What England Means To Me

The Battle of Hastings, October 13th 1066: A bad day at the office for England.


It's up there in its full glory in cyberspace at What England Means To Me.

Here's what I said:

I think of myself as an old-style English Radical in my politics, somewhere on the Left. I see the English people, whatever their origins, as having struggled for centuries to reverse the effects of the “Norman Yoke”. When I was about eight, living in a Labour-voting (or, more accurately, Tory-hating) household in the West Midlands, I remember learning at school about the Roman and Viking invasions of England and how they left eventually. Then when learning about the Normans, the obvious question to me was “when did the Normans leave?” I never got a decent answer at the time. As I got older the obvious answer was “never”, but l knew from the callous destruction of much of the West Midlands’ industrial base under the Thatcher regime that we were a nation of lions led by donkeys. When I was 19 I came across the Levellers in the English Civil Wars and their idea of the “Norman Yoke” which deprived the “free-born” Anglo-Saxons of their liberties after 1066. Ever since, I have basically held onto the idea that England is still under the thrall of a much-modified “Norman Yoke”. The faces and names may change (and if your ancestors came over in 1066 I don’t hold you personally responsible for anything!) but “the Thing”, to quote William Cobbett, has persisted for centuries. Its “golden thread”, to coin a phrase, runs from the “Harrying of the North”, Magna Carta (a baron’s carve-up), the Glorious Revolution (a banker’s coup d’etat) all the way up to New Labour’s paeans to “New Britishness”.

Why does anyone on the Left have hang-ups about the idea of being English? It sure beats the idea of Britishness. For about two decades I’ve thought the whole concept of Britishness (for which my spellchecker suggests “Brutishness”) as an idea whose time has gone. The only question is how we give the United Kingdom a decent burial. However, too many on the Left hold onto the idea of Britishness, fearing Englishness. However, how on Earth can holding onto the ideology of a big business dominated imperial state, which is in its death throes, be progressive? There is simply no “Britishness”, new or otherwise, that political progressives can subscribe to and be true to their ideals. It is a concept too weighed down by the gap between its democratic, enlightened rhetoric and the sordid reality that the British state has presided over for centuries.

Instead the Left should embrace English Radicalism, which inspired thinkers and movements such as the Levellers, Tom Paine, William Cobbett, the Chartists, the mutualist and co-operative movements, William Morris, the pre-1914 syndicalists and Guild Socialists such as GDH Cole. It was driven underground politically by the triumph of “top-down” socialism, in both its Fabian and Leninist forms, after 1918. Now that global “top-down” models of organising society, whether by states or corporations, are under attack from decentralising, democratic tendencies, it is time for the English Left to embrace a national identity that accords with the spirit of the age.

It also means we need a national identity that draws upon one of the most abused phrases in modern politics: “Little Englander”. The original “Little Englanders” were patriotic radicals who were opposed to the Empire building that underlay Britain’s participation in the 1899-1902 Boer War. Our nation can only be at ease with itself when we abandon imperial adventures, whether our own or on behalf of the USA or EU, and realise that our real gifts to the world are our language, our culture and our sense of humour, none of which the Normans gave us! (“Taking the piss” is something that William the Conqueror, Oliver Cromwell, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair would never appreciate!). We should become a country where, to quote Orwell, we “hate to see England either humiliated or humiliating anyone else.”

Biographical note: I was born in Walsall in the Black Country two weeks before the end of 1969. My mother was also born in the Black Country. My father was born in County Sligo. He came over in 1948 at the age of six after his dad served in the British Army during WW2 (and was to again in Korea in the early 1950s). However, I think of myself as English rather than British, and have done for 30 odd years.

Little

How Monty Python Made Me A Socialist

I would have probably become a socialist of some sort anyhow. I was brought up in a working-class Labour-voting family (my dad did join the Labour Party for a while, but found out, like Oscar Wilde had claimed, the problem with socialism was "too many meetings"). I am also left-handed, so when I was a sprog and people said Labour was on the left, I sort of automatically identified with Labour!

Then came the Python connection. When I was about 9 my parents gave me "Monty Python Live At Drury Lane" on tape as a Xmas present. It had the Communist Quiz sketch in which Karl Marx, Lenin, Chairman Mao and Che Guevara are asked questions about English football and pop music that they had next to no clue about. However, in the second part of the sketch Karl was asked questions about "workers' control of factories" to win a beautiful lounge suite (though he flunks it when asked about who won the 1949 FA Cup Final). It was there I fell for the idea of direct workers' control of their work places! After that I got out the "Great Lives" volume of a massive set of encyclopedias my mum had and looked up Karl Marx and it spoke about his support for workers' control of the economy. Being a mid-1950s mainstream sort of publication, "Great Lives" slagged Marx off, but he seemed a decent sort to me. So I have always been quite pro-Marx from quite a young age.

To Be Continued...

London Election latest and stuff

I spent yesterday morning leafleting a housing estate up in Highgate (next to the cemetery with Karl Marx in it)for the Greens. There is a Camden Council bye-election on May 1st, the same day as the London-wide elections, and as the Greens have two out of the three councillors in the ward, they are hoping to take the third off the Tories.

I think the Greens have a reasonable chance of taking the ward. On the estate (I managed 275 or so letter boxes in 90 mins) the only political posters in windows were Green ones. I think there was someone else delivering stuff (or it could have been just someone delivering leaflets for pizza). It could well have been the Lib Dems as I saw someone delivering Lib Dem Focus leaflets on my way back to Gospel Oak train station. It was a cold, grey, damp morning so there weren't many people about but those I did say morning to were friendly, so that it is a good sign. All other things being equal, I should be able to get up Highgate again the day before the election for one more leafletting blitz.

Two Tuesdays ago I did turn up at the Friends Meeting House over in Euston for a meeting organised by NO2ID. It was about the surveillance state in London. Ken Livingstone didn't turn up (he was represented by a full-size cardboard cut-out!), but Boris Johnson, Brian Paddick, Jenny Jones (for the Greens), Lindsey German for Left Luggage (sorry, Left List) and Gerard Batten for UKIP were there. The BNP candidate for Mayor Richard "one suit" Barnbrook turned up, but as the BNP aren't represented in Westminster, the European Parliament or the GLA (yet) he wasn't invited onto the platform and was given a ticking off by security. (You might ask, why was Lindsey G allowed on the platform when Left List have no electoral representation in London? Apparently she was asked to speak when she was still Respect's Mayoral candidate...).

There was quite a consensus amongst the platform speakers: opposition to ID cards and fears about where surveillance of London and Londoners is heading. The big arguments were between Jenny Jones and Brian Paddick (over whether crime in London was going up or down) and Lindsey German and Gerard Batten (over immigration). I must say Boris Johnson was quite impressive, but the format of the meeting (I left 8.30ish as I was nodding off and I had a night of work ahead of me)aided him. Each of the 5 speakers was given 3 mins to do their spiel, then the chairwoman (apols, I didn't catch her name) read out 4 issues NO2ID wanted the speakers to address. Each of the speakers were given 3 mins (or so) to give their view. Then it was questions from the audience (you had to fill a piece of paper in- I split before that started). I have been reading that Boris Johnson has been taught to stick to the point, otherwise his minders think he'll go off topic and alienate audiences. So three mins to reel his spiel off was ideal for him, and to his credit he is genuinely anti-ID cards, so he was reasonably impressive.

I still think I'll force myself to vote for Ken as my 2nd choice for Mayor, but I have no enthusiasm for him at all. Having said that, a few Conservative contacts of mine are not too keen on Boris either. I suppose it will all depend on where the Lib Dem votes go after Brian Paddick is eliminated. At the hustings he was very pro- civil liberties and vehemently anti-racist. However, I have been reading that he is quite pro-City of London and has accused Ken of wanting to make London "a socialist republic" (do me a favour!).

Anyway, before I started dropping off into the land of nod, I wrote down a few facts and figures mentioned in the meeting:

Later this year non-European Economic Area foreign nationals (that is, anyone who desn't come from the EU, Iceland, Norway or Lietchenstein)in the UK will be compelled to register for an ID card and be fingerprinted in the process. I can't see this going down well with people from outside the EEA living in London, including all those non-doms...

Those who have ID cards will have to give the authorities information about 50 categories (not just 50 items) of personal information. These can be added to via Government regulation (ie sod Parliamentary scrutiny).

In London there are around 10,000 CCTV cameras on the roads and 8,000 on the Tube. I feel safer already... There are 4.2m CCTV cameras in the UK as a whole.

There are 700,000 DNA samples on the Metropolitan Police database, with around 90,000 new samples being added to every year. I feel safer than ever...

Sort of update...

Hat-tip : A Very Public Sociologist

Really I should be typing lots. Lots in my mind's eye (as per usual) but I have a strong "manana" tendency in my outlook, which means I put off a lot of stuff I could really do now. I'm not proud of this. I wish I could flush this annoying habit of mine down the toilet of history.

My article on "what England means to me" has got bogged down with two other possible pieces. One on socialism and another on "radicalism, conservatism and populism" (working title). All three pieces wander into the other two. However, with April 23rd coming up (St. George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday) I have a deadline in my head for getting this stuff down on paper (or up on hyper-text). This is my final night of freedom out of 10 before a week back at work. So it'll be a week's time when I start grappling and slaying my article demons.

In the meantime I will leave you with a quote I quite like...

"The mere fact that communism didn't work doesn't mean that capitalism does. In many parts of the globe it's a wrecking, terrible force, displacing people, ruining lifstyles, traditions, ecologies and stable systems with the same ruthlessness as communism."- John Le Carre, Times Higher Educational Supplement, 20/6/97, p.11.

At long bloody last!!

Big apologies are in order for the lack of blogging in recent weeks (months?). Without trying to sound like too much of a whinger, I have not been well recently. I've had various ailments, underpinned by a chill that never really went away, combined with extreme tiredness. Give me somewhere to lie down and I could win a medal at the 2012 Olympic Games for the demonstration sport of Crashing Out Bigtime. I've felt really washed out all too often. It's not like I've been not being looking after myself or been eating poorly either (I've consumed plenty of fruit, veg, muesli, brown bread, lots of fruit juice and water). I think the long grind of winter has a lot to do with it. Combine that with the fact that we didn't really have a proper summer last year (all I remember much of is a couple of weeks in Vancouver and the August Bank Holiday weekend being good) and it's all got me down.

I think as well I've suffered some existential angst about blogging. Unless you are an unthinking clone of The Party Line, if you are a "political" blogger I think you will be prone to wondering at some point whether what you do is of any use or worth. I think it's the same with political commentators in the so-called Mainstream Media too, and the politically active as well, unless you are a fanatic, ideologue or careerist on the make. Sometimes it is good to doubt yourself. I think that's what happened to me a bit.

Anyway...without any further ado. A bit of a run through about what I've been thinking and even what I've been doing.

The Big One?



Is this the final denouement of global capitalism? Call me an ageing cynical sell-out, but I've lived through several periods when it seemed The End was on the cards and the system kept going. However, the least that can be said is that it looks like the latest "British economic miracle" is looking decidedly dodgy. I'm unsure how much this will affect the "neo-liberal" consensus (which is not particularly new or really that liberal)in Westminster. Although I've read and heard economics commentators talk about something that could be as bad as the 1929 Wall Street Crash and its aftermath, in those days there were positive, reasonably worked-out alternatives to casino capitalism being offered worldwide: Keynesian economics and Five Year Plans. Now what is there? To assume that an economic downturn will automatically lead to political radicalisation here or elsewhere in the West is naive beyond belief. In fact, I fear the people who will gain politically in a new slump are the RoRos: the Racially Or Religiously Obsessed.

Rejoining the Greens



I think the need for a positive alternative that isn't all RoRo in the face of economic uncertainty is one big reason why I've rejoined the Greens (well I've sent my cheque off, so I hope my membership etc is in the post!). I joined them back in early 2006, but various personal stuff got in the way of participating fully, and so I dropped out. There was also political stuff too stopping me being a Green. Those who've been reading my blog for a while or have perused through my posts over the last few years may have come across my hope that an English Mutualist Party or a worthwhile Democratic Socialist Party that I could join and support would appear by the time of the next General Election.

I now realise the Greens are going to be the closest approximation to my hope this side of the next General Election and quite possibly a long time afterwards too! It seems that if mutualist, co-operative bottom-up economics which is neither Labourist or Leninist in inspiration is to have a home in English politics it seems the Greens is the best place to nurture it. As for the Democratic Socialism...

Back in September I joined a (Lib Dem-inspired, if my memory is correct) group on Facebook whose name was something along the lines of "Gordon Brown, call a General Election now!" I wanted a General Election last Autumn and a solid Labour majority as I thought it would flush out a lot on the British Left. It would force a major re-alignment, with the Labour Left (At Long F**kin' Last) realising there was no point staying there and the Left outside Labour getting a second chance to build a modest but viable alternative to Labour, along the lines of the Socialist Alliance circa 2000(RIP). I also saw the Greens playing an important role in such a realignment along with other Left-field groups I have time for, including the IWCA and Socialist Party (anyone who can build local pockets of support in working class areas and elect councillors on the back of that deserves serious respect).

Well, we didn't have a General Election, but we did see a certain re-alignment. That is, the SWP and George Galloway wings of Respect went to war with each other. Now we have the SWP's "Left List" (which will get nowhere in the forthcoming London Elections, before the SWP retreats back to its natural home: selling "Socialist Worker" outside student unions) and George's "Respect Renewal" (which will do nothing outside of areas with large Muslim areas). There is a lot of bad blood flowing from this and I can't see Humpty Dumpty getting back together for a long time, if at all. The Labour Left are still there, a triumph of hope over experience. So I've going to stick with the Greens, as the re-alignment will come some point after the next General Election, or we will all hang separately.

Before then...

The London Elections




Pretty obviously I'll vote Green on the constituency and list votes for the GLA and Sian Berry (above) as first choice for Mayor. I plan to spend some of April delivering GP leaflets and literature to the populace.

As for my second choice...I will probably grit my teeth and vote for Ken Livingstone. I voted for Ken in 2000 (when I was in the London Socialist Alliance) but didn't in 2004 (Laura Reid of the IWCA was my number 1, Darren Johnson of the Greens number 2). This time round I was going to leave my second choice blank, but Boris Bloody Johnson as Mayor? I'd rather have Steve Norris, the Tory Mayoral candidate in 00 and 04, as Mayor as at least he had some basic competence. Same with Ken: he ran the GLC from 81 to 86, and has run London for the last 8 years without the place falling apart. Johnson could not run a bath (except as a publicity stunt) to save his life. His life is one big publicity stunt to be frank. If you think Ken embarrasses London, wait until Boris is running the show...



I had thought of having Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem candidate, as my second choice, but I decided that he's too good for them, after their ridiculous behaviour vis a vis...

The European Union



The Lisbon Treaty is basically the same as the EU Constitution which we were promised a referendum on a few years back and which the Dutch and French voted down in 2005. (Please visit the Democracy Movement's website for more details about the Treaty and other EU stuff.) However, we're not to get a referendum, short of a political earthquake. This is in spite of overwhelming public support for such a referendum. No wonder people cannot be bothered to vote any more if their elected representatives ignore their own manifesto pledges!

There were votes in the Commons on a referendum but the Lib Dem official line was to abstain. There was that walk-out of Lib Dem MPs as their new (latest?) leader Nick Clegg (former MEP) demanded a straight Yes or No vote to staying in the EU. This reminds me of Trotskyites demanding a referendum on a "United Socialist States of Europe" and refusing to take a stance on any other vote. I think the Lib Dems will pay heavily for this at the next General Election, particularly in naturally Conservative seats they hold with narrow majorities (particularly in the South West). Purely on narrow electoral grounds it was stupid, as even the most mindlessly pro-EU Lib Dem voters tend to want votes on everything. How this move was supposed to attract Tory voters to the Lib Dems is beyond me. Of course, with "My EU right or wrong" types like Cleggy, the EU should be protected from public scorn.

However, after that anti-Lib Dem rant (and the Government hardly covered themselves in glory. As for the Tories, if you think David Cameron will pull the UK out of the EU, you've got another thing coming) at least Clegg says he would rather go to jail than carry an ID card (although it does somehow remind me of trade union leaders back in the 80s saying they'd rather go to jail than obey the Tories' employment laws- none did!).


ID Cards



After all the thefts and losses of personal details by Government and other official bodies in recent months, and the general consensus that the cost of implementing ID cards will be much more than first estimated by the Government (quelle surprise!), you'd think the Government would want to get shut of the idea ASAP. However, this waste of tax-payers' money will, it seems, be implemented come hell or high water. It seems that it will be foreign nationals and students who will be forced to get ID cards first. I wish I could trust the Tories and Lib Dems when they say they would junk ID card if they took office. Otherwise it will be have to be mass civil disobedience. If you are angry, or merely quietly concerned, about this move towards a police state, please visit No2ID's website. I just wish events by Camden NO2ID group and my free time coincided more!

England Again.



I am trying to write a piece about "What England Means To Me". 800 words or so. The problem is there is potentially so much to say...so that's my excuse Gareth! (who runs the Little Man in a Tocque blog, and who asked me to write this too long ago...)

Anyway, I hope that's made up a bit for lost time. I won't be so tardy from now on!

Been unwell...

I wanted to do a fair bit this week on this blog but I've had a bad chill, felt tired and washed out. My resolution for the next six months is to hit this big-time- I don't want to disappoint my public!

To be continued soon...

Election USA...there's another 8 months of this rubbish!

Hat-tip: Get Your War On

I've tried really hard, I truly have, but I've been through the newspapers and been on the Net and I've had extreme difficulty finding anything of substance about the policies of, let alone policy differences between, the main candidates in the US Presidential campaign. Indeed, the only candidate who seems to have anything different to say is Ron Paul. He is a social reactionary, but he was opposed the war in Iraq from day one, talks about American "imperialism" and is opposed to moves towards a North American Union. He'd make a good Libertarian Party candidate, as he was in 1988.

As for the Democrats: Hilary Clinton seems to be appealing to voters on the grounds that she represents "experience" and is a woman, while Barak Obama's appeal is that he's non-white and represents "change". That's it. Nothing approaching ideological or policy differences at all. As Andrew Stephen wrote recently (in an article which makes a refreshing change from the Barak-mania doing the rounds at the moment):

"Politically, there is remarkably little difference between the three leading Democrats- Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards."

I realise that the over-the-top enthusiasm for the US Presidential elections in the media here (apart from being a consequence of becoming a de facto 51st State?) is that, for many people with power and money, it is a normative model for General Elections here. Candidates with no major policy differences, just images, sound-bites and "values" to uphold.

Update: Reading The Guardian this morning, I find Peter Wilby laying into the media circus around the US Elections and the euphoria found amongst the commenting classes here:

Interest in the game eclipses the message

I don't want to spoil the fun, but I wonder if British columnists are getting a little too excited about the US elections. In the Guardian, for example, Timothy Garton Ash, writing after Super Tuesday, saw it as a triumph for the "soft power of democracy". He reckoned you could "strike up a conversation with a complete stranger in any bar in any city on any continent" and ask whether he or she was backing Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But the more pertinent question would be whether, even in America, the stranger had the first idea as to what either candidate would do in office.

The Pew research centre in Washington estimated, even before the voting started, that two-thirds of media coverage was dedicated to "the game" rather than to the political content of the candidates' campaigns. American political writers, like our own dear Westminster hacks, find it hard to wrestle with policies and ideologies, and largely duck out of their responsibility to make such things accessible and interesting. The result is that US presidential candidates, when they take office, are hardly at all constrained by electoral commitments, except to corporations and pressure groups who provided the campaign funds. And this is the electoral system commentators hold up for our admiration.

Garton Ash compared the Clinton-Obama contest to "an exciting horse race or a well-made soap opera". Precisely.

BTW I would probably vote Green in November if I was a US Citizen. However, I'm not, however much the UK's media and political classes would like us to be!