The noxious Alex Belfield also put up a video last week in which he gleefully told his viewing public how badly Labour leader Keir Starmer was doing in the polls. According to him, YouGov or some other polling company had found that only 6 per cent of Brits think that he’s doing a good job. Actually, there might be some confusion over this, as the clip Belfield showed to back up his claim actually recorded that only 6 per cent of Brits thought Starmer was doing a ‘very good job’. It’s a minor difference, but it could mean that Starmer’s overall approval rating is actually higher, as these questionnaires commonly ask people if they think someone is doing a very good job, good job, all right and so on. Many more people could believe that Starmer was doing a good job, in addition to the 6 per cent who thought he was doing a very good job. But even so, Starmer’s popularity is low. Hardly able to contain his delight, Belfield speculated that he’d be out by Christmas. Labour was finished, especially if it elected Diane Abbott as leader.
Oh, ho, ho, ho. (Sarcasm).
But actually, if Starmer’s popularity has plummeted that far down, then there should be no surprise. Starmer has violated the cardinal raison d’etre of the parliamentary opposition – to oppose. He has simply announced that he cautiously supports the government, and wishes to give them friendly advice. When he does criticise them, it’s all with 20/20 hindsight, as Johnson has mockingly pointed out in parliament. He has no vision, no clear policies, with the exception that he’s waging war on the left in the Labour party, and so absolutely nothing to offer the great British public. And they know it.
And it shows splendidly how bankrupt Starmer’s own political strategy is. He’s a Blairite, which means that he fully supports the destruction of the welfare state and privatisation, including that of the NHS. Blair’s own election strategy consisted of finding out what would appeal to Tories or middle class swing voters and then make it Labour policy. This meant copying the Tories, or reviving failed and discarded Tory policies, like the academy schools, while at the same time telling everyone that Labour would do it better. This gained him the support of the Tory press with the exception of the Daily Heil, and Tory donors. At the same time he centralised authority in the party around himself and his clique. Party membership dropped as the views of ordinary Labour voters and supporters were ignored. But Blair was quite happy with this, so long as he had the support of the rich and the Murdoch media. As for the working class, he blithely expected them to keep voting Labour as they’d have nowhere else to go.
This failed spectacularly, as a sizable section of the British working class either stopped voting, or turned to Brexit and UKIP to articulate their alienation from contemporary parties. Starmer’s continuation of Blair’s policies, and his consequent rejection of Corbyn’s, which were genuinely popular and his determination to purge Labour of genuine socialists under the pretext of rooting out anti-Semitism are losing him working class and left wing support. He’s also losing the support of Black and ethnic minority Labour supporters through his cavalier attitude to Black Lives Matter and his studied inaction against the bullies, who racially abused Diane Abbott and other Black MPs and party activists, as well as the islamophobes.
A number of the speakers at yesterday’s Arise virtual meeting about resisting the Tories and standing for socialism in the Labour party made the point that all the talk about how ‘we’re all in it together’ during this pandemic is an utter lie. We’re not all in it together. The Tories have used the crisis, following Churchill’s dictum that you should never let a crisis go to waste, to cut services and push through policies that are making working people poorer, all with the goal of making the rich even more obscenely wealthy. The left knows this, and so aren’t backing Starmer because they recognise that he doesn’t have their best interests at heart.
At the same time, Starmer isn’t picking up Tory votes as he doesn’t really have anything to offer them either. No vision, no policies and no clear positions either. Mike’s put up several pieces about how Starmer will adopt a policy and then discard it the moment it seems unpopular. Like he was all for sending children back to school until Johnson decided he wasn’t going to send them.
I’m therefor not remotely surprised that some polls are putting Starmer’s approval rating that low. And I’d like him to be out by Christmas, but I doubt that will happen. The Blairites are determined to hang on to power anyway they can, and David Evans, the party secretary, is arrogating to himself powers to veto any Labour candidate he doesn’t think is suitable. Which means, as the good left-wing peeps pointed out yesterday, means that he has the power to stop local constituency parties choosing left-wing candidates. The various coups plotted against Corbyn and the deliberate sabotage of Labour’s election campaigning by the Blairites show that they are perfectly willing to destroy the party just to stop the left gaining power. I don’t think Starmer and his supporters will go without a very destructive, bloody fight.
As for Diane Abbott leading the party, I have my own problems with her, but I’d rather have her as leader standing to be the next PM than Starmer. She really does have the welfare of Britain’s working people at heart. But I’m enough of a realist to recognise that the press and media would have a field day reviling her, just as they’ve been doing for the entirety of her career. This would have an effect. A large number of people wouldn’t vote for her, because the Scum tells them not to. We’d need someone more acceptable to the British public, but Abbott should definitely be part of that person’s team, whoever they are.
Starmer’s popularity is waning, and this incompetent leader, who has no real policies except to advance his own faction in the Labour party, should go as soon as possible. He must be replaced by someone from the real centre of the Labour party, someone who believes in its historic policies of a welfare state, publicly owned public utilities, a genuinely nationalised NHS, decent wages and strong trade unions.
That won’t happen without a fight. But if Starmer’s popularity gets any lower, the party may not have a choice whatever the Blairites mouth to contrary.
Ho ho! Here’s a bit a fun news, also from yesterday’s I, for Tuesday, 1st December 2020. Grantham, the home town of Margaret Thatcher, of late and reviled memory, wants to be put up a statue to their most famous daughter. Of course, it’s massively expensive – the article quotes a price tag of £100,000 – and so a slap in the face of people struggling through the Covid lockdown. The council’s well aware that it’s controversial, and are going to put it on a high plinth to stop vandalism. Some hope! The good peeps on the ‘net have started organising an egg-throwing contest against it. The article by Jane Clinton, ‘Hundreds plan to throw eggs at new Thatcher statue’, runs
More than 1,000 people have signed up to attend an “egg throwing contest” at the £100,000 unveiling ceremony of a statue of Margaret Thatcher.
Around 1,400 people said they would be at the “egg throwing contest” in Grantham, Lincolnshire, which was advertised on Facebook. Yesterday more than 8,000 people had responded to the event.
In an accompanying Facebook post the organiser of the event, Kasa Arif, said: “We have a special target… a beautiful statue of the Iron Lady.”
Members of South Kesteven District Council’s (SKDC) cabinet will be asked today to approve the £100,000 expenditure, with fundraising for the even potentially carried out by the public, businesses and others.
But Adam Brookes, a Market Deeping town councillor, said “There is no guarantee as to the level of outside funding that will be secured, leading SKDC funding any gap.”
Baroness Thatcher was born and brought up in Grantham. And while councillors say the £300,000 bronze statue, created by Douglas Jennings, will be a fitting tribute, many have been angered by the financial outlay during a time of hardship. The statue is to be placed on a 10ft-high plinth to prevent vandalism.
News of the unveiling ceremony has sparked hundreds of anty responses on social media.
Twitter user Sammy said: “If you have to put the statue on a 10ft plinth because everyone hates its may be consider not buying the statue.”
I contacted South Kesteven District Council for a comment.
I’ve called the statue an idol because, in my view, that’s precisely what it is. Thatcherism is now a cult, like that of Reagan in America. Their economics have failed massively, and free trade neoliberalism with its central dogma of privatisation and the destruction of the welfare state, workers’ rights and low wages, have wreaked incalculable harm and suffering on ordinary people everywhere in the world. It’s been rightly described as ‘zombie economics’, but it has made the 1 per cent colossally richer, and so the political and media class are pushing it with all their might. And no voice must be allowed to blaspheme against the woman Alan Bennett once described in his dulcet tones as ‘Our Lady of Monetarism’.
Over the decades many people and organisations have shown their hatred of Thatcher by refusing to put up monuments to her or defacing them when they were put up. I think Oxford Uni shocked the government and the political class in the ’90s by refusing to put up a statue of her, despite the fact that they a tradition of erecting statues and busts of former PMs. And then, later in the decade, a statue of Maggie did appear – I think it was at an art exhibition – it was beheaded by an angry member of the public. Which led Private Eye to compare it to the great poem about the shattered remains of similar monument from ancient Egypt, Shelley’s Ozymandias.
Well, they’re trying to protect it by putting it on a plinth, but as the old glam rock song goes, ‘You can’t stop the children of the revolution!’ Rock on!
I got this email message from Labour Against Austerity on Saturday, so I apologise for being so late putting it up.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Hear John McDonnell respond to the Tory Spending Review.
Wednesday 25 November 2020, 7pm. Register here // Share & Invite on FB here // Retweet here to spread the word.
With: John McDonnell MP // RIchard Burgon MP // Pascale Robinson, We Own It // Apsana Begum MP.
The #payfreeze news is more proof the Tories will always put the 1% first. The economic crisis we face is set to be the worst any of us have experienced.
What’s the alternative & how do we build resistance? Join us to discuss how we transform our economy and society to ensure that people’s jobs, livelihoods and health come first.
One of the other books I’ve been reading during the lockdown is The German Left and the Weimar Republic: Selection of Documents, edited by Ben Fowkes, (Chicago: Haymarket Books 2014). The Weimar Republic was the name given to Germany for the all too brief period from the end of the First World War to the the Nazi seizure of power in 1933/4. It was a tumultuous period which saw the brief rise of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ council seize power briefly, the brutal suppression of soviet republics up and down Germany by the Freikorps, the rise of the Nazis, and splits in the majority Germany socialist, the SPD, which produced the USPD (Independent Socialist Party of Germany), the SAP (Socialist Workers’ Party) and the German Communist Party. The book collects a number of documents from these left-wing parties and movements, which reveal their policies and attitudes towards some of the most important issues of the day.
In 1931 the KPD proposed a law to protect and give full equal rights to working women. I’m putting this up, because while I’m very definitely not a Communist, these demands show how far ahead of their time the Communists were. Women’s right to work was attacked by the Nazis, who saw women’s proper sphere as ‘Kinder, Kirche, Kuche’ – children, church and kitchen. And although governments now are keen, or claim to be keen, to promote women’s equality in politics, culture, industry and science, the laws protection working women from exploitation and arbitrary dismissal have been and are being rolled back. This is line with the general attack on worker’s employment rights and job security.
The KPD proposals ran
We call on the Reichstag to demand that the government introduce a bill to protect and give full equality of rights to working women according to the following principles:
Establishment of complete economic, cultural and political equality of rights between women and men. All laws and emergency ordinances that contradict this are to be abrogated with immediate effect.
Women in all enterprises in industry and agriculture, doing the same work as men, are to be paid wages at the same level as men. The longest daily working time for women is to be set at seven hours, with full wage equality, while for unhealthy and heavy work, as well as for young females below the age of 18, it is to be set at six hours.
(Similar provisions for office workers).
Working women are to have a fully equal right to occupy all posts in all professions. Women workers, office employees and civil service officials are not be dismissed because they are married. All working women are to receive free professional training appropriate to their professional capacity.
All unemployed women must have a legal right to full unemployment insurance payments without means testing or reference to the income of family members. Every kind of compulsory labour or compulsory re-training is prohibited. The right to receive social insurance during the whole period of unemployment is to be guaranteed.
All working women employed in industry, agriculture, commerce and transport and domestic work as well as women in the so -called free professions, housewives and the female relatives or working peasants are to be included in the social insurance system.
Dismissal of pregnant women is legally prohibited up to the 12th month after the birth of the child. The pregnant woman is to receive full pay and be exempt from work from eight weeks before until eight weeks after the birth. Nursing mothers are to receive half and hour twice a day for breast-feeding their children, without any reduction in wages. Maternity homes in sufficient numbers are to be made available to all working women, also creches for babies and children up to three years old, nurseries for children from three to school age. These services are to be provided free of payment. They are to be directed and supervised by control committees made up of delegates from the working population, mainly women.
The interruption of pregnancy is to be permitted by law. The contrary paragraphs of the penal code (184 Section 3 and 28) are to be abolished. All persons condemned under the previous abortion paragraphs are to be amnestied immediately, and all current cases are to be terminated. Abortion carried out by a doctor and the provision of the means to avoid pregnancy count as medicate help in the national system of insurance.
When entering marriage, the woman retains her right to decide independently in all legal and personal matters. She is not dependent on the husband in any of her decisions. After marriage, the women may take the name of her husband, but she may also continue to be known under her maiden name. She has the same parental power over her children as the man.
All exceptional provisions dealing with the unmarried mother and the illegitimate child are removed. Every unmarried women has the right to be bear the title of ‘Frau’. In mixed marriages, the choice of nationality is left to the woman.
Obviously, abortion rights are still extremely controversial today. And one of the reasons for the introduction of zero hours contracts and firms insisting that their employees should sign documents stating that they are self-employed is deny women rights like maternity leave. And unemployed women and men are required to go for compulsory retraining and work under Blair’s wretched ‘welfare to work’ initiative. Which is another Tory idea taken from the Americans.
The reduction of the working day for women would be controversial today. More women work part-time than men because they do the majority of work rearing children and running the home. A week or so ago someone proposed that women’s working day should therefore be shortened generally for those reasons. But one of the drawbacks of this would be that women would need to be paid more than men in order to close the gender income gap. Many men on the political right already feel that they will be discriminated against regarding pay rates because of this.
The KPD made these demands nearly 90 years ago, and despite many of them having been introduced over the following decades, we still need to follow their recommendations to defend the rights of all working women along with workers generally.
Starmer clearly believes that suspending Jeremy Corbyn and misrepresenting the EHRC report into anti-Semitism in the Labour party were somehow draw a line between his own shabby leadership of the Labour party and that of Corbyn’s. His apologies and uncritical acceptance of the demands of the Board of Deputies for another witch hunt in the Labour party against the former Labour leader and his supporters as an effort to cleanse the party of anti-Semitism did win Starmer the approval of the Board and other Zionist Jewish groups. But not everybody has been so impressed. Right-wing internet radio host, Alex Belfield today put up this video demanding that Keir Starmer should also be suspended.
Belfield’s extremely right-wing. He’s a fierce opponent of immigration and critic of Black Lives Matter and similar anti-racist movements and initiatives, as well as general left-wing snowflakery, as he sees it. He also has a particular, personal hatred of the BBC, having worked in it for decades. He left due to some kind of dispute, which has involved lawyers. He despises the Beeb for its ‘woke’ views on race, sexism and trans rights, and claims that he was looked down upon by its overwhelmingly middle class staff and management because of his own working class origins. He therefore takes every opportunity to demand that it be defunded.
And now he turns his fire on Keir Starmer. Starmer, he says very clearly, should himself be suspended along with Corbyn. He makes it clear that it’s not for him to decide whether the former Labour leader was anti-Semitic, but not only was Starmer an MP during Corbyn’s leadership, his constituency was Holbourne and St Pancras, which was bang right next door to Corbyn’s. Starmer should therefore have known what was going on.
And he also brings Jimmy Savile and the Beeb into it. It is, says Belfield, exactly like the Beeb claimed that it didn’t know Savile was a vicious child abuser after this was revealed, despite Savile working for the Beeb for decades. But Starmer also has a personal connection to the Savile case. He was director of public prosecution when the decision was taken not to prosecute Savile for the allegations of child abuse. Allegations that have since been shown to be true.
Here’s the video.
I don’t believe for a single minute that Jeremy Corbyn was ever anti-Semitic, and neither were his supporters. But he and those accused of anti-Semitism were smeared as such because they supported the Palestinians, but not Palestinian terrorism, against the decades-long efforts to cleanse them ethnically by the Israeli state. And as Corbyn and his supporter were also traditional centrist Labour, supporting a strengthened welfare state, decent wages for working people, a state-owned and funded NHS, strong unions and a mixed economy, the anti-Semitism smears gave the Thatcherite, New Labour right an opportunity to smear and expel them.
Corbyn was a victim of a conspiracy by his own right-wing party bureaucracy to force him out. They deliberately did everything they could to throw the elections, withheld information on anti-Semitism in the Labour party, and bullied Black and Asian MPs and activists like Diane Abbot. But they worked to Starmer’s advantage, and so he has not taken action against them.
The result of all this is that the Labour party is haemorrhaging working class and ethnic minority support. As a Blairite, Starmer may well welcome this. Blair after all had complete contempt for the party’s working class base in his attempt to turn it into a second Tory party in pursuit of the middle class and swing voters. It’s also threatening to create a civil war that will cost Labour the next election.
Starmer clearly thought suspending Corbyn would win him greater approval from the right-wing political establishment. But if Belfield’s example is any gauge, he’s wrong.
The Tories really do seem determined to turn as much of the British public away from them as possible through their obstinate refusal to give free school meals to hungry children during the school holidays. Of course they’ve started making up excuses. They’re claiming that the vouchers given for the meals are being spent on drugs and in brothels. This seems to be something that they’ve just pulled out of their rears. There’s no evidence for it, and the organisations and people dealing with Britain’s drug problem haven’t every encountered any drug dealer who has taken food as payment for their wretched wares.
I know from experience that drug addicts will rob homes and premises for food. My mother used to run a elderly people’s club in south Bristol. It was set up by the local council to give the elderly of that area a meal out and allow them to meet other people, play games and exercise themselves for a few hours. One day they found they’d been broken into, but what had been stolen was mostly food. They contacted the police, who came round and took a few details. The cops believed that the people responsible were drug addicts and had had experience of similar cases in the past. As for food vouchers being used in brothels, Cynthia Paine, the notorious ‘Madame Cyn’ of Personal Services infamy, accepted payment in luncheon vouchers from her clients. But she was very much at the top end of prostitution servicing MPs and the like. Or so she claimed. I’ve never heard of any house of ill repute accepting food vouchers. But this seems to show the fantasy land in which the Tories making these excuses seem to live.
They’re also trying to deflect blame away from themselves. They’re being abused as ‘scum’ by an outraged public, and this is all the fault of Angela Rayner for calling one of nastier Tory MPs the term when he was speaking to defend the government’s odious policy. Of course, it’s unparliamentary language and Rayner should apologise. But I don’t think the British public need any encouragement from Rayner to abuse the Tories, who voted against giving children free meals. To state the blindingly obvious, people are very protective of children. It’s why there’s such loathing and hatred of child abuse. The Tories’ policy harms children, and so people are naturally enraged.
And besides, the Tories have previous when it comes to abuse. Like Boris Johnson and his highly racist description of Black Africans and newspaper article describing women, who wear the burka as looking like ninjas and letter boxes. After he wrote that, the number of racist assaults on Muslims increased, including assaults on women wearing the burka. Labour MPs also received more than their fair share of abuse. Margaret Hodge infamously called Jeremy Corbyn ‘a f***king anti-Semite’ in the House of Commons. Black MPs seem to be particularly targeted for vilification. the majority of insults and threats sent to female MPs actually go to Diane Abbott, while there was massive abuse of Dawn Butler after she was stopped by the cops for driving while Black. The whines and wails from the Tories about insults and abuse is just gross hypocrisy in this matter.
Mike and others have pointed out just how much the Tories supporting this policy are paid. Tories like Boris Johnson are making tens of thousands from their MPs salaries and from other work, as well as corporate and private political donations. This is very much the obscenely rich deciding that the poor should starve. And to add insult to injury, MPs also enjoy subsidised food in parliament’s restaurants and bars.
This short video comes from Carl Vernon’s channel on YouTube. Vernon shares the general public disgust at the Tories’ decision. He states that we don’t live in a socialist country, and people do have a responsibility to feed their children. Absolutely, but people have pointed out before, those forced to use food banks and charity to feed their children do feel this responsibility like every one else. They’re just prevent from acting on it by decades of Tory and New Labour policies that have kept wages below the level on which many people can afford to feed and clothe themselves and their families and heat their homes. Quite apart from the destruction of the welfare state, so that hundreds of thousands of people, who should receive benefits, aren’t.
Vernon points out that MPs’ meals in parliament are subsidized, so they eat very well at cheap prices. He shows this with examples from parliament’s own menus. Here’s the video.
The British public, local councils and businesses have shown immense generosity stepped in to feed these children. And in return some Tory MPs have responded with contempt and insults. One of those complaining about insults from the other side of the chamber is north Devon MP Selaine Saxby. When local businesses stepped in to feed the children the Tory government wouldn’t, she announced on Facebook
“I am delighted our local businesses have bounced back so much after lockdown they are able to give away food for free, and very much hope they will not be seeking any further Government support”.
So much for Tory support for the hospitality and other industries struggling due to the Coronavirus emergency and the lockdown! But there, as Mike, Zelo Street and a multitude of other peeps are pointing out, the Tories don’t care about anyone except themselves personally. Only when it directly affects them do they feel any remorse or pangs of conscience.
This is a national disgrace. Last night the BBC news announced that ours is the only country, which isn’t feeding its children.
We stand shamed and humiliated on the world stage. This is an outrage. But as Zelo Street has also posted, it also shows that Nye Bevan, the architect of the welfare state, was right. Bevan stated that he had always had a burning hatred for the Tories because of the way they condemned decent people to semi-starvation. And so he called them
‘lower than vermin’.
And they’re proving him right once again.
And they have the audacity to complain that people are calling them ‘scum’!
The most deprived section of the population according to some measurements is the White working class. There have been any number of articles written about this. Working class White boys perform less well at school compared to Blacks and Asians, have higher rates of unemployment and hold poorer paid jobs. And according to an article in last Wednesday’s I for 14th October 2020, the rhetoric used by Black Lives Matter and other pro-Black anti-racist activists may make this deprivation worse. The article states that working class Whites believe that they have little chance of improving their conditions due to their communities lacking status and this is potentially going to be made worse through talk of ‘White privilege’. The academics interviewed in the article also state that their communities are still suffering from the decline of Britain’s manufacturing industry.
The article’s by Will Hazell, and is titled ‘White working-class pupils think academic race is unwinnable’. It runs
White working-class pupils are falling behind at school because their communities suffer from a “status deficit” and talk of “white privilege” could make things worse MPs have heard.
An inquiry by the Commons Education Select Committee is examining why white children from disadvantaged backgrounds perform worse than any other group in education.
Only 17 per cent of white pupils on free school meals get a strong pass in English and maths GCSEs – the lowest of any ethnic group.
Meanwhile just 13 per cent of white British boys on free school meals progress to higher education, compared with 42 per cent from a Pakistani heritage, 51 per cent of black African boys and 66 per cent of Chinese ethnicity.
Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at Kent University, told MPs that there were “cultural explanations” with white working-class families suffering a “status deficit”.
White working class families were left to feel “as though they’re not being given as much recognition and esteem as others”, Professor Goodwin said.
He said the idea of “white privilege”, along with references to “toxic masculinity”, had demoralised white working class families. He added: “If we are now going to start teaching them in school they not only have to overcome the economic and social barriers within their community, but they also need to start apologising for simply belonging to a wider group which also strips away their individual agency, then I think we’re just going to compound many of these problems.”
Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at Exeter University, said white working class communities were “still recovering from the demise of the manufacturing industry”, and a “narrow academic race” in schools which felt “unwinnable” for poor white families.
The problem could only be fixed by providing improved vocational education routes for young people as well as jobs in their local communities, he said.
I think the class background of some of the children of other ethnic groups may help to explain why these generally perform better at school, and get better jobs and opportunities. than working class Whites. Not all Blacks, Pakistanis and Chinese are working class. Many of them are businessmen or professionals, who may have emigrated to Britain as part of their jobs or came over here because of the greater opportunities offered when immigration was being encouraged or at least less restricted. These children therefore already enjoy social advantages and opportunities through their parents’ higher status and education than working class children.
Also, there has been enormous effort put into improving conditions for ethnic minorities. This obviously includes affirmative action programmes. About a decade ago the former head of the Council for Racial Equality, as ’twas then, was quoted in an article in the Heil as suggesting that their should be similar programmes for working class Whites. Nothing further was then said, and I think the gentleman involved left his position shortly afterwards due to a completely unrelated matter. If he’s the fellow I’m thinking of, he was accused of making up accusations for racist abuse or something similar against a policeman at a football match.
The ideas interesting and probably necessary, but it has major problems. Not least is the way it contradicts, or appears to contradict, much contemporary anti-racist and feminist discourse and policies. The contemporary concern for equality is centred around providing better opportunities and social and economic improvement and advancement for ethnic minorities and women. Left-wing, anti-racist and feminist criticism of traditional western society is that it’s dominated by White men. This is obviously true, but it needs to be remembered that it’s dominated by elite White men. But any programme aimed at specifically improving the conditions of Whites, and especially White boys, may appear reactionary because it’s directed to improving the conditions of a gender and ethnicity – but not the class – that some view as already having too much power.
And I do think also that there’s now a lack of glamour about the White working class compared to other ethnic groups. Blacks and Asians have the glamour of the exotic, and so they can be promoted by celebrating their cultures’ achievements, as Black History Month does. But the White working class is much harder to celebrate because of their ordinariness. And the fact that the socially deprived sections are likely to be sneered at as chavs or rednecks.
The concept of White privilege has been subject to extensive criticism by people on the right. As a generalisation about society as a whole, it’s obviously true that Whites generally perform better academically, and enjoy better jobs and opportunities than many, but not all, ethnic minorities. But it ignores the fact that many Whites don’t share this privilege, and may be as disadvantaged or more than some other deprived ethnicities. I think the reason for this is that the whole concept of White privilege was formulated by middle class radicals thinking specifically about the White middle class, and lumping all Whites in with it.
I think we’re probably going to hear much more about the problems of the White working class as time goes on. The right-wing internet host and YouTube Alex Belfield has already put up a video about the plight of White working class boys. Another right-wing outfit – I think it’s called the New Culture Forum or something like that – has also put up a long video about ‘The Demonisation of the White Working Class’. I think the intention here is to exploit working class White discontent as a way of attacking the anti-racist affirmative action programmes.
Because the Tories certainly don’t care about the working class, whatever it’s colour. The Tories smashed the coal industry partly as a way of destroying the trade unions. It was the miner’s union, remember, that defeated Ted Heath. Thatcher had no interest in manufacturing, and her Labour successor, Tony Blair, blandly assumed that its role in the economy would be taken over by the financial sector. Since David Cameron’s election victory, the Tories have insisted on austerity, holding down wages, promoting zero hours contracts and attacking workers’ rights, as well as cutting the welfare benefits working people need to keep body and soul together. It’s all in the name of creating an impoverished, cowed, demoralised workforce that will take any job, no matter how poorly paid or insecure. Most of the people claiming benefits and using food banks are now people actually in work. But instead of doing anything for them, the Tories simply drum up jealousy against those even more disadvantaged. You think of the rants the Tories screamed about how they were going to cut benefits to the unemployed in order to make work pay. The unemployed were scroungers, malingerers and layabouts, who shouldn’t earn more than working people. But in all too many cases, the benefits system does not provide enough for the people who need it to live on. And how seriously the Tories take their slogan of making work pay is shown by the fact that they’ve done nothing to raise wages. ‘Cause it’s all the working class’ fault they’re poor.
In contrast to the Tories’ posturing, the people who are serious about protecting and advancing the White working class are the Labour left. The very people the anti-immigrant, racist Brexiteer right despise as traitors. But left-wing Labour activists like Richard Burgon have made it very clear that they will work for improving the conditions of White working class communities as part of their commitment to bettering conditions for all of Britain’s working people, Black, brown, White or whatever.
And you can believe them.
The Tories, however, will do nothing but patronise the White working class, drumming up racial resentments and jealousies while pushing through policies that will make them, and the rest of the working class, even poorer and more miserable.
Here’s another interesting question posed by the changing policies of the Italian Fascist state towards industry and the financial sector. Fascism celebrated and defended private industry as the essential basis of the Italian economy and society. When Mussolini first took power in the early 1920s, he declared that Fascism stood for ‘Manchester School’ capitalism – privatisation, cuts to public services and expenditure and the lowering of wages and welfare benefits. But this changed with the development of the Fascist state through the establishment of the corporations – industrial organisations combining the employers’ organisations and the trade unions, which were supposed to take over the management of industry – autarky, which aimed to make Italy self-sufficient and the movement to a centrally planned economy.
This was partly achieved in the early 1930s when Mussolini set up two state institutions to buy out the Italian banks following the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression. These not only bought out the banks, but also the industries these banks owned and controlled, so that the Italian state ended up owning just under a fifth of the Italian economy.
This is described in a passage in the article ‘Industry’ in Philip V. Cannistraro’s Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press 1982). This runs
Two public agencies were created to save banks and crucially affected industries: the Istituto Mobiliare Italiano (IMI) on November 13, 1931, which was to control credit; and the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI) on January 23, 1933. IRI was by far the more radical solution, for it purchased all the shares of stock in industrial, agricultural, and real estate companies previously held by banks. (The banking law of 1936 prohibited banks from extending long-term credit to industrial concerns). Although the industrialists fully expected a return to “normalcy” and to private enterprise after the crisis had passed, Mussolini had successfully created an instrument for the permanent intervention of government in the economy. By 1939 IRI controlled a series of firms representing 44.15 percent of the capital of Italian stock values and 17.80 percent of the total capital of the country – hence, the Fascist government controlled a proportionately larger section of national industry than any other government in Europe except the Soviet Union. (p. 278).
This allowed the government to interfere and restructure the Italian economy leading to the expansion of the manufacturing economy and a reduction in imports. On the other hand, poor government planning and an inefficient bureaucracy meant that Italian domestic manufactures were frequently inferior and the country had a lower growth rate than many other western European countries.
But this contrasts very strongly with policy of Britain and America to the financial sector after the 2008. The banks were bailed out with public money, but were not nationalised and the government has continued with its ‘light touch’ approach to regulation. Meaning that the banks have been free to carry on pretty much as before. Public spending, especially on welfare, has been drastically cut. Despite the Tories claiming that this would boost the economy and they’d pay of the debt within a couple of years or so, this has very definitely not happened. In fact, the debt has massively increased.
This has added to the long term problems of Britain’s manufacturing industry. Left-wing economists have pointed out that Britain’s domestic industries suffer from a lack of capital because the financial sector is geared towards overseas investment. A situation that has no doubt got worse due to globalisation and the personal investment of many Tory and New Labour MPs in foreign industry and their savings in offshore tax havens. British industry has also suffered from the ignorance and neglect of successive prime ministers from Maggie Thatcher onwards. Thatcher couldn’t understand that her policy of keeping the Pound strong would damage British exports, and in any case did not want to rescue failing British industries. They were either to be allowed to go under, or else sold to foreign companies and governments. Tony Blair went further, and believed that manufacturing industry’s place in the British economy could be successfully taken over by the financial sector and the service industries.
But this has also been a failure. Ha-Joon Chang in his 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism has pointed out that manufacturing industry is still very much of vital importance. It’s just that it has grown at a slower rate than the other sectors.
Fascist Italy was a totalitarian dictatorship where Mussolini ruled by fear and violence. There was no freedom of speech or conscience in a system that aimed at the total subordination of the individual, economy and society. Mussolini collaborated with Hitler in the persecution of the Jews, although mercifully this wasn’t quite so extreme so that 80 per cent of Italian Jews survived. The regime was aggressively militaristic aiming at the restoration of a new, Roman-style empire in the Mediterranean. Albania, Greece and Ethiopia were invaded along with Tripoli in Libya and Fascist forces were responsible for horrific atrocities as well as the passage of race laws forbidding racial intermixture with Black Africans.
It was a grotesque, murderous regime which was properly brought to an end by the Allied victory of the Second World War. It must never be revived and Fascism must be fought every where. But it does appear that Mussolini’s policy towards the banks and industry was better than that pursued by our supposedly liberal democracies. But the governments of our own time are also becoming increasingly intolerant and authoritarian. The danger of our country becoming similar repressive dictatorship under Boris and the Tories is very real.
We desperately need the return to power of a genuinely socialist Labour government, committed to investment in the welfare state and public services with a nationalised NHS, a mixed economy and positive commitment to democracy and freedom of speech rather than the illusion maintained by the mainstream media and Tory press.
And that will mean overturning over three decades of Thatcherite orthodoxy on the banks and financial sector, just as Mussolini changed his policies towards them with the aim of restoring and expanding Italian industry.
In his chapter ‘The Violence of the Debtfare State’ in Vickie Cooper and David Whyte, eds., The Violence of Austerity (London: Pluto Press 2017), David Ellis uses the term ‘debtfare’ to describe the dismantling of state welfare provision and its replacement by debt and credit. And I’m starting to wonder how far this can go before something like debt slavery arises. The Romans abolished debt slavery, but the punishment for debt was addictio, forced labour. People are being forced into mountains of debt through poverty created by austerity and the removal of living wages and proper unemployment and disability benefits. Students are also mired in it through tuition fees which now may amount to tens of thousands of pounds.
I am therefore left wondering at what point the various banks and other organisations offering credit will stop it and start demanding their money back or some other form of repayment. Clearly if people remain in debt, they can’t repay the money. The alternatives seem to be either that the banks keep on giving them credit in the hope that they’ll be able to repay something, or else write it off as a loss. But if the number of people in irrecoverable debt hits millions, what happens? If the levels of indebtedness actually starts to harm the banks and the other organisations, will they turn to the state to demand some kind of forced labour in order to make good their profits?
I’ve already pointed out the similarity of the workfare schemes to the forced labour systems of Stalin’s Russia. Stalin used slave labour from the gulags to industrialise the Soviet Union. Business managers would give the KGB lists of the kind of workers their enterprise needed, and the KGB would then have those with the appropriate skills and qualifications accused of anti-Soviet crimes and arrested. The workfare scheme now used to punish the unemployed doesn’t teach anybody any new skills, nor does it allow them to find employment. Indeed the stats a while ago showed that people on workfare were less likely to get a job than if they were left to their own initiative. But workfare does supply cheap, state-subsidised labour to the scheme’s backers and the parties’ business donors, like the supermarkets.
So if the number of people in grievous, irrecoverable debt, will the government simply write them off and let them starve to death, as so many disabled people have done already thanks to false assessments under the Work Capability Tests? Or will they decide they can still make some money for business by pressing them into compulsory labour in order to work their way out of it, as in the Roman system?
I’m not saying this will happen or even that it’s likely. But I do wonder if it’s a possibility.
A couple of hours ago I got an email from the Labour Assembly Against Austerity. They are petitioning against Sunak’s support package announced earlier this week on the grounds that it doesn’t go nearly far enough in giving people the help they need. They wrote
‘Urgently Needed – A Plan for the People
Rishi Sunak’s announcement this week was too little, too late, and will not prevent a massive increase in unemployment. We need to fight for every job and we need to fight for an economic plan for the people. As part of this campaigning, over 9000 people have now signed up in support of this plan to fight the Tories and put people first. Please help us get this up to 10,000 by taking 30 seconds to:
Let’s keep fighting the Tories and for a better future – for people and planet,
The Labour Assembly Against Austerity Volunteer Team.’
The text of the petition runs
A Post-Pandemic Plan for the People – #PeopleBeforeProfit. Add Your Name!The economic crisis we now face is set to be the worst any of us have experienced. We urgently need to transform our economy and society to ensure that people’s jobs, livelihoods and health come before private profit.
DEFEND LIVINGS STANDARDS AND JOBS – INVEST IN OUR FUTURE
The fight to prevent soaring unemployment is paramount. We need to build a movement that demands the Government takes the action needed to create full-employment with well-paid secure jobs for all. This will need massive, sustained investment in our infrastructure, in council housing, transport, public services, industry and beyond. We must eradicate financial insecurity through a minimum earnings guarantee at a decent level, ensure Statutory Sick Pay at living wage levels, support for renters, and build a Social Security System that is universal and not punitive. The crisis has shown we need trade unions more than ever. Greater union rights and freedoms will help end the exploitative zero-hour and precarious contracts that dominate our economy, save jobs and give workers a proper say in their workplace.
REBUILDING TO TACKLE THE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE AND ACHIEVE SOCIAL JUSTICE:
We must rebuild in a way that tackles the existential threat of climate breakdown with ambitious, redistributive policies that put jobs, equality and improving people’s lives first. Research shows £85bn investment in green infrastructure could help create 1.24 million jobs in 2 years. The state must urgently invest to create high-quality green jobs and technologies through a Green New Deal, providing a just, environmentally sustainable transition of our industries and infrastructure by safeguarding the employment of all.
UNIVERSAL, PUBLICLY-OWNED SERVICES:
Our public services provided the vital support needed during the pandemic. But this crisis also sharply exposed how a decade of austerity and privatisation has left them at breaking point. We need to rebuild them to be the world class services our communities deserve creating hundreds of thousands of socially useful jobs at the same time. Only public ownership and universality will ensure access to our public services. Our transport system should be integrated and upgraded, with the railways and buses publicly owned and education properly funded and free for all. NHS under-funding, staff shortages and privatisation must end. We urgently need a public, universal social care service.
EQUALITY FOR ALL:
This pandemic has shone a spotlight on the deep structural inequalities in our society. Now is the time for real change. The dismantling of systematic inequality and liberation for all must be at the heart of how we rebuild better. The Black Lives Matter movement has rightly pushed the structural racism to the top of the political agenda. Real government action, not just words, is now needed. Women and disabled people have already seen a rolling back of equality gains under the Tories and these risk being further undermined, while LGBT+ people face a reactionary government which is not afraid to use the tactics of divide and rule. We must demand an end to the scapegoating of disabled people on benefits.
If you support it, please go over to their website and sign it, as I’ve done.
