KitNotes

Sorry for not posting for a while. Good news for my AWL readers is that, on Thursday, while I was raising funds for the group at Leeds Festival pouring drinks with Workers Beer, I officially became a member.

Make of that what you will, eh?

Leeds Festival was pritty good, though when you’re working there, you don’t get to enjoy it as much as if you were a paying punter, though the free beers and food you get do make up for it. I was working the Mandela bar, which was right by the main stage, so I got to see all the main acts. It’s a shame most of them sucked, with the exception of Flogging Molly, where I ended up in the quite hard mosh pit. Contarary to popular belief, I am NOT a mosher, thank you very much.

I’m more into my breakbeat, especially drum & bass, and I was a bit gutted that I couldn’t have a good old rave to some deep frequency basslines. But it was free. Beggars can’t be choosers, eh?

Anyway, onto more… hmm… advanced culture.

I’ve been tagged by Louise from Team Stroppyblog with the following for me to complete and forward. So here goes…

1. Book(s) that changed your life: I can’t say I’ve ever read a book that has ‘changed my life’. There are books which are pritty inspiring, but life changing experiences - for me anyway - don’t come from books, but real life adventures.

Inspiring tomes include “Ten Days That Shook The World” by John Reed, and James Cannon’s “Socialism On Trial” (Tommy Sheridan, eat your heart out - Cannon IS the daddy of socialists in court)

2. Book(s) you have read more tham once: Greg Palast. There is too much to take in if you read it just once, half of it you won’t remember.

3. Book I would take on a desert island: Hmmm, do these have to be political? “Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About” by Mil Millington never fails to have me in complete and utter stiches.

4. Book which made you laugh: Apart from the above, “Reasons To Be Cheerful” by Mark Steel. Despite his politics, a lot of what Steel describes chimes with my own experiences. A very funny book indeed.

5. Book which made you cry: I can’t remember when I last cried over a book.

6. Book(s) you wish you had written: “Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?”

7. Book(s) which you wish had never been written: I only have a limited amount of webspace, you know.

8. Book which you are currently reading: None, shockingly, I should sort this out at once!

9. Book you are meaning to read: There is a neverending list.

If you complete this list on your blog, let me know, and then I can say I tagged you and impress Louise with my huge number of blogging friends. K thx.

From The Sunday Herald:

FORMER Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) leader Tommy Sheridan has revealed that several Scottish celebrities, including actor and director Peter Mullan, are to join him in forming a new political party.

Sheridan, who was awarded £200,000 damages earlier this month in his case against the News Of The World, said in an interview with the Sunday Herald that he wants to start a new socialist movement.

“It’s time to build a new organisation out of comrades, not collaborators. I am confident we can build a new, bigger and better socialist vehicle,” he said.

He claimed that David McKay and Martin McCardie, both Glasgow-born actors, writers and directors, will join him forming the new unnamed party.

Sheridan said: “Peter Mullan, Davie McKay, Martin McCardie are among those I’ve had consultations with and they have said they want to be part of something new, along with miners, nurses and everyday workers.

“I predict hundreds, maybe thousands, of ordinary, everyday workers will fight for equality and justice. The war is with inequality, not with fellow socialists. And Scotland is big enough for more than one socialist party.”

Oops. Am I that slow?

This is from The Scotsman:

TOMMY Sheridan yesterday vowed to turn his back on the Scottish Socialists and to set up his own party, after admitting he had no future in the organisation he founded.

Mr Sheridan urged those in the SSP to join him in a new movement, which his supporters said could be called the Solidarity Scottish Socialist Movement - a reference to the shipworkers’ opposition movement in communist Poland.

However, rivals poured scorn on the idea of Mr Sheridan using the Solidarity label and vowed to fight any new party.

Following Mr Sheridan’s successful defamation case against the News of the World, the party has been split.

Many of the “United Left” faction claimed during his libel trial that Mr Sheridan had admitted visiting swingers’ clubs, and they now refuse to work with their former leader. But another faction calling themselves the “SSP Majority” want Mr Sheridan reinstalled as leader.

The two sides were due to battle it out at the party’s national conference in October. However it now seems Mr Sheridan will lead his supporters in a new movement before it goes to the vote. From more than 50 branches, so far he has fewer than a dozen nominations for the leader’s position.

Other suggested names according to that Scotsman report include Solidarity, the Socialist Majority, the Democratic Green Socialists or Independent Scottish Socialists.

In any case, whiffs of Lech Walesa aside, it seems that I overestimated old Tommy. Apparently this new party won’t just be a Scottish RESPECT (though one cannot rule it out in all honesty), but it’s still a damaging development. No doubt that people who came to socialism because of Tommy Sheridan will still hold some loyalty for him, however misplaced it is. A lot of people - actors and directors included - were loyal to Gerry Healy, and look what happened to him. I believe the phase is ‘hoisted by one’s petard’.

The chances are that the CWI and SWP platforms inside the SSP will join ‘Solidarity’, which will cause it to splinter further. The CWI in the rest of Britain are pushing their propagandist and substitutionalist ‘Campaign for a New Workers Party‘ while the SWP are pushing RESPECT.

Meanwhile, despite Colin Fox’s best attempts, the SSP are up shit creek without a paddle. They’ve just lost their ’star’ (though it may be no great loss from their perspective) but are also saddled with massive debts, a disillusioned membership, and a huge PR problem, and no, I’m not talking about proportional representation.

For once, I don’t think I have the answers. Well, not right now. What needs to be done is to develop the party into a firmly internationalist, revolutionary, socialist direction which relies less on MSP celebrities and more on building an educated, active membership party.

I got this from one of the (too) many mailing lists that I am subscribed to:

The Venezuelan National Guard has repressed a group of striking workers belonging to the UNT in Carabobo state, according to reports on the Aporrea website.

Workers at Alfarería Internacional (International Pottery) had their three-week-old strike broken up on 10 August by the National Guard. Two days before, seven members of the union’s executive were arrested.

Workers are members of the Unión de Trabajadores Procesadores de la Arcilla, Similares y Conexos del Estado Carabobo (Utpasca), part of the National Union of Workers (UNT), the new independent union federation in Venezuela.

Although information is sketchy, it is at least clear that the Venezuelan military has used force to back employers against unionised and militant workers. The UNT in Carabobo is calling for solidarity.

Perhaps Chávez should heed the warning of his hero Simón Bolívar – damned is the soldier that uses force against the people.

This has caused quite a stir on the e-group of the Socialist Youth Network (who’s new message board is finally up and running here) between the Alliance for Workers Liberty supporters (to who’s camp I belong on this question, without being an actual member) and Old Labourites/Socialist Appeal.

Certainly there has been a lot of support for Chavez who, in his own way, constitutes an alternative to US Imperialism in Latin America. And there are features of his “Boliviarian Revolution” which I believe should be defended - the literacy programmes, social housing programmes, healthcare, etc.

But to defend these gains is no different to defend the gains of the 1945 Labour Government (which, uncannily, also introduced similar benefits for workers). There are some who like to believe that the Chavez movement constitutes a socialist revolution, and given the defeat of the Stalinist states in Russia and Eastern Europe and the massive onslaught of US and UK imperialism (mostly US), then the proposition is an attractive one.

But people shouldn’t let their optimism blind them. The process in Venezuela under Chavez is not a socialist revolution - the nature of Chavez’s state is what Marxists call ‘left-bonapartist’. It replaces the independent role of the working class with a benevolent state.

Certainly, there is very little worker’s organisation that is independent of both Chavez and the capitalists (who predict rich pickings, according to The Times). Indeed, the above report suggests that workers who are organising for their class interests are being attacked by this ‘progressive state’.

Certainly the Chavistas on the SYN list are being quiet on actually giving an answer. But this one is open to people who support Chavez (critically or otherwise). When workers are fighting for their class interests, who do you back: the Chavistas or the workers?