I haven't the time - or resources - to explore this fully, but there does seems to be plenty to find about a nexus of Marxists and revolutionary socialists at St Catherine's College, Oxford, starting as early as the 70s* and forming the background for Peter Mandelson and others with connexions to New Labour. I should be grateful for more insights.
*With much deeper roots - e.g. Terry Eagleton was a protege of Raymond Williams.
Showing posts with label Communism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communism. Show all posts
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Reds under the chaise longue
Why would someone concentrate his academic research on how America has tried to counter Communism within its own country? But (and I think it more telling) why would the Labour Party notice and employ such a person?
Andrew Neather's PHD and a follow-up article surface in several places on the Web, e.g.:
"Popular Republicanism, Americanism, and the Roots of Anti-Communism, 1890-1925"
Duke University Ph.D. dissertation, May 1994
"Twentieth-Century Communism and Anticommunism: the View After the Cold War"
Reviews in American History - Volume 23, Number 2, June 1995, pp. 336-341
Linkedin.com supplies details of Neather's experience - a year working for Dennis McShane; another doing editing work for the Labour Party; nearly 3 years with Friends of the Earth; a year speechwriting at the Home Office under Jack Straw and David Blunkett; a year speechwriting with Tony Blair; and now he's with the Evening Standard, writing on wine, cycling, travel and local issues, as well as editing comments. (There seems to be a lacuna of a year (1994-95) between completing the PhD and starting with McShane, but doubtless it was some sort of gap year-cum-looking for a career.)
I think he's probably harmless, and the track record suggests a touch of the Green idealist and instinctive-moderniser-against-the-wicked-Establishment. If he were a "sleeper", he'd not have blurted out the stuff about Labour's secret motivations regarding immigration policy.
But "as the twig is bent, so the tree will grow": we have to look at beginnings, try to find some of the warning signs.
I recall a tiny incident regarding Peter Mandelson's college, St Catherine's, Oxford, at the time he was there (1973-76 - why did Peter matriculate at age c. 20?). I'd gone over there one evening (summer '75) with some friends to see a Ken Russell film, and we had a drink in the student bar first. Noticing us, somebody at the other end called out "bleedin' poors". True, but why say it?
It's not what someone does that is most revealing; it's the context, the belief that what they're doing is acceptable. St Catherine's was rather nice - newish, and expensively-designed, right down to the knives and forks (I kid you not). We were impressed; it was time when we still wore thick jumpers because college rooms were cold, and drank beer from large Party Seven cans at parties. Ever get the feeling that you've been let in by mistake, and wonder when you can afford better-looking shoes and clothes?
Privilege and socialism went together in those times. Posh Marxist meddlers dined at the Elizabeth or the Randolph, wore expensive blue boiler suits as a political fashion statement, spoke contemptuously at the Oxford Union of "the talking professions" that, of course, they would soon join. In the street, I overheard two chaps discussing what they would do when they graduated; one said it was a toss-up between joining his father's stockbroking firm or the IMG (International Marxist Group).
Power is sexier than money. In the old days, bored toffs could shag debs at the Hunt Ball, knock the necks off brandy bottles at two in the morning, test themselves against professional boxers; but ah, the chance to lead Revolution...
Don't look for revolutionaries among the likes of John Prescott, a former "bleedin' poor" who knows which side his bread is buttered; look for them among the drawing-room drawlers, the tea-table traitors, the Kim Philbys.
Who is to say that forty years from now, one of our deadliest enemies may not turn out to have been in the Bullingdon Club?
Andrew Neather's PHD and a follow-up article surface in several places on the Web, e.g.:
"Popular Republicanism, Americanism, and the Roots of Anti-Communism, 1890-1925"
Duke University Ph.D. dissertation, May 1994
"Twentieth-Century Communism and Anticommunism: the View After the Cold War"
Reviews in American History - Volume 23, Number 2, June 1995, pp. 336-341
Linkedin.com supplies details of Neather's experience - a year working for Dennis McShane; another doing editing work for the Labour Party; nearly 3 years with Friends of the Earth; a year speechwriting at the Home Office under Jack Straw and David Blunkett; a year speechwriting with Tony Blair; and now he's with the Evening Standard, writing on wine, cycling, travel and local issues, as well as editing comments. (There seems to be a lacuna of a year (1994-95) between completing the PhD and starting with McShane, but doubtless it was some sort of gap year-cum-looking for a career.)
I think he's probably harmless, and the track record suggests a touch of the Green idealist and instinctive-moderniser-against-the-wicked-Establishment. If he were a "sleeper", he'd not have blurted out the stuff about Labour's secret motivations regarding immigration policy.
But "as the twig is bent, so the tree will grow": we have to look at beginnings, try to find some of the warning signs.
I recall a tiny incident regarding Peter Mandelson's college, St Catherine's, Oxford, at the time he was there (1973-76 - why did Peter matriculate at age c. 20?). I'd gone over there one evening (summer '75) with some friends to see a Ken Russell film, and we had a drink in the student bar first. Noticing us, somebody at the other end called out "bleedin' poors". True, but why say it?
It's not what someone does that is most revealing; it's the context, the belief that what they're doing is acceptable. St Catherine's was rather nice - newish, and expensively-designed, right down to the knives and forks (I kid you not). We were impressed; it was time when we still wore thick jumpers because college rooms were cold, and drank beer from large Party Seven cans at parties. Ever get the feeling that you've been let in by mistake, and wonder when you can afford better-looking shoes and clothes?
Privilege and socialism went together in those times. Posh Marxist meddlers dined at the Elizabeth or the Randolph, wore expensive blue boiler suits as a political fashion statement, spoke contemptuously at the Oxford Union of "the talking professions" that, of course, they would soon join. In the street, I overheard two chaps discussing what they would do when they graduated; one said it was a toss-up between joining his father's stockbroking firm or the IMG (International Marxist Group).
Power is sexier than money. In the old days, bored toffs could shag debs at the Hunt Ball, knock the necks off brandy bottles at two in the morning, test themselves against professional boxers; but ah, the chance to lead Revolution...
Don't look for revolutionaries among the likes of John Prescott, a former "bleedin' poor" who knows which side his bread is buttered; look for them among the drawing-room drawlers, the tea-table traitors, the Kim Philbys.
Who is to say that forty years from now, one of our deadliest enemies may not turn out to have been in the Bullingdon Club?
Saturday, November 07, 2009
The Pollitt Sanction
It's now reported that the bank bailout will (technically) add another £1.5 trillion to the UK's public debt, making some £2.3 trillion in all, as compared with GDP of maybe £1.4 trillion.
Time for conspiracy theory. Which of the following seems most likely?
Gordon Brown is authorising throwing more cash onto the bonfire because:
1. It alleviates a problem he himself, embarrassingly, allowed to develop as Chancellor
2. It will get us out of the mess, helping the economy recover
3. It will buy some feelgood leading up to the next General Election, limiting the damage to Labour
4. As a scorched-earth policy, it will leave Cameron nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat and as soon as Cam has heroically dealt with it, in will come another 1945-style Labour landslide as the population again votes for what it thinks it deserves
5. It represents an "Iceland strategy", so effectively ruining the country that we have to throw ourselves into the arms of our communautaire pals on the other side of La Manche
6. As (5) above, but part of a grander plan to advance the cause of international Communism.
There are little conspiratorial threads we can weave together if we wish. For example, we read this week that Brown's candidature for the Labour slave state (sorry, safe seat) of Dunfermline East was sponsored by the TGWU's Jack Jones, now revealed as a traitor in the pay of the USSR at a time of great danger to our country. Could this have been part of the entryist approach of Harry Pollitt? Is Gordon Brown a man of Pollitt's stamp?
Time for conspiracy theory. Which of the following seems most likely?
Gordon Brown is authorising throwing more cash onto the bonfire because:
1. It alleviates a problem he himself, embarrassingly, allowed to develop as Chancellor
2. It will get us out of the mess, helping the economy recover
3. It will buy some feelgood leading up to the next General Election, limiting the damage to Labour
4. As a scorched-earth policy, it will leave Cameron nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat and as soon as Cam has heroically dealt with it, in will come another 1945-style Labour landslide as the population again votes for what it thinks it deserves
5. It represents an "Iceland strategy", so effectively ruining the country that we have to throw ourselves into the arms of our communautaire pals on the other side of La Manche
6. As (5) above, but part of a grander plan to advance the cause of international Communism.
There are little conspiratorial threads we can weave together if we wish. For example, we read this week that Brown's candidature for the Labour slave state (sorry, safe seat) of Dunfermline East was sponsored by the TGWU's Jack Jones, now revealed as a traitor in the pay of the USSR at a time of great danger to our country. Could this have been part of the entryist approach of Harry Pollitt? Is Gordon Brown a man of Pollitt's stamp?
Like the Communists, one-eyed Wotan may fantasise that the destruction is merely part of the process leading to the Millennium, for after Ragnarök and the ensuing Flood, "... the world resurfaces anew and fertile, the surviving gods meet, and the world is repopulated by two human survivors."
And if he's wrong?
Sunday, May 10, 2009
... but the Revolution begins at home
We attended the memorial service for a friend yesterday, and the following quotation (Acts, Chap. 2, vv. 44-47 - King James version) was included in the readings:
And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,
Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.
It's a big ask, as they say; and the more we have, the bigger an ask it is. Jesus' advice to the rich young man (Matthew 19, v. 21) is after the latter has confirmed that he already performs all the normal religious duties:
If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
It was too much for that trustafarian, and it's too much for modern us. So we try to explain it away, Philadelphia lawyer-style. Clever people will explain that if you give away all, you'll merely be a charity case yourself. Or they'll tell you that the advice was case-specific: the young man needed freeing from his attachment to material things (and, presumably, we don't).
Yet the history of the early Church clearly shows that these sophisticated glosses are plain wrong. They were far, far closer to the revolutionary events (and witnesses) of the New Testament, and we must assume that they understood the message better. "Such as should be saved" must join the project, and obey the project's rules.
Reportedly, 82% of Americans are Christians (even the Simpson family). Many sincerely try to follow the early example - think of the people who took in refugees from Katrina-devastated New Orleans, and how some of these good hosts were robbed and even killed as a result.
But writing comments on US blogs suggesting sharing resources (even in the bureacratic form of the NHS) will get sharp ripostes accusing you of socialism or worse.
It's still a big ask, isn't it? And still too big for me, at the moment.
And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,
Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.
It's a big ask, as they say; and the more we have, the bigger an ask it is. Jesus' advice to the rich young man (Matthew 19, v. 21) is after the latter has confirmed that he already performs all the normal religious duties:
If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
It was too much for that trustafarian, and it's too much for modern us. So we try to explain it away, Philadelphia lawyer-style. Clever people will explain that if you give away all, you'll merely be a charity case yourself. Or they'll tell you that the advice was case-specific: the young man needed freeing from his attachment to material things (and, presumably, we don't).
Yet the history of the early Church clearly shows that these sophisticated glosses are plain wrong. They were far, far closer to the revolutionary events (and witnesses) of the New Testament, and we must assume that they understood the message better. "Such as should be saved" must join the project, and obey the project's rules.
Reportedly, 82% of Americans are Christians (even the Simpson family). Many sincerely try to follow the early example - think of the people who took in refugees from Katrina-devastated New Orleans, and how some of these good hosts were robbed and even killed as a result.
But writing comments on US blogs suggesting sharing resources (even in the bureacratic form of the NHS) will get sharp ripostes accusing you of socialism or worse.
It's still a big ask, isn't it? And still too big for me, at the moment.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Let's move to Russia
I've said it before: you get the clearest explanations from someone who is in a hurry to move on to something else. Here is Dmitry Orlov on why Russia will survive:
It seems that the Russians are better-equipped to survive financial collapse than just about anyone else. They have formidable reserves of gold and foreign currency to soften the downward slide. They have a dwindling but still sizable endowment of things the world still wants, even if at temporarily reduced prices. They have plenty of timber and farmland and other natural resources, and can become self-sufficient and decouple themselves economically should they choose to do so. They have high-tech weaponry and a nuclear deterrent in case other nations get any crazy ideas. After all the upheavals, they have ended up with a centrally-managed, natural resource-based, geographically contiguous realm that is not overly dependent on global finance. Yes, the Russian consumer sector is crashing hard, and many Russians are in the process of losing their savings yet again, but they have managed to survive without a consumer sector before, and no doubt will again.
I'm almost tempted to live there. My grandparents' farm, overrun by the Red Army in 1945, is somewhere in that weird, tiny sliver of the Russian Federation stuck between Poland and Lithuania like a stone in your shoe. I'd need a heavily-armed gang to take the farmhouse back from whoever took it over after the hick troops stole everything in it. But maybe it's not there any more - probably it's covered with concrete now, the tyrant's material of choice. Still, life goes on; it's outlasted communism and looks set to outlast Western capitalism.
Though I should say that in the UK, the nutso socialist element must be seeing this as an opportunity to start the Millennium. I have been wondering whether it's possible to take American citzenship while continuing to live here, so that I might have some residual civil rights when my neighbours have lost theirs.
America, see the issue for what it is: not money, but democracy and freedom.
It seems that the Russians are better-equipped to survive financial collapse than just about anyone else. They have formidable reserves of gold and foreign currency to soften the downward slide. They have a dwindling but still sizable endowment of things the world still wants, even if at temporarily reduced prices. They have plenty of timber and farmland and other natural resources, and can become self-sufficient and decouple themselves economically should they choose to do so. They have high-tech weaponry and a nuclear deterrent in case other nations get any crazy ideas. After all the upheavals, they have ended up with a centrally-managed, natural resource-based, geographically contiguous realm that is not overly dependent on global finance. Yes, the Russian consumer sector is crashing hard, and many Russians are in the process of losing their savings yet again, but they have managed to survive without a consumer sector before, and no doubt will again.
I'm almost tempted to live there. My grandparents' farm, overrun by the Red Army in 1945, is somewhere in that weird, tiny sliver of the Russian Federation stuck between Poland and Lithuania like a stone in your shoe. I'd need a heavily-armed gang to take the farmhouse back from whoever took it over after the hick troops stole everything in it. But maybe it's not there any more - probably it's covered with concrete now, the tyrant's material of choice. Still, life goes on; it's outlasted communism and looks set to outlast Western capitalism.
Though I should say that in the UK, the nutso socialist element must be seeing this as an opportunity to start the Millennium. I have been wondering whether it's possible to take American citzenship while continuing to live here, so that I might have some residual civil rights when my neighbours have lost theirs.
America, see the issue for what it is: not money, but democracy and freedom.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Handy-dandy, the pigs are the farmers
Place your political parties in the schema below:
At first, I wondered what Hatfield Girl was talking about. Now it's one of the news headlines on the morning radio, and in the papers: the Government has taken to arresting members of the Opposition, like tinpot dictators in faraway countries that it's difficult to believe really exist.
At first, I wondered what Hatfield Girl was talking about. Now it's one of the news headlines on the morning radio, and in the papers: the Government has taken to arresting members of the Opposition, like tinpot dictators in faraway countries that it's difficult to believe really exist.
Difficult to believe; that's part of the process. Honestly, I have felt since 1997 (and I am no natural Conservative voter, please believe me) that something was obscurely wrong, that we were all inside someone else's dream. It's like that feeling you get that you've forgotten something, but haven't a clue what it might be.
Before 1997, the Government was Them and we were Us: British, muddling through, ready to heave a brickbat at these clowns who pretend to rule us, but all of us bound by habit and tradition. But in Tony Blair's revolution, the Government claimed to represent all of us: it was the political wing of the British people as a whole, or some such typical Toni verbalfluff.
This is how Nazism took hold - and my mother lived through it. No need for the unions, we the national socialist State represent the worker's best interests, etc.
Fascism, Communism - it's all the same, structurally.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
A small town in Germany
The TV was on, and I forget what programme we were watching. Sometimes they were Dutch - we were near the border - but more often German. I was eleven, and would watch anything. Even the adverts were fun, linked by shorts featuring little cartoon characters, the Mainzelmännchen. HB cigarettes, Allianz insurance, Bear condensed milk ("Nichts geht über Bärenmarke……Bärenmarke zum Kaffee!")
Then a newsflash cut in: the President of the USA had been shot on a visit to Dallas and had been rushed to hospital. My father went upstairs. The programme resumed.
My father came down. I still remember him buckling his belt over his uniform, as ever uncomfortable and determined to do his best, a stocky man with a straight back, now full of tension. He watched with us as another newsflash came: the President was dead.
I think the camp sent a driver with a Jeep; in any case, Dad was gone. We watched some more TV, interrupted by occasional updates and speculation. Then it was time for bed. Flannel pyjamas, cotton sheets, the heavy blankets that trapped your feet. I went to sleep.
Lights woke me, illuminating the curtains. Heavy engines, headlights passing, heading in the direction of Düsseldorf. One after another after another. Now, I know they were tank transporters, racing to position the heavy armour in readiness for the Red invasion.
And now there are no more Communists, or so it seems. We buy fuel from the Russians, hardware and toys from the Chinese. The people my father, a gentle and sensitive man, was prepared to die fighting, are our friends and trading partners. As reported by The Independent, Chinese interests even supported our Conservative leader and former Prime Minister, Edward Heath (Sir Edward protested the following week, saying the claims were "misleading and inaccurate" - but did not go so far as to say that they were untrue). Surely, we're all friends now. After all, Dad had helped the Germans start to rebuild their country; he'd worked with German civilians, learned to speak the language fluently, married a German refugee. Wars happen, and so does peace. The people of the world are vexed by their leaders, yet love for one another endures and triumphs.
But Communism is not a nation, and does not love people. Everything, even its own most ardent supporters, can be burned on the altar of abstract principle. Informed that a general nuclear war would kill a third of humankind, Mao said good, then there would be no more classes.
As gypsies and beggars used to sing:
So proud and lofty is some sort of sin
Which many take delight and pleasure in
Whose conversation God doth much dislike
And yet He shakes His sword before He strike
(The Watersons performed it on "Frost and Fire", which our English teacher played to us in the late Sixties. I associate it with cold, freshness, the musty fragrance of the Monmouthshire woods, animism, hope.)
By degrees, this brings me to the current state of affairs. Our leaders wish us to believe that the history of our fathers is at an end, and now only efficient administration remains to be achieved. The revels of democracy are ended; they were fun, but their time is past.
No: as Christopher Fry said, "affairs are soul size", still. Although I do believe that sudden and total conversion is possible, as in James Shirley's now implausible-seeming play "Hyde Park" (who would have believed the Earl of Rochester's conversion? - and there are those who still doubt it, not knowing how the sinner hates sin), I doubt that all who worked with the old Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes have abandoned their principles and plans. Like the remark about the significance of the French Revolution (variously attributed to Chou En-Lai and Mao Tse-Tung), it's "too early to say".
Even if our leaders should be gullible or merely suborned, Jeffrey Nyquist reminds us again that there are still people who think differently from us, and we must be prepared. It is not all right to be weak, whether militarily or in our economies. Good fences (and good borders) make good neighbours.
Then a newsflash cut in: the President of the USA had been shot on a visit to Dallas and had been rushed to hospital. My father went upstairs. The programme resumed.
My father came down. I still remember him buckling his belt over his uniform, as ever uncomfortable and determined to do his best, a stocky man with a straight back, now full of tension. He watched with us as another newsflash came: the President was dead.
I think the camp sent a driver with a Jeep; in any case, Dad was gone. We watched some more TV, interrupted by occasional updates and speculation. Then it was time for bed. Flannel pyjamas, cotton sheets, the heavy blankets that trapped your feet. I went to sleep.
Lights woke me, illuminating the curtains. Heavy engines, headlights passing, heading in the direction of Düsseldorf. One after another after another. Now, I know they were tank transporters, racing to position the heavy armour in readiness for the Red invasion.
And now there are no more Communists, or so it seems. We buy fuel from the Russians, hardware and toys from the Chinese. The people my father, a gentle and sensitive man, was prepared to die fighting, are our friends and trading partners. As reported by The Independent, Chinese interests even supported our Conservative leader and former Prime Minister, Edward Heath (Sir Edward protested the following week, saying the claims were "misleading and inaccurate" - but did not go so far as to say that they were untrue). Surely, we're all friends now. After all, Dad had helped the Germans start to rebuild their country; he'd worked with German civilians, learned to speak the language fluently, married a German refugee. Wars happen, and so does peace. The people of the world are vexed by their leaders, yet love for one another endures and triumphs.
But Communism is not a nation, and does not love people. Everything, even its own most ardent supporters, can be burned on the altar of abstract principle. Informed that a general nuclear war would kill a third of humankind, Mao said good, then there would be no more classes.
And dictators, dressed in a little brief authority, ignore warnings. On the eve of World War II, when the conflict could yet be averted, Hitler was with guests in Berchtesgaden when the clouds over the mountains assumed an ominous red and yellow appearance. A woman told him "Das bedeutet blut, und mehr blut" ("This means blood, and more blood"); Hitler trembled, but then said if it must be so, it must be so.
As gypsies and beggars used to sing:
So proud and lofty is some sort of sin
Which many take delight and pleasure in
Whose conversation God doth much dislike
And yet He shakes His sword before He strike
(The Watersons performed it on "Frost and Fire", which our English teacher played to us in the late Sixties. I associate it with cold, freshness, the musty fragrance of the Monmouthshire woods, animism, hope.)
By degrees, this brings me to the current state of affairs. Our leaders wish us to believe that the history of our fathers is at an end, and now only efficient administration remains to be achieved. The revels of democracy are ended; they were fun, but their time is past.
No: as Christopher Fry said, "affairs are soul size", still. Although I do believe that sudden and total conversion is possible, as in James Shirley's now implausible-seeming play "Hyde Park" (who would have believed the Earl of Rochester's conversion? - and there are those who still doubt it, not knowing how the sinner hates sin), I doubt that all who worked with the old Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes have abandoned their principles and plans. Like the remark about the significance of the French Revolution (variously attributed to Chou En-Lai and Mao Tse-Tung), it's "too early to say".
Even if our leaders should be gullible or merely suborned, Jeffrey Nyquist reminds us again that there are still people who think differently from us, and we must be prepared. It is not all right to be weak, whether militarily or in our economies. Good fences (and good borders) make good neighbours.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)