18 September 2006
THE BRITISH INFIDEL COUNCIL DOES NOT REPRESENT INFIDELS!
The blatant opportunism of the renegade jihadist lapdog Harry in launching a so-called organisation to represent British infidels can only outrage all true infidels! He and his cronies are lickspittles of the jackboots of imperialism, a clique of rabid Papist-Zionist jackals unconnected to the militant infidel youth! The sole legitimate representative of Britsh infidelism remains the Infidel Association of Britain!
17 September 2006
GIVE HIM A COMPLETE IGNORAL (AFTER THIS POST)
Iain Dale has set himself up as the arbiter of the Brit political blogosphere and too many people are taking it seriously. I'm only number 50 in his Labour bloggers list and I just don't care. He represents nothing whatsoever apart from the insignificant gay Tory West-Ham-really-but-Norwich-City-on the-doorstep lobby. As a straight Labour Tractor Boy I know just where he's coming from...
16 September 2006
ORWELL AND SUFFOLK
The obvious connection between George Orwell and Suffolk is the surname the aspiring author Eric Blair adopted as a pseudonym in 1932: the River Orwell is the tidal estuary that links Ipswich to the sea. But his Suffolk connections go further than that.
As a 17-year-old schoolboy at Eton, he spent much of the Xmas holiday of 1920-21 with cousins of his father in Burstall, a small village just west of Ipswich, where – as we know from a letter written to a friend – he picked up a large cage rat-trap, which several biographers suggest was the prototype for the cage full of rats that finally breaks Winston Smith’s resistance to torture in Orwell’s last novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
A year later, after he left Eton, he and his family – his father Richard, a retired colonial administrator then in his early 60s, his mother Ida, nearly 18 years younger than her husband, and his younger sister Avril – moved from the home counties to the small Suffolk coastal town of Southwold, to a rented house in Stradbroke Road near the lighthouse. (His elder sister Marjorie, five years his senior, had married and left home the previous year.)
The young Eric spent six months at a crammer in the town swotting up for imperial police service exams which he took and passed before going off to Burma as a colonial policeman. Not much is known about this time in Southwold apart from the fact that he got into trouble for sending a dead rat to the borough surveyor as a joke birthday present.
He came back from Burma on leave in 1927 and after a couple of months announced to his parents, who had by this point moved to another rented house, in Queen Street, right in the centre of town and near South Green, that he had decided to quit his job in Burma and become a writer. For the next eight years, Southwold was his main base – though he spent a lot of time away.
In late 1927 he moved to lodgings in London, where he experienced for the first time the poverty of the East End, then the next year went to Paris, where his aunt lived, in an attempt to make it as a freelance. But he ran out of money and turned to working as a washer-up to try to make ends meet – an experience that eventually made its way into Down and Out in Paris and London – before admitting defeat and returning to Southwold just before Xmas 1929. Feeling a failure, he took a job looking after what he called “an imbecile boy” in the nearby village of Walberswick.
The job did not last, but he didn’t leave the town for good until late 1934 – though he often went off in 1930-31, dressed as a tramp, to do the research for what became Down and Out; and in 1932-33 he worked in suburban west London as a teacher, an occupation he was forced to give up by illness. Not only Down and Out (published in 1933) but also the novels Burmese Days (1934) and A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935) were written largely in Southwold. A Clergyman’s Daughter starts and ends in a Suffolk town, Knype Hill, at least partially based on Southwold.
His family had been living in genteel poverty until the early 1930s, but an inheritance and Avril’s success at running a tea room made them comfortably off. They bought a house in the High Street and became pillars of respectable society – Orwell’s father a familiar figure in the posher of the local golf clubs and his mother a doyenne of the ladies’ bridge circuit.
Orwell said he didn’t like Southwold, and the best bits of A Clergyman’s Daughter – a novel he later dismissed as “tripe” – are a vicious satire on the parochialism of provincial small-town life, including tea rooms. The chief protagonist of the novel, Dorothy Hare, is the dutiful daughter of a rector, and her reputation is destroyed by a malicious gossip.
But he had lots of friends there, including one woman, Eleanor Jaques, with whom he had an affair, and another, Brenda Salkeld, the gym mistress at St Felix girl’s school, whom he wooed unsuccessfully for several years and on whom Dorothy Hare was loosely based. And his distaste for the place did not prevent him visiting it regularly after he left, the last time in early 1944 after the death of his mother. (His father died in 1939.)
People apart, there was something about the bleakness of “the low, barely undulating East Anglian landscape” that Orwell liked. Although it was “intolerably dull in summer”, it was “redeemed in winter by the recurring patterns of the elms, naked and fanshaped against leaden skies”. Seventy years later, I feel much the same way. It's just a pity all the elms have died.
As a 17-year-old schoolboy at Eton, he spent much of the Xmas holiday of 1920-21 with cousins of his father in Burstall, a small village just west of Ipswich, where – as we know from a letter written to a friend – he picked up a large cage rat-trap, which several biographers suggest was the prototype for the cage full of rats that finally breaks Winston Smith’s resistance to torture in Orwell’s last novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
A year later, after he left Eton, he and his family – his father Richard, a retired colonial administrator then in his early 60s, his mother Ida, nearly 18 years younger than her husband, and his younger sister Avril – moved from the home counties to the small Suffolk coastal town of Southwold, to a rented house in Stradbroke Road near the lighthouse. (His elder sister Marjorie, five years his senior, had married and left home the previous year.)
The young Eric spent six months at a crammer in the town swotting up for imperial police service exams which he took and passed before going off to Burma as a colonial policeman. Not much is known about this time in Southwold apart from the fact that he got into trouble for sending a dead rat to the borough surveyor as a joke birthday present.
He came back from Burma on leave in 1927 and after a couple of months announced to his parents, who had by this point moved to another rented house, in Queen Street, right in the centre of town and near South Green, that he had decided to quit his job in Burma and become a writer. For the next eight years, Southwold was his main base – though he spent a lot of time away.
In late 1927 he moved to lodgings in London, where he experienced for the first time the poverty of the East End, then the next year went to Paris, where his aunt lived, in an attempt to make it as a freelance. But he ran out of money and turned to working as a washer-up to try to make ends meet – an experience that eventually made its way into Down and Out in Paris and London – before admitting defeat and returning to Southwold just before Xmas 1929. Feeling a failure, he took a job looking after what he called “an imbecile boy” in the nearby village of Walberswick.
The job did not last, but he didn’t leave the town for good until late 1934 – though he often went off in 1930-31, dressed as a tramp, to do the research for what became Down and Out; and in 1932-33 he worked in suburban west London as a teacher, an occupation he was forced to give up by illness. Not only Down and Out (published in 1933) but also the novels Burmese Days (1934) and A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935) were written largely in Southwold. A Clergyman’s Daughter starts and ends in a Suffolk town, Knype Hill, at least partially based on Southwold.
His family had been living in genteel poverty until the early 1930s, but an inheritance and Avril’s success at running a tea room made them comfortably off. They bought a house in the High Street and became pillars of respectable society – Orwell’s father a familiar figure in the posher of the local golf clubs and his mother a doyenne of the ladies’ bridge circuit.
Orwell said he didn’t like Southwold, and the best bits of A Clergyman’s Daughter – a novel he later dismissed as “tripe” – are a vicious satire on the parochialism of provincial small-town life, including tea rooms. The chief protagonist of the novel, Dorothy Hare, is the dutiful daughter of a rector, and her reputation is destroyed by a malicious gossip.
But he had lots of friends there, including one woman, Eleanor Jaques, with whom he had an affair, and another, Brenda Salkeld, the gym mistress at St Felix girl’s school, whom he wooed unsuccessfully for several years and on whom Dorothy Hare was loosely based. And his distaste for the place did not prevent him visiting it regularly after he left, the last time in early 1944 after the death of his mother. (His father died in 1939.)
People apart, there was something about the bleakness of “the low, barely undulating East Anglian landscape” that Orwell liked. Although it was “intolerably dull in summer”, it was “redeemed in winter by the recurring patterns of the elms, naked and fanshaped against leaden skies”. Seventy years later, I feel much the same way. It's just a pity all the elms have died.
POPE BENEDICT XVI - WHAT A BASTARD!
The Pope's lecture in Regensburg last week was an outrage. He had the temerity to attack atheism and irreligiousity in a manner more fitting to the middle ages than to the 21st century. As an atheist I am so deeply offended that I am going out immediately to burn down a church.
13 September 2006
HEADLESS CHICKENS SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT - 3
Peter Hain declares himself a candidate for Labour's deputy leadership; Alan Johnson is already up for it even though I can't remember him having said so; you could add Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett, a Campaign Groupie and A. N. Other and we've got a bit of contest on for a non-job.
The big question, however, is whether anyone is going to take on Gordon for the leadership. And – please forget McDonnell – I don't believe there are any takers.
Meanwhile, Blair put on a stunning performance at the TUC Congress today in his question-and-answer session. Nervous he might have been, but he dealt with a hostile audience with panache. And he was right about public services and about globalisation.
The big question, however, is whether anyone is going to take on Gordon for the leadership. And – please forget McDonnell – I don't believe there are any takers.
Meanwhile, Blair put on a stunning performance at the TUC Congress today in his question-and-answer session. Nervous he might have been, but he dealt with a hostile audience with panache. And he was right about public services and about globalisation.
12 September 2006
HEADLESS CHICKENS SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT - 2
David Aaronovitch is on the ball. I think I'm a Milibandite too, incidentally, though I can't see David M making it to Number Ten quite yet. Little-known fact: he used to turn out for the Tribune cricket team. Miliband, that is, not Aaronovitch.
11 September 2006
HEADLESS CHICKENS SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT – 1
OK, now I’ve read all the papers and – well, it looks to me that Labour did a pretty good job last week of ensuring that it loses the next election.
No one comes out of this smelling of roses. Blair has been forced to admit he is a dead man walking and has lost it with his party. Brown will forever be suspected of attempting a coup, particularly after the revelation that Tom Watson, the instigator of the letter demanding Blair’s prompt resignation, visited Brown at home the day before the letter was leaked. And Charles Clarke was “stupid, stupid, stupid” to have attacked Brown as he did, even if he was spot-on about what is wrong with the Chancellor.
Looking on the bright side, Clarke's intervention might just be seen in retrospect a year hence as the wake-up call Labour needed to stop it electing Brown as leader. But the chances of that are remote, because it’s still very difficult to imagine anyone mounting a credible challenge to Brown, for all his dunderhead incompetence (at best) this week.
John McDonnell won’t get the nominations required to run (and anyway he is not credible, for the rather obvious reason that he is a Trot headbanger). Clarke himself would get my vote, but I’d be amazed if he crossed the nominations threshold either. Either John Reid or Alan Johnson might do better, but neither has significant support either in the trade unions or among Labour’s individual members – for many of whom Reid is a hate figure. David Miliband is too young and inexperienced and has no political machine behind him of any description. The momentum is still all with Gordon, and that in itself means anyone with an eye on a future career will probably keep his or her powder dry.
So my money – for now – is on an uncontested leadership election, Brown becoming PM, continuing bickering from his many party critics as he fails miserably to claw back the Tories’ opinion poll lead, a Tory victory in 2009 or 2010, then 15 or more wilderness years for Labour as this week's protagonists try to take their revenge on one another.
Welcome to the progressive century, comrades!
No one comes out of this smelling of roses. Blair has been forced to admit he is a dead man walking and has lost it with his party. Brown will forever be suspected of attempting a coup, particularly after the revelation that Tom Watson, the instigator of the letter demanding Blair’s prompt resignation, visited Brown at home the day before the letter was leaked. And Charles Clarke was “stupid, stupid, stupid” to have attacked Brown as he did, even if he was spot-on about what is wrong with the Chancellor.
Looking on the bright side, Clarke's intervention might just be seen in retrospect a year hence as the wake-up call Labour needed to stop it electing Brown as leader. But the chances of that are remote, because it’s still very difficult to imagine anyone mounting a credible challenge to Brown, for all his dunderhead incompetence (at best) this week.
John McDonnell won’t get the nominations required to run (and anyway he is not credible, for the rather obvious reason that he is a Trot headbanger). Clarke himself would get my vote, but I’d be amazed if he crossed the nominations threshold either. Either John Reid or Alan Johnson might do better, but neither has significant support either in the trade unions or among Labour’s individual members – for many of whom Reid is a hate figure. David Miliband is too young and inexperienced and has no political machine behind him of any description. The momentum is still all with Gordon, and that in itself means anyone with an eye on a future career will probably keep his or her powder dry.
So my money – for now – is on an uncontested leadership election, Brown becoming PM, continuing bickering from his many party critics as he fails miserably to claw back the Tories’ opinion poll lead, a Tory victory in 2009 or 2010, then 15 or more wilderness years for Labour as this week's protagonists try to take their revenge on one another.
Welcome to the progressive century, comrades!
GOT A BLACK CAT BONE, GOT A MOJO TOO
Been on R&R for the past week so nothing on the Labour crisis until I've read everything. In the meantime, many thanks to Emily C for turning me back on to the Blues Bar, which is still as marvellous as it was before the good friends I used to meet there — er — died. Fantastic jamming and some belting renditions of the standards. Don't go, because it makes it difficult to get a drink if there are too many people around.
'Cos I'm the hoochie-coochie man
Everybody knows I'm here
4 September 2006
DRINKING OPPORTUNITY
I've got a launch party on Wednesday 4 October in the Wheatsheaf in Rathbone Place, London W1, to celebrate publication of Orwell in Tribune: 'As I Please' and other writings, which I've edited. All Gauche readers welcome, but don't expect very much free beer. Kick-off 6pm in the upstairs bar.
1 September 2006
BOOK MEME
Just to prove I'm not lazy, just busy, here belatedly is my take:
1. Name one book that changed your life
Modern Capitalism and Revolution by Paul Cardan (pen name of Cornelius Castoriadis).
2. One book you've read more than once
English for Journalists by Wynford Hicks.
3. One book you'd want on a desert island
The Economist Style Guide.
4. One book that made you laugh
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.
5. One book that made you cry
Waterland by Graham Swift.
6. One book you wish you'd written
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell.
7. One book you wish had never been written
Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
8. One book you're currently reading
Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert.
9. One book you've been meaning to read
Great British Bus Journeys by David McKie.
10. Now tag five people
Everyone else has done it.
1. Name one book that changed your life
Modern Capitalism and Revolution by Paul Cardan (pen name of Cornelius Castoriadis).
2. One book you've read more than once
English for Journalists by Wynford Hicks.
3. One book you'd want on a desert island
The Economist Style Guide.
4. One book that made you laugh
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.
5. One book that made you cry
Waterland by Graham Swift.
6. One book you wish you'd written
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell.
7. One book you wish had never been written
Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
8. One book you're currently reading
Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert.
9. One book you've been meaning to read
Great British Bus Journeys by David McKie.
10. Now tag five people
Everyone else has done it.
IKEA SUCKS
I went to IKEA's Edmonton branch today to get two Billy bookcases to match the dozen others I've collected over several years of bibliomania — and made the mistake of not persuading a friend or family member that he or she needed to buy some furniture too (I don't drive).
It must be easy to get there by public transport, I thought, and they've got a delivery service.
Wrong on count one: Angel Road station, which opens for two hours every day, is a mile-and-a-half away, as far as Neasden tube from the other north London IKEA. I did manage to avoid the horrible experience of the showrooms by going to the exit and walking straight into the warehouse, and I got through the till with my 2m tall Billy flatpacks at £29 each within 20 minutes. Hey, success, I thought, and I've beaten the IKEA hard sell! I've left without cushions, picture frames or rugs I don't need and I've not wasted a whole day!
Then came IKEA's revenge. I went to the delivery counter, where a young man solemnly told me it was going to cost me £90 to have the stuff delivered. I thought about telling him to stick it. I looked at him. He looked at me. And I realised I the only alternative was abandoning the bloody things and walking out, which would cost me £60 and leave me without the bookcases I need. So I coughed up. But never again.
It must be easy to get there by public transport, I thought, and they've got a delivery service.
Wrong on count one: Angel Road station, which opens for two hours every day, is a mile-and-a-half away, as far as Neasden tube from the other north London IKEA. I did manage to avoid the horrible experience of the showrooms by going to the exit and walking straight into the warehouse, and I got through the till with my 2m tall Billy flatpacks at £29 each within 20 minutes. Hey, success, I thought, and I've beaten the IKEA hard sell! I've left without cushions, picture frames or rugs I don't need and I've not wasted a whole day!
Then came IKEA's revenge. I went to the delivery counter, where a young man solemnly told me it was going to cost me £90 to have the stuff delivered. I thought about telling him to stick it. I looked at him. He looked at me. And I realised I the only alternative was abandoning the bloody things and walking out, which would cost me £60 and leave me without the bookcases I need. So I coughed up. But never again.
23 August 2006
WHY I COULD NEVER GET A JOB IN ER... RADIO
I was on Little Atoms last Friday and now it's on the web.
16 August 2006
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
Madeleine Bunting is an affront to all that I hold dear. She is part of a mainstream media assault on atheists and secularists that insults us insistently and leaves us no option but militant resistance.
I used to be a moderate atheist secularist who was tolerant of believers, but the insistent vicious attacks by Bunting and her cronies leave me no choice. I’m getting so much grief from their condescending and uncomprehending assault on my culture, an assault reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition, that I cannot contain myself any more.
In fact, I feel myself being drawn into a terrorist network that will burn down every fucking mosque, church and synagogue in the country! I wanna kill the religious indiscriminately! Yeah, that’s it! With car bombs and with knives! Suicide bombers for secularism! That’s me!
It’s no good blaming the government for talking only to extreme atheists: moderate humanists are out of touch with the anger of the irreligious masses, particularly us youth.
They need to talk to nutters like me if they’re gonna get a hold of the profound alienation that the atheist community feels today, particularly us youth. Otherwise the churches and mosques and synagogues will burn!
We demand vengeance – or at least representation on several Home Office quangos and a bit of understanding. Or else!
NOTE FOR IDIOTS: This is a satirical post.
12 August 2006
I’M A HOG FOR YOU BABY, CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOUR LOVE
All right, I realise that the remastered stereo luxury version of Dr Feelgood’s Down By The Jetty came out a month ago, but I’ve only just got the Nectar points to get it. And what a stonker it is ... except that, er, it’s no more than a stereo version of a very fine mono record, and Wilko’s guitar sounds better on the original. OK, there are some decent out-takes, including a fine “Route 66”, and “She Does It Right” and some others sound pretty good in stereo. But what’s the point? The extra material wrecks the integrity of the austere small-but-perfectly-formed package that the original was – is. I’ve had the same experience too many times. I blame capitalism. All the same,
remains a great lyric. I can see it, but I can't quite believe anyone ever did it.
If you see my baby walking
I’m not walking by her side
Ain’t no need to look too far
Because I won’t be hard to find
I'm walkin’ twenty yards behind her
Cause I love the way she shakes behind
remains a great lyric. I can see it, but I can't quite believe anyone ever did it.
11 August 2006
CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 4 August 2006
As some of you might be aware, it’s Tribune’s 70th birthday this coming January — and boy, are we planning a party! I have been given a sneak preview of the celebration plans and can now exclusively reveal what is going to happen (with a bit of luck).
1. Anniversary special issue of Tribune
There will be a special issue of Tribune to mark the anniversary. As in 1987, 1992, 1997 and 2002, nothing will be done to plan the editorial side until two weeks before publication, when a desperate call will be made to the former member of staff who compiled the previous anniversary issue. He or she will be too busy to help. The special issue will therefore contain the same material from the archives that appeared in all previous anniversary issues. No one will notice.
2. Birthday rally in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1
No left-wing anniversary would be complete without a rally in Conway Hall. The Tribune 70th birthday celebrations will be kicked off with an event that will rekindle comrades’ memories of the good old days.
Neither the heating nor the lighting will be working properly, so comrades will have the opportunity to savour all this historic venue’s traditional mid-January ambience. The legendary early-1950s public address system will also be in use, so the whole audience will appreciate the back-chat of those on the platform although no one sitting in the gallery will hear a word from any speaker.
The rally will be advertised to start at 7.45pm with eight speakers, but will not get under way until at least 8.15pm as the editor, in the chair, waits for stragglers from the pub. It will in fact comprise 15 speakers, 10 of them representatives of trade unions who have notified the editor the day before that there will be no more funding unless their man is on the platform.
The event will begin with an oration from a foxy international comrade whose command of English is uncertain and who reveals herself, after 30 minutes of fiery anti-imperialist rhetoric, to be an unrepentant admirer of J. V. Stalin. Everyone on the platform will retain rictus grins as the editor makes repeated unsuccessful attempts to bring her diatribe to a close before introducing a member of the Cabinet.
The member of the Cabinet will begin his speech by making it clear he believes he is wearing a famous ceremonial garment, the Mantle of Nye. He will go on to detail the success of the government in reducing paperclip wastage in Whitehall. Thirty minutes into his speech there will be an opportunity for audience participation as Mr Walter Wolfgang and assorted Trotskyist hecklers make an intervention, shouting: “This is rubbish!”, “What about Iraq?” and “You are not wearing the Mantle of Nye and I claim my five pounds!” A Tribune staff member will then pass a note to the editor telling him to get on with it because at this rate the meeting will end after the pubs shut. The editor will ignore it and call Mr Tony Benn to speak.
At 9.25pm, after Mr Benn sits down to warm applause from Mr Wolfgang and the Trotskyist hecklers, the general secretary of the largest trade union that subsidises Tribune will deliver a speech. By 10.55pm, after several other general secretaries and MPs have droned on at length, there will be fewer than two-dozen people in the audience, all either Tribune staff or relatives of the platform speakers. There will then be a collection, which will raise £12.47 and a £5 Argos voucher. There will follow a desperate search for a bar that is still serving and takes Argos vouchers.
3. Celebrity fundraising party, Queer Cavalier restaurant, London WC1
In addition to the traditional rally, Tribune will be holding a celebrity fundraising dinner orgainsed by Zhdanov Jenkins Associates at the exclusive Queer Cavalier restaurant in London’s Soho. Tables will cost a bargain £25,000 for rich bastards from the City who want to get in with Gordon (£2.50 unwaged and Tribune staff and contributors).
The highlight of the event will be a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in which he will hint that he is wearing the Mantle of Nye underneath his suit. He will then make a coded reference — the import of which is made clear only to the political editor of the Daily Mail — to the effect that the owners of Britain’s newspapers can rest assured that the unions can expect no favours.
After the speech, everyone will get hopelessly drunk. At least one pissed hack will say: “I don’t know how to be an opposition journalist. I’m fucked!” — in homage to the great Mr Peter Oborne’s performance at Tribune’s 60th bash in 1997.
4. Article in Guardian Media
The editor will write an upbeat peice about Tribune for the Guardian’s Media supplement. The result will be a four-fold increase in circulation of the Guardian and a 20-fold increase in the circulation of Tribune. Really.
As some of you might be aware, it’s Tribune’s 70th birthday this coming January — and boy, are we planning a party! I have been given a sneak preview of the celebration plans and can now exclusively reveal what is going to happen (with a bit of luck).
1. Anniversary special issue of Tribune
There will be a special issue of Tribune to mark the anniversary. As in 1987, 1992, 1997 and 2002, nothing will be done to plan the editorial side until two weeks before publication, when a desperate call will be made to the former member of staff who compiled the previous anniversary issue. He or she will be too busy to help. The special issue will therefore contain the same material from the archives that appeared in all previous anniversary issues. No one will notice.
2. Birthday rally in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1
No left-wing anniversary would be complete without a rally in Conway Hall. The Tribune 70th birthday celebrations will be kicked off with an event that will rekindle comrades’ memories of the good old days.
Neither the heating nor the lighting will be working properly, so comrades will have the opportunity to savour all this historic venue’s traditional mid-January ambience. The legendary early-1950s public address system will also be in use, so the whole audience will appreciate the back-chat of those on the platform although no one sitting in the gallery will hear a word from any speaker.
The rally will be advertised to start at 7.45pm with eight speakers, but will not get under way until at least 8.15pm as the editor, in the chair, waits for stragglers from the pub. It will in fact comprise 15 speakers, 10 of them representatives of trade unions who have notified the editor the day before that there will be no more funding unless their man is on the platform.
The event will begin with an oration from a foxy international comrade whose command of English is uncertain and who reveals herself, after 30 minutes of fiery anti-imperialist rhetoric, to be an unrepentant admirer of J. V. Stalin. Everyone on the platform will retain rictus grins as the editor makes repeated unsuccessful attempts to bring her diatribe to a close before introducing a member of the Cabinet.
The member of the Cabinet will begin his speech by making it clear he believes he is wearing a famous ceremonial garment, the Mantle of Nye. He will go on to detail the success of the government in reducing paperclip wastage in Whitehall. Thirty minutes into his speech there will be an opportunity for audience participation as Mr Walter Wolfgang and assorted Trotskyist hecklers make an intervention, shouting: “This is rubbish!”, “What about Iraq?” and “You are not wearing the Mantle of Nye and I claim my five pounds!” A Tribune staff member will then pass a note to the editor telling him to get on with it because at this rate the meeting will end after the pubs shut. The editor will ignore it and call Mr Tony Benn to speak.
At 9.25pm, after Mr Benn sits down to warm applause from Mr Wolfgang and the Trotskyist hecklers, the general secretary of the largest trade union that subsidises Tribune will deliver a speech. By 10.55pm, after several other general secretaries and MPs have droned on at length, there will be fewer than two-dozen people in the audience, all either Tribune staff or relatives of the platform speakers. There will then be a collection, which will raise £12.47 and a £5 Argos voucher. There will follow a desperate search for a bar that is still serving and takes Argos vouchers.
3. Celebrity fundraising party, Queer Cavalier restaurant, London WC1
In addition to the traditional rally, Tribune will be holding a celebrity fundraising dinner orgainsed by Zhdanov Jenkins Associates at the exclusive Queer Cavalier restaurant in London’s Soho. Tables will cost a bargain £25,000 for rich bastards from the City who want to get in with Gordon (£2.50 unwaged and Tribune staff and contributors).
The highlight of the event will be a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in which he will hint that he is wearing the Mantle of Nye underneath his suit. He will then make a coded reference — the import of which is made clear only to the political editor of the Daily Mail — to the effect that the owners of Britain’s newspapers can rest assured that the unions can expect no favours.
After the speech, everyone will get hopelessly drunk. At least one pissed hack will say: “I don’t know how to be an opposition journalist. I’m fucked!” — in homage to the great Mr Peter Oborne’s performance at Tribune’s 60th bash in 1997.
4. Article in Guardian Media
The editor will write an upbeat peice about Tribune for the Guardian’s Media supplement. The result will be a four-fold increase in circulation of the Guardian and a 20-fold increase in the circulation of Tribune. Really.
9 August 2006
OBITUARY: MURRAY BOOKCHIN
The American left-libertarian polemicist Murray Bookchin, who has died aged 85, is rightly credited as a pioneer of the modern ecologist movement (and as a critic of its back-to-nature, anti-modern fundamentalists), but he also played an important intellectual role in the revival of anarchism and libertarian socialism in the 1960s and was a historian of note. The essays collected in Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971) provided, together with the work of Colin Ward and his collaborators on Anarchy magazine in London, the most convincing case for considering that anarchism was of more than historical interest as a practical political philosophy. And his The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936 (1977) remains the best available riposte to orthodox Marxist historians who dismissed the Spanish anarchists as a movement of "primitive rebels". The Guardian has an obituary here.
5 August 2006
OBITUARY: PIERRE VIDAL-NAQUET
The polymath French intellectual Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who has died at the age of 76, is best known on the Anglo-American left for his polemical demolition of Noam Chomsky for the latter’s defence of the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson – part of which is available here. But he is worth remembering for more than that. He was a brilliant historian and classicist and an active left libertarian until his death. The Independent has an obituary here.
4 August 2006
IN DEFENCE OF BLAIR – 3: THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
Like it or not, only a two-state solution for Israel/Palestine could possibly be viable: a "democratic secular state" is a chimera. Israel needs to be persuaded to agree to lift the siege of Gaza, tear down the wall, remove the settlements from the West Bank and accept a deal based on 1967 borders – perhaps with the status of Jerusalem still to be decided, with the old city internationalised for a period. The Palestinians need to be persuaded that Israel will not do any of this until they renounce rocket attacks, suicide bombs and so forth. And of course they will not be convinced until Israel stops bombarding and blockading Gaza.
Again, sorry, but this seems to be roughly what Blair is proposing. Is there any credible alternative?
Again, sorry, but this seems to be roughly what Blair is proposing. Is there any credible alternative?
IN DEFENCE OF BLAIR – 3: LEBANON
Hizbullah fires dozens of rockets into northern Israel, randomly killing civilians, then kidnaps Israeli soldiers and demands the release of prisoners held by Israel. Israel responds by air strikes on what it thinks are Hizbullah positions, killing civilians. Hizbullah continues to fire rockets. Israel responds with more air strikes, killing more civilians and creating a massive refugee crisis … OK, we all know the story.
Of course, it would be great if both sides just stopped. But both sides need to be persuaded to stop, because both have interests in prolonging the action. Hizbullah gains kudos with every rocket it fires; the Israeli government needs to be able to boast of success to frightened Israelis. The upshot is that pious expressions of the desirability of an immediate ceasefire have no chance of effecting one.
To complicate matters, although the Israelis have undoubtedly killed more civilians and caused more suffering in the past three weeks, Hizbullah is the greater long-term threat to peace. Supplied by Iran and Syria, it acts as a state within a state in Lebanon and is committed to elimination of the “Zionist entity”. Unless it is disarmed and the areas it controls are brought under the control of the Lebanese government, there will soon be another crisis like the current one.
This, roughly speaking, is the position taken by Blair and the British government, which have argued for a ceasefire accompanied by the disarmament of Hizbullah and introduction of an international force in southern Lebanon to oversee the process. The Lebanese government seems to agree, and there’s at least a hope that the Israelis can be persuaded to accept such a deal. Is there any credible alternative?
Of course, it would be great if both sides just stopped. But both sides need to be persuaded to stop, because both have interests in prolonging the action. Hizbullah gains kudos with every rocket it fires; the Israeli government needs to be able to boast of success to frightened Israelis. The upshot is that pious expressions of the desirability of an immediate ceasefire have no chance of effecting one.
To complicate matters, although the Israelis have undoubtedly killed more civilians and caused more suffering in the past three weeks, Hizbullah is the greater long-term threat to peace. Supplied by Iran and Syria, it acts as a state within a state in Lebanon and is committed to elimination of the “Zionist entity”. Unless it is disarmed and the areas it controls are brought under the control of the Lebanese government, there will soon be another crisis like the current one.
This, roughly speaking, is the position taken by Blair and the British government, which have argued for a ceasefire accompanied by the disarmament of Hizbullah and introduction of an international force in southern Lebanon to oversee the process. The Lebanese government seems to agree, and there’s at least a hope that the Israelis can be persuaded to accept such a deal. Is there any credible alternative?
IN DEFENCE OF BLAIR – 3: IRAQ
A memorandum to the prime minister from the outgoing British ambassador to Iraq suggests that, as things stand, low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is more likely than the emergence of a stable democracy. Two senior American generals express much the same opinion.
Now, these are statements of the bleeding obvious – yet they are big news. Why? The legitimate reason is that it is newsworthy that high-ups are worried about what is going on in Iraq. Much more important, however, they give John Humphrys and other journalistic titans a chance to have another go at forcing members of the government to admit that the invasion of Iraq three years ago was a terrible mistake.
I’m so sick of this game I start shouting at the radio every time it starts. It’s not that the rights and wrongs of the Iraq invasion are not worth discussing – it’s just that they’re not now what matters. The issue today is what happens next and what, if anything, Britain and America can do to minimise sectarian strife and encourage the development of a democratic civil society in Iraq.
Now, one possible course of action is withdrawal of all occupying forces and either (a) replacing them with a UN force; or (b) letting the Iraqis get on with it unhindered. Option (a) would be fine if the UN had any worthwhile experience of counter-insurgency, which it does not. Option (b) would almost certainly lead to a civil war that is anything but low-intensity, with massacres and (quite possibly) direct intervention by regional powers.
Neither option is credible. At least if the US and Britain stay, there is some hope of keeping the civil war low-intensity. But isn’t the best hope for Iraq that the US and Britain do more than merely stay – that they actually increase their presence and make a concerted effort to suppress the low-intensity civil war? In other words, shouldn’t the left be supporting the current policies of the US and British governments regardless of what we thought about the 2003 invasion? Is there any credible alternative?
Now, these are statements of the bleeding obvious – yet they are big news. Why? The legitimate reason is that it is newsworthy that high-ups are worried about what is going on in Iraq. Much more important, however, they give John Humphrys and other journalistic titans a chance to have another go at forcing members of the government to admit that the invasion of Iraq three years ago was a terrible mistake.
I’m so sick of this game I start shouting at the radio every time it starts. It’s not that the rights and wrongs of the Iraq invasion are not worth discussing – it’s just that they’re not now what matters. The issue today is what happens next and what, if anything, Britain and America can do to minimise sectarian strife and encourage the development of a democratic civil society in Iraq.
Now, one possible course of action is withdrawal of all occupying forces and either (a) replacing them with a UN force; or (b) letting the Iraqis get on with it unhindered. Option (a) would be fine if the UN had any worthwhile experience of counter-insurgency, which it does not. Option (b) would almost certainly lead to a civil war that is anything but low-intensity, with massacres and (quite possibly) direct intervention by regional powers.
Neither option is credible. At least if the US and Britain stay, there is some hope of keeping the civil war low-intensity. But isn’t the best hope for Iraq that the US and Britain do more than merely stay – that they actually increase their presence and make a concerted effort to suppress the low-intensity civil war? In other words, shouldn’t the left be supporting the current policies of the US and British governments regardless of what we thought about the 2003 invasion? Is there any credible alternative?
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