Futures of Socialism is a hastily gathered collection of chapters to look at where socialists go from here, after the defeat of the Corbyn Project andFutures of Socialism is a hastily gathered collection of chapters to look at where socialists go from here, after the defeat of the Corbyn Project and the admission from the Bernie Sanders campaign that he wasn’t going to be the Democratic Party nominee for the Presidency in late 2020. In amongst all this is a socialist analysis of Covid-19; what happens subsequently and specifically how socialists can react to the inevitability of further “shock doctrine” capitalism after the world has moved on.
The book is introduced by left wing economist Grace Blakeley who has been fairly prolific of late with several books of her own as well as a new weekly podcast in association with the political journal Jacobin. From there each chapter is by a different figure on the left; it’s not a book where you will find yourself agreeing with everyone but each chapter will prompt a debate with your own internal monologue. Most are well written with a perhaps one or two being quite bogged down in the lamentable language of academic Marxism which at times becomes impenetrable to anyone not steeped in the world of dialectical materialism.
In Part One, Foundations, Tom Hazeldine described what happened in the north of England among working class voters at the 2019 election and how to react to it. Lola Seaton gives a personal experience as a doorstep campaigner for the first time during that election. Rory Scothorne gives us an overview of Scotland and why Labour have no room for manoeuvre between Tories and what he sees as the faux progressivism of the SNP. Andrew Murray of Unite the union gives a treatise on why the Lexit project was right which I found to be a challenge to my own beliefs, but well written and passionate. Gargi Bhattacharyya gives us the five bad habits of “nearly successful political projects” and questions whether we can create new, winning habits. Media commentator Tom Mills describes the challenges our movement faced during the Corbyn years and continues to face in the anti-democratic sphere of our current media, both in print and the audio-visual world. Keir Milburn (you kind of have to be involved in the Labour movement with a name like that don’t you?) speaks of the youth movement that was brought into the open by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, how their first defeat will shape their politics in the years to come, and why they should not be abandoned by the current leadership of Labour. Owen Hatherley looks at the what he sees as the peculiarly English obsession with misery, politically speaking. Rory MacQueen examines the similarities between earlier socialist projects and Corbynism while the section is finished off with an interview with Leo Panitch who gives his appraisal of what happened and happens now.
In Part Two, Futures, Sam Gindin takes a look at Covid-19, how socialists can react to it and utilise current economic changes such as emergency nationalisations to consolidate power in the hands of ordinary people. Joshua Virasami writes about how the anti-racism movement needs to move towards activism rather than “passive sympathy”. Cristina Flesher Fominaya gives an interesting appraisal of the situation in Spain and the Podemos party; how it has made important changes as a junior coalition partner, but also how it is being sucked into the world of “Party politics” as opposed to a grass-roots insurgency, disappointing some of its early supporters. Three authors collaborate on an article about food distribution and how to improve things on a global scale for the poorest people in the world. Jeremy Gilbert presents a chance to build and organise the labour movement both inside and outside of mainstream politics while Ashok Kumar takes a worldwide view of socialist strategy. Sita Balani writes passionately about the corrupt nature of our politics at the moment; how we need a commitment to truth to force a confrontation to reality. James Meadway on finance and capital in reaction to Covid and the scale of the challenge facing indebted nations coming out of the pandemic. Chris Saltmarsh has a chapter on the Green New Deal and wider ecological outcomes from Covid and Dalia Gabriel gives an eye-opening overview of the global precariat and how the working class, and those who organise the working class, should react to it. Sian Errington makes a defence of the Corbyn Project and details the levels of austerity that it fought and changes that it forced in government policy. Joe Guinan and Sarah McKinley collaborate on a chapter looking at the “transatlantic left” and see parallels between the Corbyn and Sanders supporters which must be harnessed for future tilts at electoral victory. Cat Hobbs makes an appeal for further public ownership, not just for the pandemic emergency period, but for a permanent shift and lays out how this can happen, and the popularity behind it. Daniel Gerke gives an assessment of current thinkers on the left and pays homage to Mark Fisher and how his analysis of the present day in “capitalist realism” seems to be accurate. Simukai Chigudu gives an update on the Rhodes Must Fall movement, linked to Black Lives Matter and how change is happening, even at Oriel College where an infamous statue of Cecil Rhodes stands. Amelia Horgan takes on corporate and centrist feminism as poor replacements for socialist feminism and finally James Schneider looks at the Corbyn years in terms of Jeremy’s Labour leadership; how it came about and what important philosophies it encouraged which aren’t going away any time soon, despite the best wishes of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
If any or some of that sounds up your street, you will enjoy the book. All chapters are roughly seven or eight pages long and easily digestible. A recommended text. ...more
First and foremost it is worth praising Laura Bates for having the courage to write this book. Laura founded the Everday Sexism project and since thenFirst and foremost it is worth praising Laura Bates for having the courage to write this book. Laura founded the Everday Sexism project and since then has been subject to thousands and thousands of violent, rape and death threats from the types of men with whom this book is concerned. She has had to move house several times and lives with a legitimate fear for the safety of herself and her family.
The book itself is an expertly put together piece of investigative journalism. It is harrowing, affecting and thoroughly researched. Bates primarily focuses on the online world of what she terms the “manosphere” which incorporates involuntary celibates (incels), pick up artists (PUAs), men’s rights activists (MRAs), men going their own way (MGTOWs) and straight up old fashioned misogynists, which of course all of the above are whatever their acronym of choice. This isn’t a tour of online communities though; there is a very “real-world” connection to changing attitudes in the English-speaking world among predominantly young men which has been a precursor to extreme physical and sexual violence against women and ultimately murder and acts of terrorism.
People may not see such things as terrorism initially but in the UK, the statutory definition of terrorism is contained in section one of the Terrorism Act 2000. It specifies that terrorism is the use or threat of action that is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation, or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. The action used or threatened must involve serious violence against a person, serious damage to property, endangering a person’s life, creating a serious risk to public health or safety, or the intention to interfere with, or seriously disrupt, an electronic system. This fits in wholly with the world the manosphere is trying to promote, whether that be the “redistribution of sex” preferred by incels or the decriminalisation of rape that PUAS advocate or the desire to itemise women as property, first of a father and then a husband that MRAs speak of. Whatever the goal, violence and intimidation are the prime forces behind the ideology and Bates gives us plenty of examples of acts of terror committed in the misogynist cause; yet only one of the criminals listed have been charged under terrorism powers, in Canada.
Indeed, it seems states are reluctant not only to invoke the powers they have, but to devote any attention in terms of criminological research to, when coupled with far-right ideology, is the fastest growing threat of terrorism anywhere in the world. States do not fund any projects of note into misogynistic terror, preferring instead that it gets caught up in other areas of investigation. Something overlooked by both police forces and the media is the extent to which misogyny drivers far right terror. While Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant were clearly driven to murder by their hatred of the left in one case and Muslims in the other, both were clear in their writings that they despised women and were deeply embedded in manosphere theory. If someone from a Muslim background kills three people in a spree it is instantly described as an act of terror but similar acts by a man who is clearly targeting women such as Elliot Rodger are described as “gunmen” or the pathetic aggrandising term “lone wolf”.
Behind the perpetrators of these terrorist acts are a plethora of internationally famous hate preachers; famous in terms of the community itself but there are others that have broken into mainstream debates such as Jordan Peterson and of course former president of the USA Donald Trump. Such people attempt to distance themselves from the extremes of the communities they endorse but their output is specifically referenced in the rambling manifestos of people committing the most heinous acts. A huge industry has built up around stirring hatred like this, and in terms of PUAs their idols tour countries giving talks to vulnerable young men for a lot of money teaching them how to lie their way into bed with a woman and at the most extreme fringe, how to get away with rape. Some such people have run for office in local, European and nation elections for recognised parties.
The most disturbing chapter for me was the penultimate one which explains the way boys and young men are being groomed by the far-right and their extreme misogyny through various social media platforms. We all know the connections Facebook has with troubling communities and much has been made of it in the press but Bates aims her ire clearly at YouTube which makes up the bulk of all mobile internet traffic and is the platform of choice for boys and for misogynist hate preachers. Bates tours schools herself and has noted a change in the way pupils ask questions and come out with statistics either wholly made up or manipulated which can only have come from viewing manosphere content online (men are more likely to suffer domestic violence than women, most claims of rape are false, etc. etc.). The way YouTube works in terms of its algorithm shows their business model is built on keeping people watching through the “recommended videos” section which, whatever you search for, takes the user down ever more extreme routes. For cooking you end up seeing extreme food challenges for instance, which is fine if a little gross. However when someone searches for “what is feminism” on a brand new Laptop with no previously gathered data on the user, within a few clicks on the “recommended” sidebar they are faced with an excess of troubling content; one is an interview with one time darling of the Alt-Right Milo Yiannopoulos (another who was courted by the mainstream press in both the US and UK) speaking unchallenged about modern feminism, which he describes as ‘primarily about man-hating… a very anger, bitter, profane, lesbianic sort of feminism’, spreading a ‘constant message that men are evil and broken and wrong’. He calls campus rape statistics ‘nonsense’ and says that figures cited by Barack Obama about sexual violence are ‘not true’. The video has over 2 million views. YouTube has chosen its profit margins over the safety of 50% of the public.
The final chapter suggests ways to move forward and challenge this, particularly among the young and if any government wants to start taking this seriously, as they should, then this book should form an important part of the bibliography of any policy proposal. The trend needs to be reversed among young men. In the British Attitudes Survey the general public are asked whether they think women are fully or partially to blame for being raped or sexually assaulted if they are drunk or have been ‘flirting heavily’ before the attack. And, every year, the results are deeply depressing. Not just because a quarter of the general public believe drunk victims are to blame, or because a third believe those who were flirting bear responsibility. But because, among 16–19-year-olds, those numbers jump dramatically. Over a third believe a drunk victim bears blame for their own rape or assault, and, for those flirting heavily, the number rises to almost half. Please read this book. ...more
Guy Standing was one of the co-founders of the Basic Income Earth Network in the 1980s and has been a champion of his cause ever since. Thirty to FortGuy Standing was one of the co-founders of the Basic Income Earth Network in the 1980s and has been a champion of his cause ever since. Thirty to Forty years of fighting this corner at times must have been arduous and thankless; moreso in recent years of right wing governments and global policies of austerity. However, he remains passionate and confident that the time is now for a universal basic income, and this reviewer happens to agree. In terms of the book, it begins with a historical tour of the concept of a universal basic income. While we may see UBI as a relatively new political idea, its germination can be traced back to 2000 years ago but emerged as robust idea in Utopia by Thomas More, published in 1514. At various times since then UBI has gained many supporters, not always from the areas of society you might think; in the 20th century both Milton Friedman and Freidrich Hayek were supporters and more recently Nobel prize winning economists such as Jospeh Stiglitz and Angus Deaton. While some of these may have looked at this from a libertarian point of view in terms of a replacement for welfare and government, the fact is they saw the merit in essentially “giving” people money to enhance their personal freedom and level of choice, whether that choice be in the arena of work, education or leisure.
Standing is clear though that a UBI should not be a replacement for existing welfare or benefits but should work alongside those to alleviate poverty and reduce inequality. For him it is a matter of social justice and this runs strongly through the book as a central nervous system without which the idea cannot survive. Over the next 300 or so pages we are given access to the positives from angles personal, economic, international, labouring, liberty and affordability. Two of the most useful chapters are a dissection of alternatives and a list of standard arguments against UBI and their converse rebuttals. It is thorough and well sourced, being able to call on the results of pilot schemes that have taken place across the world with positive results in terms of work, poverty, education and crime.
Where the book is incomplete is its lack of understanding with which our current politics would fight back against this, and only barely mentioned is the media outrage such progress would face. We are led by politicians currently in the world’s largest and oldest democracies by reactionary right wing people who are in thrall to ideas that not only don’t work but actively make life harder for the poorest in a given society. This isn’t an accident, it is the point of government policy. Since roughly 1980 we have seen a gigantic transfer of wealth and power from the poor to the rich. Genuinely social democratic policies which reduces inequality were abandoned and what became known as neoliberal policies were the only game in town. This was only exacerbated by the fall of the Soviet Union; capitalism won but our leaders are still fighting a Cold War that no longer exists, and there is no brake on the system.
Similarly we have a media class that is bought and controlled by the billionaire class. Even the nominally progressive sources of news such as MSNBC or The Guardian are ideologically positioned to maintain the status quo; this can be evidenced by the treatment of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in the so called left wing media; any chance of real change must be shut down. Without pluralism in our media, no government will be brave enough to carry out substantial change that would transfer wealth back to the true creators; the workers. We know all too well the style of story that targets benefit “cheats” in the same pages that celebrate the lives of the indolent rich. Without media backing, no policy can survive.
Traditionally this work-focused route to wealth has also been championed by organisations on the left such as trade unions, many of which see a rise in income and living standards equating less members of their institutions. This shows a startling lack of confidence in unions and an inability to adapt to a changing situation. The pilots show that people are more likely to be engaged in soldaristic grass roots institutions such as unions and other community based organisations as they not only have the free time to do so, but also have the money to join in the first place; as a grass roots trade union rep I have heard all too often that members of staff cannot join as they simply cannot afford it as their contract is insecure or their hours too few.
Aside from what I took to be a lack of understanding of the realities as they stand, the book is a rallying cry for fairness and must be celebrated as such. Whatever the arguments against, what is clear is that market driven capitalism has had 200 or so years to reduce poverty and inequality; if this is the pinnacle of an ideology, it has failed wholly. UBI can be used as something to kickstart a new way of living, or it could be used even to save capitalism as it stands but as Victor Hugo said, nothing is more power than an idea whose time has come. ...more
It is important to say first of all what this book isn't. It is not the story of Grenfell tower and its ill-fated residents. For those wanting first hIt is important to say first of all what this book isn't. It is not the story of Grenfell tower and its ill-fated residents. For those wanting first hand testimony of that night or analysis thereof they would be better directed to the public inquiry and its plethora of primary accounts https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/ ; alternatively the London Review of Books dedicated an entire issue to the incident which, while widely criticised by residents associations and campaign groups in its assignment of blame, does nevertheless contain some important information detailing the build up to 14th June 2017 https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n11/andrew-... . A full book form narrative from the residents point of view, survivors and the dead, is yet to be written and its right that someone embedded within the community should write this. What Stuart Hodkinson has written is a detailed and forensic critique of the political errors, negligence, cruelty and malfeasance that created the circumstances in which something like Grenfell Tower could happen.
The book begins by squarely pointing the finger at the government for bringing back what Engels called “Social Murder” in his seminal book The Condition of the Working Class in England, purely concerning the incident at Grenfell Tower. From there in clearly laid out and referenced chapters the book goes on to discuss the privatisation and death of quality public housing, beginning with the huge post-war construction project undertaken by Nye Bevan and even subscribed to by Harold MacMillan's Conservative administration of 1957; social housing was an accepted need for a healthy, working population. While the Tories built houses with less space and of less quality, this belief ran right through until the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher brought in the right to buy policy and neglected completely the remaining housing stock in the public sector. Tony Blair's administration continued the policy of neglect and privatised much of what remained to get the burden off of the government's books short-term.
The following chapters looks at “Outsourcing on steroids” and we are given the history of Private Finance Initiative (PFI), Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and the absolute horrors that residents faced when they were moved from having the council as effective landlord to these corporate, faceless entities. Not only is the neglect of properties and peoples well-being dissected, but what appears to be downright vindictiveness is perennially close to the surface. Gaslighting of complaining residents, ostracising them from residents meetings, taking legal action where none was necessary against their own tenants and even calling in psychiatrists to try and have serial complainants declared mad. There are case studies of some specific projects which are by no means extraordinary. Here we find the testimony of actual residents and it reads like something out of a Dickensian farce. A 40 year contract handed to E.ON to provide energy to socially housed and privately owned homes alike (there are examples elsewhere of 70-80 year energy contracts) – they put prices up immediately to unaffordable levels; where you and I would be able to switch energy supplier, this was not an option for those subject to being housed under PFI deals. Poorly fitted and unsafe wiring, sewage running down the walls, combustible material being used despite being identified, the list is an endless litany of carelessness and cost-cutting leading some people to the ultimate act of suicide at being forced to live in such situations, with no redress and no care for those involved.
The final chapters look at the level of accountability and the amount of money sloshing around the PFI sector, and just how much the public are being ripped off for having public housing taken off the public accounts in the short term. This final chapter is incredibly heavily detailed, showing how some projects ended up costing the taxpayer six or seven times what the original quote was from the private finance partners when the work was tendered. In terms of accountability the entire thing was essentially self-regulating with any government watchdog being severely limited in what they could actually do. Not only that but the “independent” assessors used by the partners had serious conflicts of interest which are laid bare in the penultimate chapter. At this point of looking at the money trail, various organisations involved in the PFI gravy train decided to attack the author and his line of income. They sent several letters to his employer, The University of Leeds, demanding they distance themselves from his work, and disbar him from using their logo on his work. Effectively these letters called into question when Hodkinson should still be employed at Leeds given his, as they saw it, clear bias toward PFI. To the University's credit they appeared to wholly back their employee and his work.
What this book shows is a clear and unobstructed path from public housing regeneration schemes under PFI to the Grenfell tragedy, and furthermore that it was no accident but a natural conclusion. It is also a plea that Grenfell will be the turning point from 40 years of dogmatic adherence to neo-liberal policies on social housing, and that the government will start putting social need, health, safety and well-being first as the key performance indicators of future housing developments. However, under current Conservative government this does not look hopeful. In the 15 months after Grenfell over 6000 high rise properties were inspected and the number found unsafe was 468; the government seem more interested in passing the buck on payment for repairs and upgrades than actually carrying the work out. Important to note that this survey only includes housing blocks over 18 metres high and ignores all other public buildings that have some form of cladding on them such as hospitals and schools. In terms of all housing, in 2015 there were 8.4 million unsafe homes which were said to have a detrimental effect on residents well-being.
The book ends with a series of proposals for improving the housing situation and the ticking bomb on the government's books, both in terms of preservation of life and the repair bill. While each point is expanded on in detail, these proposals are as follows: re-empower residents and restore accountability, reinstate residents rights to legal aid and security of tenure, create a new independent enforcement body, accountable to residents, re-regulate the building and landlord sectors, introduce more “green tape” to regulate building safety, end self regulation and re-empower independent building inspectors, push back the rentiers and reboot public housing, end the ongoing privatvisation of and bring council housing back in house by gradually ending PFI and outsourcing and finally – something very close to my heart - build public housing once again....more
"Fake news" and "main stream media" are epithets that are not really new but have been much more prominent in our collective lexicon over the last cou"Fake news" and "main stream media" are epithets that are not really new but have been much more prominent in our collective lexicon over the last couple of years. They are, as phrases, politically ambivalent until you understand the angle of the person taken to wield them and both, but moreso the former, have been misused greatly. The phrase became famous when Donald Trump used it to describe any and everything that he disagreed with, and his followers gleefully took up the catchphrase whereby it is now the go-to defence of the political right when faced with an inconvenient truth. However, we are now seeing this peculiar axiom being used by a wholly new interlocuter, and that is where the main stream media, or MSM come in.
Newspapers, particularly so-called quality newspapers, current / former broadsheets and such see themselves as papers of record, their integrity unquestionable and their honesty unimpeachable. On examination this high-minded self-promotion holds no water. Nowadays the vast majority of newspaper income comes not from sales but from advertising and affiliation space sold over to huge corporations to reach a wide audience. How can the Guardian’s credentials as a progressive organ on, say, climate change maintain alongside a willingness to hand over daily space to BP or Shell to tell us how wonderful they are. As soon as the Guardian wants to write a piece on the unethical behaviour of the oil industry, naming and shaming corporations involved, they are unable due to the threat of advertising revenue being pulled by those companies.
But something much darker is happening in media circles than underreporting, and it is the targeting of smaller independent minded organisations and journalists by the corporate media, and fake news is the route they are taking to do that at the behest of senior editors and the financial backers of these institutions. In response the fake news epidemic that has plagued large scale national and global campaigns in recent years Google released an update which was supposed to remove untrusted pages from the first set of results a user got back from a basic search; this new algorithm was programmed to promote “trusted” news sources, or to put it another way, mainstream media. A result of this was that progressive independent news organisations reported massive drops in the amount of people clicking on, and so seeing, their stories. World Socialist Web Site and Counterpunch feature award winning progressive journalists from around the world and their traffic dropped by hundreds of thousands as soon as this Google update was brought in; among the websites that remain in the “trusted” bracket are things like The Sun, The Express and the Daily Mail along with the other daily newspapers; their longevity should not signify trustworthiness.
If we look at the social media output of star columnists for the Times, Guardian etc we see that they are littered with slanderous comments aimed at small organisations that haven’t the budget to fight back. Journalists who work for MediaLens, Truthdig or any other progressive organisation are called out time and again by six-figure salaried writers who they dare to question. Doxing and gaslighting has been a part of this as has the denial of people’s qualifications to write in their chosen field, despite photographic evidence to the contrary, and it is with this chapter on the state of corporate media today, the BBC included, that this new book from Cromwell and Edwards of MediaLens shines. Much of it is an update on the previous two books about the latest in a long line of state propagandising on behalf of big business or the military industrial complex; very valuable in itself but what is new is this coordinated assault by the biggest companies in the world against small outfits that seek truth and justice and aren’t beholden to advertising revenue so can’t be bought. The corporate world is jumpy; they see how Momentum pushed Jeremy Corbyn to almost becoming British Prime Minister while the whole artillery of the press was opposed to him to almost no avail. They realised their smears were not sticking as people actually had the ability to find out for themselves what was true and what was not, they have started to be able to tell the fact from the fiction and if people start to do that the whole edifice of corporate / government / media threesome comes crashing down as they all exist to sustain one another, and a threat to one is a threat to all.
MediaLens is one of those vital parts of journalism; it watches the watchers and lets us know what the watchers aren’t telling us. This book is a collection of evidence against the more trusted side of the corporate media that they are just as bad, and at times worse in giving us the full picture. It Is hard to conclude at the end of this book that a rightist ideology has not grabbed our media, top to bottom, in a vice like grip of control; at times overt and at times subtle but always there but at no point does this theory enter conspiracy claims. The point of how our media sustains itself is that a conspiracy doesn’t need to take place; the ideology is already shared between the actors who just play their role as they always would have, but in doing so they advance more than those who don’t play by or understand “the rules”. This is a most valuable volume and critical at a time when our politicians seem to be able to lie with impunity without anyone holding them to account, when big business, quite literally in terms of Grenfell tower for instance, gets away with murder and when our hitherto most trusted news organisations have started drinking from the same well as those they are meant to hold to account. I would urge anyone who wants to understand how the media manipulate their readers and viewers to read this book. ...more
For anyone who doesn't know who the author is it is probably worth explaining he is one of the most listened to voices on commerical radion in the UK.For anyone who doesn't know who the author is it is probably worth explaining he is one of the most listened to voices on commerical radion in the UK. The national braodcaster, formerly London only, LBC features his show daily from 10am to 1pm and is regarded as a progressive outlier on a network whose usual target audience is the Daily Mail reading right wing constituency beloved of so much of talk radio. The format of his show is the traditional phone-in; a peramble or monologue on an issue of the day followed by an hour or two discussing that subject with callers who either agree or diagree with him on a sliding scale; it's very listenable and this book is very readable as it remains loyal to his radio format; the chapters read like a verbal monologue and for good measure some of the “greatest hits” calls are reprinted to give fans a comfortable feeling of fmiliarity; most of these have gone viral and can be found on various social media platforms, should you want to listen to them in all their jaw-dropping glory.
The full title, How To Be Right... In A World Gone Wrong, smacks of an arrogance which O'Brien freely concedes, although throughout he is keen to reference that he has changed his mind on several things such as state intervention in public health awareness and certain aspects of feminism, which he describes as a partially completed personal journey, as it is for most men who see themselves as allies of movements they don't have a racial, sexual or biological link to. The book structure is an introduction followed by chapters under straightforward headings upon which O'Brien gives us his opinion, these are (in order): Islam and Islamism, Brexit, LGBT, Political Correctness, Feminism, Nanny States and Classical Liberals, The Age Gap, and Trump followed by an Epilogue. I have to say I was quite surprised to see the absence of anti-Semitism or the Labour Party from the list of contents, as this is one of his favourite topics on his radio show. I wonder whether the publisher suggested that this might affect sales negatively as the market for this publication is surely a left-of-centre readership.
For a progressive, there is little to disagree with here. Some of the bombast of his phone-in show has been dropped in favour of careful consideration of the subject-matter. Any criticism comes more from what is not said than what is. Everything is written in the now, in a very casual way to make the tone almost conversational; there is very little of the history of each topic, no real dissection of how society got to where it currently resides, and how opinions became so polarised, and increasingly seem to diverge into sensibility and extremism, despite the education materials available at all of our fingertips. O'Brien highlights the pernicious elements of the media, often invoking Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, as the shadow behind our riven society, but surely this is too simplistic and takes no account of subversive elements within a wider information superstructure, currently being unravelled by the likes of Carol Cadwalladr and beforehand Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald. His critique of classical liberalism, or libertarianism which in itself is a confused and misplaced synonym, talks of the growth in selfish “I'm alright Jack” attitudes that pregnate modern rightist politics, but he fails to mention Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet, Friedmann or Hayek. It's like coming in late to a football match and it is 4-2 to one team or the other, a person tells you exactly what is happening now on the pitch, but you want to know how it got to 4-2 in the first place.
The second critique is a lack of solutions. Perhaps it is unfair to expect O'Brien to come up with workable fixes for all of the problems he hits upon. Each chapter finishes with the image of someone with a great deal of sense throwing their hands in the air (like they really do care) and going “but what can we do?”, almost pleading with the reader to give him the directions he needs. This is the curse of the radio phone-in host; they are brilliant at getting conversations started, keeping them going and provoking a perhaps reluctant interlocuter, but they are not very good at ending them and concluding; everything is open ended and able to return to deeper into the show or at a later date and it is this that makes the book feel somewhat incomplete. Listening to James O'Brien it doesn't take long to realise he is an intelligent man and probably has a lot of fresh ideas and solutions to the miriad issues he discusses here, and I feel it is a missed opportunity to not speak to these in this book; although I accept space is always an issue, especially for a first book and perhaps an overzealous publisher advised against making the book any longer, though at 218 pages it's hardly a tome.
For anyone wanting to know more about what James thinks this is clearly an excellent book; it would also appeal to people who want an introductory level publication on some of the issues discussed. Anyone who listens to his show will not be surprised to learn that he is most at home speaking about Brexit; a subject he clearly knows more about than the average Joe and an area I expect he will return to in more detail, in a future book when the debacle this country got itself into is over, one way or another. It is a grim reality that the way things are shaping up, a title of this future work will probably be “I Told You So”. ...more
There have been many histories of the Labour Party; Keith Laybourn, Brian Brivati, Andrew Thorpe and Henry Pelling to name a few. This appears to be tThere have been many histories of the Labour Party; Keith Laybourn, Brian Brivati, Andrew Thorpe and Henry Pelling to name a few. This appears to be the first (or the first for quite some time) to focus on the Labour Party purely from the left wing angle and attempts to set the historic framework for the current leadership which is probably the most progressive in the party’s history, in the context of a post-Thatcherite local and post-Soviet global politics.
It is a fairly short book to focus on such a large period of history, and indeed such large personalities therein, so for those wanting more insight into what drove Ellen Wilkinson or what galvanised Nye Bevan they would be better off reading direct biographies of their targets. This is very broad brush and looks at how the left have consistently been marginalised by party and governmental machinery, how Labour looks outward and more progressive in opposition, but suddenly looks inward and conforms to establishment norms when in power. The lack of depth on certain key moments is my only real criticism of the book, but once the reader is aware of them, they can be researched more thoroughly elsewhere. Also, the author tires quickly of the early history of the party where much of the political philosophies going forward were enshrined; this is clearly the book of a political activist as opposed to historian.
Very few party leaders are praised (with the exception of Clement Attlee, with qualifications), with the right of the party usually in control of the major seats of power, from the leader himself (always a him) to NEC members and trade union general secretaries; only recently have trade unions had leaders moved somewhat to the left of their general membership with notable past exceptions, and have often been in conflict with the left of the Labour Party due to naked self-interest at times, and at others a narrow but well intentioned view on what is best for their members in the short term – this latter point is nothing new, Len McCluskey may be a died in the wool socialist but UNITE represent members working in the nuclear industry and will block any moves to abolish Trident. The book maintains a quick pace throughout and Hannah seems in his element when speaking of the splits in the 1970s and 80s. He breaks some sacred myths here about the IMF loan, Militant Tendency and the so-called “longest suicide note in history”; all these things have become millstones tied to the neck of the Labour left, unfairly in Hannah’s view and he explains why with great clarity and shows up the timidity of the late 80s / early 90s Labour leadership with passion, reserving full scorn for those in the party who refused to back the miners, dockers and printworkers in their various strike actions, which we know now (and some knew at the time) was part of a larger assault on workers’ rights under Thatcher and Major.
Moving forward, he details how left wing members of the party were deselected or not put forward for potential seats under John Smith briefly and Tony Blair more permanently. Here we see the centralisation of the party machine under Blair and his policy unit. How Party Conference was subdued and deliberately undermined to keep power within the grasp of the leadership and his cabal.
We finish of course chronologically with the defeat of 2015, with some sympathy for Ed Miliband who should have been given far more freedom to be himself, and the movement that gathered behind Jeremy Corbyn who was entered on to the leadership election ticket as a sop to the left but quickly grabbed the attention with his unfailingly human and compassionate responses to questions in debates.
Obviously this book is partial, as all political books are and indeed all histories of the Labour Party. Hannah clearly is a Corbyn supporter along with a huge number of other people and has become party of the army of dedicated activists pushing for a Labour government with a socialist face. However, despite his (twice made) democratic mandate there is a warning here that the right of the party are ideologically opposed to the politics of Jeremy Corbyn and the vast majority of members, they will come again in another coup attempt before long and those of us wanting to continue this project must be ready.
It is a vital read for anyone engaging with politics for the first time, particularly in Momentum or other Corbyn supporting movements to see how we got here, and to show them that they have the fight of their lives on their hand if they want to see a democratically elected socialist leader in this country. ...more
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