Public Reading Rooms is very pleased to publish this interesting and informative piece from the veteran Marxist Ian Birchall . Ian’s article forms part of an important discussion about the hugely significant political developments of recent weeks. Our pages are open. Please write to us at [email protected]

A friend recently suggested to me the comparison between the current wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations and the events of 1968. For someone of my age it is an interesting comparison. Obviously I am in no position to make a properly documented historical assessment, but I have attempted to compare some aspects. I am writing largely from memory, and my perspective will necessarily be subjective and impressionistic, but I offer these somewhat disconnected thoughts as a small contribution to the current political debate.

I should begin by saying something of my own situation, which must be taken into consideration in relation to any comparisons I may make. I was slightly older than the generation radicalised by 1968; I had become active in the Nuclear Disarmament movement around 1960, and in 1962 had joined the International Socialists – forerunners of the SWP. For some five years I had been calling myself a Marxist and a revolutionary, though I was only beginning to understand the meaning of those words. In 1968 events that had seemed to belong to a hypothetical future became part of the real world. I was heavily involved in the movement of 1968 – meetings, demonstrations, etc.; looking back it is hard to imagine how I found the time for it all. Ostensibly I was joint author of a small pamphlet on the French events, though in reality I was merely Tony Cliff’s research assistant.

Today my situation is very different. I have mobility problems which mean that, even without the lockdown, I should be unable to attend meetings or demonstrations. I may respond to events with approval, even admiration, but my knowledge is limited to what is available in print and online, plus occasional discussions with comrades. And of course the present situation is only the very beginning. It is clear that the BLM movement, added to the coronavirus crisis and the increasing threat of climate change, is opening up a new historical phase. But I am unlikely to live long enough to assess what it will mean. To an observer of history like myself it is a bit like reading a detective story from which the last chapters have been torn out.

What can be said about the current wave of resistance from BLM etc. from the perspective of a one-time 1968 activist? Perhaps not much. I am not particularly well-informed, and the movement is still at a very early stage. So my observations will be tentative and cautious.

One comparison illuminates the sheer scale of events. According to no less than Priti Patel, some 137,500 people attended protests in Britain over the weekend of 6-7 June. (Guardian, 8.6.20) That is considerably in excess of the hundred thousand which were claimed for the October 1968 Vietnam demonstration – although we had no lockdown to contend with and had been working to build the demonstration for some months.

News that the Minneapolis city council has pledged to disband the city’s police department was remarkable. An ageing sceptic like myself may wonder just what it will mean and what the new arrangements will amount to, but there is no doubt that some important changes are going on.

US dockworkers on strike for Black Lives Matter

Much has been written about 1968, a good deal by historians who are too young to remember it. There is now a whole field of academic study entitled “1960s protest research”. Of course there will always be a conflict between the viewpoint of those who actually took part and those who have worked from the archives – I am always thankful, when I write about the French Revolution, that there are no surviving sans-culottes to complain “It wasn’t like that”.

The centrepiece of 1968 was the French general strike – ten million workers; still, to the best of my knowledge, the biggest general strike in human history. But illiterate journalists feel it can be dismissed as “student riots”. And 1968 led on to a series of events around the world – the massive strike wave in Italy in 1969, the humiliating defeat of the United States in Vietnam, the strike by British miners in 1974 which provoked a general election and led to the fall of the Tories, the Portuguese revolution which looked as though it might spill over into post-Franco Spain. All these events created a sense that a revolutionary perspective for the coming years was far from unrealistic. Historians with the wisdom of hindsight may assure us that the system was in no danger – but we don’t live our lives in retrospect.

In my recollection one central aspect was the sense of urgency. I remember hearing Tony Cliff in Hornsey Town Hall at the end of May 1968, arguing that capitalism and trade unions could no longer co-exist. Perhaps it would be five years, perhaps it would be seven before the final confrontation. He concluded: “If I am wrong, I see you in the concentration camps”. Cliff himself soon adjusted his over-dramatic timescale. But he was not entirely wrong. In just over five years there would be concentration camps in Chile – and internment in Northern Ireland.

Tony Cliff

One thing that should be stressed is that the question of racism was central in 1968, just as it is today. In Britain one defining political event of the year was Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech. This was an extremely alarming event, which focussed the minds of the left on the emerging threat from the racist right. And doubly alarming, especially for those of us who had been welcoming the rise in industrial militancy and opposition to the Labour government’s wage controls, was the fact of groups of workers taking strike action in support of Powell. Above all there was the strike by London dockers.

Here it is important to recall a figure often forgotten in accounts of 1968. Terry Barrett was a London docker who had joined the International Socialists and had worked closely with us around the dock strike in 1967. When the dockers voted to strike in support of Powell, Barrett gave out a leaflet – written by Paul Foot – putting a clear class position against Powell, pointing out for example that Powell had called for mass sackings on the docks. Barrett showed great courage and was totally isolated – other dockers threw coins at him. Of course he was quite unable to prevent the dockers from striking for Powell. But the fact that IS took such a firm anti-racist position helped to attract some of the people who would build the Anti-Nazi League a few years later.

In France many of the leaders of the 1968 movement had been radicalised by the colonial war in Algeria which ended in 1962. Alain Krivine, one of the most prominent student leaders, had been a member of the Communist Party youth section, but had been reprimanded for making contacts with the Algerian National Liberation Front. He had then become involved in solidarity activity with the Algerian struggle. Yvon Rocton had gone to Algeria as a conscript and had been sent to a punishment battalion for protesting at the army’s use of torture. On his return to France he had joined a Trotskyist organisation, the Parti Ouvrier Internationaliste. In 1968 he was working at the Sud-Aviation aircraft factory in Nantes, where he led a factory occupation which was to be the first in France, and would spark off a national wave of occupations over the following days.

Obviously racism is central to the current movement of struggle. I want to be very careful about how I discuss the comparison with 1968. Of course people get justifiably very angry when Tory politicians assure them that Britain is not a racist country. And it is the victims of racism who have an absolute right to define the racism they experience. Racist practices and attitudes remain deeply embedded in British society. (I shall confine my comments to Britain – I don’t know enough about the USA to comment in any depth.) Anyone who, like myself, is misguided enough to spend far too much time on Twitter is aware of the vile – and often semi-literate – racist abuse that flourishes there; whether spontaneous or centrally coordinated – probably a bit of both – it is substantial enough to be very alarming.

Yet at the same time it seems to me that it would be defeatist to suggest that nothing has changed, that fifty years of anti-racist campaigning have achieved nothing whatsoever. Doubtless we made mistakes, doubtless we sometimes did not try hard enough. But if nothing has changed, it would seem to imply that campaigning is futile.

My own feeling is that racism in Britain, though still very real, is more on the defensive than it was fifty years ago. I remember how overt racism was in the 1960s. Until just before 1968 it was still legal to advertise a room to let with the words “No Blacks” (or an appalling example, for its mixture of racism and snobbery, “No Blacks except embassy”). South African apartheid was widely defended. Those who opposed sporting links with South Africa were accused of bringing “politics” into sport. Today it would be hard to find a Tory MP who would express other than admiration for Nelson Mandela. But back in 1964 those of us (including myself, Tariq Ali and several others still active on the left today) who demonstrated vigorously against the South African ambassador after Mandela was jailed were a tiny minority and widely reviled.

That racism was equally deeply established in the Labour Party. I remember we raised in our local branch the question of a colour bar in a local Labour Club – and one member quite cheerfully telling us they didn’t want blacks – or Jews! In the 1964 election I was leafleting a polling station with a Labour Party member. He gave a leaflet to a black voter, saying (clearly with no concern as to whether he could be heard) “if you can read”.

Now when people in positions of power and authority are challenged about racism, they are somewhat more defensive, more apologetic, more anxious to insist that they are opposed to racism. And attitudes are changing. As Richard Evans points out in the New Statesman (19-6-20) a poll in 2014 showed that 59 per cent of UK respondents thought the British Empire was something to be proud of. By March this year the figure had fallen to 32 per cent.

I belong to the generation that grew up when the empire was taken for granted. Like many homes mine had a map on the wall showing the British Empire in red. As a child I was made to collect money for missionaries – the benighted populations outside Europe had false religions and had to be given the true one. I doubt if those of us who grew up in that world of empire will ever totally shake off its legacy – but we are dying off fast.

There is a long, long way to go, but we have made some progress and we need to go on pushing. But of course I realise that for someone young and angry being told that things were even worse fifty years ago isn’t a lot of consolation.

So it is important to analyse the various forms which racism takes. Is Boris Johnson a racist? Inasmuch as he is quite happy to make irresponsible use of racial stereotypes in order to achieve journalistic effect, yes. He has the typical arrogance of a privileged white upper-class Brit. But does he have a political strategy based on racist principles? Unlikely, since he wouldn’t know a principle if one ran up his trouser leg. Johnson attacked Muslims and single mothers because he knew it would confirm the vile prejudices of readers of the Spectator and Telegraph. He would praise Stalin if there was money in it.

In 1968 we saw racism as deeply rooted in capitalism, so that the struggle against racism feeds directly into a broader struggle against capitalism. The same seems to be true for many of today’s militants. Socialist Worker (17.6.20) quite rightly quotes with approval Angela Davies’ statement that “the only true path of liberation for black people is the one that leads towards a complete and total overthrow of the capitalist class” – though I suspect the interrelation of the struggles may be more complex than some of Socialist Worker’s simplistic formulations. But at least its positions are more credible than the Weekly Worker’s remarkably complacent claim (11.6.20) that “in western capitalist societies…. deliberate efforts have been made to diversify the professional layers of society over many decades”, and that therefore anti-racism can be dismissed as mere “identity politics”.

1968 must be seen in its historical context. It came towards the end of what is often called the “long boom”, the period of twenty-five years or so after World War II when Western capitalism enjoyed economic expansion and full employment. For many, in the labour movement and elsewhere, it seemed that capitalism had changed for good, that prosperity and full employment would last for ever. The IS held a position known as the “permanent arms economy”, based on the work of Michael Kidron, which argued that the long boom was based on massive arms spending. The mechanisms whereby this happened were complex and open to question (Kidron himself later moved away from the theory), and few of us understood them properly, but the conclusion was simple – the boom was real (as against those on the far left who continued to promise imminent slump) but it would not last for ever and it was bought at the very real price of the danger of nuclear war. As to how long the boom would last and what would happen when it ended, we were rather vague.

The long boom had produced a working class that was strong and self-confident. When its situation began to be undermined as the boom came to an end, it initially fought back with great vigour. The peak year was 1972, when engineers joined miners at the Saltley picket and won the strike; a few months later five dockers were jailed for breaking anti-union laws. As strikes spread, the state was obliged to invoke an obscure legal figure (the Official Solicitor, who pleaded on behalf of children and others unable to defend themselves) to get them out. I remember seeing the release in a pub in Hull, and thinking, in a way I have never done before or since, “Our side has won”.

It didn’t last. By the end of the seventies the militancy had run out of steam. Tony Cliff argued that there had been a “downturn” in struggle. In the short term he was right and saved IS from many of the problems that beset other organisations confronted with a setback to their militant aspirations. In the longer term he was wrong. Cliff and we in the SWP expected the “downturn” to be short-lived and to be followed by a renewal of struggle. We’re still waiting. The lesson, I think, is that there is no automatic relation between economic crisis and resistance.

It is clear that the impact of coronavirus will be to produce an international economic crisis. The depth and extent of that crisis is unpredictable. Even more unpredictable is what will be the effect on class consciousness and movements of resistance. Will threats to living standards provoke militant resistance, as they did in 1972, or will rising unemployment intimidate and subdue workers, as it did in the later 1970s? It’s too soon to know.

In the ten years preceding 1968 France had been ruled by General de Gaulle. He was an autocrat, with a carefully designed presidential system that enabled him to exercise power. He was eccentric, rather quaintly old-fashioned, but certainly not a fascist. The left had failed to remove him electorally. In 1968 he put an end to the movement by calling an election; a frightened middle class flocked to vote for him, while a working class that had seemed to be on the brink of achieving much more showed no enthusiasm for the left. But de Gaulle’s triumph was short-lived. The following year he called a referendum and was quietly but effectively stabbed in the back by his own allies. 1968 had, after a short delay, put an end to de Gaulle. I would not want to take a comparison between de Gaulle and Trump too far; but perhaps there are parallels with the way Trump’s support among his own allies is beginning to slip away as he fails to deal with either coronavirus or the BLM revolt.

In 1968 de Gaulle won the support of army leaders. But in the end he did not use the army against the strike movement. France still had a conscript army. Many soldiers had been, or aspired to be, students. And almost every soldier must have had a striker in his family or his close circle of friends. Could the army have been relied on if it had been asked to confront strikers? De Gaulle had the spectacle of Vietnam, where the US army was increasingly unwilling to fight an unjust and unsuccessful racist war, and where many black soldiers sympathised with the black revolt back in the US. Today the US is still haunted by Vietnam; whatever its military needs it dare not bring back the draft. And now Trump’s threats to use the army against protesters has led to open dissent from military leaders. Lenin’s view of the state (“special bodies of armed men”) remains valid, but contradictions within the state are becoming more visible.

Another important question is that of fascism. When fascism first emerged in the 1920s it it caused a lot of difficulties for Marxists, who tended to see it in terms of reactionary movements from the past rather than recognising a new and very dangerous phenomenon. (The Italian Communist Party used to refer to Mussolini’s blackshirts as “white guards”, which must have caused considerable confusion.) A bit later the irresponsible use of the term fascist – in particular the description of social democrats as “social fascists” – played a significant part in enabling Hitler to take power.

But since 1945 the term “fascist” has often been used indiscriminately and confusingly. The IS appeal for left unity in 1968 was entitled “The Urgent Challenge of Fascism”. It was misleading. The threat of racism was real and immediate. Over the coming few years small but pernicious fascist organisations would emerge, but the main threat to the working class, black and white, came from mainstream parties – Labour as well as Tories.

Today the enemy is different. There are real fascists – and at times it is necessary to expose and confront them. But they are not the main enemy. Donald Trump has some reactionary, evil and dangerous policies – but he is not a fascist. Marxist analysis of new forms of reactionary rule, not mere sloganising, is required.

An important fact about the French general strike, often neglected, is that out of ten million strikers, at best three million were union members. Unionisation levels in France were very low – partly as an inheritance of the syndicalist view that unions were the organisation of the “active minority” rather than of the totality of wage-earners, and partly because of the divisions in French trade-unionism, with three main federations, under Communist, social-democratic and secularised ex-Catholic leaderships.

The low level of unionisation was a great asset for the Communist Party and the union it controlled, the CGT. Where they were dominant, the factory occupations were run by union activists, while the non-unionised were sent home to watch the state-controlled television. The Trotskyists of Lutte ouvrière argued that revolutionaries should present a programme for non-unionised workers. British comrades, used to near-100% unionisation levels, tended to be rather scornful of this, saying that the only message for non-union members was “join the union”. Presumably they imagined that revolutionaries should spend their time during a general strike filling in membership forms and putting them in the post (….. oh! the postal workers were on strike).

The point is not to argue against working in the unions. The role of the unions was crucial in controlling the strike and getting workers back to work, and it was vital to be in the unions to counter this. But it was also important to recognise that the majority of workers were not in the unions, and to find ways of addressing them and involving them actively in the movement. Similar flexibility will be required in the future.

The development of communications has been an important factor. Vietnam – and with it the international wave of opposition to the US aggression – was the first war to be widely followed on television. But in other ways things were very different to today. Telephones existed – but they were firmly rooted in houses. The idea of putting one in your pocket was pure science fiction. I remember being in Paris in the 1970s and to phone London I had to go to a post office and get an operator to connect me.

So there were plenty of rumours. I remember hearing in the course of the May events that demonstrators had burned down the Paris Stock Exchange. Naturally we thought this was rather a good thing. When I finally got to Paris in July I made a point of going to the Stock Exchange. I walked right round the building and could not find so much as a single scorch mark.

From the age of Twitter communication in 1968 looks almost unbelievably sluggish. So it is no surprise that the BLM movement has spread to so many countries so rapidly. Within a week of the first demonstrations in the USA the movement had spread to Mexico, Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland, Israel and Canada. (“Ten Days That Shook the World”, RS21, 4. 6. 20) More than ever before capitalism is an international system and resistance must be international too.

1968 was a year – like 1848 and the aftermath of 1917 – when revolutionary ideas spread rapidly across frontiers. Often those of us who challenged the Stalinist theory of “socialism in one country” had been accused of advocating “simultaneous revolution”. But in 1968 the idea did not seem quite so absurd.

The far left had to respond, very quickly, to the challenges of 1968. I’ll focus on the International Socialists, as that was where I was.

How can the Marxist left today relate to the emerging movement? We have to begin from where we are. The Marxist left in Britain today is lamentably small and divided. The biggest organisation is probably the SWP, with in reality no more than a thousand members and a paper sale of at best three thousand. The SWP used to claim to “punch above its weight”, but I doubt if it does any more. The simple fact is that, after fifty years of “building the party”, the Marxist left in Britain is much smaller and less influential than it was in 1968.

In 1968 the Marxist left in Britain had the prospect of rapid growth – in 1968 IS more than doubled its membership (450 to 1000). Those new members were mainly young, enthusiastic and hyperactive. There is no similar prospect today.

For many years I believed the SWP offered the possibility of an organisation which combined what was best in classic Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism with a realistic assessment of current reality. (As Tony Cliff used to say: “If you sit on Marx’s shoulders you see far, but if you sit on Marx’s shoulders and close your eyes, you don’t see very far at all”.) In 2013 I, and many other comrades, were painfully obliged to acknowledge that we had been wrong – an organisation which couldn’t deal with a rogue National Secretary was hardly likely to stand up to the bourgeois state. For a little while there was perhaps a glimmer of hope that the International Socialist Organization in the USA could achieve the required synthesis, but that has now liquidated itself.

The IS response in 1968 was a return to Leninism. After two stormy conferences a “democratic centralist” constitution was adopted. Cliff began to lecture on Lenin and started writing his four-volume biography. It was not an unreasonable position. A more effective, interventionist organisation was needed for the period that was opening up. Lenin’s Bolshevik party was the only model we’d got, hopefully interpreted in not too literal or mechanical a way.

It seemed to make sense in historical terms. 1917 had opened up a period of revolutionary change, but this had been driven off course by the rise of Stalinism. Now, we thought, the Stalinist detour was over. The French Communist Party’s sluggish and conservative response to the strike wave, and the international crisis of Communism caused by the invasion of Czechoslovakia, marked the beginning of the end of Moscow’s domination of the international left. As Tony Cliff used to say – there is now no danger of the left capitulating to Stalinism – they are moving rightwards so fast you can’t catch up with them to capitulate. So, apparently, we could resume the natural course of history from where we had been interrupted in the mid-twenties.

Today it is clear that, whatever we can aspire to in the future, it is not a rerun of 1917. Of course it is still worth studying 1917, as one historical topic among others; there are always lessons to be learned and inspiration to be gained. Lenin still repays study, among other things for his theory of the state, for his remarkable flexibility about organisational forms as objective circumstances changed, and for his wonderfully agnostic final speech to the Comintern in 1922: “The resolution is too Russian, it reflects Russian experience. ….. Nothing will be achieved that way. They must assimilate part of the Russian experience. Just how that will be done, I do not know.”

In a period of rising struggle organisation is certainly required. Nothing happens spontaneously, there is always someone who takes a lead or proposes an initiative. In 1968 we turned to Leninism because it seemed the best thing going. Now there is no obvious model for organisation. So there will undoubtedly be heated debates about organisational forms. In the period just before the coronavirus Extinction Rebellion drew in more activists in a few months than the Marxist left had done in twenty years. This is not to say that XR has solved the problem of organisation; undoubtedly its members will recognise weaknesses and learn from mistakes. There are no models from the past, from 1917 or 1968, which will solve our problems.

The far left in 1968 was small and fragmented. (Until 1968 the largest British Trotskyist organisation had been the Socialist Labour League, which in October 1968 gave out leaflets boasting that it was not taking part in the Vietnam demonstration. IS overtook it in 1968.) IS put out an appeal for left unity on the basis of a minimum programme. This was mainly aimed at the International Marxist Group (IMG). This had “orthodox” Trotskyist politics and until recently had been oriented to the Labour left, but it had done excellent work in building the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. And it had Tariq Ali. Tariq was a formidable orator – I remember hearing him at the Friends’ Meeting House just after he had returned from Vietnam. He had to plead with the audience to stop clapping so that he could get on with his speech. And, although he was no longer a student, he had been built up by the press as a “student leader”. IS plus Tariq could have created a powerful pole of attraction to establish a left organisation of several thousands. (How long it would have lasted after the euphoria of 1968 had worn off is a different question.) It nearly happened – as Ernie Tate has shown in his autobiography (Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s & 60s, 2014) the IMG was divided and might well have agreed to a fusion. Instead IS fused with a small group around Sean Matgamna, which produced three years of internal conflict, and gave the SWP a phobia about factional rights which has lasted half a century.

So what remains? The left unity initiative, which failed in 1968, would now be completely futile. Dragging the tired, depleted fragments of the Marxist left together would achieve nothing – in fifty years we have just acquired more reasons to bear grudges again each other. And, it seems to me, the whole Leninist project is now exhausted. When the USSR collapsed in the early 1990s we hoped it would mean a revival of the “genuine” Marxist left. It didn’t happen. Tony Cliff’s claim (Trotskyism After Trotsky, 1999) that Trotskyism was “coming into its own” again was no more than wishful thinking.

What we need to address is something which blighted all attempts at left unity in 1968, and remains a huge obstacle today. It is what Peter Sedgwick referred to as the idea of the “apostolic succession”, the belief that one particular organisation is the true heir of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, and has a monopoly of “correct” positions. All other organisations are dismissed as counter-revolutionary, or at best as irrelevant sects. I am more sympathetic to the idea expressed by Tony Cliff in his magnificent lecture on Engels, only five years before his death: “ideas are like a river and a river is formed from lots of streams”.

In 1968 Trotskyists, Maoists and anarchists cooperated briefly, before their differences began to harden. In 1968 some of us in IS cooperated with Black Dwarf, as well as helping to launch the weekly Socialist Worker, believing the two publications could be complementary. Alas, we were soon at each other’s throats.

Today it seems to me that a range of publications – journals and websites – can coexist, helping to develop and propagate Marxist ideas. Jacobin, Catalyst, Salvage, RS21, Historical Materialism, Spectre, Tribune, New Left Review – and many more I’ve probably never heard of, have a role to play. Party publications can contribute as well, if they abandon the claim to a monopoly of truth.

Until 1968 the IS worked inside the Labour Party. This was not “entrism” in the classic sense – it simply provided a milieu where we could meet and discuss with other people of left-wing views. In the early 1960s the tactic paid off – IS membership quadrupled (50 to 200) from work in the LP Young Socialists. (Whether such recruitment ever works except in youth organisations I don’t know – I suspect not). But in the mid-sixties the emphasis was shifting – we were more involved in industrial struggles and tenants’ campaigns, and less in internal arguments in the LP. In 1967 I tried quite hard to get myself expelled, but the LP was too gutless to throw me out.

The Wilson government from 1964 had been a great disappointment even to those of us who had not expected very much of it. Wilson froze wages, tightened immigration controls and backed the US in Vietnam. The response to the Powell speech was abject – for a fortnight after the speech Wilson and the other Labour leaders remained silent; Powell’s slanders went unanswered. 1968 was the end of the road – most comrades left the LP, though a few stayed in where local parties offered a favourable environment. In 1970 there was a fierce internal debate before we even decided to call for a Labour vote.

Were we wrong, premature in our departure? In my view the whole Corbyn experience has proved that it is impossible to take over the Labour Party from the top down. But I understand why individuals would want to go into the Labour Party, if they think it is a useful milieu for meeting and discussing with other left-wingers. A publication can address those inside and outside the Labour Party, and encourage dialogue between them. An organisation which requires all its members to be inside or outside the Labour Party merely aggravates the problem.

One of the lessons of 1968 was the need for flexibility in terms of tactics and organisation. There was a student occupation at Hornsey College of Art. One morning I was phoned to be told that security guards with dogs had gone in to clear the students out. I set off for Hornsey, unsure what sort of a confrontation lay ahead. By the time I got there the students had “fraternised” – they were offering cups of tea to the security men and feeding biscuits to the dogs. In the nuclear disarmament movement I had often argued against those who made “non-violence” a principle – here it worked perfectly as a tactic.

When I came into politics, about eight years before 1968, Marxism was pretty thin on the ground. Certainly the writings of Marx and Lenin were easily available in cheap editions produced in Moscow. But only two or three books by Trotsky were available. Luxemburg was almost unknown until a couple of books by Tony Cliff and JP Nettl appeared. Gramsci was virtually unknown, and Lukács was represented only by a couple of volumes of rather Stalinist literary criticism.

1968 led to a boom in left publishing. Much classic Marxist material became available again, and there was a flood of new books. For a while in the 1970s and 1980s Marxism was almost fashionable in academic circles. It would be wrong to claim that nothing of value was produced, but in a great deal of work the link between theory and practice often seemed tenuous.

Today, above all with the Marxist Internet Archive, as well as publishing initiatives like Historical Materialism, there is no problem about the availability of Marxist literature. The question of how it feeds into the problems and needs of a real movement is a very different matter. In 1968 Marxists began to attract a small audience because what they were saying seemed to fit the way history was moving. Likewise Marxists today can have a real influence on the movement if they offer analyses which are convincing and fit the complexity of the situation.

One small sign of hope is the way Marxism remains a target for the apologists of the right. BLM is absurdly accused of being a “Marxist” organisation, and the accusation of “cultural Marxism” is thrown around, generally by those equally ignorant of Marxism and of culture. Hopefully all this will awaken an interest in Marxism among at least a few young people. (I first heard of Trotskyism as a result of the witch-hunt of the South Bank building workers’ strike in 1958.)

One final observation on 1968. It is only a personal impression, and in recent years often based on attendance at funerals. But I am struck by how many of those whom I knew in the years before and after 1968 remained active in left politics. Of course there have been many splits and divisions, and old comrades have chosen different paths. Many have devoted themselves to specific issues and campaigns rather than generalised revolutionary politics. There have been renegades, like the Hitchens brothers, but only very few. Nonetheless I think it is true that the experience of 1968 radicalised a generation of activists who have remained involved, in one way or another, in the left for over half a century. It seems likely that in fifty years time – if human civilisation survives that long – ageing activists will recall how they were first radicalised by the demonstrations of 2020.

That something very significant is now happening is not in question. How it will develop, what forms of organisation and activity will endure or be modified, is quite unpredictable. There are still some very nasty reactionaries at every level of society, and they will not surrender easily. But real gains can be made, and a new generation of activists is emerging. Will there be echoes of 1968? Today’s world is very different from 1968, in its hopes and dangers, but in Victor Serge’s words the left of the future will be “infinitely different from us, infinitely like us”.

Ian Birchall

June 2020

Robin passed away on the 29th May at the Royal Free Hospital surrounded by his family. He’d had a heart attack the week before in the street close to his home while out on a walk with his wife Manuela. She said he was reciting a passage from the Tempest at the time.

The heart attack was a shock to us all because Robin, although in his seventies, was one of the healthiest people that we knew. We thought that he would live forever such was his spirit and engagement with the world.

I first met Robin in the early years of Stop the War Coalition. He was running Muswell Hill STW one of the largest groups with several hundred members and a mailing list of thousands. For many years his group ran a weekly stall on the Broadway. In 2005 STW put out a call for help with the International Peace Conference that we were organising in London. We had scores of international delegates that needed hosting. Robin immediately responded offering help from his group. The entire US delegation some thirty strong were looked after by Muswell Hill STW.

The following year he took over running the central STW office organising the massive demonstrations that took place in the wake of the war on Lebanon in 2006.

He was hugely talented and efficient and for many years ran the STW website almost single handedly. He admired good writing and sought it out promoting those those he considered the best writers. For STW and subsequently on his own Public Reading Rooms website these included STW Convenor Lindsey German and others such as Matt Carr, Jonathan Cook, Tansy Hoskins, John Wight, Caitlin Johnstone and the late great Heathcote Williams among many others.

It was his love of Heathcote both as a person and a writer that led to our closest work together. Heathcote had written a series of pieces on Boris Johnson whom Heathcote hated with a vengeance. Heathcote wanted the articles published as a book and as he said – a weapon. He approached Robin and myself with this as a plan. We agreed and set up a publishing house, the Public Reading Rooms, to launch the book. At the same time Robin set up a PRR website to promote the book and also to be a voice for a shared politics and future publishing.

The book was published as Brexit Boris from Mayor to Nightmare and was illustrated with cartoons featuring Boris Johnson from the leading cartoonists of the day. The two printings of the book have sold out.

Over the last four years Robin continued to develop the website and build the publishing continuing to promote the writers that he admired. He was an editorial board member of the radical left journal Transform and he was central to building the successful European conference that the journal organised this March against the rise of the far right.

Robin never wavered in his support for the work of STW remaining a member of its steering committee until his death. Robin was a strong supporter of the Palestinian struggle and he was on the National Demonstration for Palestine only a couple of weeks before he died.

He was also very concerned at the lack of support from the left, as he saw it, for the case of Julian Assange whom he felt had been abandoned.

Robin had been a long time member of the Socialist Workers Party in the 1970s and early eighties and he retained an affection for comrades from that period and for the work of the organisation particularly its anti-racist and anti-fascist organising. However like many who’d been involved with the far left, myself included, he was drawn back into political life through the anti-war movement.

When Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader Robin joined the Labour Party to support him. He saw Jeremy’s election as opening up a real possibility for social change. He and Manuela canvassed energetically for the Labour Party in the 2015 general election. In the great Brexit debate he plumped for Remain but he was opposed to the right wing in the Labour Party using the Brexit question to attack Jeremy’s leadership. He was very critical of me when I went on the two People’s Vote marches and in the usual Robin very straightforward way demanded that I explain myself.

Robin would have been absolutely furious about his own death. He was extraordinarily careful in guarding against that great thief. He said he hadn’t had a drink in forty years and was very proud of his specialised juicer and swore by the medicinal properties of ginger and according to Manuela had recently discovered the benefits of magnesium. For those of his friends who like myself who were/are in relatively poor health he had lots of advice. During my chemotherapy treatments he provided an endless supply of films and books to help me pass the recovery time.

His great love of culture is reflected in the many posts he made on the Public Reading Rooms website. The breadth of his knowledge of plays, films and music was vast and his loves stretched from Doris Day to Frank Sinatra to Rai, Lowkey and the Young’uns and beyond. He loved his family above all else and he made the teasing of Manuela into an art form. He was immensely proud of all his children. The last song I heard Robin sing was ‘the wheels of the bus go round and round’ which he performed live with his 2 year old grandson in his sitting room. Great fun.

I shall miss Robin terribly and miss our long telephone conversations which we considered to be serious political analysis but were really time well spent endlessly gossiping about the left and its foibles. I shall also regret the fact that I never asked Robin for any of the passwords or log-ons for our website and social media and you tube platforms which may now be locked for eternity. Robin was meticulous in protecting against any possibility of us being hacked. He succeeded. RIP.

In China where the outbreak was first identified, it has been brought under control but elsewhere it is spreading rapidly. In its wake the virus is transforming everyday life. The main way to fight it is self-isolation and social distancing. No longer can people socialise as they did. Grandparents cannot help look after their grandkids. The schools are shut. The supermarket shelves are often empty. Bars, clubs restaurants and all social amenities are closed and will remain so possibly for many months.

The world is turned upside down and everyday life is changed in a way that nobody was expecting.

Swift action in China against the virus gave the rest of the world a breathing space. It gave other countries a few weeks in which to make preparations but few heeded the warning signs. In the US and Europe, few if any preparations were made by governments. Trump called the virus a hoax. He had already closed the White House pandemic office and last July had withdrawn the only US medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency in Beijing. This was a ‘Chinese’ virus and would not infect US citizens. But Europe not China is now the epicentre of the virus and many thousands more will die here than there. In the US itself there has been precious little testing and the disease is running rampant.

As governments flounder and struggle to stop the spread of the pandemic, ordinary people are coming together in self-help groups, in streets and on estates and throughout the community, to make sure the vulnerable and the elderly are not abandoned. In the UK, thousands of these groups sprang to life almost spontaneously. They are social solidarity in action and are taking some of the strain off local councils who have seen services decimated through central government cutbacks. This is not only heart warming but is a cause for hope and optimism.

Society is creaking under the weight of the tasks necessary to protect people in this outbreak. It is ill-prepared. The health service is poorly resourced and short of staff and basic equipment. The medical staff struggle to find protective masks. There are insufficient beds and not enough ventilators. The doctors will have to decide who lives and who dies. More morgues are being prepared. All this stems from years of austerity cutbacks which followed the bailout of the banks in 2008. Over that period there has been a massive transfer of wealth from working people to a small elite in society.

When the government says not to panic few believe it. When the supermarkets say there is enough food for all even fewer believe it. The supermarket shelves are emptying. The just-in-time food supply chain is fragile and could easily collapse.

The pandemic has detonated an enormous crisis. It is a crisis not just of health care but of the economy, of our political structures and of society as a whole. It is a global existential crisis of the entire system, it presents a real threat to the continuation of capitalism. Is this an exaggeration?  Some argue that the old routines of society will return once a vaccine is found. People will go back to work, production will resume and things will pretty much return to ‘normal’

Of course it is possible for the ruling class to recover its position, even from such a deep crisis. But is it also possible now to see an alternative path to a new kind of society. A struggle is now engaged over the future – can this rotten system be ended?  For many years this has seemed an unattainable prospect for those on the left. But in the midst of this crisis the possibility of fundamental social change is posed.

The virus has stripped the ideological mask away from society. Every thing that was hidden is now illuminated for all to see. The pandemic unleashes the same social and political dynamic that the world wars did. It accelerates class divisions and class struggle and reveals the real relations of things in society. We can see clearly the social power of the working class. The bankers, the Richard Bransons, the hedge fund managers and the speculators are exposed as the drain on society that they actually are. They add nothing of value.

The real value in society is to be found in those who constitute the actual subject of production, that is in labour itself. It is an ideological sleight of hand that makes the capitalist rather than the worker appear as the motor of production. For those of us on the left this is a truism that we learnt in our early time in the movement. But the change that the virus creates is that this now becomes apparent to all, as clear as day. Everyone now not only sees it but they come out on their balconies and shout it and make noise with pots and pans about it and whatever else they have to hand. And in Edinburgh they sing it in the form of Proclaimers’ songs dedicated to the ‘unsung heroes’ of this crisis – the nurses, the doctors and all those who are keeping society going during this crisis.

Society as a whole recognises the truth that it can dispense quite happily with the bankers but nurses are essential. Even the ruling class understands this and sees its own impotence in the crisis. The virus illuminates this essential truth: that working people embody the common decency of humanity.

Millions of people now recognise the uselessness of this system and of those who rule us. ‘Don’t we need a new form of society?’ ‘Why are things like this?’ This goes beyond leftist propaganda and becomes the talk of everyday life. In the solidarity networks these questions and these discussions are taking place. ‘What sort of society do we want?’. And when the answer to that question is ‘Not This One’, then something is in the air. A profound change in mass social consciousness is taking place.

The questions keep coming. Why are there no medical masks, no ventilators, no hand sanitizer? Where do we get these things? The answer is simple. Requisition the resources from the private health care system, instruct manufacturers to produce for human need. Society can be organised on radically different lines and can serve the interests of the vast majority and not those of a small minority.

This is a potentially explosive situation in class relations. The economic compulsion on the backs of the working class is undermined. Everyone remembers Theresa May saying in the 2017 general election that there was no magic money tree to pay for an increase in nurses’ wages. Now it seems they have found a whole magic money forest to try and preserve their dominance.

So what will happen next? The ruling class senses the danger and is prepared to move quickly and to give ground in order to maintain class rule. They are trying various strategies to preserve their position. At the beginning Johnson and his chief adviser Cummings were both keen on the ‘herd immunity’ strategy which proposed letting the virus rip through society. However after a public outcry and the publication of a study by epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson and others from Imperial College which suggested the strategy could lead to the deaths of 250,000 in the UK and up to 1.2m in the US, ‘herd immunity’ was shelved. The government withdrew it declaring that it had never been its strategy in the first place.

The pandemic has driven the world economy into recession to be followed by slump outstripping both the crisis of the 1930s and that of 2008. All the accumulated contradictions within the system that drove previous crises are once again brought to the surface in an even more powerful and destructive way. The measures taken to try and revive capitalist economies over the last ten years have built a massive burden of indebtedness into the system which now threatens its collapse. In its wake it reveals the fragility of all the existing political and social structures in society.

The Tories do not have a clear strategy to extricate themselves from this agglomeration of crises. A class truce is proposed by both Tories and Labour Party to deal with a national emergency. The Tories are prepared to temporarily suspend some of their sectional interests. The Labour Party, deeply wounded by its election defeat, is keen to present itself as a loyal, constructive and responsible opposition.

Jeremy Corbyn, whom the Conservative Party has attacked as a threat to the nation and as an ‘anti-semite’, now becomes an important elder statesman with whom one can work. You will hear little about the anti-semitism crisis in the Labour Party in the coming period. And Corbyn will be replaced by Keir Starmer who is very much a politician that leading Tories believe they can do business with. Some argue that Starmer should be brought into a national unity government. They believe that they will need Labour’s help in order to survive this crisis.

This political truce has its dangers for both parties. Both parties risk being outflanked and surpassed as the catastrophe gathers pace. In this situation the Labour Party is in a potentially powerful position, but doesn’t yet realise it – or more accurately wants to avoid the responsibilities that now rest on its shoulders. It welcomes being asked into the establishment’s inner circles and warns workers to accept and not go beyond what the Tories propose.

But the reality is that labour itself – the working class – is able at this point to exert its social, economic and political power. The Labour Party must represesent the interests of the working class in this context. It must lead, because what we are seeing is a shift in the balance of class forces in society, a change that few of us could have imagined only a few weeks ago. Working people are becoming aware of their power and the possibility of uniting with others across borders.

There is a sense that something must really change and a recognition that society must not return to how things were before the pandemic. Another, better world will have to be made.

The question for the radical left is how are we to respond? Do we have anything to say in this situation?

We cannot just repeat the old formulas. We have to reawaken our historical perspectives of socialist transformation. The answers do not lie in mirroring the strategies of the revolutions of the twentieth century. We must grasp the interplay of the social forces which are presented to us today, historically conditioned as those are, and which form the terrain on which we must fight. Previous revolutionary struggles cannot just be repeated. They left a legacy of positive and negative aspects which will shape our actions now.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were the product of a specific constellation of historical and social forces. We must fight with the comrades we have and the social forces which exist in our time.

Many millions of people are beginning to understand the need for real social change and are preparing to fight for the new society they want to see. The initial skirmishes in this battle will take many forms and socialists should engage creatively with the new forms of organisation that are emerging and not impose preconceived ideas as to how the struggles should unfold.

The left in the country has been riven by deep divisions over Brexit but in other countries too socialist organisations have been confined to a small political space; and comrades have been isolated from each other in separate organisations, often battling over the minutiae of political differences. I believe it is time to try and unite those socialist forces which understand both the gravity of the crisis and the tasks necessary in the coming period.

There will continue to be political differences and I am not suggesting the abandonment of principles. Instead I am suggesting the abandonment of subjectivity because that is required of us. It is our duty as socialists. We must try and rise to the level necessary to play the historical role that the left has always claimed for itself.

The virus has disrupted the ability of the ruling class to subordinate working people in line with its overall class interest. The virus stops capital reproduction dead in its tracks. The Tories are prepared to give ground because they understand the weakness of their own position. They speculate that this ground can be recouped from labour once everything gets back to ‘normal’. In this belief they have some willing allies in the labour movement. These people are so imbued with the ideology of the ruling class that they cannot imagine the world being any different.

But there is movement now at the base of society. There is anger, a desire for change and there needs to be organisation.

The working class is faced with the possibility, no more than that at this moment, of resolving – in its own interests – some of the problems it has faced for many decades. It begins to recognise the impossibility of continuing to live in a world dominated by capital. A question is posed. How do we create a society based on human need and not profit?

For the radical left there is a new mass audience. Ideas that would have seemed outlandish a few weeks ago now make perfect common sense. Who will now justify the billions or even trillions of dollars being spent on nuclear weapons and other military hardware? Why do we not distribute food to the poor and vulnerable? Why are there food banks? Surely food should be distributed to everyone? Increasingly production and distribution are being brought under state control in the interests of the population as a whole. This cannot be only necessary and desirable during a national emergency. It has to be the bedrock of our society.

There must be no going back and we need to be organised, becoming hegemonic with a new narrative that centres planning, public ownership and solidarity at the heart of our society. The desire for ‘normality’ after the crisis will play into the Tories’ hands, We must resist this and win the case for social, economic and political transformation.

There is a lot more to say on the question of internationalism and on the question of climate change.  During the crisis the decline in industrial production, the reduction of air travel and exhaust emissions reduces pollution and leads to better air quality. There are once again fish and dolphins in the canals of Venice. The fight against the pandemic has to be accompanied by a complete re-thinking about the organisation of society and its relation to the natural world. In the future society must be organised in such a way that the natural world is protected and not destroyed.

We all need to write about and discuss these crucial matters. I will try and write some more on them myself, especially about why building the international movement is a primary task at this moment, and about the dangers we face from the far right should we fail.

Let us recognise the scale of the tasks we face and bring together those forces that have a common understanding of the necessity of ending this system, not saving it.

Time is not on our side. Rosa Luxemburg’s understanding that in her historical period humanity stood on the crossroads between ‘socialism or barbarism’ has never been more true than in ours.

Dear comrades,

Here is my update from Italy. Good news first…
– Life under lockdown is intense, challenging, but also often quite beautiful. We are getting exercise, playing music, making art and sharing food. There’s a strong sense of social solidarity and things feel especially cheerful when the sun is out.
– Provisions like paused mortgages and bills payments are helping ease the anxiety of lost work. Life will go one when this is over.
– Our region, Friuli Venezia-Giulia, is still faring okay considering the circumstances. As of today, we have 347 cases and 14 deaths. Hospitals are working extremely hard, but not overwhelmed or breaking down (yet). Hospitals and health services are reshuffling as EMTs and ICU nurses relocate to bigger hospitals with negative-pressure rooms, which is smart.
– Supermarkets are placing restrictions on the number of people allowed in at a time: 25 people at once. You must stand in line outside at 6 feet apart. All clerks are wearing gloves and masks and the belt is being sanitized between each customer. This is a very good thing because it has prevented panic, crowds, and hoarding. I STRONGLY suggest ALL supermarkets and pharmacies implement these policies NOW. Like yesterday.
– No people outside (including cars) has made the birds and animals all very happy. I’m a bird watcher and have definitely noticed that birds are both more active and more relaxed. Good for them.

Now the bad news…
– The case fatality rate (death rate) in Italy 7.3%. That’s…staggering…especially considering the amount of testing Italy has done compared to other nations. We’re not exactly sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because Italy has an aging population. As I understand it, according to the current science, the disease is genetically stable, meaning it’s the same everywhere. So consider that 7.3% accordingly.
– It is worse in the cities.
– It is very bad in nursing homes and senior living facilities.
– Some people are STILL trying to violate the lockdown and go out to drink with their friends or whatever (Note: it’s illegal to leave the house without a permit for work, health emergency, etc. You face up to 3 months jail time.) I think some folks end up mentally overwhelmed by the enormity and scariness of the situation and their brains are just kind of short-circuiting. Sadly, we had this with a friend. The lesson? Some people are just NEVER going to get it. And those “some” people may be people you care about.
– Yes, children CAN and DO get infected. They just don’t often exhibit a serious illness. This means they can kill your parents. Keep them isolated like the rest of us. In Italy, there’s a campaign of kids drawing rainbows that say “Andrà tutto bene” / “Everything will be okay”. Give your kids stuff like that to do. Make them feel useful and like they are a part of the solution, cuz they are.
– The disease is likely “aerosolized” which means it can travel great distances in the air. 6-feet of distance is not nearly sufficient.

What to do…
– Stay home, stay home, stay home. Seriously, stay the f* home.
– Support seniors. Do their shopping. Call them. Explain that no, they can’t go to the beauty salon or to their favorite eatery. Those things will be there once we all get through this.
– Disinfect, ventilate, take Vitamin D.
– I have read there’s growing evidence not to take Ibuprofin if you are sick. Your body produces a fever for a reason: to burn out the pathogen. If you take fever reducers, the virus worsens in your lungs. The fever is not what kills people, it is the pneumonia. So be careful.

From my little corner of lovely Italy, I love you all.

“Hello all, I am writing to you from my fourth day in coronavirus quarantine, here in Barcelona, Spain. This is a message to everyone- family, friends, former colleagues, peers and teammates back home (or wherever you are in the world). Please take this virus seriously. I want to share with you what is happening here now, what the consequences are of a delayed response. I hope this will help you to understand that all jokes and toilet paper memes aside, your action needs to be taken now.

A week ago here in Spain, we only talked about coronavirus. We already had some cases, but it just didn’t seem that bad. We saw the suffering in Italy and said “That won’t happen here.” Changes were not made. People still went out on the weekend, went to the gym, went to work, to school, etc. Preventing the spread of the virus was not a priority. Fast forward just 1 WEEK: Spain is now in a state of emergency. The virus is here and it is tearing through this country. I have coronavirus. My friends have coronavirus. Parents of children have coronavirus. Teachers, students, business people, researchers, politicians, bus drivers, etc. have coronavirus. In a matter of days, the number of confirmed cases spiked from just a few hundred to well into the thousands. Hospitals and medical clinics are completely and entirely exhausted, operating at over-capacity, with quickly depleting resources and staff. Hundreds of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel have caught the virus and have been issued to quarantine. Those who remain are working 24/7, non stop. It is not just the elderly or the immunocompromised who are checking in for treatment- people of ALL ages are needing medical care. With each passing day, the death toll rises and the situation grows more severe.

In just 1 WEEK the coronavirus has caused Spain to crumble and it appears the worst has yet to come. Now having one of the fastest rates of COVID-19 contagion in the entire world, the Spanish Prime Minister stated that the number of cases could top 10,000 by early next week- almost double the current level. Just yesterday, cases rose by 1,500. If the pressure on the health care system is already unbearable, then what could possibly happen in the following days? We could ask our dear friends in Italy, as they are about a week ahead of us, with thousands of infected people trying to get into hospitals with only a few spaces left. With doctors and nurses having to CHOOSE who to save and who to let die because there are not enough medical professionals, supplies or space left to treat the growing number of patients. The Spanish government can see we are following in Italy’s footsteps and the pressure is on, to make up for a lack of action taken in the beginning.

All schools and universities have shut down. Public events and sports games have been cancelled. Roads have been blocked, entire regions of the country are under lockdown and towns and villages have been quarantined. Businesses, cafes, restaurants, gyms, bars/cubs and shopping centres have all closed, with the exception of the supermarkets selling food and pharmacies. Police roam the streets to ensure people stay inside. The rest of the world can see the risk now too- 62 countries have suspended flights from Spain.

To think, if preventative action could have been taken just 1 week before, if the mindsets of people could have shifted 1 week earlier, we could be living a very different reality right now.

To all the people back home in Canada or wherever you may be, please understand that this virus will change things very quickly. Once it becomes an issue, it is very hard to control. Being proactive and taking precautions now is absolutely necessary; every day counts! Be diligent with your health practices and be responsible with your decision making to be out in public!!! Going to the bar, the mall, the movies, the gym, etc. is truly just not worth it right now!!! Save it for a week that isn’t potentially life threatening to you or the humans around you. Push for work weeks at home and online classes!! Nothing is worth the risk. Social distancing is CRITICAL. And if you are sitting there feeling like you don’t have to be cautious because you are young/healthy, PLEASE remember that we as human beings have a responsibility to look out for one another. You being careless could lead to the loss of someone’s grandmother or grandfather, someone’s parent, someone’s coworker, or someone’s friend. That is what is happening here and it’s a lot more difficult to stop now that it’s started.

I hope you take something away from this going forward. Stay home and be cautious. Start today if you haven’t already. You will make a difference!!! Please stay safe everyone. ”

Disease, debt and depression

I first met Alice in 2001 at a local Stop the War meeting in Islington and worked with her on many campaigns and projects over the next nearly twenty years. From the off she was the proverbial force of nature driving forward the campaign. She wasn’t interested in the doctrinal disputes of the left. They irritated her and she wasn’t shy in letting those who were thus engaged know how she felt. And she had a wicked sense of humour – see below.

Post-demo pint. Stop the War early days

For her the movement was everything. She wanted action and a better world for all. You didn’t want to fall out with Alice. She was one of the warmest and most generous people I have ever met but woe betide anyone she felt wasn’t pulling their weight in the movement

Halloween eve protest. Alice and Laura Dubinsky. 2002 in the Guardian

For many years she was at the heart of the Stop the War coalition. In the early days she made the initial contacts with the Muslim community in Islington when it came under attack and visited the local mosque to express solidarity. In 2002 she was central to the first ever protest against the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Alice – in centre – on the first ever ‘Close Guantanamo Bay detention camp’ protest at US embassy 2002

She helped organise the collections from the national demonstrations and ran the stalls. And before we had a proper office we would count the collections in the living room of her council flat. Later on Alice became the finance worker at Stop the War. She had many skills and bookkeeping was one. She kept books for a range of radical projects: the Left Book Club, Muswell Press, Left Unity and others.

Alice was very proud of being a council tenant and never considered buying her flat even though it would have profited her personally. She used to talk about how pleased she was that her flat would continue as part of the social housing stock and would house a family in need. She was appalled by the Grenfell fire tragedy and campaigned against Rydon which was one of the contractors responsible. She attended many of the silent marches.

Our joint work was only part of her work for the movement. There was so much more and so much that we all have to thank her for.

Her heart lay in her commitment to social justice and her support for the NHS. She fought to defend our local hospital and this tribute from the secretary of that campaign, Shirley Franklin, sums it up:

‘So devastated that my feisty friend and comrade Alice Kilroy passed away today. She was a brilliant fighter for peace, socialism and social justice. And a fab banner maker. She was our very rigorous treasurer in Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition. And today it was confirmed that she has been awarded the Islington Mayor’s Civic Award. She knew it was going to happen. Big thanks to Alice for your tireless work for a better world.’

Alice opposing the attempt by the Whittington Hospital management to use Grenfell contractors Rydon

I want to mention some of the many campaigns that Alice supported or helped build. There will be many that I don’t know about but others will speak about them. And I want to talk about the personal help she gave me.

Alice was outraged at the way the families of soldiers in both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were treated. She supported the Military Families Against the War campaign for which she made the banners and she became close friends with some of the family members; she was close to Joan Humphries, the grandmother of Private Kevin Elliott, who was killed Afghanistan in 2009. She was always willing to put people up when they had to travel to London for meetings with MPs.

Over the years her embroidery, needlework and quilting skills developed to the point where she was able to create the most beautiful banners. Many have been exhibited. She used a very light netting fabric as the base which made the banners portable – essential for long demonstrations. Probably the most delicious of all was the one she made for the Lesbians and Gay Men Support the Miners banner which is truly a work of art. For many years she made costumes for the Notting Hill carnival which she loved to attend.

LGSM banner. This was the banner Alice thought this her finest creation.

She made the banners for the Greece Solidarity Campaign, for the anti-austerity Coalition of Resistance, for the No Pasaran conference, as well as banners for Stop the War, the Labour Party, Left Unity and many trades union branches.

Representatives of the 595 sacked cleaners from the Ministry of finance welcome a delegation from the Greece Solidarity Campaign (14 Oct 2014) at the cleaners’ camp, outside the ministry of finance just south-west of Syntagma (Constitution) Square, Athens. Alice was very proud of this international solidarity work.

Alice’s banner for the front of the 60,000 strong Stop Trident march in 2016.

She was for a time a member of the radical left party Left Unity acting as a national officer and treasurer. She also made banners for practically every Left Unity branch. As soon as Jeremy Corbyn launched his leadership campaign she left Left Unity and rejoined the Labour Party. Jeremy was Alice’s local MP and she was fiercely loyal to him recognising in his leadership bid a renaissance for political life in Britain. Within a week of Jeremy making it onto the ballot for the leadership Alice had made a ‘Just for Jeremy’ banner which was used on the first ever campaigning stall supporting his leadership bid. She went on to make many others both for his campaign and for the local party.

Left Unity on Kurdish solidarity march. Wonderful William Morris quote

Although Alice had been opposed to Brexit she was even more opposed to right-wing remainers who sought to use the issue to undermine the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party. She had no truck with those who sought to paint Jeremy as an anti-semite and a racist. Jeremy was a personal friend as well as being her MP. He visited her in hospital in December and she knew Jeremy’s deep commitment to the working class. She understood with a clarity that so many lacked that vilification of Jeremy Corbyn was driven by the establishment and his opponents in the party.

Jeremy and Owen Jones on Solidarity with Greece demo.

Alice and I set up the People’s Campaign for Corbyn facebook page but Alice ran the page and built the followers up to nearly 60,000. Some of the posts went viral such as the one with the photograph of Jeremy on the night bus. The page was a continuous source of support for Jeremy’s leadership and Alice was dedicated to using it to oppose those who were attacking him.

I have much to personally thank Alice for. She made me four incredible banners for a conference I organised in 2008 on the 40^th anniversary of the May events of 1968. The banners were huge long quotations from the Situationist graffiti that littered the walls of Paris at that time: ‘Run Comrade, the old world is behind you’. She made a banner for my daughter’s 10^th birthday – Holly is now 25 but we still have the banner. And she made banners for my 60^th and for my wedding to Kate. The wedding banner is a fantastic hammer and sickle. And I need to say a special thanks because when I was ill with cancer and having chemotherapy and was temporarily homeless, she took us in.

One of the last banners Alice made was for the No Pasaran conference. Lindsey German is speaking and on the platform is Salma Yaqoob, Walter Wolfgang –  sadly no longer with us, Diane Abbott and Chairing is Kate Hudson

Alice loved her daughter Stephanie above everything else. My thoughts are with Stephanie and with all Alice’s family and friends. Not only will she be much much missed but in a very real sense she is irreplaceable.

Farewell Alice.

Robin once told me a story about a turning point in his life. An organizer with the Socialist Workers Party had been recruiting Manuela and him to join the Party for quite a while, but Robin was taking his time. Finally, during a house visit, the organizer made the hard sell. “You know,” he said, “you need us more than we need you”. 

It was the sort of encounter that shakes a person free from his sense of self-importance. It was a reminder that, when left to our own devices, we drift toward lives of private concern. A political community, however, can hold us accountable to a much greater cause. It can push us beyond self-imposed limits and help us flourish as members of a larger movement.

For me, the day I met Robin and Manuela was just such an encounter. In September 2002, I arrived in Muswell Hill with a group of American university students for year-long study abroad program. While out for a jog with a friend on a gorgeous fall day, we quite literally ran into Robin and Manuela handing out Stop the War leaflets.

Within a few minutes, Robin had convinced us to join them at their stall the following Saturday. Within a few weeks, he had us organizing our fellow students. Within a few months, he has us speaking at public meetings. By February 15, the day of the massive national anti-war march, we had established a partnership with Iraqi students and were fielding interview requests from BBC stations in London and Manchester.

His recognition of the potential for public good in our private lives was unwavering. His enthusiasm for our involvement was overpowering. How could we resist?

Over the next 17 years, I returned to London to visit Robin, Manuela, and Sam several times and even lived with them for four months in the fall of 2005. In the long intervals between visits, we exchanged countless emails about books, music, and politics.

These exchanges often left me unsettled for days afterward because Robin’s manner of conversation was, in a word, pugilistic. If he sensed even the slightest lapse in your commitment to a more equitable and peaceable planet, he would jab and jab at you until you were mentally exhausted and emotionally frayed.

In moments like these, I often wondered – sometimes with great frustration – why it was so difficult for Robin to temper his political opinions with a personal touch. But now, I would give anything to go a few more rounds with him.

I would tell him that I’d never met anyone so damnably willing to set aside private pleasures for the public good. I would tell him that his decision 17 years ago to treat a 20-year old kid from Montana as a serious person with real political power changed my life forever.

I think I always needed Robin’s friendship more than he needed mine. I think I will always miss his voice – which, for me, is the voice of the movement – calling after to me to be my best. His voice saying, “You need us more than we need you.”

By Gabe Furshong

As someone who strives for a degree of elegance but who is fated never to achieve it, I was always struck by Robin’s natural elegance, poise and charm. It was a privilege to know him and to feel a little of his favour so I can imagine the warmth and love extended to you all and to Manuela, Dany, Alice and Sam.

While some say that death is a symptom of life’s limited state I would hope it is merely the malady of the soul endured as part of its path towards ascension. At this painful moment for his family and all of his friends, colleagues and comrades, I wish him the safest and purest of flights. Among many others, he and Heathcote Williams will now be able to talk endlessly into the light.

This poem was written when I heard the sad news.

FOR ROBIN BESTE AND FAMILY

It is only through dark
That light achieves its full measure.
Against its lines we gain purchase
On the presence and gift
Of life’s charm.

None were as charming
Or sleek,
From his urbane stance
To the treasure
Of his good looks and viewpoint
On the counter cultural dance
As we stumble
Towards
The oncoming political storm.

As devoted to change
As he was to The Action (Robin’s
Favourite band)
He was totem
To standards and time
Unsurpassed.

On this dreadful day
When what was Beste
Has been taken
We will commit love and friendship
To honouring his soft shadow
Sharpening as we listen
To all that he shared.

Robin lasts.

by David Erdos, 31st May 2019

Justice Now: Make It Right For Palestine – National March & Rally
Saturday 04 Nov | Assemble 12 noon Grosvenor Sq | W1K 6LF

Full details here…    Transport across UK here…

Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign » Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al Aqsa, Stop the War Coalition, Muslim Association of Britain.

For the past 100 years Palestinian rights have been disregarded. On the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which built the path for their dispossession, join us on 4 November to demand justice and equal rights for Palestinians now.

Speakers include: Dr Mustafa Barghouti / John Pilger  / Prof Manuel Hassassian / Tariq Ali / Salma Yacoub / Ken Loach / Dave Randall.

Source: Migrants’ Rights Network

As a proportion of the world’s population of just over 7 billion the number of people mobile across international frontiers now makes up a rather modest 3.3% of everyone on the planet – up from 2.8% back at the start of the millennium.

What is the fuss and over-hyped anxiety over migration really about?  We have to probe beyond these global figures to get a better sense of what dynamics are in play here.

Two-thirds of all migrants are living in just 20 countries.  The 2015 figures set out by the UN tell us that these were the USA with 47 million migrants; and then Germany and the Russian Federation in second and third place with around 12 million each. Then comes Saudi Arabia (10 million), the UK (nearly 9 million), and the United Arab Emirates (8 million). Of the top twenty destinations of international migrants worldwide, nine were in Asia, seven in Europe, two in Northern America, and one each in Africa and Oceania.

The reasons why people move between countries is, in the main, economic. They are going in search of jobs and the chance of having a decent standard of life.  Outside of this population of migrant workers and their families stand refugees – some 20 million who face all the hardships of people who have fled their homes because of persecution and warfare.

In the realm of economic activity migrants play an extraordinariily positive role in promoting growth.  According to a report just published by Mckinsey Global Institute (MGI) migrant workers moving to higher-productivity settings have boosted global GDP by around US$6.7 trillion, or 9.4 percent, to global GDP in 2015—some US$3 trillion more than they would have produced in their origin countries. North America captured up to US$2.5 trillion of this output, while up to US$2.3 trillion went to Western Europe. MGI says that migrants of all skill levels make a positive economic contribution, whether through innovation, entrepreneurship, or freeing up natives for higher-value work.

Whilst some of the people journeying between countries have the good fortune to have the social and economic standing that allows them to access rights, others are caught up in a maelstrom that strips them of much of their capacity to stand-up against state authorities and economic stakeholders for whom ruthless exploitation is the name of the game.

A recent report from Amnesty International (AI) reminded us of the sort of risks that migrants are exposed to, even when they are set to work on such prestigious and popularly acclaimed projects like the football World Cup.  According to the AI report, the Qatar is preparing for the 2022 competition with an estimated $200bn worth of spending on new transport infrastructure, housing and sports facilities, including six stadiums.

Yet the South Asian migrants who are building all this scarcely benefit, despite government reforms that supposedly tackle international concerns about widespread abuse and slave-like conditions

The situation is hardly better in developed countries. The re-emergence of Berlin as an elegant European capital in recent years is very impressive but reports of conditions on building sites show that abusive employment conditions exist for many of the migrant workers toiling on the city’s new developments.

And there may be common patterns of labour abuse across Europe.  The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency revealed widespread payment of  starvation wages as well as abusive employment practice such the confiscation of passports and cutting migrant workers off from the outside world as commonplace forms of exploitation.

In the UK the worst abuses are recorded in the farming, hospitality and social care sectors.  The Guardian’s Felicity Lawrence has written of how the exploitation of migrant workers has become ‘a way of life’ in the food industries.  She writes of poultry workers working weeks of more than 120 hours, workers having to be continuously on the move, charging for squalid tied housing, withheld wages, and threats of violence and actual assault.

One in seven workers in the social care sector has a workforce is a migrant.  The trade union Unison reports that 80 hour working weeks paid at minimum wage rates are common.  Employers will push beyond even these limits with pay that falls below the legal minimum.

The Kanlungan Filipino Consortium reports many instances of exploitative conditions for Filipino workers in the social care sector, citing examples of care managers, a grade with immense responsibility for the well-being of elderly and frail people, being paid a meagre £7.02 an hour.

International students are engaged by the sector to provide care find themselves excessively working long hours to support themselves. Many people are working alongside those with a temporary visa and with documentation problems who feel they are unable to enforce basic workers’ rights.

The dangers of chronic injustice are growing worse as the UK authorities set up the conditions for a ‘hard’ Brexit process which will reduce the rights of 3.5 million EU nationals who live here.   If these rights go, they will find themselves joining the vast army of ‘third country’ migrants who are fighting to survive in a country which is subjecting them to a ‘hostile environment’ born out of draconian UK immigration laws.

20 February – the plan to hold events and actions across the UK to push forward the ‘One Day Without Us’ campaign.  Click on the website, and find out more on how you can get involved in the battle for the rights of all migrants!

One Day Without Migrants: 20 February 2017

Website: www.1daywithoutus.org
Facebook: One Day Without Us 20/02
Twitter: @1daywithoutus

Source: Jeff Goulding

The term can easily be applied to the last few months of the Labour Party Leadership campaign. This is after all a period that has seen Neil Kinnock, a man who lost two General Elections, and Kezia Dugdale, a woman who led her party to third place in a two horse race, lecture us all on the importance of electability. It has served up a challenger who agrees with everything his rival says, but nevertheless feels that plunging his party into a pointless and damaging election is entirely justified. And finally, in what is perhaps the most phoney of all the soundbite salvos hurled Jeremy Corbyn’s way in the last few months, we’ve read that Sadiq Khan believes that it is Owen Smith, not the current leader, who best represents Labour’s core values.

Actually, we should be grateful to Sadiq for his timely reminder of what all of this is really about; Labour’s values. What are they and who is best placed to act as custodian of them? This is truly what’s at stake in this contest for the soul of the party.

Instinctively, when I think of  the party’s values, I think about Socialism, and of an organisation that represents the interests of working people; both in Parliament and, when necessary, on the streets and in workplaces. Labour is part of a tradition of struggle that stretches back more than a century, and it has brought huge societal advances in that time. Social housing, weekends off work, the ‘Welfare State,’ the National Health Service and universal education are just a few of Labour’s great achievements.

Of course, in order to deliver all of these things, Labour had to first win power. This is self evident, and on that score, Owen and Sadiq, we are in complete agreement. However, could any of those things have been delivered, if our party’s founders had put the opiate of electability before their values? Would they have campaigned for the rights of children not to be exploited, or care for the elderly, had they been utterly preoccupied with ‘public opinion’? Was the media and the general public, in 1906, or in 1945, broadly accepting of Labour’s values? It seems they were not. Yet the likes of Kier Hardie, fought strenuously for them anyway.

Consider this passage from a speech, given by Hardie, Labour’s first leader, in 1914:

“I shall not weary you by repeating the tale of how public opinion has changed during those twenty-one years. But, as an example, I may recall the fact that in those days, and for many years thereafter, it was tenaciously upheld by the public authorities, here and elsewhere, that it was an offence against laws of nature and ruinous to the State for public authorities to provide food for starving children, or independent aid for the aged poor. Even safety regulations in mines and factories were taboo. They interfered with the ‘freedom of the individual’. As for such proposals as an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right to work, and municipal houses, any serious mention of such classed a man as a fool.”

If Hardie and Labour had not stayed true to their principles, even in the face of a hostile establishment and media, would future generations have had the courage to implement such a radical programme in 1948?

Even in post World War II Britain, we find that Labour had to fight the ruling class and middle England ‘tooth and nail’ to implement the National Health Service. There were voices, notably Winston Churchill’s, who argued that the nation could not afford such a social experiment. Labour did it anyway, and, though it is in peril from the current administration, it has endured for seventy years, and is still the envy of the world.

This excerpt from a speech by Aneurin Bevan demonstrates the resistance from an educated and powerful medical lobby, that Labour had to overcome, in order to enact its reform programme.

“In the case of the National Health Service very deeply entrenched emotional attitudes were disturbed. The traditions of the medical profession go back a very long way, and it was too much to hope that so drastic a thing as the National Health Service could be accomplished without very much disturbance.”

The point here is that if Labour is to crumble in the face of the prevailing wisdom, every time we advance our programme, then we will always find ourselves articulating a watered down version of the status-quo. Such a manifesto would serve only those in power, while failing the very people who need Labour most. Yes we need a Labour government, perhaps now more than ever, but to do what? If it is not to transform society into one in which all people are of equal value and wealth and power are distributed equitably, then it is for nothing.

The argument that any Labour government is better than the Tories is selling our people short. It is precisely why so many voters have abandoned the party in its heartlands since 1997. Kezia Dugdale would do well to reflect on Labour’s near annihilation in Scotland, on the back of watered down Conservative policies, before she delivers any more sermons on what will and will not win votes. Our people deserve so much more than ‘Tory light’.

People stripped of their dignity and robbed of the help they need by cruel benefits cuts need a party willing stand up for them, even in the face of relentless criticism and scepticism. They need a leader that campaigns tirelessly in their interests, even when the cost to him or her is great. Children dependant on food banks, or living on the streets, or in temporary accommodation deserve a future that doesn’t offer more of the same, and our elderly need a life worthy of their sacrifices. Indeed the National Health Service desperately requires a Labour movement that is unwilling to compromise on the socialist principles that brought it to life.

Those who put forward arguments about electability seek merely to distract us. Such bluff and bluster only masks their real intent, which is to maintain Labour’s position as a centrist party, committed to managing capitalism slightly better than the Conservatives. After all, it was Tony Blair who said he wouldn’t want Labour to win on a socialist platform, even if that was the only way to guarantee victory.

The argument that Corbyn is incapable of winning an election for Labour is self-evidently wrong. He has done it time and again. He did it in Rotheram and elsewhere, despite dire predictions to the contrary. Lest we forget he also did it for Sadiq Khan.

So let’s end this phoney war, conducted as it is through private briefings and column inches and in TV studios. As ballot papers drop through letterboxes and fill email inboxes, power has now shifted decisively from the plotters to the members. In exercising our democratic choice we should ensure a resounding victory for the only candidate capable of upholding Labour’s core values of socialism; Jeremy Corbyn.

In closing, the words of Kier Hardie, at the end of that great speech in 1914, seem particularly pertinent.

“The emancipation of the worker has still to be achieved and just as the ILP in the past has given a good, straight lead, so shall the ILP in the future, through good report and through ill, pursue the even tenor of its way, until the sunshine of Socialism and human freedom break forth upon our land.”

Any Labour leader, at least one worthy of the name, will always need to stand firm in the face of doubt and hostility; if they are to deliver a programme worthy of the people. They’ll need to do it, as Hardie said, through fair weather or foul and stay true to their purpose. That’s why I’m voting for Corbyn, a man capable of doing just that, and a true custodian of Labour’s values.

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