation, sometimes violent and centred on Cable Street, Mosley was forced to abandon his march. They did not pass!

Philosophy Football's design is based on the original 1936 street sign for Cable Street.'

Available from HERE
 
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50th anniversary: Freedom Rides and the civil rights movement

The first Freedom Rides for black civil rights in the US were in May 1961.

What better way to mark the 50th anniversary than announcing a new Freedom Ride, in opposition to Islamophobia, as happened at last weekend's European anti-racist conference in London?

The new initiative is a creative tribute to the legacy of the 1960s Freedom Rides against racial segregation, as well as repsonding to the urgent need to confront rising anti-muslim racism across Europe. It is especially a response to the French government's ban on women wearing the full veil in public.

The original Freedom Rides were prompted by segregation in transport and public facilities. In 1961 the old, racist 'Jim Crow laws' were still in place, institutionalising the separation of people on the basis of skin colour - and their unequal treatment, with black people typically having poorer facilities.

In 1955 Rosa Parks famously refused to sit in the designated area of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, triggering the successful Montgomery bus boycott campaign. In 1961 some activists decided to make a stand against continuing segregation on interstate travel, i.e. the long-distance buses crossing state boundaries.

The first freedom ride, which departed Washington DC on 4 May 1961, involved 7 black and 6 white people sitting together on two segregated buses. The buses travelled through several states, with New Orleans as the activists' planned destination on 17 May. One rider would sit where they were supposed to, so they didn't risk arrest - and could therefore contact organisers, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to arrange bail.

On 14 May a Ku Klux Klan gang attacked the freedom riders in Alabama. The vicious mob violence was organised by local senior police officers. One of the buses was firebombed and the racist gang attacked people as they escaped the burning bus.

A mob later gathered outside the hospital where freedom riders had been taken. Most of the activists were refused treatment by the hospital, which threw them out at 2am to face the racist mob. A contingent of local black activists arrived to rescue the Freedom Riders from further racist violence (this would become a familiar pattern).

The other bus had, meanwhile, been attacked by 8 Ku Klux Klan thugs, who left activists semi-conscious. The bus continued, but was attacked for a second time that day. In Birmingham, Alabama, a KKK gang with police support assaulted activists with bicycle chains, iron pipes and baseball bats.

The original freedom riders - beaten savagely - were forced to abandon the bus journey. But, showing extraordinary reslience, they flew to New Orleans so they could still participate in the rally planned for the culmination of their direct action, which had drawn considerable attention and promoted the civil rights cause.

Activist groups were determined not to let violence stop them, so 10 students from Nashville bravely stepped in to continue the freedom ride from 17 May. They were arrested by the corrupt, racist cops in Birmingham.

More activists immediately responded to the call for volunteers to maintain the momentum of the Freedom Rides. There were more attacks in the following days, but the activists were gaining impressive support in the areas they travelled through. Martin Luther King addressed 1500 supporters on 21 May. 3000 racists gathered outside.

Despite KKK violence, racist protests and arrests by local police, injured or arrested freedom riders would be replaced by new volunteers. The numbers grew and grew. National authorities were put under great pressure to intervene against local racist police forces and gangs. Black people rallied around in support, and white sympathisers took heart from the freedom riders' courage and perseverance.

The Democratic administration in Washington tried to maintain a 'neutral' stance, saying it couldn't 'take sides' and criticising Freedom Riders for being 'unpatriotic'. A number of prominent civil rights organisations responded with fury. But they also translated this into action, launching a Freedom Riders Coordinating Committee determined to sustain Freedom Rides throughout the whole summer of 1961.

Despite hundreds of arrests, around 450 people participated directly in at least one Freedom Ride, which had begun in May with just 13 people who planned to travel for 13 days. At least 60 Freedom Rides took place during those months. The numbers were divided roughly equally between black and white, a powerful statement of unity and active co-operation.

The movement extended into new areas, with mainly young black and white people defiantly sitting together in segregated restaurants and other public places. A new generation, inspired by the Freedom Rides, was refusing to submit to the old divisions, defying the repeated attacks and arrests by police forces which were increasingly forced on the defensive.

On 1 November, new legislation came into place. It had been wrenched out of a reluctant Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, by the civil rights movement. Travellers on interstate buses could now sit wherever they wanted. Segregation was also outlayed in the bus terminals' facilities and in a number of other places.

This was a major turning point in the long struggle to end segregation. It was a victory for detemined collective action and the growing movement of multi-racial solidarity with the Freedom Riders. In the face of a hostile press, viciously repressive policing, racist gangs and a miserably weak federal government, the movement made a historic advance in the course of 6 months during 1961.

The Freedom Rides inspired further actions in the following years, which saw the civil rights movement grow and extend into new areas. It is an episode in our shared history of anti-racist struggle which can inspire us today, as we confront the state-sanctioned racism of Islamophobia.

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Mass movements for democracy: a lesson from history

This is from a superb new feature article on the Chartists by John Westmoreland:

'When the Charter was launched in London, at the Crown and Anchor Inn in May 1837, it had politics and political representation at its centre. The Charter contained demands, rather than aspirations, that had the backing of middle class intellectuals and working class militants. The Charter contained six points: manhood suffrage; the ballot; the abolition of property qualifications for MPs; payment of MPs; equal electoral districts; and annual elections.

This may seem small beer today but for the ruling class it represented a major assault on their life of unaccountable and predatory privilege. As Frederick Engels pointed out, the political demands served the purpose of social transformation. Parliament would serve the people because its representatives would be from the people and it would pass laws that would apply to everyone and not be used to oppress the poor and downtrodden.

The launching of the Charter threw up the question of how the demands should be obtained. This was a divisive issue right from the start. Historians of Chartism divide the movement into two parts: moral force Chartists such as William Lovett, and physical force Chartists such as Feargus O’Connor. It is a mistake to make the division too sharply because any mass movement is made up of different elements who see the struggle and the possibilities of resolving it in different ways. People who combine together and fight for their rights change themselves in the process, and that was what happened with Chartism.

In London, Lovett sought to persuade middle class sympathisers of the Charter’s merit, but in the industrial towns the working classes proved to be ready to fight a more revolutionary battle. Between 1838 and the main uprising of the Chartists in 1842 a huge wave of revolutionary energy swept across the land. The Charter was endorsed at mass meetings called conventions at the great industrial centres. The word convention had a distinct meaning at the time – it was associated with the French revolution – and it really referred to a peoples’ parliament. In other words, if the talking shop in Westminster was useless, then the people themselves could pass their own legislation.

The petitions they organised represented their political will. In Glasgow (May 1838) the Charter was endorsed on Glasgow Green after a procession of 200,000, with a sea of banners, 73 trade unions, and 43 bands. There were similar rallies on Town Moor in Newcastle, Kersal Moor Manchester and Peep Green in West Yorkshire.'

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Manning Marable (1950-2011)

Manning Marable sadly died on Friday 1 April, aged 60. He was an authoritative and respected voice on the American left, a penetrating analyst of racism in modern capitalist society, and an expert on the history of anti-racist struggles

Gary Younge of the Guardian described Marable as 'a great man, a great intellect an a great loss'. The author of numerous books and essays, his major new biography of Malcolm X is about to be published in the US.

A professor of history and African-American studies at Columbia University, New York, Marable was a pioneer in the study of the history of American black liberation struggles as well as a champion of anti-racist, anti-war and progressive political causes. He recognised and explained the achievements of the civil rights era, but also understood that racism remained an endemic problem in American capitalist society.



Marable argued that racism is structural, rooted in society, not merely a matter of prejudices or something that can be removed by 'affirmative action' within unequal and unjust economic and political structures. The partial advancement of a modest black middle class was not enough, while many remained impoverished - and while the barriers of racism, while less overt than in the segregation era, remained.

Marable was concerned in particular with bringing the past - experiences of both racism and anti-racist resistance - to bear on the present. His book Living Black History, for example, is a collection devoted precisely to the project of rediscovering and re-interpreting black history for the purpose of current struggles.

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The culture of mass protesting

I recommend listening to this thoughtful and well-produced podcast, from North East-based site 'The Cultural Thing'.

It uses the student protests and occupation in Newcastle (and the wider national movement) as the starting point for considering some bigger questions. It is, amongst other things, a good deconstruction of the myth that protesting simply isn't part of our national character.

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Black Friday: 100 years ago today

See Kate Connelly's centenary article on a landmark in the suffragettes' movement. It begins:

‘The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics’, declared suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst.

A hundred years ago today (on Friday 18th November 1910) a suffragette deputation to the House of Commons met with a six hour onslaught of police brutality resulting in a the Suffragettes beginning a huge window smashing campaign in protest.

The attack was so horrendous, the Suffragettes remembered the day it happened as ‘Black Friday’.

Today, when the government and right-wing press are declaring moral outrage at the smashing of a window in the Milbank Tower, many activists have been looking back to the inspiring examples of suffragette direct action.'


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Trade unions and rank and file movements

This is my introduction to Brian Pearce's classic essay 'Some past rank and file movements', which we have just posted on Counterfire.

There are two basic divisions inside the trade unions. One is the division between left and right - including contests between left-wing and right-wing candidates for leading positions in the unions. The other division is between the bureaucracy and the grassroots members.

Trade unions are the essential defence organisations of the working class inside capitalist society. They are necessary for us to protect pay and conditions against employers' attempts to increase exploitation for their own profit. They bring together large numbers of working people, enabling us to take united action in defence of our interests - or in solidarity with other groups of workers.

It is therefore in the nature of trade unions - as mass organisations of the working class - to reflect the varied and contradictory ideas circulating in society. They are reformist organisations, seeking improvements or concessions within existing capitalist society rather than the overthrow of capitalism altogether. These contradictory ideas are inevitable: unions can only be effective if they involve large numbers able to take decisive action. They have to be broad-based working class organisations.

This means there will always be arguments and tensions - put crudely, between left and right - in the trade union movement. It also ensures that the unions are constantly vulnerable to making compromises with ruling class opponents. In this respect the trade union leaders play a particularly vital role.

Even the most left-wing union leaders are inclined to look for compromise in negotiations with the employers or government. The bureaucracy's role is precisely to mediate between the members it represents and the employers.

Senior union officials are typically paid far more than rank and file members of their union. They work full time for the union and are therefore separated from direct contact with ordinary union members and from the day-to-day experiences of their working lives. They are therefore subject to pressures pulling them away from authentically expressing, and fighting for, the interests of rank and file trade unionists.

To a certain extent the culture of union officialdom affects every level of the trade union machine, including at local level, with a tendency to see union work as about compromise not confrontation, and as a professionalised activity removed from daily practices of trade union members.

In recognition of the limits of the trade union bureaucracy, many socialists since the birth of the union movement in the 19th century have sought to build rank and file organisations. This doesn't mean abandoning trade unions as mass organisations; nor does it involve completely ignoring the often important left-right contests at the top of the unions. It's about building the independent strength of grassroots members as a counterweight to the bureaucracy's tendency to sell them short.

Here's how Trotsky put it in 1938:

'All sections of the Fourth International [i.e. revolutionary organisations] should always strive not only to renew the top leadership of the trade unions, boldly and resolutely in critical moments advancing new militant leaders in place of routine functionaries and careerists ; but also to create in all possible instances independent militant organisations corresponding more closely to the problems of mass struggle in bourgeois society.'Brian Pearce

This quote appears at the start of Brian Pearce's illuminating essay 'Some past and rank and file movements', first published in 1959. This important essay was later part of a superb collection called 'A History of Communism in Britain', a book of essays written by Pearce and fellow Trotskyist Michael Woodhouse, published in 1969 (and reissued by Bookmarks in 1995).

Below we republish the first half of this essay, providing both a Marxist account of the role and politics of rank and file movements and a potted history of three highly significant historical examples: the Great Unrest (1910-14), the shop stewards movements during World War One, and the Communist Party-led Minority Movement in the 1920s.

Pearce is not merely providing a trade union history; this is a profoundly political assessment with lessons for us today. He looks at the interactions between different elements, for example the relationship between organised socialists and trade union struggles. He doesn't simply give us 'history from below', celebrating grassroots resistance, but examines how the rank and file interacted with the unions' official leaders.

Pearce was a longtime member of the Communist Party in Britain, but broke from the CP - and became involved in Trotskyist circles - in the aftermath of the crisis of 1956, when thousands of CP members became disillusioned with the official Communist movement following the Soviet Union's crushing of the Hungarian revolution. You can sense him rediscovering the radical history which shaped the formation of the CP in 1920/21 and then, with the Minority Movement, the CP's early years when it was still a genuinely Marxist organisation. Pearce is also thinking through the political implications of the strikes and resistance of 1910-26, a period which reshaped both the British Left and the trade unions.

Today levels of strike action are low, and rank and file movements exist in no more than embryo form. If there is to be a renewal of the power of the union grassroots, we need to learn the lessons from history and also examine the particular circumstances we find ourselves in today. History won't simply be repeated. We are re-publishing Brian Pearce's contribution to our understanding of these issues as a means to learning from history, as the basis for exploring and discussing the tasks facing us today.'

Other archive pieces at Counterfire:

Duncan Hallas: The Comintern and the united front
Tony Cliff: Naqba and the roots of Israel's violence
Georg Lukacs: Lenin, the vanguard party and the working class
Alexandra Kollontai: Class and women's oppression
Chris Harman: Iran - revolution, Islamism and the left
Leon Trotsky: The Lessons of October

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Timeline: World War Two (part 2)

See HERE for Part 1.



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Timeline: John Rees on World War Two

This new, illuminating documentary (part 1 of 2 below) complements Neil Faulkner's recent article which marked the 70th anniversary of the Blitz, offering a broader perpsective in terms of both time - tracing the origins of the war - and geography (it's a refreshingly non-parochial account).

This edition of Timeline also benefits from the vast wealth of film material from the period, helping make it very visually engaging. Importantly, this is utilised for a historical assessment which is more complex and interesting than the conventional versions, which tend to be either excessively patriotic or overly focused on the role of individuals, most obviously Hitler and Churchill.

Speaking of Churchill, one of the best things here is John's nuanced view of the wartime PM, putting him in context - the debates about appeasement, tensions in the British elite - in a way rarely encountered. I look forward to Part 2.   




See HERE for a number of other editions in the Timeline series.

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Victory for CLR James Library campaign

A message from Black and Ethnic Minority Arts to supporters of the campaign to retain the name of CLR James Library:

Following a short meeting between representatives of BEMA and Members and officers of Hackney Council, an in principle agreement has been reached that the name of the new facility will carry the name of CLR James Library as per our campaign demand. A formal statement will follow shortly. Many thanks to the thousands who have supported our successful campaign online and in other ways.

Bema will be playing an ongoing role in the development of a permanent CLR James exhibition at the new library as well as the establishment of an annual event commemorating his life and work.

Ngoma Bishop & Andrea Enisuoh
Campaign co-ordinators

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CLR James Library: campaigners launch petition to save the name

Hackney Gazette recently reported the start of a campaign to preserve the name of a local library. There aren't many public libraries named in honour of socialist historians, but Dalston's CLR James Library is just that. Now the council wants to re-name it Dalston Library and Archives which, well, doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Sign the petition HERE (it takes 30 seconds) and spread the word!

The paper reported:

'ANGRY campaigners are calling on the council not to discount the cultural contribution of Hackney’s African and Caribbean residents by ditching the name of a popular Dalston library.

More than 100 protesters have signed a petition to demand that the new library being built as part of the Dalston Square development to replace the CLR James Library in Dalston Lane retains the name. Members of the borough’s Black & Ethnic Minority Arts network (BEMA) and House of Arts & Music Production Services (H-AMPS) took action after discovering that the library’s current name was set to be dropped.

Town hall bosses called the library after the Afro-Trinidadian historian, cricket journalist and theorist Cyril Lionel Robert James in 1985. They now want to call it Dalston Library and Archives when it reopens next spring.

“I think the council, at the time the library was named, was making a statement and commitment regarding the literary contribution of African Caribbean people worldwide,” said Ngoma Bishop, chairman of BEMA.

“Given the high percentage of African and Caribbean people in Hackney, I feel that taking a decision to drop the name is making an equally strong statement in the opposite direction. It’s one step short of being an insult to the community.”

CLR James gained acclaim for The Black Jacobins, his 1938 book about the 1791-1804 Haitian revolution, and his 1963 autobiographical book, Beyond A Boundary. He attended the library’s naming ceremony. He died in May, 1989.

“This is not just about his contribution as a black individual,” said Andrea Enisuoh, of social justice group Hackney Unites.

“He was a campaigner and a thinker and we want to keep his legacy alive. It is known internationally that there is a CLR library in Hackney and that is something we should be proud of.

“It’s about what sort of Hackney we want to see in the future. Now that Hackney and Dalston are developed, do we no longer want to support these people?”'

See HERE for the writings of CLR James.


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Peterloo anniversary: rise like lions after slumber

Today is the anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, when 15 were killed and at least 600 injured by cavalry attacking a mass peaceful demonstration.

The protest for parliamentary representation, at St Peter's Field, Manchester, prompted the great radical poet Percy Shelley to write one of the best-known political poems in the English language.

The Mask of Anarchy concludes with these stirring words of collective rebellion:

'And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again -

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few.'

Support the campaign for a fitting memorial. 

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Middle East: 5000 years of imperial history... in 90 seconds

I'm thinking about maps at the moment - I've just got back from a day trip to London, where amongst other things I visited the history of maps exhibition at the British Library (highly recommended - it inventively reveals the role of maps in propaganda, military planning, and the projection of power and status).

Now for an especially ingenious and illuminating use of mapping, with the aid of 21st century technology, to show the history of imperialism and military competition.

Click HERE to speed through the last 5000 years of conquest, expansion and war in the Middle East. 

On a related theme, see Neil Faulkner's fascinating Marxist History of the World series (8 installments so far).

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The red mole of history

Browsing on the 'Net at the weekend, I stumbled across this little gem of distilled political wisdom from North East-based historian Raymond Challinor, which I dimly recall reading when it was first published in 2001.

'The anger and alienation existing within society, any modern society, results in strife. This manifests itself in a variety of ways - multitudinous murmuring, protest meetings, demonstrations, strikes and, even, occasionally, revolutions.

The problem is that socialists, involved in anti-capitalist activities, often expect a successful revolutionary culmination, an ending that rarely occurs. It reminds me of Shakespeare's Henry IV, where Owen Glendower brags, 'I can call the sprits from the vasty deep.' To which Hotspur retorts, 'Why, so can I, or so can any man, but will they come when you call them?'

But revolutionary socialists should not be disheartened. In circumstances of capitalist normality they can have a negligible impact on the course of events. The political temperature depends upon two things that remain virtually outside their control.

First, there is the objective situation, the actual conditions under which people live. And second, there are the conditions under which they consider they are entitled to expect to live.

If these two remain roughly the same there will be no mass protest movements. But once people make the links between the gap that exists between what life is and what it could be, then they move into action, show themselves able and willing to fight for a better world, and socialist ideas swing into their own.

Not only are the organisation and ideas the distillation of centuries of working class struggle- they also acquire still greater power through the passage of time.

Let me illustrate this by taking as an example The Communist Manifesto. To the overwhelming majority of humanity living in 1848 it would seem quite meaningless. When Marx and Engels wrote, large parts of the world remained unknown, unexplored and economically undeveloped.

Where in their writings was, for instance, any talk of Korea or Latin America? Their collected works never mention them. Even if they had, a modern, free enterprise economy did not then exist there. There was no industrial society, no division between capitalist and worker, hence no class struggle as we know it today. Workers of the world could not have united.

Yet nevertheless Marx and Engels were still correct. They were thinking dialectically, not formally, in terms of not merely being but becoming. Korea and Latin America may well have been, in 1848 terms, located in the dream clouds, but today they are enmeshed in the world capitalist system and the domination of giant multinational corporations.

As a consequence we find our struggle intertwined with theirs in a way that could never have been envisaged in 1848. We are both equally victims of international capitalism. Workers of the world must unite.'

Image: a young Karl Marx


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