Investigate! / Thatcher - the Tory cut / Good Morning for Vietnam? / Strike Three / All points right

Investigate!

I’ve written extensively before about how the Left could use the net to do a lot more than it does now. We could organise, report and agitate - and not just pontificate.

But why is no-one Left using the web to do that other necessary task - to investigate? Why can’t Left bloggers not just say who and what it is that they dislike, but also provide some facts - and dig up some background - to expose their prey as well?

Many a current print title started life as a muck-raking, small budget newspaper. Many more never made it. I remember, in my youth, visiting 'Grassroots' bookshop in Manchester where I used to pick up a badly printed, but well written investigative small newspaper whose name I can’t now remember.

I do remember that it (most unusually) managed to attract some mainstream advertising. So there would be incongruous display ads - for BabyBio - next to muck raking articles about the Manchester elites - such as James Anderton, God’s copper. The paper doesn't exist anymore.

Neither does one that was based a few miles further down the road - the 'Rochdale Alternative Press'. RAP got some good scoops. For example, it alleged in 1979 that “during the 1960s, Cyril Smith (then Liberal MP for the town - Southpawpunch) was using his position to get lads (in childrens’ homes - Southpawpunch) aged 15 – 18 to undress in front of him in order that he could get them to bend over his knee while he spanked their bare bottoms or let him hold their testicles in a bizarre ‘medical inspection’. Smith never sued RAP - or was prosecuted.

Swansea council's corrupt Labour administration was done over by another crusading and investigative paper, 'Rebecca', in the late 70s.

There were other similar papers elsewhere.

Where are their modern day equivalents? Draconian libel laws remain in place but print bills and distribution hassles don't exist for online journals. Useful legislation to help such journalism, like the Freedom of Information Act, is also now with us.

Amongst the big boys there’s a paucity of investigative journalism. The 'Guardian' will sometimes put resources into an in-depth investigation into, say, supermarket practices. The 'Evening Standard' did some good investigations into that 'Left' fraud Livingstone during the recent London mayoral election (but something tells me we’ll be waiting a long time for them to do the same to their boy Boris.)

The 'Daily Mirror' may occasionally put the boat out and reel in a few small businessmen running web scams and the like. The 'Sun' had a good story yesterday on its front page about one of the last wanted war-time Nazis being espied at a football match.

Some Sunday tabloids also do welcome investigations into pimps and politicians or executives and excesses but they’re far more likely to waste ink on coked up celebrities or sybarite sportsmen.

Channel 4’s 'Despatches' can be watchable but the BBC’s 'Panorama' doesn’t usually deliver. Local papers and radio mainly report what the PR release tells them to but local TV news can sometimes make an effort to meet the terms of their licence.

'Private Eye's news pages can be a real draw although they do have a skewed interest in the unimportant - such as hacks - and some stories only contain spurious stuff about who’s shagging who. (I also wonder why that magazine bothers with the humour pages; they’re somewhat worse than the Victorian era 'Punch' witticisms that they used to mock.)

But most media - including the above, most of the time - don’t dig like they did or could.

I recently read a former editor, Peter Wilby, of the 'New Statesman' implying that a good outcome of a Tory General Election victory could be a revival of his former magazine.

The 'New Statesman' is now full of dull policy prose from one of the identikit think thanks. It all comes wrapped around an insert called something like 'Community Policing (published in association with Taser)’ with a forward by the Home Secretary. The magazine lives off the advertising of multinationals that pay them in the hope of influencing the government connected readership.

But I remember enjoying reading a very different NS in my school library. I fondly recall the exploits of the investigative journalist, Duncan Campbell (who was harassed by the state for his journalism in the ABC Trial). Campbell would often burrow away under Whitehall - quite literally - exploring the capital’s secret spy tunnels. (Where has he been these last twenty years - bricked in round a bend under Belgravia?)

I’ve also seen some good exposes in 'Socialist Worker'. I think usually a member of theirs has got hold of something that they’d rather see published in their own paper than in the mainstream media.

This week’s 'Weekly Worker' also has an interesting investigative article about Tower Hamlet council’s manipulation of opinion polling to support their privatisation schemes. I emailed the author and urged he try and get a wider audience for his research. He replied that he had tried the mainstream and trade press, but that they generally weren’t interested.

But I have seen one blog that does do investigative journalism and does it well - ‘Postman Patel’. That link takes you to an interesting recent article from that blog about Britain’s latest Military satellite - delivered under PFI, naturally.

The author of that blog, 'Postman Patel' told me that he publishes a thousand words a day. I think most of them are interesting. It was no surprise to me to find that, as I understand it, he was connected with the 'Rochdale Alternative Press'.

So why can’t Left bloggers investigate? Make a name for yourself - get on the net, in the council minutes, in the planning approvals - and start digging.

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Thatcher - the Tory cut

Have you seen the latest recut of the Story of Margaret Thatcher (on now, all channels) - the ex PM as an early feminist and a principled fighter; an admirable figure and smasher of glass ceilings but whom previous TV directors have misunderstood?

Maybe this trend is the media catching on that the Tories are on the rise, and that their latest draft of history needs to be rewritten once more.

But Southpawpunch hasn’t forgotten the bastard offspring of Attila the Hun and Elizabeth Báthory. In fact that bottle of Cava has been hanging around near my fridge for a while now. Could it be that these belated tributes to Thatcher instead mean that they know what we don’t yet - but that we earnestly hope and pray for - that she’ll not be with us anymore, sometime soon?

I look forward to a celebratory drink when that happens - and a lot more.

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Good morning for Vietnam?

As an orthodox Trot (how can there be any type?) I considered Vietnam, and other places, to be a degenerated workers state.

I am near enough sure that it, like all the rest (except Cuba?), have reverted back to capitalism but my lack of time to sit in the British Library and, of course, my lack of economic knowledge, precludes me from saying when this took place.

One of the reasons for being sure of this change is a report about that country that I read in my 'Wall Street Journal' this week - “new labour laws …make workers liable to compensate the employers if they walk off the job illegally.”

You would expect that move may have led to a cooling down in the number of strikes in Vietnam, not least because many of them are illegal. Certainly such rules in Britain led to a downward pressure on strikes - no end of trade union professionals are all too pleased to have to kowtow to this employer’s law.

If Vietnam is no longer a workers state I don’t rule out the possibility that it can be so again - and a healthy one, this time.

The Vietnamese showed how you can defeat the strongest imperialist force on the planet, just a generation ago. And their response to this latest offensive against them? The number of strikes there after this legislation was introduced increased by almost 300%.

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Strike Three

'Kapoom' or similar noise doubtless echoed along the mountains as an attack from the USAF hit home last week in the latest country to suffer their advances. Has that foresight from the Left (and many others), organising in defence of the next likely target, Iran, been shown to be on the ball?

No, it was 11 Pakistani soldiers who were obliterated last week when the United States destroyed one of that country's border posts on their frontier with Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government has gone very quiet since its election a few months ago. Doubtless it’s been spending most of its efforts deciding exactly who will be receiving which kickback in the ruling coalition.

But it’d better hurry up with governing - because far from being able to get rid of their hangman in waiting (the former dictator Musharraf) as they’ve intended, they may yet be answering to him again. Last month the US said that “(Bush) looks forward to President Musharraf’s continuing role in further strengthening US - Pakistani relations.”

Since the birth of that state, its armed forces have engorged themselves on the product of Pakistanis. The army is perhaps that country’s biggest business. But that body has the characteristics of a military midget if it can’t stop its troops being killed in cross border attacks. And now the Afghani president (and American puppet) Karzai is threatening more of the same.

I wonder what the response of the Chinese (who also share a border with Afghanistan) would be if the US blew up one of their border posts?

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All points right

I suppose if you’re a swimmer trapped underwater, your desperate thinking may make you imagine every movement around you in the inkyness to be someone coming to your rescue. Anyone Left has to have had that feeling, from time to time, of solitary abandonment and of running out of oxygen but still with hope alive. That's why you may not appreciate that the motion near you may be something dangerous coming towards you instead.

And the sea in which all the Left swims is certainly hard to fathom. But still why, in the full glare of daylight, is the Labour ex Left knowingly diving into a tub full of sharks?

It’s just plain sad to see Labour ex Lefts - such as 'Labour Briefing' - pandering to the sharp suited careerists in Compass and jumping into their tub. Why do these Labour ex Lefts let themselves be pulled ever rightwards like a rudderless tugboat? Why are they so incapable of dragging Compass in their direction?

I think it’s because, without Compass, these Labour losers would drift even further - right out to sea, they've no anchor left at all. They’ll do anything to break from the monotony of having wave after wave crash down onto them.

The Labour ex Lefts remind me of all those ‘in the know’ who just 'knew' that Brown was going to be noticeably different from Blair. Well, I suppose they were right - Brown is sending more troops to occupy Afghanistan than his predecessor.

And like those idiots without insight - the acolytes who saw in Brown what plainly wasn’t there - so if it wasn’t for Compass, these Labour ex Lefts would instead now be watching out for any slight Left trick of the light emanating from the Cabinet, not unlike a collection of Cold War Kremlinologists overinterpreting the angle at which every member of the Politburo was wearing their fur hat.

I could imagine what the witterings of the Labour ex Lefts would be - 'Was Harman pulling a face at that fringe meeting, and so should we be supporting her to run for Leader?' - 'Was Blears actually answering the question (and for the very first time!) about mistakes on Question Time indicative that she may be worth supporting as someone who may develop new policies?'

But the Labour ex Lefts think they don’t have to go quite that low now - they are doing ok, they have Compass. But why do they think that the wannabe Labour ministers in that outfit offer anything better than how things are now?

Do they really think a ‘kinder’ capitalism is on offer from their betters in the Compass leadership? What might their programme be - maybe no prescription charges (as Labour did in 1945-50 government) but with Travelodge hospitals and Virgin GPs running alongside.

Is this all the one time Trots, amongst the Labour ex Lefts, will settle for? Have they no principles? Have they no politics? Or do they just want to become a Commander of the British Empire, like former ostensible Trotskyist - and now member of the Compass coterie - Ruth Lister?

The Cruddases and co. of this world are just positioning themselves ‘Leftish’ for a fight for their party after Labour’s defeat. These putative ministers want to replace the old guard - just like the ‘Lefts’ Harman, Blunkett, Hodge etc did in the 80s - and Wilson, Attlee and more did before them.

So Compass won’t just drag the Labour ex Lefts north, south, east and west, as well as backwards through a hedge, it won’t even notice them clinging on to its shoelaces as it walks onwards - but never leftwards - towards whatever prize will sate the personal gluttony of the wannabe members.