SOCIALIST UNITY

I spoke to Leanne Wood today as she was on route to a meeting tonight at Neuadd Penygroes, near Caernarfon, for local Plaid members. The leadership campaign means that she, and the other candidates, are travelling the length and breadth of the country for hustings and public meetings. The under-developed civic infrastructure in rural Wales was underlined by the trouble we had continuing a conversation, as her phone dipped in and out of coverage. Travel around Wales can also be difficult, as became clear as we discussed the impracticality of me travelling to Aberystwyth to report an upcoming public meeting.

For some decades Wales’s economy has suffered from de-industrialisation, and the neglect from the government in Westminster, who have prioritised growth of the finance sector in the South East of England. Leanne points out that the Caernarfon area has a GDP of only 60% of the UK average. However, she is quick to acknowledge that the same process has disadvantaged the regions of England, as well Wales and Scotland.

Leanne also understands how the levers available to the Welsh government provide opportunities for promoting economic growth. “I am arguing for a twin track”, Leanne says, “We need to have a long term economic plan, firstly with what we can do right now with the existing devolved powers, and take that as far as we can, but we also need a vision of what we could achieve as an independent nation”

Economic underdevelopment poses particular challenges for the West and North of the country, as second home ownership and tourism can represent a threat to the sustainability of Welsh speaking communities, and the survival of Welsh is complicated not only by geography, but also issues of class.

“Plaid’s vision is that the economy should serve equality” said Leanne, “and that includes economic equality across Wales”, and she agrees that a civic concept of nationalism can promote the idea that the nation should support the interests of every citizen, not just of the business community.

I asked Leanne whether she thinks that there could have been a possibility of the coalition between Plaid and Labour continuing after the last Assembly elections. “I don’t know what they could have offered us, to be honest” she replied, “Plaid has already won all our short term objectives. The One Wales agreement gave us the referendum, and now we have devolved powers, and we have won cross party consensus on issues like defending the Welsh language; and now Labour are not in power in London, they don’t have much scope for offering anything. Plaid are not interested in just more of the same, and we want more for Wales than just managing decline”.

The current leadership election does find Plaid at the crossroads, having won the reforms they have been campaigning for over the last few years, and now contesting a new political context  with the Senedd enjoying greater powers. Leanne sees their opportunity because she believes that Labour does not speak up consistently and unambiguously for Wales, and the Blairite strategy of triangulating around the concerns of swing voters in marginal constituencies in Southern England acts against the interests of Welsh voters.

Leanne believes that Labour did pull a fast one by organising the Welsh referendum two months before the Assembly election. “After the referendum campaign our activists were exhausted” said Leanne, “But we did win”.

“The economic crisis is opening a space for Plaid”, Leanne argues, “We can build on that space based upon different values, and arguing for economic recovery for Wales”. She is excited that the leadership contest has revealed a willingness for large numbers of people to engage in a different type of politics. She believes that the debate in Scotland over independence has shifted the political context. “We are two different nations, with two different cultures and histories, but if Scotland gains independence, then there is no more UK, and that is bound to have an impact on Wales”.

Leanne believes that Labour is too oriented towards the British state and British national identity to effectively represent Wales. “There is a tremendous amount of ignorance from some Labour politicians in Westminster about how devolution works, and what devolved powers we have”.

The next stage of the campaign will be a number of hustings meetings for Plaid members, who will hear from the four candidates. It is a testament to Plaid’s forward looking approach that the two leading candidates are both women.

For the uninitiated, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is preparing to stand in the London Assembly elections. Although it claims to be a new project, it clearly represents continuity with previous attempts to create a left of Labour electoral project. This is evidenced by the fact that the London campaign is being organised by Nick Wrack (former chair of RESPECT), and Will McMahon (Former staff member for the Socialist Alliance). The collaboration between the Socialist Party and the RMT in the NO2EU campaign for the last Euro elections also feeds into the mix, with the list being headed by RMT president, Alex Gordon.

Anyway, this has come to the attention of Conservative Home, who somewhat creatively seek to link it to Ken Livingstone:

SWP choose not to run a candidate against Ken Livingstone

For those of you who haven’t got hold of this week’s issue of Socialist Worker yet comes the news that the Party will not be running a candidate for the Mayor of London. Apparently there seems to be some sentiment amongst these demented totalitarian outfit that the official Labour Party candidate, Ken Livingstone, would merit their support.

But the Socialist Workers party will run candidates for the London Assembly – standing under the guise of the “Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition”.

The paper reports:

The London candidates include RMT and FBU union reps among others.

RMT president Alex Gordon, who is on the list, told the meeting that Labour’s shift to accepting the cuts would have a big impact. “There is a huge constituency of Labour Party loyal voters who feel completely betrayed,” he said.

The meeting discussed the fact that TUSC had decided not to put up a candidate for mayor against Ken Livingstone, after some parts of the coalition including the FBU felt it would not be the best strategy.

Instead TUSC will stand for the proportional representation “top up” list for the London Assembly. If the slate can get 5 percent of the vote—likely around 150,000 votes—then it can win a seat.

Bob Crow is on TUSC’s National Committee. Andrew Gilligan has more.

Leanne Wood’s campaign to become leader of Plaid goes from strength to strength, now gaining the endorsement of Dafydd Iwan, former president of the party, and a renowned Welsh-language musician. Iwan’s support is significant as it bridges the gap between the tradionalist Welsh speaking foundations of Plaid’s support in the West and North of the country with the left-wing republicanism that Leanne avows.

Jon Lansman recently asked the question whether a Plaid led by Leanne Wood could pose the same sort of threat to Labour in Wales as the SNP does in Scotland. Jon makes the interesting point:

Last year, Plaid suffered the consequences of a term of Coalition government with a Welsh Labour party that had, under Rhodri Morgan, put clear red water between itself and New Labour. Poorly differentiated from Labour, and in the context of a Tory-Liberal Coalition in London, Plaid lost 4 seats in the 60-seat assembly. Now governing Wales alone, Labour is being forced to make substantial cuts whilst, in Westminster, Labour is announcing that “the starting point….is we’re going to have to keep all these cuts” when it returns to government and accept real-term cuts in public sector pay in the meantime.

The poor differentiation between Plaid and Labour was not accidental, it is because when Labour speaks for Wales, and embraces the social democratic values that dominate Welsh political life, then Plaid becomes eclipsed.

It is important to understand how labourism creates the space for Plaid to exist. Geoffrey Foote’s indispensible 1986 book “The Labour Party’s Political Thought” argues that the coalitional nature of the Labour Party, involving as it does both the trade unions and a political movement, provides an envelope that constrains the limits of the party’s politics, not only to left and right, but also over issues that sit uncomfortably with the perspectives of trade unionism. Any deviation that strays so far away from the horizons of the unions risks rupturing the coalitional nature of the party. This explains the phenomenon of essentially social democratic parties arising outwith Labour, expressing a single issue that the Labour Party could not accomodate, such as the Common Wealth Party’s advocacy of a second front during the second world war, or Respect’s opposition to the Iraq war.

But is also explains how the Labour Party, with its orientation towards the British national state and therefore towards British national identity has struggled with expressions of Welsh and Scottish identity. As the architect of devolution, Ron Davies, explained to me in an interview in 2005:

There were many people in the Labour party, and there still are, who find it very hard to reconcile their patriotism, their love for Wales, with their commitment to socialism, or to the Labour party I should say.

Because they believed and argued very strongly in 1979 [to defeat devolution in the referrendum], and still do, that the solutions to the problems of Wales are to be found in exactly the same mechanism as the problems of the North of England or wherever. The answer is a strong labour government in Westminster who will legislate all these problems away.

It doesn’t understand that there are issues about patriotism, of identity, of wanting to do things differently in Wales, of nation building if you like. To free up the initiatives we have in Wales, because our scale is different, because we do have different values, there is a greater sense of community, we do have distinctive policy issues of our own we do have issues about language and so on. And there is a large part of the Labour Party that is entirely uncomfortable with that agenda, and didn’t want to go down that track.

 Labour’s support in Wales and Scotland is therefore jeapordised by the very arts of triangulation towards swing voters in the South East of England, which many on the Blairite wing of the party still believe is the magic feather for winning elections.

The paradox is that David Miliband’s recent article in the New Statesman advocates moving away from the idea he atributes to Roy Hattersley, that the ”mechanism … for furthering social democratic goals is the central state “. Miliband argues in favour of decentralisation of power, but still wants a centralised political message based around swing voters in Southern England. David Miliband seems to confuse two issues: the practical devolution of power to the nations and regions is an entirely different question from whether the state itself should directly intervene in the economy and be the provider of services.

 Miliband fails to acknowledge that Labour does not exercise power only  in towns and cities  (in his own words) like “Newcastle, Lambeth, Liverpool – and South Tyneside“, there is also a Labour government in Wales. Therefore David Miliband demonstrates no recognition that there could be a different political culture in Wales, (or indeed in the English regions away from the South East). The days when Labour could advocate a one-size-fits-all set of policies and values are over, and this no longer fits with the realities of devolution.

What is more, the economic policies of the Blair/Brown government benefitted the South East of England more than the regions and nations. So even if certain polices do attract swing voters in marginal constituencies, this may be at the cost of abandoning policies that appeal to Labour’s core voters, and which undermine Labour’s distinctive values. The challenge instead is to construct an election winning coalition that both convinces core voters that Labour is still Labour, and extends Labour’s reach to those who may have previously voted for other parties by convincing them that Labour’s policies are the ones that will best serve themselves, their famillies and their communities.

As Dr Éoin Clarke argued last year:

[Since 1995] incomes of the south east and London grew significantly more that Labour heartlands. Now that’s the thing. Labour already succeeded in boosting the pockets of southerners more disproportionately than the north [of England] but what thanks or indeed recognition did they get? The lesson is clear, don’t build you political strategy around courting those who have no intention of voting for you anyway. Cosying up to big business, vested interests and the filthy rich did Labour no favours at election time. It is the reason why our working class voters stayed away in such vast numbers.

David Miliband’s article in the Statesman does make some sensible points, despite the facts that its hidden agenda is not very hidden. Let us concede there is a potential danger of Labour succumbing to a self-referential agenda of reassurance, instead of developing a vision of a better society, and a strategy of acheiving it. It is true that some sections of the left, for example, do have an overly optimistic belief that Labour could win elections by simply being more left wing. However, David Miliband should look in the mirror: the greatest danger for Labour being sucked into an electorally damaging  and self-indulgent nostalgia comes nor from the left but from the Blairite right. Firstly, the economic and social policies of the Tory led coalition are so damaging that they cannot simply be triangulated around, they needed to be opposed by a credible alternative vision; but secondly, the process of devolution has created increasingly differentiated political contexts in the other nations of the UK outside London. The world is bigger than Portculis House, and a preoccupation with the incestuous London chatterati does not lead to politics that works on the streets of Middlesborough, Swindon or Bolton; let alone in Dundee or Caerffili.

This is why the prospect of Leanne Wood winning the leadership of Plaid is such a potential challenge. As Dafyyd Iwan says:

By Michael Meacher, from Left Futures

What political leader in Opposition has ever stopped in its tracks what looked like irresistible momentum towards a disaster? No, I can’t think of one either.

Certainly not Cameron – can you remember any of the positions he took during the 5 years before the 2010 election, apart from slyly posing beside a dog-sleigh in the Arctic? Nor Blair, except his flying off to Hayman Island off Australia to pay sycophantic homage to Murdoch’s News International just before the 1997 election. Not even Thatcher who spent 4 undistinguished years as Tory Opposition Leader 1975-9 and failed to leave any mark whatever on the tumultuous struggles of the late 1970s.

Yet Ed Miliband has now twice outmanoeuvred some of the most powerful forces in the land and forced the government on to a humiliating defensive. By any standards, given the lack of executive power, that is a stunning tactical and strategic achievement.

Murdoch, the most powerful media mogul the world has ever known, was within days of doubling his empire by the takeover of BSkyB when he was stopped dead by Miliband’s decision to force a Commons vote on the issue in the light of the hacking scandal. Cameron was not only outwitted, he was deprived at a stroke of the secret pact he had made with Murdoch to buy political success for himself at the expense of handing over inordinate media power to Murdoch with all the evil consequences entailed, the depth of which we are only now beginning to understand. It was a huge risk on Ed Miliband’s part since Murdoch was almost universally regarded in political circles as unchallengeable. No other political leader has ever achieved such a feat, and probably never will.

Overturning the Hester heist is scarcely less. In the face of banker lobbying and City greed the bonus momentum seemed unstoppable. Cameron, as is his way, flitted around lighting like a butterfly on ‘popular capitalism’ and ‘shareholder power’; then deserting them almost at once by declaring that the RBS bonus was a requirement of the contract negotiated by Labour (which was a lie); and then once again changing course by the claim (almost certainly equally mendacious) that Hester and the board would resign and that this blackmail had to be bought off (Danegeld was implied though not explicitly mentioned) to avoid even higher costs to the Treasury.

A more demeaning posture for the government it is difficult to imagine. As an alternative, Just say No! comes to mind. Yet it was only Miliband’s intervention that finally forced a feeble and atrophied government, and an over-mighty and hubristic banking clique, to face reality.

No doubt Ed Miliband will not get the credit for this that he deserves. Far too many in the press lobby and in parliament are so entrenched in their prejudice – besotted by PMQs which is low-farce pantomime far removed from real politics – that their judgement is blinded. But having twice now taken on the mighty and felled them, most objective observers will see very clearly that this is a very significant and brave leader in the making.

The declining human rights situation in Libya has now been confirmed by the United Nations.

According to the BBC, the UN’s Libya envoy, Ian Martin, told the Security Council in New York last Wednesday.

“The former regime may have been toppled, but the harsh reality is that the Libyan people continue to have to live with its deep-rooted legacy,” said Mr Martin.

He described that legacy as “weak, at times absent, state institutions, coupled with the long absence of political parties and civil society organisations, which render the country’s transition more difficult”.
Mr Martin said some steps had been taken towards demobilising ex-combatants.

But the government was struggling to establish its legitimacy, he added, with weapons freely available and various armed brigades having unclear lines of command and control.

While authorities had so far successfully contained any outbreaks of violence, they could escalate and widen in scope, he warned.

In addition

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay meanwhile raised concerns about detainees being held by revolutionary forces, saying there were some 8,500 prisoners in about 60 centres.

“The majority of detainees are accused of being Gaddafi loyalists and include a large number of sub-saharan, African nationals,” she said.
“The lack of oversight by the central authority creates an environment conducive to torture and ill treatment”

It would be obscene and inappropriate to judge the Western military intervention in Libya by comparing the deaths that have resulted from it with the unknown number of deaths that might other wise have happened. Nevertheless the chaos and continuing bloodshed does compromise the moral narrative of those who argued for NATO intervention.

It is therefore appropriate to revisit whether or not NATO’S involvement was posited upon a credible understanding of the situation in Libya, and whether the negative outcome was entirely predictable, as some of us argued at the time. Reconsidering the Libyan experience is particular urgent as the possibility of military actions against Syria (or even Iran) is looming.

The conceit behind the NATO intervention was its alleged necessity to prevent atrocities from the Gaddafi government in response to “Arab spring” demonstrations. However, there seems to have been little understanding of what the outcome would be were Gaddafi to be overthrown in such a manner.

The lazy assumption of Western governments and their liberal cheerleaders is that the overthrow of what they categorise as a “totalitarian” government aided by the military force of Western democracies will inevitably lead to a freer, and more pluralistic society. This argument is based upon a whole series of wrong assumptions, as the graveyards of Afghanistan testify.

Firstly, the whole concept of “totalitarianism” or “tyrannical” government is a superficial one, that inhibits a nuanced understanding of how particular societies outside of the norms of Western democracies, actually work.

Libya under Gaddafi was a relatively stable society in many ways, based upon distributive policies and oil exports, as Hugh Roberts explained in the London Review of Books last November.

The Jamahiriyya lasted 34 years (42 if backdated to 1969), a respectable innings. It did not work for foreign businessmen, diplomats and journalists, who found it more exasperating to deal with than the run of Arab and African states, and their views shaped the country’s image abroad. But the regime was not designed to work for foreigners and seems to have worked fairly well for many Libyans much of the time. It achieved more than a tripling of the total population (6.5 million today, up from 1.8 million in 1968), high standards of healthcare, high rates of schooling for girls as well as boys, a literacy rate of 88 per cent, a degree of social and occupational promotion for women that women in many other Arab countries might well envy and an annual per capita income of $12,000, the highest in Africa. But the point about these indices, routinely cited, naturally enough, by critics of the West’s intervention in reply to the propaganda that has relentlessly blackened the Gaddafi regime, is that they are in one crucial sense beside the point. The socio-economic achievements of the regime can be attributed essentially to the distributive state: that is, the success of the hydrocarbons sector and of the mechanisms put in place early on to distribute petrodollars.

However, the so called Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriyya was a particularly absent state, lacking any politi cal party or parties, and while it had a functioning bureaucracy with some degree of popular participation, it had neither the culture nor institutions for allowing political differences to be aired or resolved. We need to understand that the murder, torture and repression of political opponents is the attribute not of a strong state, but of a weak state.

The stronger state is one where there is sufficient culture of respect for the rule of law in civil society; political institutions that allow the resolution of disputes; and the willingness of governments to renounce power to their political opponents via constitutional means. Constitutionality is the hallmark of a state whose sovereignty rests upon popular consent; and in the modern world, a state that can exercise popular sovereignty as a counterweight to corporate power is a precondition for meaningful democracy.

Hugh Roberts accurately describes the peculiarity of the Libyan system

[Gadaffi] dispensed with the [governing political party, the Arab Socialist Union] and the idea of a single ruling party, promoting instead People’s Congresses and Revolutionary Committees as the key political institutions of the Jamahiriyya, which was proclaimed in 1977.

The former were to assume responsibility for public administration and secure popular participation, the latter to keep the flame of the Revolution alive. The members of the People’s Congresses were elected, and these elections were taken seriously, at least at the local level and for a while. But voters were not, in theory, electing representatives, merely deciding who among the candidates on offer they wished to assume the mainly administrative responsibilities of the bodies in question.

The system encouraged political and ideological unanimity, allowing no voice for dissident opinion except on trivial matters. It drew many ordinary Libyans into a sort of participation in public affairs, although this was waning by the mid-1990s, but it did not educate them in other aspects of politics, and did not work well on its own terms either. … …

A distinction between revolutionary and constitutional government was made in 1793 by Robespierre, when he wrote: ‘The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.’

The effective historical function of the revolutionary government in Libya was to ensure that, while the country was modernised in important respects, it did not and could not become a republic. The Libyan Revolution turned out to be permanent because its objects were imprecise, its architects had no form of law-bound, constitutional government in view as a final destination and no conception of a political role for themselves or anyone else after the Revolution.

The State of the Masses, al-jamahiriyya, was presented as far superior to a mere republic – jumhuriyya – but in fact fell far short of one. And, in contrast to states that call themselves republics but fail to live up to the name, its pretensions signalled that there was never an intention to establish a real republic in which government would truly be the affair of the people. The State of the Masses was in reality little more than a game to occupy and contain ordinary Libyans while the grown-up business of politics was conducted behind the scenes, the affair of a mysterious and unaccountable elite.

The traditions of constitutionality in Britain, for example, are deep rooted in decades and even centuries of political evolution, that has itself not been without violent conflict. Of course, other countries have achieved political stability and a commitment to the rule of law in more accelerated circumstances; and despite an inauspicious start, the German Bundesrepublik has been built as a stable constitutional democracy out of the ruins of a defeated Nazi dictatorship.

However, the crucial feature in the development of stable political institutions is that they have legitimacy based upon popular engagement. Respect for the rule of law, especially constitutionality, cannot be imposed from outside; and even the successful German experience was domestically driven, in conjunction with protracted nation building suport by the occupying powers. Conspicuous successes in conflict resolution, for example the end of South African Apartheid, or the process started by the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland, have involved long term commitment from the protagonists themselves to resolve their differences.

Arguably the NATO intervention curtailed any prospect of a process in Libya leading to a stable resolution. It is worth quoting Roberts at length:

The situation that developed over the weekend following the initial unrest on 15 February suggested three possible scenarios: a rapid collapse of the regime as the popular uprising spread; the crushing of the revolt as the regime got its act together; or – in the absence of an early resolution – the onset of civil war. Had the revolt been crushed straightaway, the implications for the Arab Spring would have been serious, but not necessarily more damaging than events in Bahrain, Yemen or Syria; Arab public opinion, long used to the idea that Libya was a place apart, was insulated against the exemplary effect of events there. Had the revolt rapidly brought about the collapse of the regime, Libya might have tumbled into anarchy.

An oil-rich Somalistan on the Mediterranean would have had destabilising repercussions for all its neighbours and prejudiced the prospects for democratic development in Tunisia in particular.

A long civil war, while costly in terms of human life, might have given the rebellion time to cohere as a rival centre of state formation and thus prepared it for the task of establishing a functional Libyan state in the event of victory. And, even if defeated, such a rebellion would have undermined the premises of the Jamahiriyya and ensured its demise. None of these scenarios took place. A military intervention by the Western powers under the cloak of Nato and the authority of the United Nations happened instead.

How should we evaluate this fourth scenario in terms of the democratic principles that have been invoked to justify the military intervention? There is no doubt that many Libyans consider Nato their saviour and that some of them genuinely aspire to a democratic future for their country. Even so I felt great alarm when intervention started to be suggested and remain opposed to it even now despite its apparent triumph, because I considered that the balance of democratic argument favoured an entirely different course of action.

The claim that the ‘international community’ had no choice but to intervene militarily and that the alternative was to do nothing is false. An active, practical, non-violent alternative was proposed, and deliberately rejected. The argument for a no-fly zone and then for a military intervention employing ‘all necessary measures’ was that only this could stop the regime’s repression and protect civilians. Yet many argued that the way to protect civilians was not to intensify the conflict by intervening on one side or the other, but to end it by securing a ceasefire followed by political negotiations.

A number of proposals were put forward. The International Crisis Group, for instance, where I worked at the time, published a statement on 10 March arguing for a two-point initiative: (i) the formation of a contact group or committee drawn from Libya’s North African neighbours and other African states with a mandate to broker an immediate ceasefire; (ii) negotiations between the protagonists to be initiated by the contact group and aimed at replacing the current regime with a more accountable, representative and law-abiding government. This proposal was echoed by the African Union and was consistent with the views of many major non-African states – Russia, China, Brazil and India, not to mention Germany and Turkey. It was restated by the ICG in more detail (adding provision for the deployment under a UN mandate of an international peacekeeping force to secure the ceasefire) in an open letter to the UN Security Council on 16 March, the eve of the debate which concluded with the adoption of UNSC Resolution 1973.

In short, before the Security Council voted to approve the military intervention, a worked-out proposal had been put forward which addressed the need to protect civilians by seeking a rapid end to the fighting, and set out the main elements of an orderly transition to a more legitimate form of government, one that would avoid the danger of an abrupt collapse into anarchy, with all it might mean for Tunisia’s revolution, the security of Libya’s other neighbours and the wider region. The imposition of a no-fly zone would be an act of war: as the US defense secretary, Robert Gates, told Congress on 2 March, it required the disabling of Libya’s air defences as an indispensable preliminary. In authorising this and ‘all necessary measures’, the Security Council was choosing war when no other policy had even been tried.

The proposal for a cease fire and negotiations could not allow the absent state model of the jamahiriyya, to survive. The jamahiriyya lacked the civic institutions and political traditions to engage in negotiations, and so would have needed to generate them. There is evidence that the jamahiriyya was reformable, and the compelling impetus of a peace process would have accelerated support for the reforming current led by Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, who had been previously praised by among others Tony Blair, and was well placed to use the crisis to its advantage to create civic institutions. As Hugh Roberts explains:

It was the fashion some years ago in circles close to the Blair government – in the media, principally, and among academics – to talk up Saif al-Islam’s commitment to reform and it is the fashion now to heap opprobrium on him as his awful father’s son. Neither judgment is accurate, both are self-serving. Saif al-Islam had begun to play a significant and constructive role in Libyan affairs of state, persuading the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to end its terrorist campaign in return for the release of LIFG prisoners in 2008, promoting a range of practical reforms and broaching the idea that the regime should formally recognise the country’s Berbers. While it was always unrealistic to suppose that he could have remade Libya into a liberal democracy had he succeeded his father, he certainly recognised the problems of the Jamahiriyya and the need for substantial reform. The prospect of a reformist path under Saif was ruled out by this spring’s events.

But paradoxically, because the NTC rebellion arose in the Libyan context without pre-existing civic and political institutions, the NTC also needed time to coalesce and develop. The military victory of NATO not only ruled out reform of the jamahiriyya under Saif, but it also ruled out the NTC going through the process of political evolution and clarification, the development of institutions, mechanisms of accountablity and self-discipline. The jamahiriyya was not founded upon the principle of the rule of law, and sadly neither is the new NTC state that has succeeded it. NATO’s military action has perpetuated the worst features of Gaddafism, without Gaddafi; and in fact marked a tangible regression in racism, and probably a reduced commitment to egalitarianism.

PICTURE: PAMBAZUKA

National Maritime Museum
18.30-22.00
Thursday 16th February 2012

A satirical extravaganza about China, Britain, imperialism and drugs in the 19th century in verse & music. See narco-capitalists & Chinese lawmakers slug it out, take part in a poetry slam, and watch the weirdest tea ceremony ever.

What do the humble cup of tea and the opium poppy have in common?

Britain’s craving for chinoiserie in the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in a trade imbalance that threatened to empty the treasury. To pay for the tea, silks, spices and porcelain we liked so much, the East India Company sold enormous quantities of cheap Bengal-grown opium to China, turning an aristocratic vice into a nationwide addiction.

The profits from the opium trade made fortunes, earned revenues for the British government, paid for the administration of the Empire in India and even financed a large slice of Royal Navy costs. When the Chinese tried to halt the import of the drug, the narco-capitalists persuaded Foreign Secretary Palmerston and Lord Melbourne’s government to go to war in 1839. The first military conflict, lasting a bloody three years, resulted in the Treaty of Nanking and the transfer of territory including Hong Kong to British rule.

A dastardly tale of imperialism, drugs and warfare, the story of this dark episode in British history is told in The Steampunk Opium Wars, a satirical extravaganza hosted by poet Anna Chen inside the belly of the beast, the heart of Empire, the Royal National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Government narco-capitalists and Chinese law-enforcers slug it out in verse, and members of the audience have the chance to write and take part in a Farrago Poetry History Slam.

Featuring Paul Anderson, John Crow Constable, Neil Hornick, John Paul O’Neill, Hugo Trebels, and Louise Whittle.

With music from legendary writer Charles Shaar Murray and The Plague’s Marc “The Exorcist” Jefferies; former Flying Lizards singer Deborah Evans-Stickland singing her mega-hit “Money”; DJ Zoe “Lucky Cat” Baxter of Resonance FM; and Gary Lammin of The Bermondsey Joyriders in the weirdest tea ceremony you’ve ever seen.

Have your photograph taken in your finest steampunk paraphernalia on stage by Mrs Sukey Parnell, who has exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery, and maybe see it displayed on the interweb.

Come and play with us …

More here:
http://madammiaow.blogspot.com/2012/01/opium-wars-extravaganza-at-greenwich.html

Free entry but book tickets:
http://www.rmg.co.uk/visit/events/lates-anna-chen-presents-traders

http://www.facebook.com/steampunkopiumwars

Tomorrow the Welfare Reform Bill returns to the House of Commons.

To mark the occasion Soundings journal publishes an ebook ‘Welfare Reform The dread of things to come’.

Free download at

http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/WelfareReform.html ].

Contributors: Peter Beresford, Declan Gaffney, Kaliyah Franklin, Steve Griffiths, Sue Marsh, Jonathan Rutherford.

Contributors bear witness, employ argument and offer statistical evidence to challenge the way both Labour and the Coalition governments have designed and implemented welfare reforms.

By Tim Lezard, from Union News

GMB members vote to ballot for strike action.

When organiser Carole Vallelly suggested GMB members at a local hospital sign a collective grievance against bullying at work, she was expecting a dozen or so to add their names.

So when the petition was returned with 109 signatories, she was astonished.

“I knew there were problems at the hospital, but I didn’t think so many people were going to be brave enough to sign a public document,” she says.

“A few members came to us with complaints about bullying and harassment from one particular manager, so we started looking into it for them. When the collective grievance came back we realised just how great the strength of feeling was for them to take some action and change things in their working lives.”

One of the workers prepared to speak out is Paulo Fernandez, who told UnionNews: “Every day we are afraid to go to work because whatever we do we will be threatened with a disciplinary. This is a constant threat to us – we cannot do anything right in the eyes of this manager – and before we leave home we have to prepare ourselves for this behaviour. It is very hurtful for us to get it all the time.”

The hospital is in Swindon and is run by Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The manager works for Carillion, the private company contracted to carry out the ‘housekeeping’ work – cleaning the wards and delivering the food to patients.

Paulo, like many of the workers, is from Goa, a small state on the west coast of India. There are some 7,000 Goans living in Swindon and their sense of community has emboldened them to stand up to their employer.

“It’s impressive that these people, who feel so powerless when they’re at work, can come together and feel they have power in solidarity,” says Carole.

One of the problems faced by the workers is holidays. GMB members say there is no formal procedure for booking holidays, that it depends on the whim of the manager, and that there is a ban on taking more than two weeks’ holiday at at time.

One GMB member, who did not want to be named for fear of recrimination, told UnionNews: “This is terrible because two weeks to go to India is not enough. It takes us two days to get there and two days to get back, so we don’t have much time with our families. Also, many of us are Christians and we want to go home during the Christmas period but we are told this is not allowed. This is not fair. This is discrimination.”

Carole is also quick to relate horror stories of bullying and harassment at work.

“There are countless incidents,” she says. “There are racist remarks, intimidation – the way holiday is booked is used as a way to bully people because if they don’t do what the manager wants, they are refused their holidays. There is a real culture of bullying at the hospital, and we want to see an end to it.

As good as its word, the GMB is currently balloting its members for strike action – a decision that has filled the workers with confidence.

“We have been joined all tighter and we feel some comfort,” says Paulo. “Even our faces are smiling. We are happy with the union.”

Finally, a third worker, who did not want to be named, says: “We all joined the union to fight for our rights. We feel a lot more confident and stronger with the union backing us up. The frustration that we are suffering at the hospital bought us together and we are now united and willing to fight even to the point of going to strike if they do not listen to our grievance.”

Another worker, Jose Pereira adds: “I joined the union because I was unhappy every day. Now, day by day, the union is improving the situation.”