Book covers

Dave Nellist addresses Socialist Party Meeting

Dave Nellist was a Labour MP who took a worker's wage when he was in the House of Commons. He was expelled from the Labour Party for his opposition to the poll tax.

Less than two-thirds of members voted in the Labour leadership election. 65 percent of trade union members did not vote. Sir Keir Starmer got a smaller vote than the number of abstentions.

Labour is now a second eleven for capitalism. Starmer's appointments to the front bench involved sacking supporters of Corbyn and promoting the right wing.

Sir Keir has not yet started to roll back the programme of the Labour Party. The backers of Sir Keir Starmer were the likes of George Osborne. In all practical terms the machinery of the Labour Party has swung to the right. This coincides with working families facing the most desperate conditions.

It has been recommended by some representatives of capitalism that Starmer should be brought into a coalition government by Johnson to share the guilt for the handling of the C-virus. Frances O'Grady called for a national council of reconstruction involving the government, the unions and big business.

The working class needs a party to represent their interests as enthusiastically as the Tories represent big business interests.

The lockdown now has predictions such as a 35% fall in output. A world recession of 1930s proportions is possible. It is unclear whether the economy will "bounce back" from the recession.

The amount of subsidies to big business in the UK is 300 billion, twice the amount in the last recession. The figure is 2.2 trillion pounds in America. There has been a sharper fall in employment than in the 1930s.

Are the rich going to pay the price? In 2007 the richest 1000 families had £250 billion, that figure is over £750 billion now.

A Financial Times editorial suggests there is a generational gap so the elderly should be made to pay. Blairites have suggested that the money should come from pensions.

Despite Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, a majority of councillors and the PLP were busy sabotaging the Labour Party's radical agenda.

Mandatory reselection was not brought in. There was no instruction to councils to fight the cuts. 90 pages of the infamous report examine how at director level the Labour bureaucrats actively worked to prevent the Labour Party winning the election.

Labour remained two parties in one. The right-wing machine was in control of a party with radical policies.

Despite the end of the Corbyn era, the need for a workers' party remains. Labour can only become that party if the members take control. Labour could allow Socialist organisations and trade union militants to affiliate.

The Socialist Party worked with the RMT and other Socialist forces to build the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). After Corbyn's victory, TUSC Candidates in national elections were withdrawn whilst candidates in local elections raised the issue of cuts in opposition to the policy of the right wing Labour councillors.

We should engage with those who are angry about the resurgence of the right wing. Practical work over the issue of Covid-19 is exemplified by the charter published by the Socialist Party..The key task for Marxists should be to look two or three steps ahead to the way the capitalist class want to make the working class pay the price for the C-virus crisis.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

Consider yourself at home

Chanctonbury Chorus have asked for new lyrics to this song from "Oliver".

I have a modest example here.

Consider yourself at home
Consider yourself stuck with the family
The Cobra edict's so strong
You're all just going to get along
Consider yourself well in
Consider yourself part of the furniture
Consider yourself a chair
Who cares?. It's better than being out there!

If it should chance to be
We should see
Some harder days
Empty larder days
Why grouse?
If there's a chance we'll get
Sainsbury
To foot the bill
Then the drinks are on the 'ouse!

Consider yourself our mate
We don't want to have no fuss,
For after some consideration, we can state
Consider yourself
One of us!

Happy St George's Day

A bit fanciful to picture Trotsky as St George but it must be galling to the English Nationalists that St George was, in fact, Turkish and probably had a Palestinian mother Happy St George's Day everybody!



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

Tories in crisis

BBC News presenter Fiona Bruce was bouncing around like Tigger when she was announcing the Tory "landslide" victory in the election. She used the word landslide more times than I could count.

She is not so chipper now. Those pesky news reporters keep coming up with stories which discredit this government. 

Whether it is the lack of PPE for NHS staff and care-home staff, the Trump-like underestimation of the C-virus and its "sombrero" or the simple dishonesty of 90 per cent of government claims to be "working round the clock" and "ramping up" this that and the other, there is nothing for Tories to be smirking about now.

As for Question Time, she has turned it into a Party Political Broadcast for the Conservative Party and that was not the original intention. It was supposed to appear impartial whether it was or not. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

Pelf and Place

In spite of the problems of NHS staff and care staff risking their lives and not getting the PPE they need, in spite of all the other evidence of the incompetence of this Eton mess of a government, Keir Starmer has found time to wish the Queen a happy birthday. Isn't that sweet?

Is his mind fixed on pelf and place? Surely not. He's already got the knighthood. Perhaps there is a peerage in the pipeline?

Thatcher’s children

If you receive a text like this it is a fraud. The government never inform you of pending tax rebates. Do not click on the link. You can report it to Action Fraud. 

What kind of person uses the C-virus as an opportunity to commit fraud, usually targeting the elderly and vulnerable?  They are Thatcher's children. For them, there is no such thing as society and the poisonous doctrine of Thatcherism suits them down to the ground. 

--

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Derek-McMillan/e/B009FUXHWY

For a new workers' party

From the webpage of the Socialist Party

Dave Nellist, Coventry Socialist Party and former Labour MP

A leaked internal Labour report, a mammoth 851 pages in length, has detailed internal sabotage by senior party officials of Jeremy Corbyn's attempts to radicalise Labour policies.
The report - 'The work of the Labour Party's Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019' - quotes from transcripts of thousands of emails and WhatsApp discussions between Labour's senior officials, particularly in the 2015-2018 era before the current general secretary, Jennie Formby.
The official report was drawn up, so its authors say, to provide context to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) investigation into the party's handling of complaints of antisemitism.
It found no evidence that complaints of antisemitism were treated any differently to any other complaints, but that other work was prioritised for factional gains, such as the purge of Labour members prior to the 2015 and 2016 leadership elections.
It claims senior officers, at Labour's head office, deliberately worked against the party's attempts to win the 2017 general election, in the expectation that defeat would lead to a third leadership contest and that Jeremy Corbyn could be initially replaced by Tom Watson, then deputy leader.
In particular, the report claims party finances were routed to right-wing, anti-Corbyn MPs and parliamentary candidates; with some funds being controlled through a separate office, in "a parallel general election campaign" to hide their destination from Corbyn and his staff.
When the result of the 2017 election was the Tory government's loss of majority, one senior official is quoted as saying Labour's better than expected outcome (which would mean Corbyn was unlikely to resign) was the "opposite to what I had been working towards for the last couple of years".
There are numerous communications detailed in the report between senior right-wing officers describing activists in abusive terms - for example hoping that one "dies in a fire", to which another official replies "wish there was a petrol can emoji".
Senior staff working directly for Jeremy Corbyn are described in pejorative and misogynistic terms. Jeremy Corbyn himself is described in June 2017 by Labour's then head of political strategy as "a lying little toe rag".
Two of the frequently quoted officials, both then at director level, now work at senior levels in Unison; one was suggested, in several media stories in February, to be a possible candidate under Sir Keir Starmer for Labour's next general secretary!
The Socialist Party argued right from Jeremy Corbyn's first victory as Labour leader in September 2015 that attempts to transform Labour's previous Blairite trajectory would fail unless the composition of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and of Labour's own internal machine, were also transformed.
Not restoring mandatory reselection for MPs left most right-wingers in place. And, as this report indicates, not acting decisively against the right-wing machine at the top of Labour's structures meant that the Corbyn project was doomed to failure.
Keir Starmer's election as Labour leader, together with the restoration of right wingers to leading positions, has pleased those capitalists who viewed the Corbyn era with fear, and now relish Labour being transformed back into a safe 'second eleven'.
Labour, union, and socialist activists must now start a discussion on the need for a new mass workers' party with a socialist programme, and how that can be built.

Socialist Reviews

Sherlock Holmes

The press reports that Sir Keir Starmer is investigating whether right-wing Labour bureaucrats were too busy attacking Jeremy Corbyn to deal with the issue of anti-semitism.

He might have to call in Sherlock Holmes.

While he is investigating whether the right wing opposed Jeremy Corbyn, he might as well try to find out whether the Pope is a Catholic and what exactly bears get up to in the woods.  

• 

Sir Keir's conciliatory tone towards this criminally incompetent government militates against taking them to task for their manifold failures:

• Testing or the lack of it..
• Personal Protective Equipment for NHS staff.
• Personal Protective Equipment for Care Home Staff.
• A snail's pace approach to getting money to families which desperately need it.
• An initially casual approach followed by frantically handing out new police powers like sweets.
• A proposal to re-open schools without any serious precautions to protect pupils and staff.

The government's incompetence is no accident. When Tories talk about defending the NHS they usually have their fingers crossed. The NHS is a Socialist concept. Without the trade union sponsored MPs it would never have come into existence. Any Socialist concept is anathema to the Tories and the more they talk about "ramping things up" the more transparent their class interests become.

Rise of the police state

1) The police asked people to report anyone who broke the rules (taking the dog out twice for instance). 
2) People did. 
3) The police were overwhelmed by the number of calls. 
4) They told people to go away and confront their neighbours instead. 

Still, it could be worse: "In a video recorded for the region of Campania, President of the southern Italian region Vincenzo De Luca threatened those planning to throw graduation parties with police armed with flamethrowers coming to their house." (Daily Express - I don't usually quote them!).

I repeat: giving the police greater powers is a cover for the government's continued failure to provide testing and proper protective equipment. They will do anything, including the blatantly ridiculous, to divert attention from this continued abject failure.

Keir Starmer would be better off taking the Eton Mess in Downing Street to task than attacking Jeremy Corbyn under the fake pretext of anti-semitism.

Evenin' all

My page on Amazon

 

TORY BASTARD ALIVE

I didn’t want Boris Badenough to die, the media would have made him a martyr, the Sun would have made him a saint. However TORY BASTARD ALIVE is not the headline to cheer people up.

The NHS is good news for the prime minister of course. However, Boris is a fan of Churchill and if Churchill had his way there would be no NHS.

Churchill's Tories voted against the formation of the NHS 21 times before the act was passed, including both the Second and Third reading.

Churchill believed that the NHS was a"first step to turn Britain into a National Socialist economy."

The NHS is still desperately short of protective equipment and the Tory gratitude does not extend to providing it. Handouts to the rich remain their top priority. 

Sunday Times and the Profiteers

The Sunday Times has the following exclusive story:

The owners of the ExCeL centre in east London are charging the NHS millions of pounds in rent to use it as a temporary hospital for coronavirus patients.

The ExCeL, owned by the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (Adnec), is charging the health service £2m-£3m a month, according to industry sources.

The Nightingale Hospital London, the first of several temporary facilities planned, was opened by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, on Friday. 

Focussing on one profiteer, the Sunday Times continues to defend the capitalist system which makes this profiteering inevitable.

Do Not Resuscitate

Toby Young, described by the Daily Record as a "pound shop Peter Hitchens" has laid bare the thinking of the Conservatives. He takes the view that it is a waste of money to keep old people alive. Of course, Toby Young is rapidly becoming old himself.

Thanks to Tory cuts, the NHS is unable to cope with the "normal" needs of the population and they are already talking about the "tough decisions" which will have to be taken.

GPs have been advised to consider "Do Not Resuscitate" discussions with elderly patients. One practice (Llynfi Surgery in Maesteg, South Wales) jumped the gun somewhat by sending out a note to patients saying that those with a life-limiting illness should opt for DNR.

One patient told Sky News,  "...It made me feel worthless. I've lived with cancer for eight years and I want to live another couple of years. I'm not digging my grave yet."

The advice is that GPs should have *discussions* with elderly patients. That is different from bullying them to sign a DNR form. That is different from making people feel worthless.

The original text of the Hippocratic Oath contains the phrase, "I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course."  This is often shortened to "do no harm".

The government's pathetic failure to "ramp up" testing for the virus is part and parcel of Toby Young's thinking. It is much cheaper not to test and if old people die as a result that's all to the good in his twisted philosophy.

When all this is over it is the Tory government which will need resuscitating and the public might consider DNR in that case.

Derek McMillan is a writer in Durrington-on-Sea.
He has written 11 works of fiction and 7 works of non-fiction including Socialist Reviews

Police State

In the Peak District over-zealous police officers reacted to new powers like Tigger with a new toy. They poured foul black dye into a picturesque lake to discourage tourists. The likely effects on wildlife and the environment were less important than being tough. 

Even the rightwing journalists of the Spectator have been constrained to criticise the police for the ludicrous overreaction to gaining new powers in the C-virus crisis.

This is the article

" 'A hysterical slide into a police state. A shameful police force intruding with scant regard to common sense or tradition. An irrational overreaction driven by fear.' These are not the accusations of wild-eyed campaigners, they come from the lips of one our most eminent jurists Lord Sumption, former Justice of the Supreme Court."
 

Giving the police extra powers under any pretext is a stupid move. It is a knee-jerk reaction to the government's previous refusal to take the C-virus seriously and their continued failure to protect key workers from the virus.

The police themselves have suffered from Tory cuts and they have had many officers taken out of the equation by self-isolation. However, there are some police officers for whom brute force and ignorance is the only solution for any problem.

To give Boris Badenough (and therefore his puppet master Dominic C) dictatorial powers for an unlimited period will be an example of a cure being worse than the disease.

The working class (mainly the trade union and political activists) will draw the appropriate conclusions from the abject and pathetic failure of capitalism to cope with the C-virus.

It is a good thing, for example, that NHS staff are no longer being charged for parking at NHS hospitals. The scandal is that they were ever charged in the first place. And Boris Badenough supported every austerity measure which made such penny-pinching inevitable.

Capitalism is incapable of dealing with this crisis. The profits of billionaires like Branson are more important than the lives of key workers. Socialism could be the only way out of this situation. Listen to how people are talking in the street. This system has let them down catastrophically and the Labour movement needs to provide answers.