Shoot Johann Hari

From Johann Hari's evening standard piece, September 2 2006

2006-11-03T15:27:00.000Z

i'm just upset it's taken me 2 months to learn of it - although i tend not to make a habit of reading the reactionary shite coming out of hari

I get my fair share of deaththreats - there is even a charming website called Shoot Johann Hari

Labour MP's who have threatened to have me arrested: Number 3: Ivor Caplin

2006-10-02T15:20:00.000Z

Well in fact it was the entire group of us he threatened to have arrested, or removed. We (Sussex action for Peace - Brighton's Stop the War group) were protesting outside the surgery of everyone's favourite junior defence minister in early 2005 when he sent out one of his staff (her name escapes me) to warn us that we were being too noisy and that anyone who wasn't a constituent with an appointment should leave.

Incidentally, following this protest, which was fairly visible, within a couple of days Caplin had announced he wouldn't be standing in the next election, a slightly odd move for a junior minister, and of course nothing to do with our protests.

buried treasure

2006-06-29T14:03:00.000Z

This is wonderful. Apparently Cadbury's is going to remove the wrappers from and bury 250 tons of chocolate. It's not often that you read something even vaguely worthwhile in the Daily Mail, but apparently they are refusing to disclose where they are burying it in case children try to find it.

Rotten spoilsports! I'd also like to find that chocolate, equivalent apparently to 55 male elephants (which would be a slightly less mouth-watering prospect), and hope that this country now embarks upon the largest treasure hunt ever seen.

Sickening - Bush attempts to co-opt the Hungarian Revolution

2006-06-22T17:43:00.000Z

This made me particularly angry. It's the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, an event that should be commemorated by workers the world over as the first occassion on which there was a real movement towards something better than the state capitalist USSR. Indeed, on October 23rd of this year, there will doubtless be many events organised by socialists to mark this anniversary. But in the meantime, we would be best advised to challenge Bush's vile claims that 'We have learned from your example and we resolve that when people stand up for their freedom America will stand with them.'

What was America actually doing in 1956? It is true that President Eisenhower said 'I feel with the Hungarian people'. Secretary of State J F Dulles promised 'To all those suffering under communist slavery, let us say you can count on us', suggesting that the US would aid those involved in the uprising. But was any aid forthcoming? No, America stood back and watched as Kruschev's tanks crushed the revolution. The result - 33 more years of occupation, with no chinks even allowed to appear in Russia's armour until Solidarnosc.

What was America doing in 1956? It is true that it played a role in ending the Suez crisis, although that was more a case of it defending its imperialism over those of Britain, Israel and France. At the same time, it was blocking Vietnam's national elections, agreed in the Geneva Peace Accords of 1954, which would have reunified the country. What was the US doing? It was building and aiding counter-revolutionary forces in Vietnam, knowing that the Vietnamese Communist Party would be the dominant political force in a unified Vietnam. Within a year, the American-backed Government of the Republic of Vietnam was rounding up and jailing revolutionaries in South Vietnam.

So we can see America's commitment to 'people standing up for their freedom' and 'fighting for democracy'. Then, as now, the imperialists dominated, and that is why anyone who remembers Hungary, October 1956, should be disgusted by Bush's visit to mark it - more than anything else he is dancing on the graves of those who were killed following the uprising.

mmm... I can feel 3 kinds of softness

2006-06-13T12:33:00.000Z

It's Craig Murray in a muumuu!! No fat guy hat though.

Congratulations Ken Loach (and a shameless plug)

2006-06-05T17:50:00.000Z

Slightly belated I know, but it is fantastic that Ken Loach has been recognised for his superb contribution to political cinema in being awarded the Palme d'Or Prize at Cannes for his new film 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley'.

The film is set around the events leading up to the Irish Civil War. I cannot comment on the film itself - it has not yet been released, but if you can jusge it by its enemies, then Harry MacAdam wrote in the Sun that it is 'A brutally anti-British film... designed to drag the reputation of our nation through the mud. It portrays British soldiers as trigger happy mercenaries hooked on torture, burning cottages for kicks, and using pliers to rip out the toenails of innocent Irish victims.'

Rightly, comparisons have been drawn between the subject matter of the new film, and events in present day Iraq, from where we receive almost daily reports of new evidence of massacres and cover-ups by occupying forces. Living at this time, any film that sheds light on the realities of life under occupation should be welcomed. This has cut both ways, with loyalists and warmongers infuriated by the new film, the Daily Mail's Ruth Dudley Edwards writing of Loach that 'His purpose is to encourage direct comparisons between the Ireland of 1920 and present day Iraq. This requires the portrayal of the British as sadists and the Irish as romantic, idealistic resistance fighters. It is no surprise that Loach supports George Galloway’s Respect party.' Loach has welcomed the comparisons, remarking upon accepting the award that 'Maybe if we start telling the truth about the past, we can start telling the truth about the present.'

This is the second time Ken Loach has been awarded at Cannes. He previously won the jury prize for his film 'Hidden Agenda' about the shoot-to-kill policy employed by the British in Northern Ireland (another topic that remains deeply relevant in light of tactics currently employed by the British state).

Ken will be speaking at the Marxism 2006 event in London next month where he will be introducing another of his masterpieces, 'Land and Freedom', an account of the Spanish Civil War that, like Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia', also makes a mockery of the lies that the tankies were putting out in the Daily Worker at the time. Other speakers at Marxism 2006 include Gillo Pontecorvo (director of the Battle of Algiers), George Galloway, Bernadete Devlin, Ragged Trousered Pessimist, Tariq Ali, Roland Denis (a former minister in the Chavez government) and Tony Benn. A full timetable and tickets are available by following the link above.

Why Not Try... with Lee and Herring. Some things you might like to try to fill up the empty hours between your birth and your inevitable death

2006-05-31T16:49:00.000Z

Why not try exhuming the dead?

Why not try soup?

Why not try onanism?

Why not try swimming on the land?

Why not try standing at an unusual angle?

Why not try having sex with a world leader and then attempting to topple him with revelations about your relationship?

Why not try standing in the middle of a roundabout swearing at the cars as they pass?

Why not try working for the Daily Star, interviewing people and then just changing everything they said, to make them sound like idiots?

Why not try surrounding your house with POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS tape and watching through the curtains while your neighbours look uneasy and distressed?

Why not try beating around the bush and other low level vegetatian?

Why not try eating rye bread in a wry fashion?

Why not try making up your own swear words like twart, marber and bed bucket?

Why not try ringing directory enquiries and asking for the number of directory enquiries?

Why not try answering the questions in the Guardian’s Notes and Queries section with deliberately wrong answers?

Why not try setting fire to some fire?

Why not try spitting on the grave of Enoch Powell?

Why not try watching Pugwall's Summer every time it's on, even though there are never any new ones?

Why not try selling salt as smelling salt and telling anyone who complains that their nose must be malfunctioning?

Why not try spitting pips into a bin?

Why not try spitting bins into a pip?

Why not try stealing your things from work?

Why not try doing a stand-up comedy routine about stealing things from work?

Why not try doing a stand-up routine about stealing things from work that is itself stolen from the King Missile Song about stealing stuff from work?

Why not try sitting on the fence, literally?

Why not try standing near the fence, and then think about hopping up to sit on it, but then deciding you might scuff your trousers?

Why not try sucking on a Jolly Rancher?

Why not try wearing glasses and smoking a pipe and hoping that the blokes in the pub will nick-name you "The Professor"?

Why not try standing in the street all day holding a sign saying "Golf Sale, This Way"?

Why not try eating one of those yellow detergent cakes out of a pub urinal?

Why not try going back in time to 1912 and shouting "You're all going to die!" at people boarding the Titanic?

Why not try licking a cat's teat?

Why not try teating a cat's lick?

Why not try smashing the system from within and then running out of it just as it collapses killing everyone inside?

Labour MP's who have threatened to have me arrested: Number 2 - Celia Barlow

2006-05-31T16:09:00.000Z

I encountered Celia Barlow, scary looking MP for Hove and self-styled angriest woman alive on the weekend prior to the 2005 General Election, while campaigning for Respect in the constituency. A replacement for Ivor Caplin, a defence minister who was forced to step down from being Hove MP after a large stop the war campaign (See Labour MP's who have threatened to have me arrested: Number 3 - Ivor Caplin), she had been very coy about her own position on the war. However she had stated to a local newspaper that she supported the occupation in claiming: 'Real progress has been made in Iraq and many ordinary people there rely on us for security and assistance so let us support the Iraqi people and our troops'.

Seeing her further up the same street where we were campaigning, it seemed only proper to challenge her over the megaphone to defend her position which to us left her with blood on her hands. She didn't seem too pleased with this move, charging up to the stall and shouting 'That is an utter lie! I could have you arrested for that!'

Quite why she thought her position on the war was any kind of secret, having stated it in the local paper is unclear. Since then she has gone on to get involved with the repulsively pro-war 'Labour Frinds of Iraq'. What is certain is that many people out shopping that day ould have been put off voting for her.

(I am aware that this series seems to revolve around me and some sort of loudspeaker sytem. This will change, I promise).

Shoot Hari - Bomb Blair

2006-05-28T16:40:00.000Z

This week, in an interview with GQ, George Galloway was asked if a suicide bomb attack on Blair in revenge for the 150,000 Iraqis killed in Bush and Blair's war would be justified. He replied, in a similar way to Cherie Blair commenting in 2002 on the motivations of Palestinians resisting occupation, that it would be "morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did" (he did also add that we wouldn't support such an attack and would like to see the PM in front of a warcrimes tribunal in the Hague).

Various things have happened since then. Warmongers the length and breadth of the country have reacted in disgust and in doing so have shown their own racism (they have made it abundantly clear that they value Blair's life far higher than those of 150,000 Iraqi civilians). A huge number of people have responded to the BBC report on the subject by stating that they agree with Galloway. And the media and Labour MP's have continued to attempt to misrepresent his comments, claiming that he's calling for Blair to be bombed.

I have only 2 comments. First, would anyone honestly be remotely upset if Blair got blown up (I would feel like having a party myself?). But secondly, suicide bombing is not the way to go, as some other poor sod has to give their life in the process. Surely a car-bomb or other remote device would be better?

Socialist Worker could also then use the long held-over headline 'GOTCHA!'

The Yellow Independent

2006-05-16T16:06:00.000Z

Few things make me angrier than this. There is nothing remotely 'red' about Bono's pretence that, if we all buy his new mobile phone or use his credit card, it will solve Africa's AIDS epidemic. From every angle, this is an insult, both to the population of Africa, and to ordinary workers in this country. It embodies everything that is worst about neo-liberalism. You want to help the poor? Spend more money on your AMEX card, make more calls on your mobile phone. For every £95 that the capitalists squeeze out of you, a generous £5 will trickle down to the third world. The fact that it is probably the same people in the third world who have made the products you're buying in near slave-labour conditions, the fact that when they develop AIDS they will be sacked and left to die, that shouldn't even enter the equation.

Any rational approach to the problems of poverty and AIDS should start by looking at what brings them about. A system that deliberately underdevelops huge parts of the world. Corporations driven by a need to accumulate that sees them employ children in sweatshops (such as GAP and Nike, partners in Bono's RED project). Pharmaceutical companies refusing to supply AIDS drugs to people who need them as it is unprofitable. A Catholic Church that uses its influence to prevent the use of contraception in the third world. An American administration that spends far more on war in a year than we would need to wipe out African poverty. But of course, capitalism is not rational.

Now look again at that image of Bono. What is he actually saying? He's effectively holding a gun to the head of an African child and ordering you to spend, spend, spend, or the baby gets it. That's when it strikes you, this is the most sickening thing you've seen from a pop star since this:

Update: Lenin's post on this is far better than mine

Shoot Harry

2006-05-16T15:21:00.000Z

It had to happen really, the islamaphobic scum of the awl have arrived on here.

They are a bit confused though, thinking that I and dan, who comments on here, are one and the same. Still, from a organisation that thinks it's big and clever to publish racist cartoons (note only they and the BNP did so in this country) i hardly expected intelligence.

It also gives me the chance to create a 'what they say' section.

The first in a new occassional series... Labour MP's who have threatened to have me arrested: Number 1 - Tony McNulty

2006-04-18T17:26:00.000Z

Tony McNulty is the Home Office Immigration Minister and MP for Harrow East. This means that he is the minister currently responsible for the government's racist laws that target immigrants and asylum seekers. Recently, his proposals include threatening to withhold the wages of low skilled migrant workers and kidnapping the children of failed asylum seekers (the dreaded section 9, now put on hold owing to large-scale campaigning by refugee groups). He is the man charged with deporting failed asylum seekers, including to countries such as Iraq and Zimbabwe.

I met Tony McNulty on the afternoon of the Brent East bye-election in September 2003. He was with Labour candidate Robert Evans, who was being interviewed by ITN outside a primary school in the constituency, and did not seem very happy when we pulled up in our Socialist Alliance Campaign car and repeatedly attempted to conduct our own interview over our tannoy, asking him where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were (at that time the government was still insisting they existed).

McNulty's exact words to me have been lost over time, but are something along the lines of "We're doing an interview, you'd better move... I've called the police, you're going to get arrested".

He didn't seem very pleased when, half an hour later, we were still disrupting the interview and there was no old bill in sight.

Labour lost that election to the Liberals that night - a seat they had held for decades. It was their first major defeat following the Iraq war. In 2 and a half weeks we can look forward to many more defeats for them, this time at the hands of Respect, and the end of Blair.

Woo!

2006-04-10T13:56:00.000Z

This morning, France President Jacques Chirac announced that the disgraceful CPE law is to be scrapped.

This follows several weeks of protests, student occupations, and 2 1-day genral strikes.

This represents a massive climb-down by the French goverment, which signed the CPE into law 8 days ago, earlier than expected.

This is a huge victory for students and workers in France, and shows the way forces can be mobilised to fight back against neo-liberal measures. At the same time, however, the neo-liberal beast has by no means been slayed, and we can expect that in the coming weeks and months there will be an attempt to reintroduce this legislation in some other (possibly watered-down) form. Nonetheless, it is without doubt a huge ideological defeat for De Villepin (he who claimed Black and Arab youths don't deserve good working conditions), and shows the workers in this country currently taking action over pensions that victory is possible.

The key thing missing from this in France now is for the forces that have come together to fight over this to have some form of political expression. The main revolutionary force, the LCR, has a substantial student base, but little influence in the unions, which are still influenced by the communist party.

This problem with the lack of building a serious party to challenge the socialist party, is based also to an extent on the failure of the French left to build an anti-war movement, to campaign against the ban on the hijab, or to intervene in any meaningful way during last November's riots. Were the political combined with the economic, we may be further still advanced in France.

Today may soon become even better with news expected that Berlusconi has been booted out of office in Italy.

Pause for Thought for the Day

2006-03-21T17:21:00.000Z

I said unto a fool "If you sow wheat, what shall you reap?" and the fool replied, "wheat".

I said unto the fool "And if you sow barley, what shall you reap?" and the fool replied, "barley".

And I said unto the fool "And if you sow hatred, you shall reap hatred, yes?"

But the fool replied "No. Because in your example wheat and barley were plant seeds and therefore follow the natural laws of physics, whereas hatred is a metaphysical
concept and therefore not subject to the same physical laws as wheat and barley."

And I said unto him "No fool, you are wrong!" and he saw, and his heart leapt.

And thus the fool left.

I'm Flabbergasted

2006-03-21T16:58:00.000Z

And thought I may even have to consider changing the name of this blog.

Then I read this, saw Hari lining up with Nick Cohen and the far right, and remembered just why Chomsky described him as 'a Stalinist who is beneath contempt', Busted described him as 'a cunt' (though I reject the sexist language), and the Dalai Lama called him 'fat'.

He is only deserting the pro-war camp in the way rats desert a sinking ship. He remains, however, a disgusting anti-muslim racist. The name of the blog stays.

Continuing on the theme started by Roobin

2006-03-14T23:51:00.001Z

Here are Lee and Herring's suggestions for TV shows:

Foxwatch, with Dr Fox. In which Dr Fox hides a secret camera in the toilet of small American actor Michael J Fox, and watches him go about his daily ablutions.

Paxman's Pacman. Jeremy Paxman of Newsnight goes round the country on a moped playing early arcade game Pacman. He is not allowed to leave any town until he has clocked the high score for that machine.

Van Outen's Van Outings. Denise Van Outen goes out in a van, meets other people with van in their name, and outs them as homosexuals whether they are or not. Possible targets might be Eddie van Halen, Laurence van der post and fictional character, Van der Valk.

Dimbleby's Dim Bumble bees- David Dimbleby presents Candid camera for bees, where the foolish insects are shown making mistakes like trying to collect pollen from artificial flowers.

Midge Ure's Midge Urine. In which Midge Ure travels around the country on a motorcycle looking at the urine of different species of midges.

Lemmy and Leeming's Lemmings, in which Jan Leeming and Lemmy from Motorhead tame wild Lemmings. And for people not interested in Lemmings there's a weird will they/won't they sexual chemistry.

Craven's Cravings. Newsround's John Craven talks each week about some of the things he has cravings for. Food, drink, air. But mainly knitware.

Johnny Ball's Balls .. that's a specialist show for after the 9pm watershed.

And Zoe Ball's Balls, which is similar to Johnny Ball's Balls but involving expensive prosthetic make-up.

Woodward's Wood Wad. Louise Woodward, the clumsy nanny, is given a wad of money made from wood, which she has to try and spend before her parents can steal it off her.

Seaman's Semen - David Seaman goes around the country on a moped meeting different sailors who then show him a sample of their gametes.

Mel and Su's Melon Zoo- Mel and Su from Late Lunch appear in a fly on the wall documentary about a zoo they run where all the cages are full of melon.

Def Leppard's Deaf Leopards. Def Leppard present a sensitive documentary series focusing on spotted big cats with hearing difficulties.

Milosevic's Miles of Vick- Slobodan Milosevic takes a trek down a 100 mile trail of vick's vapour rub that he himself has laid down between Birmingham and Liverpool.

Buying a revolution

2006-03-14T20:49:00.000Z

As it's officially Fairtrade Fortnight, and as 'compassionate consumerism' is a particular hate of mine, I figured this was a good time to add my thoughts.

The last few years has seen, as well as a fantastic upsurge in genuine anti-capitalist protests, the growth of a vast industry that tries to sell the public peace of mind by offering them fairtrade coffee, non-sweatshop trainers and dolphin-friendly tuna. Indeed, in a previous incarnation I was employed by the Vegan Society , where my daily life tended to consist of receiving phone calls, emails and letters from people who considered themselves to be utterly holier than thou simply because they refrained from eating animal products.

I also lived in Brighton, home to this country's green and anarchist movements. Sharing a city with this motley crew of wankers, who would stare down their noses at you if you so much as drank a bottle of coke, who regard socialists as worse than nazis, is enough to make anyone sick.

Before anyone starts by the way, I am well aware of the crimes of Coca-Cola, who are guilty of assasinating trade unionists in Colombia, of using and polluting Indian water reserves, and all the rest of it. However, an economic boycott, as many people propose, while making consumers feel all warm inside, will do nothing to improve the working conditions of people affected by this.

The same is true of fair trade. All that will happen by consumers paying more (those who can afford to pay more, in fact the majority cannot as we are expoited and kept poor by the very same system that keeps most coffee growers in poverty) is that a few members of the boss class in the third world will be that little bit richer, and those buying fair trade will somehow feel that they're changing the world, and that, if only everyone would do the same, poverty, famine and war would somehow come to an end.

This is, of course, horseshit. As Kevin Ovenden wrote in Socialist Worker 7 years ago:

There is no such thing as fair trade under capitalism. Every capitalist enterprise is forced to compete to survive. Each must try to undercut their competitors. This process always involves unfair means. Large companies can temporarily sell their products at a loss to drive out smaller rivals. Multinationals can blackmail small distributors into stocking only their products (a speciality of Coca-Cola down the years).

This is the reality. If fair trade really were fair, then those workers growing the coffee and the cotton, those making trainers and those bottling coke would receive the value of their labour. This doesn't happen. In contrast, the owner of a coffee plantation will get more money (an artificially set 'fair price') and the bosses of the company marketing their products as 'fair trade' receive the same level of profit as before. As fair trade becomes more fashionable for consumers, so big business gets in on the act. Nestle's 26% profit margin on its instant coffee is unhindered.

To understand this, consider the following premise - fairtrade coffee should cost no more than normal coffee. In other words, if the money were going to the workers rather than the shareholders, it would cost no more, but the wealth would be distributed fairly. Of course, under capitalismm, this cannot happen. Such is the power of the multinationals that if such a system of trading were established, they would lower their prices to aggressively destroy the competition. Having safely destroyed it, their prices would return to their usual high level, with workers' conditions attacked as is an essential part of the system.

There is a past lesson for this, the co-operative movement (rather than socialism in one state, socialism in one factory). Established by philanthropists and workers, with the best of intentions, it was of course, undercut and destroyed. It had to be, it was a threat to the system. Any semblance of workers' control, of democratically organised workplaces, is an attack on a system where the drive is to accumulate.

This brings me on to Make Poverty History, which of course is now history. Firstly, of course the left was right to engage with this campaign. It pulled together a mass movement of hundreds of thousands, and was a space within which we could discuss genuine alternatives to a system that deliberately leaves billions in poverty. At the same time, the way the campaign was co-opted by the likes of Oxfam and Gordon Brown was truly horrific.

Two weeks ago, I attended a meeting organised by WDM (one of the better radical NGO's) on the topic of 'Which way Forward After MPH'. Having drinks with their membership aferwards, I was delighted to find myself arguing with them over the merits of fair trade. While they were pushing it as a major way of changing the world, myself and their invited speaker (Kofi Klu, quite a decent black nationalist) were explaining its shortcomings and the fact that it is only through workers organisation on a wider level that change can come.

This is where autonomists and other fellow travellers fall down. It suits their mindsets not to question that the same system they feel they are attacking has co-opted them. This is an ideological battle that has to be taken up. The idea that you can buy your way past the system is an utter contradiction.

However, these campaigns are not without merit. MPH, and student campaigns like boycott coke can be the start of a radicalising process. Trade Unions and Students Unions should be encouraged to take part. At the same time, people must be quickly encouraged to start developing ideas further. It is notable, for example, that forces such as the zionist AWL have co-opted the boycott coke campaign, using it for their own ends.

And as for my old employers, the Vegan Society, it is still the healthiest diet. However, many of their members are obnoxious arseholes, who have disappeared so far into single-issues as to be utterly inneffective, and in fact form a block on the movement. The animal rights tossers are a huge drain on good activists and as socialists we should fight to break people from those ideas, which lead to turning against other workers rather than the system.

And as for those who think I am scum for drinking coke, you just make me more likely to go to Starbucks more often. And Starbucks Coffee is nice. Come the revolution, we can all drink coffee produced by workers paid a genuinely fair rate for their labour. In the meantime, there are no good capitalists and bad capitalists, only capitalists. And the sooner activists get their heads round that and concentrate on important issues, which currently means challenging imperialism and joining over 100,000 demonstrators in London this Saturday, the better.

Dead Anarchists Galore

2006-03-03T16:48:00.000Z

85 years ago this week saw the start of the Kronstadt rebellion. For the past 85 years, anarchists the world over have whinged non-stop about the putting down of this uprising. Only last summer I was on the G8 alternatives campsite in Edinburgh, when anarchists scrawled 'remember Kronstadt' on the inside of the marquee owned by the local council.

(As an aside - they then moved on to their 'eco-camp' in Stirling. Eco-camp in this case is a euphamism - it means they were able to shit in a tree. Hilariously, large numbers of them were soon suffering from dysentery as a result of this.)

Leon Trotsky was getting exceedingly tired of this by 1938. In his outstanding Hue and Cry over Kronstadt he wrote:

One would think that the Kronstadt revolt occurred not seventeen years ago, but only yesterday. Participating in the campaign with equal zeal and under one and the same slogan are Anarchists, Russian Mensheviks, left Social Democrats of the London Bureau, individual blunderers, Miliukov’s paper, and, on occasion, the big capitalist press. A ”People’s Front“ of its own kind!

So what had actually gone on that left this motley crew of counter-revolutionaries so wound up? Why did they focus on this particular event, rather than any of the other occasions when Lenin and Trotsky clashed with peasants, or even with sections of workers? The main antagonism was between peasants, who produced the bread, and workers, who consumed it. 3 years following the October revolution, resources were scarce. this led in places to fighting amongst workers, some of whom had stronger ties with the peasantry than others. This also affected the Red Army, with the effect that some regiments had to be disarmed.

How did this arise? By 1921 the Bolsheviks had successfully defended the revolution against 14 invading imperialist armies, and against the counter-revolutionary White Army. The civil war was over, but at great cost with industrial production reduced to one fifth of its pre-war level coal mining was at one tenth and iron production at one fortieth of pre-war averages. The collapse of industry and the decimation by war of the working class had plunged the towns into crisis. Unemployed workers returned to their families in the countryside. This meant the workers councils and Soviets could not function.

This explains the bread shortage - bread being necessary for the workers if they were to advance, and explains the tensions highlighted above. The peasants, who were granted their land by agreement with the Bolsheviks at the time of the revolution, were fighting for the right to sell their produce on the private market. The response of the Bolsheviks was War Communism - including most importantly the forced requisitioning of grain from the peasants. With the civil war over, peasants were no longer joining the Red Army and the Bolshevik Party that had defended the revolution. Armed peasants began to confront the Bolsheviks - these rebellions were swiftly put down. At the same time though, concessions were made to the peasantry, increasing the hardship of workers. By January 1921, the bread ration for Moscow and Petrograd was reduced by a third. Heavy snow and fuel shortages meant that in the first week and a half of February, no grain reached Moscow. This shortage led the workers to strike for bread.

Lenin wrote at this time of the conditions necessary for socialism to emerge victorious in Russia:

Here industrial workers are in a minority, and the petty farmers are the vast majority. In such a country, the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries... The second condition is agreement between the proletariat, which is exercising its dictatorship, that is, holds state power, and the majority of the peasant population.

These conditions were not in place. The decisive fights for international socialism were not confined to Russia, but were taking place in Germany, where the revolution had not yet been defeated. The Bolsheviks were forced to concentrate on a peace treaty with Poland, and a trading agreement with Britain, in order to retain power long enough to inspire workers' struggle and revolution elsewhere.

This is the backdrop to Kronstadt. However, it is a lie when it is claimed the sailors who rebelled at Kronstadt were those who were key to defending the October Revolution. The majority of these, who had been conscipted largely from Petrograd, were killed and wounded, and what was in place in March 1921 was a large number of peasant conscripts, led in the uprising by Petrichenko, himself a Ukrainian peasant.

The effect of this was, unsurprisingly, a lack of consciousness. Peasants were quitting the party, membership in Kronstadt having halved within 6 months. This manifested itself as anti-semitism, the peasants singling out Trotsky and Zinoviev for attack. Vershinin, of the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee, announced:

Enough of your "hoorahs", and join with us to beat the Jews. It's their
cursed domination that we workers and peasants have to endure.

The backwardness was also manifested in the calls from the sailors for greater freedoms. But not only were they against the requisitioning of grain, they were also calling for the abolition of Bolshevik authority in the army, factories and mills. The sailors assumed that their anti-Bolshevik sentiment would be shared by the striking workers. In reality, the bread strikes were coming to an end, and the Petrograd workers were in support of the Bolsheviks.

A mass meeting of sailors and soldiers in Kronstadt on March 1 put into power an unelected Provisional Revolutionary Committee. In effect, the sailors of Kronstadt declared war on the Bolshevik state. More recently, a Memorandum on the Question of Organising an Uprising in Kronstadt, from January 1921, has surfaced in the Columbia University Russian Archive. It details plans of White Army and French government support for the Kronstadt sailors, with the express purpose of undermining the Bolsheviks:

A breakdown in morale would be inevitable if the insurgent sailors were not to receive assurances of sympathy and support from the outside, in particular from the Russian Army commanded by General Wrangel. Further, the rising was seen as 'a very rare opportunity-an opportunity that probably will not be repeated-to seize Kronstadt and inflict upon Bolshevism the heaviest of blows, from which it may not recover.

This shows that is wasn't only the Bolsheviks who saw Kronstadt as endangering the revolution. Ruling classes across the world saw this as a key fight. This is the context in which Lenin and Trotsky were forced to put down the uprising. Strategically, this had to be done quickly, as the Gulf of Finland, where Kronstadt lies, would only be frozen for 2 more weeks.

The first attacks on Kronstadt by the Red Army ended in failure, however a regroupment including 320 delegates from the Bolshevik Tenth Party Congress succesfully broke through. 8,000 rebels fled to Finland, where a number of them revealed their close ties with the White Army.

It is key to note that there was not some anti-anarchist sentiment running through the Bolshevik Party. By contrast, the likes of Victor Serge were accepted into its ranks. Serge criticized the anarchists for being unable to offer anything other than criticism and opposition to the regime, and it was this counter-revolutionary nature that meant a number of them had to be repressed during the civil war. Had the uprising been successful, it is not the peasants whoi would have taken power, rather, far more reactionary forces would have filled the gap. Indeed, during the Spanish Revolution we were able to see first-hand the shortcomings of this anarchist opposition to all regimes and governments, in the failure of the CNT to take power. Those members of the CNT who argued for the need to take power were expelled.

This shows why the putting down of the Kronstadt rebellion was important. It is also something that brings a smile to my face whenever I am confronted with shitty anarchistic arguments within united fronts. Although for Trotsky it was a tragic necessity, to me it is a reminder of the counter-revolutionary nature of many strands of anarchism and autonomism, and why they must be smashed. And that's why, when I see grafitti saying 'Remember Kronstadt', I smile to myself and think 'yeah, it was bloody fantastic!'

Mr Blair, you sent my son to die in a war based on lies

2006-03-02T22:08:00.000Z

This letter from Pauline Hickey, mother of Sgt Christian Ian Hickey of the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards, the 97th British soldier killed in Iraq, to our lying bastard of a Prime Minister, says everything we could need to know about the brutality of the Iraq war. The fact that the army is not even supplied with Land Rovers, while Cherie Blair gets to drive an armoured car, says it all about the value the government places on the lives of its servicemen.

That brings the total of British troops willed in Iraq to 103, and it's no accident that 102 and 103 were killed on Tuesday of this week in Al Amarah, the same town from which two weeks ago we saw footage of British troops beating Iraqi teenagers.

Pauline Hickey's request to meet with Blair is likely to go unfulfilled. Not only is he so cowardly that he has refused to meet with Rose Gentle for the past 3 years, but she was even refused entry to the Labour Party Spring conference last year.

The growth of Military Families Against the War
is a very important development. The more soldiers have the confidence to say no to fighting in Iraq, the sooner our leaders will be forced to end this war. When we remember Vietnam, it was ended by the resistance of the Vietcong, the anti-war movement at home, but also by soldiers refusing to fight en masse, and in fact killing their generals rather than go out and massacre civilians. In this country, army recruitment has fallen through the floor. A similar process is beginning in America, due in no small part to the actions of Cindy Sheehan.

This is why we need a huge demonstration on March 18. Coinciding with demonstrations across the world, including in Basra and Baghdad, this will ensure Iraq remains the key political issue. It will force Blair further on to the back foot, make it far harder for an attack to be lauched on Iran, and forms the backdrop for mass public sector strikes on March 28, and for Respect's council election campaign.

A racist in sheep's clothing

2006-02-27T17:51:00.000Z

He's done it again. Not content with informing us that we're sleepwalking towards segregation, which was news to the Muslim community across the country, CRE chairman Trevor Phillips has now pronounced that Muslims must 'accept free speech' and declared that Muslims who feel they have a right not to be attacked 'should leave and live somewhere else'. In other words, if Johnny Foreigner won't accept being treated as a second class citizen, he can bugger off back where he came from.

The CRE, in which it seems some groups are considerably more equal than others, has made a move towards emloying openly racist language. Phillips' claim that 'that we have an attachment to democracy, that we sort things out by voting not by violence and intimidation' will be news to those Muslims who have seen their countries invaded and occupied by British and American forces, and to anyone who is now guilty of glorifying terrorism simply by expressing their support for the democratically elected government of Palestine.

Having said that, this is hardly new territory for Phillips. On previous occassions he has opposed councils printing documents in more than one language, and has opposed respecting religious holidays for minority groups. The CRE has systematically spouted Islamophobia whilst never actually allowing Muslims to take part in its debates. This would be bad enough coming from the Labour government, but coming as it does from a public body, funded by taxation, it is plain sickening.