Hodge on Housing / Damp Squibs / High Rise Hysteria / Recommended Blogs / Website
Hodge on Housing
A government minister, Margaret Hodge MP, has broken with political convention and come out in support of a policy that cannot be disguised as being anything other than discriminatory against non-Brits.
She's said that British people should get priority over immigrants for council housing. She wants the allocation system - which works through using a points system - to give weight to length of residence, citizenship and payment of National Insurance contributions. At present, council housing is allocated on a points system that is geared towards prioritising those in most need through awarding priority to those in bad health, currently living in poor conditions, overcrowded, etc.
Revealing his usually ill disguised ‘liberalism’, President of the Liberal Democrats, Simon Hughes MP, appears to be endorsing Hodge’s approach by saying that housing allocation was among the biggest causes of racism - "The worst cause of racial strife and antagonism is when new property is built, social property, and then people who appear to have no link with the community move into it, when other people who may be desperately needing to move, can't get a move." Hughes has a long history of bending to reactionary attitudes displayed by some of his constituents.
This is also one initiative where the ‘new’ Tories aren’t going to make much effort to maintain their recent ‘cuddly’ veneer. They’ve jumped in and said that they've been saying all along that the problems of immigration needs to be seriously addressed by measures such as this.
Margaret Hodge, who as the BBC points out was born in Egypt, said rules should "promote tolerance rather than inviting division". But there’s little that can be imagined to ‘invite division’ such as giving the 'native' population - usually white, but not always so - priority for public housing over those residents with greater need.
It’s no accident that Hodge is the MP for one of the last remaining (until recently) near all-white and poor areas in London. Barking has also seen more electoral support for the BNP than anywhere else in the country. The policy she proposes could have been written by that party.
I think it may be significant that it would be hard for anyone, with a straight face, to argue that her proposals are anything other than open discrimination. All the major parties, for the last thirty or forty years, have always swore blind that they are opposed to all forms of discrimination and will argue, sometimes in the face of all evidence, that they don’t support bigotry.
Once these politicians don’t feel the need to ‘cover’ themselves anymore, what other festering policies might they pull out of their party wheelie bins? It'll be interesting to see whether this may be a harbinger of new ‘common-sense’ policies that will no longer feel the need to be in line with the ‘equalities’ consensus.
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Damp Squibs
I saw a programme about the different approaches to fighting forest fires in the extensive woodlands of the western USA and in the endless tree cover of Siberia.
In the States, the fire-fighters were fully resourced and sent out with all the latest kit. They travelled to the fires in helicopters, in All Terrain Vehicles and by light plane. They were in constant touch with base and worked in teams to tackle the blaze.
The Russians were unceremoniously parachuted out of passing plane with nothing but a few tools - an axe, a saw, etc - to fight the fire. They needed to improvise. They set to work hacking down trees to make firebreaks. They weren’t in touch with their base and no back up was available.
It strikes me that the task of Lefts is not dissimilar to these firefighters, but with a twist - we want to help spread these blazes that have already broken out or even do a bit of arson.
Lefts in this country have never been organised like those American firefighters. We’re also in somewhat a worse position than those Russians tackling blazes in the far easterly Tundra. It's like we’re stuck in Moscow trying to cadge the fare to get on the Trans Siberian Express to work.
We have next to no equipment or little experience in teamwork but we clearly aren’t very good at the improvisation either - it may be obvious that if you deny a forest fire of trees to burn, it will die out but we have no clue about where to buy accelerants, never mind where to use them.
It’s hard work racing around looking for a few embers that may be past saving or that will never get going. If we do get to a few sparks, we may often find that we can only make a futile attempt to reignite them with half a box full of safety matches but no striker or, more usually, with a handful of damp tinder and no means of a light.
I’ve covered this theme before. I’m even running out of metaphors to describe it - as the above laboured paragraph demonstrates. I would have left it alone for a while, if it wasn’t for the outpouring of directionless frenzy and then mournful despair that was a result of the brief flowering and then wilting of John McDonnell’s bid to be Leader of the Labour Party.
Dave Osler sums up some of the issues well when he says.
"Based on my involvement with the Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Alliance, it doesn’t look like there is currently any possibility of building a meaningful left political formation outside of Labour.
As the electoral wipeout of the Scottish Socialist Party underlines, even if Respect or the CNWP were to make limited headway, it is most unlikely that they would be able to consolidate it.
Then again, the McDonnell campaign illustrates that it is currently impossible to build any meaningful left current within the Labour Party, either.
Let me just sum all that up. All tactics have been tried; all have been shown to fail. Not only are there no short cuts, there isn't even a long way round.
About the only useful work Marxists in Britain can undertake right now is to utilise whatever limited avenues for activism are available– which might be the Labour Party, the Greens or leftwing parties that have a local base, or more likely the trade unions or single issue campaign based - …"
I endorse his views that much everything - a Left Labour Party (SLP), a Left of Labour Party (Socialist Alliance) - and more - have been tried and have failed. Whether they didn’t work because of the concrete circumstances then or because of the way these putative parties were led - and whether they would work if tried again now, but in a better manner - can be but moot points.
So I have no answers. The Campaign for a New Workers Party is worth supporting but it’s also a small formation based on the Socialist Party (with some support from other organisations) that hasn’t yet shown it can grow.
Respect is both a Left AND Right popular front that would be liable to being instantly dismissed if it wasn’t also the home of the largest British Left party, the SWP. It's seen both Lefts and Rights elected as councillors!
I don’t know what to do. I’m sitting, waiting but also doing whatever I can to support a regroupment of British Left forces. Apart from that, work in the trade unions and in single-issue campaigns is also a necessary tactic for all. Comrades did succeed in establishing a party in Scotland. They’ve suffered major recent setbacks but are still going on, even if now split in two.
But I know what I’m not going to do. The Labour Party has not once turned leftwards since 1981 or 1982. It’s either being turning right or maintaining a steady course for those last twenty-five years or so.
McDonnell dropped all the Leftism, hyped his campaign relentlessly and was despatched with just a slight movement of Gordon Brown’s languorous eyelids.
And still ‘Lefts’ say, ‘never mind, we must go back and reorganise’. The Labour Party will very probably never again be home to the sort of politics that these Labour Lefts want. Left Labour types often don't realise that parties change, sentiment deceives. But if they can’t see that, after a few decades of its recent history, they really are dead for all useful political purposes.
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High Rise Hysteria
I haven’t bought a local newspaper for a long time. Their poor diet of stern looking Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators (always with arms crossed) surveying their patch; regurgitated advertorial dressed up as restaurant reviews and council PR output masquerading as news isn’t often anymore worth reading than random pages in a telephone directory.
But my eye was taken by the photo on a front page of local rag in north east London. It reminded me a little of the shot taken in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King when shocked bystanders were all looking up towards the presumed firing position of the shooter.
There’s a local paper tradition were a victim is asked to recreate the look on their face they were displaying when they first became newsworthy. So a few days after being mugged in her home, a compliant pensioner will be requested to repeat the look of fear, as well as the shying away, as though the photographer is demanding her life savings rather than asking her to pose for a picture. The photo that caught my eye was very much in that tradition.
In this shot, everyone is also looking in the same direction and grimacing. But that look of great apprehension on their faces was about a ‘problem’ that's just in their fertile imagination and is unlikely ever to escape from there.
The story is that a high rise block of flats is being erected near an infants school. And, horror of horrors, the youngsters’ playground will be overlooked by these new residences.
One of those pictured in the paper, beadily looking upper stage right towards fantasy miscreants, is the local MP (and former Conservative party leader) Iain Duncan-Smith.
IDS’s quoted in the article as saying the new development could become a "paedophile's paradise". And, he also goes on to say "It raises questions about who is going to be living in these flats, and for all we know it is people with a motive for living near a school."
I know that fear. I recently visited a school. After signing in, I needed to wait whilst someone scurried away to a back office to check my bona fides. Then on passing through this outer citadel, I had that woman from the office rubbernecking my further progress from behind whilst I was under the watchful eye of someone else who had been despatched from the inner sanctum to stand near the door, so as to monitor my walk across the playground. I can only presume that their actions were to ensure that I didn’t break step and make use of any blind spots to dash into a classroom and go on a rampage.
I’ll update you here when IDS succeeds in raising a posse of locals - whose eyebrows meet in the middle - and manages to burn out anyone who moves into the new block.
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Recommended Blogs
I’m pleased to be adding a couple of new websites to my select list of recommended blogs that are written by revolutionary socialists.
I first heard of Louis Proyect when I signed up a few years ago, rather rashly, for a Marxist email discussion list. I was new to those kinds of things and I probably didn’t set up my account very well.
Every time I looked at my email account there would be various new Marxist messages from around the globe. These messages mainly seemed written to take apart previous contributions to the discussion list - and to do so with a blunt cleaver. And then when I logged in later, these messages had bred further and mutated. These mongrel posts then spawned no end of rabid puppies that fought to the death in subscribers’ email boxes. I unsubscribed.
The quality of many Left blogs in the USA appears to be a lot higher than those written from this side of the Atlantic. There probably are American versions of the chatty, cliquey, lightweight stuff, that often just re-reports items from the liberal press or are just screeds produced primarily to settle petty scores - and which dominate British Left blogging.
Louis’s site is a long way above those dead-ends. It’s a delight to peruse his articles - such as recent writing on creationism, the Iranian left and more - as well as intelligent book reviews and readable cinema criticism.
I’m also pleased to list my first Scottish blog, Red Squirrel's Lair. I’ve argued with the main writer, Korakious (a Scottish Socialist Party member) about his views in support of Scottish independence here and here. The blog concentrates on Scotland and the Scottish Left and does it with a hard-edged political analysis that cuts through the usual hubris.
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Website
I’ve made a few changes to this website.
I’ve dropped the feeds from the World Socialist Website, the Socialist Workers Party (Britain) and the Committee for a Marxist International. They’ve been dispensed with for no reason other than a lack of space.
I’ve added a widget that displays the last 12 posts. There’s also another new widget that lists the last six comments made on my site - more comments are always welcome.
You will also see a link to a new companion website that I’ve launched - Southpawpunch Life.
I’ve thought for a while that I've wanted somewhere to post some of my writing that won’t fit in the main site. The first article there is a short piece about a film genre. I’m working on something more substantial, on another arts matter, and that will probably be published this week.
I envisage Southpawpunch Life will carry my writing on arts, culture, travel, events and more. I may even try out some of my fiction there. I won’t be posting stuff there often and will announce on this site when there is something new there.
I don’t consider myself an expert on any of the areas that I will write about in the way I do see myself as an experienced and educated communist.
But I do have an enthusiasm and an interest for arts, culture and more. And although I’ve had a few things exhibited and have also made some very small amounts of money, I think I’ve at least acquired an ability to see through a lot of fashionable tripe and hyped banality that is much of what passes for contemporary culture. I won’t be able to discuss it in the terms that an artist may but that won’t stop me passing judgement.
There’s one genre, across all mediums, that’s always likely to raise my hackles - the soft, soppy, Leftish bleatings and pleadings of no end of liberal musicians, writers et al. I don’t know why I should reserve a special scorn for this ilk, maybe it’s the obfuscation or the misleading bluster that I particularly deplore but I’d, for example, much rather listen to something with mindless drivel for lyrics than endure a Guardian reader’s exposition of his world view in song.
I’m also not (always) taken with the cult of the new. I don’t really care whether something appeared today or thirty years ago; if it’s accessible and interesting, I will consider writing about it. I’m just as likely to comment about an old Graham Greene book as I am about the latest Günter Grass.
