Sad, wounded, upset and tired, that’s how many people are feeling after finding out that Jair Bolsonaro was elected Brazil’s 38th president. Now people ask me how and why it happened. The reasons are numerous, such as dissatisfaction with the traditional political system, scandals of corruption, fake news, and especially the disbelief in the leftist parties. I will not be a hypocrite trying to cover the situation, many things were wrong, the situation in Brazil was far from perfect. But the only way to change is not totalitarianism, but dialogue.
I understand that Brazil is just another nation that opted for the nuclear option in the polls, but in the United States and the United Kingdom, we are seeing that this only brings uncertainties and retrogression in many areas, especially in the social sphere. For a place that already suffers with extreme violence and intolerance like Brazil, this is even more dangerous. When the country with the fifth highest female murder rate is also the country with the largest number of LGBT+ victims of murder are in the position of electing a president that says to a congresswoman, “I wouldn’t rape you because you do not deserve it”, or even (I believe that among the international media his most infamous quote) saying that “he wouldn’t be able to love a gay son” it’s hardly a surprise, but it says that things need to change ASAP!
I could write long paragraphs about the horrors and the truculence there, even talk about the politically motivated murders of: Marielle Franco, Moa do Katende, Laysa Fortuna, Priscila and Kharoline. But I don’t think it would honour their memories, it would only perpetuate the circle of pain and violence. Instead I want to highlight that each one of these amazing individuals left us all a love legacy and we’ll honour their efforts and fight for more tolerance.
After the initial shock, I’m now seeing that many things that were missing among the “leftist” are showing up again: union, resistance, critical thinking…pretty much everything that was lying dormant in the last couple of years is woke up now. That is great, it will give an opportunity to all those opposing the newly instituted fascism to organize the ideas and synchronize initiatives. Since Sunday the amount of love was overwhelming specially compared with the other side, while many of Bolsonaro’s supporters sung and danced holding firearms, spilling hate, those contraries were peacefully resisting , protecting each other and creating safety nets.
We are starting to make ourselves and our cause visible to the world, and it’s with tears in my eyes that I write that many people from all over the world are ready to fight for our right to be who we are. “No fear, we will resist”
On Saturday 20th October, an estimated 700
thousand people marched in what may have been the biggest demonstration since
the Iraq war. The official title of the march was ‘The March for a People’s
Vote’ referring to the demand made by the organisers for a People’s Vote on the
final Brexit deal, which would include the option to remain in the European
Union. There were more people there than on any demo I’d been to in years and
we didn’t get anywhere near any of the speeches (probably a good thing).
However, it was actually a more generalised ‘March against
Brexit’ and its likely effects and many people there had ambivalent feelings on
the concept of the second referendum and its likely outcome. I came with my Mum
and her friends, who are die-hard Remainers supporting the European Union,
although my feelings on the matter are a little more ambiguous; I will address
this ambivalence now.
When it came to the vote on Brexit in 2016, I spoiled my
ballot paper. If the same vote was held today I would probably vote to remain
in the EU. However, I feel I should be honest. Until shortly before the vote, I
thought I was going to vote leave. I know people who did vote leave with good
intentions and I feel uncomfortable with describing every Brexit voter as a
racist along the lines of Trump supporters in the USA. It’s been a few years
since I have been on any protest, I used to go a lot with the Socialist Party
of England and Wales when I was a member but having become burnt out,
disillusioned and largely politically inactive it was not necessarily my first
choice of activity for a Saturday afternoon.
There are many reasons not to like the EU. One of them is
the treatment of refugees by European governments and the fact agreements such
as Dublin 1991 make it easier for wealthier states to refuse quotas of
refugees, while countries such as Greece and Spain, with external borders,
largely pay for and organise border control themselves for the whole of the EU.
Another one is the issues with undemocratic EU institutions and the EU’s
frequent lack of accountability and transparency in its decisions. The EU does
not help this problem; the texts its bureaucracy releases are frequently
‘unreadable’ as with the notorious events surrounding the Lisbon treaty, where
countries were ‘forced to vote until they got it right’. Things like the ‘Troika’s’
treatment of Greece in 2012 when the country was unable to pay its debts and
the imposition of severe austerity on the country which left some people almost
starving. The examples of Hungary, Poland and now Italy show the EU is often
ineffective in upholding the liberal democracy it claims to value.
During the referendum campaign, businesses and many
‘establishment’ politicians campaigned to remain in the EU. Staying in the EU was
said to benefit business whether that’s due to financial stability created by
the trading bloc or whether it’s due to EU laws which create a favourable
environment for businesses to operate; many of these were the same companies
who wanted less ‘red tape’ to interfere with treatment of their workers. So the
‘Lexit’ argument is something I am familiar with, as there are good reasons to
be sceptical or suspicious of the EU. Some people simply voted Brexit as a
protest which they didn’t expect to win and it is doubtful most or even many
Brexit voters would have had Theresa May’s current shitshow in mind when they
voted to leave in 2016.
The remain campaign in 2016 left much to be desired. I was
not convinced by some of the fear mongering rhetoric in the campaign which
didn’t really spell out exactly what the consequences would be to Brexit. There
was one advert I saw in the Daily Mirror the day before the vote which simply
showed a black hole and warned people to not step into an uncertain future,
without giving any details as to what could happen. This made it easier for the
Brexit campaign to say it was all ‘project fear’, despite multiple visions of
what Brexit would be and few ideas among the lead campaigners of the
implications. What a contrast to the Scottish independence campaign who
produced a 900-page document about the implications of independence and how
they would be resolved.
However, there is a difference between being a critic of the
EU and agreeing with Brexit in its current form. One of the main reasons I did
not vote to leave in the end is because of the Labour MP Jo Cox being killed by
a far-right Brexit supporter in the first political assassination in Britain
for years. I could sense a huge far right backlash coming and whichever way the
referendum went it wouldn’t have been taking place under ‘socialism’ but under
the most right-wing government in decades, heavily promoted by UKIP and other
anti-immigration groups. The British far right adopted Brexit as its cause and
since the referendum minorities have been subjected to increasing levels of
hate crime with the Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ policy having been
ramped up.
Donald Trump called himself ‘Mr Brexit’ and said Brexit
would be ‘a great thing’ and many European right wing populists also took a
positive view of the situation. Many right-wing racists responded with delight
to the idea of ‘casting off the shackles’ of the ‘EUSSR’ and even bringing back
the death penalty and the British Empire. Tories on the right of the party have
responded with glee to the idea of getting rid of the Human Rights Act and not
being accountable to the European Court of Human Rights. Parts of the left are
almost as bad. The Morning Star even implied the Brexit marchers were funded by
George Soros.
Recent events have shown both main parties’ ‘plans’ for
Brexit are fanciful if not non-existent, with Theresa May claiming her Brexit
deal was ‘95% negotiated’ last week, then Juncker responding that it was 0%
negotiated! The example which showed the government’s cluelessness most of all was
when David Davis claimed he had done studies on Brexit showing that afterwards
all would be well, then later had to admit he hadn’t completed anything, and
the research the department had done showed a uniformly negative impact on the
economy. There is even talk of a shortage of toilet rolls, food and other
essential supplies. While these outcomes may be exaggerated, the government’s
incompetence is not.
The Brexit march was heavily advertised in London newspapers
such as the Evening Standard. It was somewhat similar to the Iraq War protest
in 2003, where entire trains were booked for the demo. The weather was
unusually sunny and hot for this time of year, which helped the high turnout. There
were a very wide range of marchers on the demo, including ‘Tories against
Brexit’, Labour, the Green Party and Left Unity (I didn’t even know they were
still around!) again resembling the political makeup of the large Iraq war demo
in 2003. A couple of people I spoke to said Brexit shouldn’t be a ‘party
political’ issue when I was surprised ‘Tories against Brexit’ were there, which
seemed strange when it is down to the Tories that the referendum even took
place!
The Brexit march demanded a ‘People’s Vote’ or a second
referendum on Brexit. However, I think there is every chance the leave side
would win again and whatever the result, the campaign has the potential to be
even nastier than the first one. Although I would like a vote on the final
Brexit deal. However, people on demonstrations frequently do not agree with all
or even many of the main demands of the organisers but may simply want to
express their outrage and dissatisfaction. As such I don’t think this is
something people with socialist principles can ignore.
Barring a few placards the majority of the organised left
seemed absent. There may be a range of reasons for this, either from a
pro-Lexit stance to an opposition to marching alongside people among whom will
be Tories and liberals. These positions are understandable but along with a
wide perception that Corbyn voted to leave, and his support for triggering
Article 50 straight away, their virtual absence adds to an impression that the
left are either indifferent or support Brexit. This isn’t helped by claims the
march ‘strengthened capitalism’ when some of the UK’s richest men voted Brexit,
such as James Dyson and James Ratcliffe. You still sometimes hear the idea
remain voters are privileged and part of the ‘middle class’, although much of
inner-city London and other working-class areas voted solidly remain.
The overall feeling of the demo was very non-threatening with none of the aggressive policing I’ve seen on anti-cuts and anti-war demos in the past. There were hardly any police around except for a small section where there was a pro-military demo near to the end point (I later found out this was a demo to highlight the problems of soldiers with PTSD, so not even necessarily opposed to the march). There wasn’t any sort of aggressive vibe from any of the marchers although obviously people were angry about Brexit. Although there were loads of people giving out stickers, especially at the start, it was somewhat weird to be on a demo and not to be met with large numbers of paper sellers and leafletters (although we took a Left Unity sign at the start). As the march went towards Parliament Square it passed a separate demonstration against the treatment of political prisoners in Iran. I couldn’t see whether there was much interaction between the two groups.
Most people there seemed to be ordinary people who were
concerned about Brexit; the home-made placards and costumes were often very
entertaining. From what I observed the march was about evenly spread between
men and women, with many people being ordinary Londoners but with many having come
down from Scotland or elsewhere in the UK. However, most seemed to come from
the south-east, and the organisation of large demos in central London, with
little organisation in the rest of the country, has long been criticised as a
barrier to participation for people who live in rural areas since as long as
I’ve been politically involved. Many of these areas are places where most
people voted Brexit or where large numbers did not vote.
I did not see any ‘Rothschilds’ or other antisemitic or
racist imagery in any of the banners which has been threatening and off putting
on other demos I’ve attended, although it may be that it was there and I just
didn’t see it. I unfortunately saw a TERF ‘Fair Play for Women’ sticker on the
ground along with some other leaflets, although that may have been there before
the march took place. Given pro-EU parties such as the Green Party have been
hit by scandals involving transphobia, it is unsurprising some people there may
have held such views. However, given rising levels of anti-trans hate crime,
these views must not be given any sort of platform.
From what I saw on the march there were a real mix of ages
and backgrounds, including many children, there was also a much higher number
of women than what I’ve seen on, for example, many anti-cuts demonstrations.
However, overall it was quite white and ‘English’, although this is an issue on
many demonstrations, so this protest was hardly unusual here, and there are
many barriers to participation in wider social movements for people of colour
and other minority communities. This underlines the importance of building a
movement where everyone is safe to participate, particularly those
disproportionately affected by the impact of Brexit.
The current government is woefully unprepared for Brexit,
and the Labour opposition are little better. As the Article 50 ‘negotiation
period’ draws rapidly to an end, we are looking towards the possibility of
increased levels of hate crime, social unrest and possibly even shortages of
food, drugs and other essential items.
This isn’t even going into the implications for the Good Friday Agreement and
Northern Ireland. You don’t have to be a member of some sort of elite to oppose
or be concerned about what’s going on. I don’t even know if I want a second
referendum (especially the dog’s dinner we can be sure the state would make of
the questions) and don’t necessarily agree with all the politics of the
organisers. But despite my mixed feelings I felt it was largely a positive
experience as it is important to show opposition to what could be an out and
out disaster.
Last week Tory MSP Michelle Ballantyne sparked a furore – and a rather magnificent speech from Tom Arthur MSP – by expressing support in the Scottish Parliament for the two child benefit cap, saying that “It is fair that people on benefit cannot have as many children as they like while people who work and pay their way and don’t claim benefits have to make decisions about the number of children they can have.”
There is a lot to unpack here – not least in view of the fact that it later emerged Michelle Ballantyne has six children and has confirmed claiming tax credits for them. Under the policy she supports, she would only have been able to draw on tax credits for her first two children.
So let’s lay it all out.
Firstly, she claims “It is fair that people on benefit cannot have as many children as they like…”
But in fact, the two child benefit cap doesn’t decide how many children women can have. It decides how much financial support the state will provide to help those children. I haven’t seen many people predicting that the birth rate will reduce because of this policy. But everyone expects child poverty to rise.
Secondly, she contrasts people on benefit with “people who work and pay their way and don’t claim benefit….”
But in fact, most people who claim benefits like tax credits are in work. The majority of children in poverty live in families where at least one adult is working, so the suggestion made by Michelle Ballantyne that people either work or claim benefits is just wrong. It is genuinely shocking that an MSP appears not to know this. It paints a picture of someone who is completely distanced from how the other half lives.
Arguably, tax credits have worked as a subsidy for employers paying low wages over the decades, creating a trap that has now been sprung, leaving low paid families with a reduced safety net. But the debate is not about parents who are working or not working. It is about parents who are poor or not poor, with a pretty explicit assumption that it would be best if poorer people had fewer children. Intentionally or not, Michelle Ballantyne is straying into appallingly dodgy territory with that one, as is everyone who supports her.
Finally, for me, the heart of debate is the assumption that having children should be seen as something people do if they can afford it, in the same way as buying a new car or kitchen. A lifestyle choice, essentially. I have always found this a very strange point of view. Women who have children are, in fact, perpetuating the human species. That is pretty important and something society should actively support them to do, given that society has a strong interest in continuing to exist.
From this perspective, children growing up in poverty isn’t just a problem for those children or their parents, it’s a problem for us all. It is in all of our interests that children grow up healthy, well nourished, nurtured, educated and loved and able to realise their full potential and contribute to the society we all share. This just seems like basic common sense to me, I find it absolutely bizarre that it is debatable.
Maybe it is partly because I don’t have children myself that I feel this way. I guess I will be dependent on other people’s children to continue to contribute to a welfare state that will help to provide me with support and dignity in my old age. That’s probably part of why I have always been more than happy to support the next generation through my taxes. It’s an investment in my own future as well as in theirs.
But, more than that, I think I just believe that adults in general are responsible for children in general. If children are going without, that is something that should concern us all, not simply the families of those children. To actively support a policy that will inevitably result in children going without is not only wrong, it is essentially dysfunctional. We know the negative impacts of poverty can last a lifetime and ruin young people’s chances of reaching their full potential and contributing to society. The corollary is also true. Investing in a good start in life for our children is an investment society should make in its own interests, as well as the interests of the families concerned.
But then the Tories still revere a leader who said there is no such thing as society and evidently many of them still believe that to be true. It is a narrow, shrivelled and sad philosophy and our children deserve so much better.
So, in case you missed it, there was a bit of a rammy, excuse the pun, when an American tv host and her husband visited a Scottish island to hunt. This might not seem that absurd considering the hundreds of shooting estates covering millions of acres of Scotland’s highlands and islands. What was peculiar was included in her quarry, a goat and a black faced tup, a ram, basically a male sheep. How do we know what she shot? Cos she posted pictures of her and her hunting party’s kills. Initially I thought the sheep was getting a wee chin rub, as you do, but hey, this isn’t an animal rights piece.
We can discuss the pro’s and con’s of countryside sports another day. This piece is about guns. I actually thought that Scotland had some of the strictest gun control laws. This is mostly to do with what happened after the tragic, infamous incident at Dunblane. The only people I expect to be in possession of firearms are farmers, soldiers and the police. With exception of the laird and his games keepers of course, and the people who come to shoot on their estates… wait. What? Why am I so desensitised to this? How many tourists are coming to Scotland and cutting about our moorland with weapons? How do they get licences? How does anyone get a licence? This is how I began my lesson in firearms in Scotland.
My first stop was to Police Scotland firearms webpage, the authority who licences weapons in Scotland. I was really surprised to find that a visitors permit is only £20 for an individual or £100 for a group of six. I was further shocked to learn that the police only deal with a sponsor from Scotland, who themselves do not have to possess a firearms licence.
The “hunter-tourist” as they shall be henceforth called, need only possess a visitor’s firearms permit made via an application. As well as the aforementioned sponsor and whatever fee is required;
“The applicant should also supply an original or a full copy of the European Firearms Pass if the permit is requested by an EEC resident or a copy of the visitor’s hunting permit valid in their home country or Certificate of Good Conduct – available from the visitor’s home police/sheriff department.
Applications for a Visitors Permit should be made at least 6 weeks prior to arrival in Scotland. There may be extenuating circumstances when an application is made close to the date on which the applicant wishes to travel to Scotland. Police Scotland will make every effort to process late applications on time, however this cannot be guaranteed.”
Firearms – Police Scotland
So to be clear, (never mind the potential brexit implications this may pose) a tourist can come to our country and be able to legally kill an animal with a dangerous weapon while dressed in camouflage fatigues and using an optical scope. As long as they have someone in Scotland who will apply on their behalf to come shoot something with a ballistic firearm. They also have to have a permit in their own country.
As a Scottish citizen, I have never really felt the need to have an opinion on “Gun Rights”. It has always felt a very American topic of conversation and the right to bear arms and second amendments and all that seem a very passionate subject. But I can arm myself, I can own a sword and a targe, a dirk, a sgian dubh, a lochaber axe, heck i have about three sets of golf clubs in my cupboard come the zombie apocalypse. But guns? I’ve shot air rifles and spud guns, once shot at a target in a scout hall in Aberfeldy. I’m not particularly adverse to guns, I play video games. I love the shooting gallery at the fairground. I like laser quest and can even get down with clay pigeon shooting. But I have never had the urge to kill anything.
Which brings us to our next issue, where can you kill things with a gun in Scotland? Seems so absurd to even type that, but it’s not. On an estate. With the laird. At the big hoose. Legally sanctioned hunting. Often grouped under Land Stewardship/Conservation or Countryside Sports, but henceforth to be known as “The Hosts”. Because lets face it, if you really “love animals” and want to “preserve ecosystems” you wouldn’t desecrate land for easy shots of too fat to fly grouse and you would come up with alternatives to mass culls such as contraceptive darting, then host visitors on a trophy hunt. But hey, this isn’t an animal rights piece. I have to keep repeating that so I don’t get distracted.
Guns in Scotland. Who has a gun anyway, beside the police, armed forces, farmers and the hunter tourists and the hosts. Well if you have “good reason” you can apply for a licence. The good reason could be for sport or vermin extermination. Perhaps you are a farmer or a vet? Or perhaps a bored housewife who has joined a local gun club? There are probably thousands of legitimate reasons to want to get a licence, I’ve never really considered it, however I was so surprised to learn that in just a few simple steps I too could be out in camo with a scoped rifle shooting living things. Legally.
It is even more alarming when you consider that the majority of brutal massacres involving firearms across the globe, were perpetuated with legal weapons. In the case of the Dunblane massacre this lead to the banning of most privately owned hand pistols and in the Port Arthur incident, Tasmania which resulted in the Australian Governement restrcting private ownership of semi-automatic rifles.
I mention these horrific tragedies only to emphasise my next points of interest. In Australia right now there is discussion about attachments to shotguns to increase their fire rate. Shotguns are traditionally two barrel (two single shots then reload required), shell (so fragments scatter rather than pierce like a bullet), slow rate of fire weapons. Usually stereotypically slung over a farmers arm, used for grouse shooting and vermin eradication. In a zombie apocalypse you would probably want a bump stock, shortened barrel and hair trigger attachments, but this is just my inner video geek talking. “Real” shooters will tell you that what you want is a longer barrel for minimum spread, probably. But bump stocks are real, and available from your local gun dealership. (Which I will come to later.) And in the case of the Australian discussion, lever action shotguns, specifically the Adler shotgun.
I don’t know why you need more than two consecutive shots to shoot a big fat grouse or pheasant anyway, just get in your motor and they will jump in front of it on any highland back road.
Most American gun ownership is of handguns, hand held small calibration pistols, which is tightly regulated in the UK. But if you are a visitor coming to shoot a deer on a highland estate at the invitation of a host is it a gateway for you to have a shot of a scoped rifle? Dress up in camouflage, hide on a hillock of heather, track down an ungulate on foot, smear yourself in the blood of a farmyard animal. Sorry, this is not an animal rights article.
This is about land rights, gun rights and classism. Yes classism. The right for some people to have access to guns and exploit the natural resources of the land for a jolly good laugh, is classist. When legislation speculatively states “good reason” in the licensing guidelines, wee guys from schemes cannae be zooming about on quad bikes on the moors hunting mountain hares, can they? When the countryside sports spokesmen chat about how ‘that’s not the British way of hunting’, and glory posts on social media are ‘very American’, and I quote “they can shoot a bigger deer in England”, I truly find myself doing mental gymnastics to justify this ease of access to legal weaponry for some people.
The exploitation of our land is a whole other article along with the subtlety mentioned animal rights topic I briefly quipped about throughout this article that I hope to address in the near future. But questions should be asked when hosts can be the sponsors to hunter tourists and make a profit becoming firearms dealers (selling hunting attire, scopes, ammunition and guns) for as little as £200 for a licence, what actual assurances have we got as citizens and visitors with the right to roam across our countryside? Who is hiding in the bushes with a sniper scope on a long rifle? Are they sponsored by the landowner who may or may not be hosting a cull? Are farmers pimping out livestock to show off their amazing weapons available at the hotel gift shop? Are councils endorsing tourist-hunter culls of pests? Is anybody proficient in using firearms on this goat hunt? Why are you wearing camouflage hunting a sheep?
Gun attire – Scottish sheep hunting camouflage
During all the research and ranting, I have only ended up with more questions. If I become an Air BnB host can I sponsor a shooter to come take out the grey squirrels in the local woods? Can you deep fry squirrel? Can I get compensated from the council for this tourism service? Has someone already been on Dragon’s Den with this idea? Who’s the smuggest; vegans, vegetarians or pescatarians? Should gun legislation and land use be reviewed pronto? Is it too easy for anyone to legally get a shot of a gun? Can shot of a gun mean two things? Who goes on holiday to stalk livestock? What does a Hunter Tourist say to custom’s at the airport when they are asked “the purpose of your trip to Scotland?”
In the last two weeks I have been on two demonstrations. The first was an anti-fascist mobilisation to counter a march by the so-called Democratic Football Lads’ Alliance (DFLA) aka Tommy Robinson’s would-be stormtroopers. The second, a week later, was the People’s Vote March. The first was like many demonstrations, too numerous to recall, that I have been on since I started political activity in the early 1970s: small, but not tiny; lots of red and black; megaphones with slogans that we knew how to join in with. When I got out of the tube at Oxford Circus, the vast majority of people around me were tourists and shoppers, quite unaware of the demonstration.
The People’s Vote March was like only one other I recall, which was the huge demo against the Iraq War in 2003 (the Stop Trump march may have been similar, but I was not in the UK at the time). At Green Park underground just after 11, it seemed almost everyone was heading to the demo, carrying homemade placards or EU flags, wearing Bollocks to Brexit stickers, talking about Brexit. Piccadilly was full of demonstrators. I knew then it would be massive. Another indication was seeing former work colleagues saying on Facebook that they were coming or messaging me to meet up. An American friend who has been politically active since the sixties once remarked apropos of the movement against the Vietnam War, that you could tell if something was a mass movement if your grandmother was involved.
The main difference between the Iraq War demo and the People’s Vote March was the lack of an organised left presence last weekend, aside from a left contingent I joined, under the Another Europe is Possible banner (there was of course a huge LibDem presence in 2003 and arguably they were the main political beneficiaries of the anti-war movement in electoral terms).
This absence on October 20th is down to the division in what remains of the far left over Brexit, and the ambivalent stance of Jeremy Corbyn and much of the trade union leadership. Even where union memberships have been surveyed showing Unite, Unison and the GMB with two-to-one majorities in favour of a public vote, unions were not formally represented on the march, though there were the odd banners from branches. Similarly, although feeling in many of the Labour Party’s constituency parties was made very clear at the recent conference, with an unprecedented number of resolutions about Brexit aimed at shifting the leadership’s stance (and cheers for Keir Starmer when he insisted Remain be on any ballot paper in a vote on the terms of Brexit), there were few CLP banners. There was a Green Party presence too.
The reaction from some of the so-called ‘Lexit’ left to this enormous demonstration has varied from a ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ tone, to shrill denunciations of the marchers as selfish, rich members of the ‘metropolitan elite’ who are ‘worried about getting to their second homes in Tuscany and the Loire’.
But leaving caricatures aside, let’s look at the main reasons why some believe that the People’s Vote March was not one that the left should have had anything to do with. This is what I have gathered from various articles in the last two days:
* It was overwhelmingly middle class
*It was mobilized by the mainstream media
* It was organized by the right wing of Labour, the LibDems and other establishment groups
* It was funded by George Soros
* Its main motive was to undermine Jeremy Corbyn
* It was fundamentally in support of big business and the neoliberal EU
* A People’s Vote will be antidemocratic and will drive those ‘left behind’ voters, who saw the EU referendum as their one chance to influence politics, further into the arms of the far right
The class character of the people on the march is one of those questions which is not amenable to a definitive answer. One of the problems being, what does ‘middle-class’ mean? Southern? Urban? White collar/professional? Educated to degree level or above? If ‘middle class’ means most of the above, then the fact is that marches through central London are mostly middle class, including the anti-Iraq War march. The left is itself mostly middle class. Actually, the population is mostly middle class (ABC1s now constitute around 55 per cent of the population). It’s also a funny thing that when junior doctors or university lecturers are on strike, they are members of the proletariat but when they’re on an anti-Brexit march they are paid-up members of the prosecco-drinking, Guardian-reading middle classes.
Yes, the Evening Standard had a wrap-around ad for the demo (what the argument that the media mobilised for it seems to come down to, along with the support of the Guardian and Independent). Yes, George Osborne is using the Standard as a stick with which to beat Theresa May. But London also stands to lose massively if Brexit goes ahead in its likely form, so it makes sense for the Standard to oppose it, as does the Mayor of London and most London MPs, including left as well as centrist Labour ones. This leaves aside entirely the fact that the vast majority of the tabloid press is banging the drum for Brexit. Nor do these people mention the inconvenient facts that the Mirror mobilised for the anti-Iraq War demo and the Mail gave out free copies on it.
If the critics do not mean its literal social composition but the class forces which it represents, then we come to the notion that it was “fundamentally in support of the interests of big business and the neoliberal EU”, but that would be as true in their eyes if it was made up entirely of retired miners from South Wales. The march did indeed have backers like Alistair Campbell and a couple of Tory MPs. The overall organization was an umbrella group with constituent groups including Open Britain, the European Movement UK, Britain for Europe, Scientists for EU, Healthier In, Our Future Our Choice, For Our Future’s Sake, Wales For Europe & InFacts. The march on the day had a lot of other groups represented. If we go beyond this, we come to the ‘Marxist’ question: whose interests was it serving?
This is surely the nub, rather than questions about its social composition or who spoke at the rally or that Soros funded it (an Anti-Semitic dog whistle there from the Morning Star, thanks for that). The argument appears to be that it represents an intervention by big business into the debate, that moreover, the Labour right wanted to use it to drive a wedge between Corbyn and his supporters, and that to have a vote on the deal plays into the hands of the far right.
I do accept the argument that to have another vote will produce a huge backlash, led by Farage, the ERG and the Tommy Robinson crowd, backed by the Mail and the rest of the right-wing press screaming about treason, but we cannot afford to run scared from these people. The evidence is that the Brexit being prepared for us is a right wing Tory project to finish what Thatcher started, to have a bonfire of regulations, an even more hostile environment for immigrants, a free-for-all for the bosses, a race to the bottom, tax haven Britain, open to US capital in the NHS and other public services, with cheap and unregulated American food imports full of antibiotics, and a backsliding on any commitment to battling climate change. As for it being mainly a ploy to overthrow Corbyn, because some speakers and marchers shouted Where’s Jeremy Corbyn? Is, in my opinion, ridiculous. That isn’t, as the saying goes, what got all those people out of bed on Saturday.
It is highly inconvenient for the Lexit left that the people who constitute the real hope for change in the UK, those who want to fight racism, who want a radical government to roll back cuts and privatization, who are committed to social progress, the young, both white and people of colour who live alongside each other in diverse urban areas, are overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU. Why? Because first of all, they don’t want to live in Tory Brexit Britain and also because they don’t want a radical government diverted from what they want it to do for years while it picks up the pieces the Tory Brexiters have left in their wake.
Above all, it is unbelievably patronising to view the 700,000 people who bothered to march as mere dupes of David Milliband or Alistair Campbell. To refuse to engage with their concerns about jobs, about the future of their children and grandchildren, about the fate of their fellow workers and friends who came in good faith from the EU to establish lives in Britain, about the NHS, about higher education, about the future of scientific research and the arts, and the future of the planet. All that is simply dismissed, because they know best. They know it was ‘really’ about big business, or Corbyn. They also think the turmoil Brexit has created and will create is fertile ground for the left, even though the evidence is quite the contrary: the Leave campaign and the toxicity it spread has led to more hate crime, more openly expressed racism and a resurgent English nationalism and nostalgia for the days of Empire.
Sue has been around left politics since she was a student at the LSE in the 1970s, during which time she was also involved in the antifascist movement against the National Front.
After more than a decade as a trade union activist in Fleet Street, a period which included the miners’ strike and the Wapping dispute, she became a parent and around the same time, she found herself disillusioned with far left political organisations, while retaining an adherence to the tradition of socialism from below and internationalism.
Professionally, she has worked in a succession of small companies specializing in the challenges presented to traditional media by the Internet.
She moved to Hong Kong in 2011, where she has been a keen witness to, and peripheral participant in, the various movements to resist encroaching control by Beijing. While in Hong Kong she has travelled in China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan and Australia.
Currently she’s living in London and working as a freelance editor and writer. She is a member of the editorial board of Transform.
Scottish nationalists and supporters of independence turning their noses up at the pro-EU protest in London for having Union Jacks and containing political figures and forces that are hostile to our own cause and principles might want to think more carefully before denouncing them.
The outer layer of a political movement always reflects its political core – I personally have no illusions in understanding that the ‘Remain’ movement in England (and among the non-nationalist component of it in Scotland) is hugely dominated by a certain form of liberal British nationalism. And though Nicola Sturgeon might send nice messages to them, when push comes to shove, we would find precious few allies among these people in the struggle for Scottish self-determination. But that’s not the main purpose or function of this movement. They don’t see the Union Jack as you might see it. It doesn’t elicit the same hatred and revulsion – it doesn’t carry the same meaning within the context of that protest as it does when we see right-wing Unionists flying it.
They live in a different country with a different political dynamic when it comes to the Union Jack and Unionism in general. They might not fully understand or care about Scottish independence to the extent that you and I do. It’s not their lived experience. You rarely in these times, or in any times, get an unbroken line of pure progress. You have to pick and choose your allies at different times and for different things. There will always be regressive intersections. When Nicola Sturgeon and other members of the SNP joined the official Remain campaign for TV debates during the EU referendum, they did so to put forward their own case for Remaining, a case that was quite different than that of Tories like Anna Soubry or Liberals like Nick Clegg.
But the main point in all of this is that the other side in the Remain-Leave dynamic envisions an illiberal form of British nationalism – a form of British nationalism that considers the Empire to be as much of a glorious past as it ought to be a triumphant future. A form of British nationalism that fetishizes the racism and chauvinism, birthed by the British domination of the world, and far from critically assessing Britishness as an imperialist identity, as the liberal British nationalists might, wants to concretely affirm it in a modern context.
This side – the side of Boris Johnson, of Rees-Mogg, of Farage and of ‘Take Back Control’ –provides no common ground for anyone with a remotely progressive vision for anything. And no progressives anywhere on God’s green earth will find allies within them, while the actual occurrence of Brexit will entail not just a considerable economic shift for the worse (the severity of this will depend on the nature of the exit) and other potentially dangerous and combustive consequences, but an overall radicalisation and concretisation of the agenda of ideological right. Many soft Remainers like to say ‘not everyone who voted Leave is racist’ – yes, not everyone who voted for the NSDAP wanted Jews to be exterminated en mass, but they still voted for a party who had a leader who routinely vowed that he would do it.
Not everyone who voted for Trump was racist, but they still voted for a leader who vowed he would ban Muslim immigration and, lo and behold, he’s taken unprecedented steps in ridding the US of Muslim immigration.
Okay, Godwin’s Law violations aside, the point is that while it’s perhaps true that not everyone who voted Brexit is a racist (a statement genuinely unworthy of saying), whether they’re racist or not, they voted for something that was:
A) framed and emphasised in an entirely racist manner and with despicably racist imagery, and B) will have concretely racist ramifications.
It is a huge triumph for racism. Only an idiot or a racist or a racist idiot would argue otherwise. People forget that Brexit was born in blood. It’s an acutely dangerous idea to think that the manner in which the UK now ignores the murder of Jo Cox is proof of some innate British manner to remain steely in the face of ‘extremism’, but the narratives of extremism that motivated Tommy Mair to murder the avowedly anti-racist, pro-immigration MP are now more stronger than ever. Only someone wilfully blind won’t have noticed the ‘creep’ of ideas once considered to be far-right into mainstream outlets. Just the other day, the Daily Mail carried a piece that essentially vindicated the fascist, Islamophobic pogromist ‘Tommy Robinson’.
So I’ll swallow my own visceral dislike for those who carry the Union Jack as long as it’s being flown by those who believe, god help them (genuinely), in a liberal form of British nationalism – I’ll even manage to swallow the fact that those protesting against Brexit allegedly fail to comprehend the deeply negative and regressive parts of the European Union with regard to refugees, non-European immigration, or the appeasement and absorbing of the far-right and, of course, its support for fascistic dictators that police its walls. These criticisms aren’t being forgotten, but, within dynamic of Brexit, they might be naturally deflected within the context of the street-to-street realities of a resurgent far-right with the vision of Brexit as their New Jerusalem.
I was and, erm, remain a Reluctant Remainer. A pragmatic Remainer, if you like. I’m not any kind of lover of the EU and feel no affinity with ‘Europe’ in terms of identity. Within the context of the UK, the EU is a symbol for a new anti-racist resistance. The alt-left is too busy either supporting a pro-Brexit Leadership that now resides permanently within the Labour Party, or they’re just plainly supporting Brexit. Those who have illusions in an ‘anti-racism’ that transcends the shortcomings of liberalism might want to consider the fact that the far-left often join the right in attacking liberal status quo. In egalitarianism, they see bourgeois ‘identity politics’, while in support for free movement of people in Europe, they see support for ‘capitalism’ and ‘neoliberalism’.
Leftist media outlets like the despicable Morning Star even use anti-semitic Soros dog-whistles to attack the protesters. Sure, they’d say they envision a world where there were no borders and they’ll screech about ‘Fortress Europe’, but that world does not exist and Fortress UK is what’s really being played for or against here. What exists is a situation where a racist Brexit is triumphing and the left, whether by themselves or by proxy through Corbyn, are supporting this reality. A reality that means the UK’s already racist and illiberal immigration system for non-EU migrants is extended to Europe. The Left function here as a force that uses radical language and wears radical clothes to scramble for the triumph of a gang of racist ultra-capitalists who see Brexit as a chance for, well, racist ultra-capitalism, not to put too fine a point on it.
We live in an era where being a ‘liberal’ simply means understanding that liberalism (the status quo of egalitarianism), for all its shortcomings and for all the areas where it should be extended, is the main mode of resistance politics against forces that want to tear ‘liberalism’, by which they mean egalitarianism, apart. They want to stamp it out. I cannot oppose those who resist this simply because they fly a flag I dislike or don’t believe in everything I believe.
Scottish separatism is internationalist in principle. There is no clearer an example of putting this principle into practice by supporting anti-racists in England and rUK, whatever haphazard form it might take and whatever dishonourable company it might keep.
So another binge on Netflix, another new series to explore. I had seen Norsemen advertised for a while but I was put off thinking it was a rip-off Vikings. Oh, how wrong I was. I started watching the first season only a couple of days ago. I was instantly drawn into the comic acting along with the authentic set and costumes of the 8th Century. The combat was engaging and the actors had physical prowess.
The characters are instantly likeable and relatable, the comedy sort of fits the genre of Parks and Recreations or The Office, (if it was set in medieval Scandinavia) but with more gruesome acts and gore. There is a lot of historical accuracy but the funniest bits are when modern references are made and the protagonists try to explain it away, you will hear several times “this is something I say now.”
As for the violence and raping, it is often brought into the story in a non-offensive, almost joyful way. There might be a few penis castrations or impaling visuals, but they are a subtle part of everyday life for the Viking warrior. Pillaging and defiling is the background to a great interwoven story about love, pride and vengeance.
Although depicting a violent and brutal period and culture in history, the imagery in Norsemen isn’t particularly gratuitious compared to other popular series of a similar theme. Human rights, morality, marriage equality and sexuality are all explored through different characters, there is vulgarity and even scenes where you will physically balk. Overall however it’s a well written story with compelling lore.
The horror aspects of the first series didn’t deter me from immediately watching the second instalment. The evolution of the characters and the satirical jibes at other films and series of a similar nature, really gave the newest episodes some depth. You felt as a viewer invested in different characters and yet each new story offered a reward for watching. A wee token visual or joke about Viking fashion, I particularly liked the way the writers allowed each character to develop gradually, slowly revealing parts of themselves whilst maintaining the expected level of humour. One of my favourite characters is a slave, who was apparently freed in the mid 80’s but he didn’t take to it.
I can’t wait for the third season. Norsemen is a Norwegian tv series, it is produced for NRK by Viafilm. The series is written and directed by Jon Iver Helgaker and Jonas Torgersen. This is a 4/5 review, but because I think it can only get better. A must watch!
Our economy is broken. Capitalism is not stable. It never has been and was never designed to be. Indeed, David Harvey describes very effectively through his analysis of the Crises of Capitalism, with capital seeking ever greater returns, destabilising the system in the process. And despite what Theresa May might wish to be true, austerity is certainly not over. 10 years after the financial crash we continue to see widening inequality, increasing climate precarity, and all the other horrendous consequences of the almost total implosion of our financial system. It seems timely, 10 years after the crash that has defined my and many others’ political life, to explore the roots of the crash, and consider where we need to go now.
I think the root of the crash lies in how society has understood, over the last few decades, and in many ways, how we still understand, democracy: our understanding of what democracy is has determined the approach to the economy.
Democracy has, broadly speaking, two definitions. It is the freedom of people to choose their government. And it is the freedom of consumers to choose within the market, thus determining how capital is allocated. The fundamental difference between left and right is that the left believe the first should be given primacy, whilst the right focus almost exclusively on the latter.
And we see this represented in our global politics: funny how the neoliberal West supported dictatorships like Pinochet, Suharto, and others, because they were market authoritarians. And we see this in rightwing Brexiteers’ desire for Brexit Britain to be like Singapore – a free market authoritarian state in which the government overrides democracy to oppose fracking and then jails those who resist. At the same time, democratically elected leaders who sought to curtail the market were and are described at dictators.
In the late 1980s/early 90s, the resolution of this conflict between left and right was political formations like New Labour in the UK, the New Democrats in the US, Die Neue Mitte in Germany. And of course, then came the collapse of the Soviet Union: the right had won – the free market was victorious. Democracy was about people as consumers operating in an omniscient market, rather than as citizens being served by the economy. History was over.
And the left has flailed ever since. We were totally unprepared, because of the general acceptance that history marked by political conflict was over. Following the fall of the USSR there was a deep intellectual crisis on left: there was no meaningful alternative to the notion that the market was the way to do things: there would be taxation on market activities to pay for public services – that was pretty much as far as the left could get. We see New Labour and other ‘third way’ formations accommodating big business, and the often nefarious activities of the City to support the interests of capital, and provide crumbs off the table for those who wanted public services, hospitals and schools being built under PPP/PFI schemes. The crisis has outlasted some of these schools – some have, literally, fallen down.
In 2008, we did not have the appropriate analysis to counter the response to the crash. However, we have now begun to develop some of the tools required to tackle the dominance of the market. Many of the problems have come through inequalities not just in income, but in wealth and assets, which are largely inherited rather than earned. The work of Thomas Piketty, Kate Pickett, Richard Wilkinson and others show us that this is how we’ve ended up with so much inequality, and how this inequality is bad for everyone.
So, what is to be done. There are three broad areas we need to address.
First, we must understand the shift in capital accumulation from productive areas of the economy into rentier accumulation. Organisations like Living Rent and Acorn are tackling the power of landlords as the focus of accumulation shifts to ownership of accommodation because returns from productive capital have collapsed. As this shift is happens in other sectors (like Uber and transport), so we need new strategies to deal with the move away from capital owning machinery that workers need to use to earn a living, towards capital owning the things and the systems and processes we need to lead our everyday lives. It is no longer through labour that the rich are making themselves richer.
Second, we know that the new models of employment that are emerging (zero-hours contracts, gig economy jobs, etc.) are extremely precarious, and are undermining what we traditionally think of as “the workplace”. This undoes much of the work done over the last few decades on things like Equal Pay and Minimum Wages: (bogus) ‘self-employment’ makes those advances redundant. We must find new ways of organising workers in these areas, and we need to find new ways of capturing these business models. We need platform co-operatives for this new age of platform capitalism.
Third, we must consider commons, which takes us beyond the financial crash. Commons are things we all share, but that are very difficult to own, like our atmosphere and the global climate that it creates. Even for the most enthusiastic advocates of the free market, it is difficult to account for the costs imposed on others through these commons. We must develop ways of governing commons at a global level, but also more locally. This requires deep democratisation of our economy and society, and action at a global level.
There were claims in 1991 that the defeat of the Soviet Union marked the end of history. We now know that this was not true – history is very much back with us. Over the next 10 years, we need to lead the argument on workers control, on reclaiming our commons, and on building movements that help to make it true that not only is another world possible, another world is imminent. The 2008 crash was, if you like, the beginning of the end of the end of history. Long live history.
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