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Carnival of Socialism #39

When I agreed to the Carnival of Socialism, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Otherwise, I would have said that the week when I start a new job and move house (into one without the internet I might add) is not the best time to be trawling through the left blogosphere. But who cares? Hastily compiled round at a friend’s house on a borrowed laptop, here is the - by no means comprehensive - 39th Carnival of Socialism! Enjoy… And happy blogging!

Let's start with the tennis. Splintered Sunrise tackles ethnic slurs of Eastern European tennis players in The Telegraph, and Cruella Blog observes that sexism is flourishing in the world of tennis.

The Third Estate has an exclusive interview with Mark Steel, addressing the Green Party ("Caroline Lucas is a very impressive character") and the SWP's call for left unity ("it’s like an alcoholic going back to his wife and saying ‘I’ll be different this time I promise!'")

Revolutionary Road provides some of the most up-to-date information in English of the situation in Iran.

Vengeance and Fashion can think of better things to privatise than the railways and postal service. Like the Queen, for instance.

Don Paskini at Liberal Conspiracy tackles the so-called "Red Tories".

HarpyMarx reports on India's overturning of the homophobic Section 377 (here) and the cops' spurious allegation that Ian Tomlinson's killer could have been a member of the public disguised as a police officer (here).

Reading the Maps commends the role played by New Zealand soldiers in fighting Franco.

Liam MacUaid writes about the MOD's approach to compensation, and doesn't think that $210 compensates for the murder of an Afghan man's wife.

Left Luggage tackles the tricky subject of Left Disunity.

Benjamin Solah calls for full marriage rights in Australia.

The Red Wombat Hole has a statement of solidarity with Iranian workers and protesters.

Charlie Pottins has an interesting question to ask: "WHY, in these recession-hit times, when companies are backing off so many projects, have six big corporations - one of them BAE Systems(formerly known as British Aerospace) found money to lobby the US Congress, not over trade restrictions, taxes or legislation that might obviously effect business, but on an issue concerning something that happened almost a century ago?"

A Very Public Socialist highlights evidence from New Scientist that the world is perfectly capable of feeding a growing population...

The Daily Maybe reports on the climate protesters found guilty this week.

Though not from the Socialist Blogosphere, you should still check out Marjane Satrapi (the maker of Persepolis) speaking of her longing to return to Iran and her admiration for the courage of the Iranian youth in the New York Times.

Finally, Hands Off the People of Iran will be playing cricket against the Labour Representation Committee to raise funds for Iranian workers. Attila the Stockbroker and John McDonnel MP will be heading up the two teams. More details here.

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Thanks for reading and apologies if I missed you or your submission out.

Peace and solidarity,

Vicky (Infantile and Disorderly)

News From Iran Blog

About two years too late Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI) has developed a blog covering events in Iran. It's full of up to date information and highly worth checking out. News From Iran Blog

This is not their victory. It is our failure.

An eyewitness report of today’s anti BNP demonstration in Manchester.

At 7pm, a small crowd of anti fascists began to assemble outside Manchester Town Hall. Unite Against Fascism erected a gazebo and played a soothing medley of reggae tunes while the latecomers began to appear. A few stray fascists were chased away, before a handful of speakers addressed the crowd. It began to rain, and I cannot recall the speakers’ names, or indeed much of what was said. From here on, braving bouts of rain and freezing cold (whatever happened to June?), Manchester’s anti fascists waited around, occasionally running here, there and everywhere as rumours of Nick Griffin’s presence reached us. The majority of protesters eventually assembled outside a side-entrance of the Town Hall. The entrance was guarded by large numbers of police and BNP security, most of whom openly admitted to supporting the fascists. At around nine, two large cars pulled up outside the entrance and the BNP security attempted to block the anti fascists from the vehicles. Some protesters hurled eggs, while others attempted to break the windows, or block the vehicles’ progress with their own bodies. They were hauled away by the BNP’s security thugs. One woman was injured.

Chasing the fascists’ cars round to another entrance, most of the anti fascists were forced into a police cordon. Myself and a few others avoided this, and were left free to hang around the Town Hall, waiting for the BNP to make their next appearance. At around this point, the only arrest of the night was made, when Chris S was handcuffed by plain clothes officers and arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, ostensibly for saying the word “fuck”. The officers, who repeatedly refused to give their names and numbers, then dragged Chris away to a police van. He was removed to a police station miles away in North Manchester.

In the meantime, two anti fascists were left to confront three fascists sitting on a bench outside the Hall without aid from the majority of the crowd, who continued chanting “the BNP is a Nazi party” nearby. The fascists ran off, shouting “BNP!”. At the same time, police cleared a path outside the same entrance to the Town Hall where the cars had previously been attacked. As BNP security amassed here, the cars once again pulled up and were surrounded by growing hordes of angry anti fascists. As the police and the BNP’s own louts combined to crush the mobilisation against the vehicles, the first rumours that Griffin might already be inside began to circulate. It turned out to be true; the cars and security had been a decoy… Griffin had sneaked in through a back entrance.

The anti fascist protest continued for about two and a half hours. Chants of “black and white, unite and fight!” and “build a bonfire…” began to ring hollow, as more protesters drifted off. At its peak, the mobilisation was perhaps 200 strong. But by midnight, scarcely forty were left. Two brief interludes of fighting broke out in the meantime: the first when police assaulted a drunk woman who was not part of the protest and the second when one of the BNP’s team, wearing a BNP identity badge, was spotted attempting to make a quiet phone call scarcely a few yards from protesters. After news of the BNP’s victory in Yorkshire and Humberside, everything became subdued. Hearing stories of the BNP trailing behind the Greens at the count taking place within the Town Hall, the mood was one of anger and, in some cases, disbelief. The Greens appeared particularly shocked.

A Labour Councillor addressed the anti fascist mobilisation poorly, omitting the fact that the degeneration of her own party had driven many working class people into the hands of the fascists. UKIP candidates came to join the protesters, and were met with fierce accusations of racism from several anti fascists. A SWP member and UNISON steward intervened, arguing that it was not the time to be exposing UKIP. A while later, at around quarter past twelve, the protest disbanded.

In the European elections, the BNP gained two MEPs. They gained a platform in Europe, and large amounts of taxpayers’ money with which to propagate their fascist lies. They managed it not just because of wide mistrust in the Labour Party, or the expenses scandal, or even the economic recession. They succeeded because the Left is fractured and weak. Because the Left didn’t stand candidates (the soft nationalism of No2EU and its pathetic results notwithstanding). We have a political alternative to fascism, we have the answers, and we need to start putting them forward. If the Left doesn’t learn this, things are only going to get worse.

Finally, we can say with utter sincerity that the “vote anyone but the BNP” strategy of UAF, Hope Not Hate etc. has been a decisive failure.

If only he went under...

Happy times.

Sex Workers' Safety!

These are three letters (two from yesterday's Guardian and one from the same paper on May 22nd) addressing the government's continuing attacks on sex workers. The government-funded Poppy Project has previously earned condemnation for its falsified data alleging that 75% of all UK sex workers are trafficked, and its government-sponsored conclusion that the "Swedish model", i.e. criminalizing the purchase of sex, rather than decriminalizing prostitution, is the best thing for British sex workers.

Sex Worker Safety and the Poppy Project

If the Poppy Project is concerned about prostitutes being criminalised, where is it when the law raids, detains and deports women (Letters, 26 May); when mothers working collectively face closure, brothel-keeping charges, imprisonment and separation from their children; or when women driven out of premises risk rape or murder on the street?

While anti-rape organisations struggle to survive, the Poppy Project has received £9.5m from the Office for Criminal Justice Reform since 2003. Its research implying that most sex workers had been trafficked was condemned as flawed by 27 academics. The legal definition of traffiking for prostitution, unlike all other trafficking, fails to mention coercion. So foreign accents alone can inflate figures, which are then used to justify laws criminalising both clients and sex workers. High figures lead to large funding, not to women's safety.

Cari Mitchell
English Collective of Prostitutes

The Poppy Project claims it is feminist. My feminist organisation in Turkey was approached by a group of sex workers after the police smashed streetlights where they worked, making them vulnerable to attack. Should we have refused to help on the basis that their job legitimises men's violence against women? No, we considered that sex workers knew best how to protect themselves, and supported them. Even if you are against prostitution, you should distinguish yourself from the Home Office - though this is harder if, like the Poppy Project, you are funded by it.

Filiz Gul
London

Double blow for poor mothers

The government is criticised for not criminalising prostitutes' clients enough (New law on forced prostitution weakened, say women's groups, 20 May). But what about their increasing criminalisation of women? Not accidentally, the crime bill and the welfare reform bill are going through parliament together. If passed, mothers, especially single mothers, will lose income support and must "progress towards work" or take a job; so will over-60s and people with disabilities and their carers, mostly women. If you can't find a job, you must "work for your benefits" ie for £1.73 an hour - the biggest attack yet on the minimum wage - or lose them.

Street workers will be rounded up and "rehabilitated". Those working indoors - 10 times safer than the street - will be raided and their earnings seized by police and prosecutors who collect their own expense claim: they keep 50% of all proceeds - a corruption of law and order which now determines priorities.

At least 70% of sex workers are mothers escaping poverty, homelessness, debt, low wages and domestic violence. Four million children live in poverty. What right has the House of ill repute to judge what mothers do to feed them? Feminists Josephine Butler, Eleanor Rathbone and Virginia Woolf would be horrified that a parliament with more women MPs and ministers than ever has launched this attack on mothers and others with the least, during a deep recession.

Butler campaigned against the criminalisation of working-class women. Unlike anti-prostitution feminists today, she never dismissed the effects of laws on mothers supporting families through prostitution. Rathbone fought for unwaged mothers, on whose work the whole society rests, to have independent money from the state. She influenced the Beveridge report which proposed family allowances. Virginia Woolf feared that women entering the professions could end up dancing "round and round the mulberry tree, the poison tree of intellectual harlotry". It is a man, John McDonnell MP, who has taken the lead in defending women against this injustice. Where have (almost) all the feminists gone? Briefings on both bills and an open letter to sign opposing them are at globalwomenstrike.net

Selma James Global Women's Strike
Cari Mitchell English Collective of Prostitutes
Kim Sparrow Single Mothers' Self-Defence

European Election Results...

You'll be pleased to know that I've finally got round to doing something with the results from that European elections poll I ran for a few days last week, and I have to say that - as far as predictions go - I wouldn't be putting much money on these turning out accurate...

Green Party - 11 votes
No2EU - 8 votes
BNP - 7 votes
Lib Dems - 3 votes
Labour - 2 votes
Tories - 1 vote
UKIP - 1 vote
English Democrats and Libertas - 0 votes

Apologies to the Socialist Labour Party. I forgot to even add you as an option. What can I say? You are that forgettable.

Now, with this super duper gadget you simply enter how many votes each party gets, as well as how many blank or spoilt ballots (in this case, the 11 people who voted for the They're all bastards option) and it deals out MEPs according to the number available for your region.

So, if the European Elections for the North West go the same way as my blog poll, we will be getting 4 Green MEPs, 2 No2EU MEPs and 2 BNP MEPs. The next party to obtain a MEP would be No2EU, stealing one off the Green Party if it had received just one more vote.

So that's that.

Royal Fascists

It's been splashed across the papers for days: Nick Griffin has been invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

Why is this news?

There are plenty of places that Griffin could visit that would be cause for concern. Buckingham Palace isn't one of them. In fact, where better for a fascist to go than the historic epicenter of British establishment support for the Nazis? Why, he'll feel right at home!

The Queen's Uncle, King Edward VIII (later the Duke of Windsor) was an enthusiastic cheerleaders for Hitler and the Nazi regime. The picture on the right shows him and his equally fascist wife making friends with Hitler in 1937. The Duchess of Windsor was also a friend of famous British fascists, the Oswald Mosleys.

Then there is the case of Princess Michael of Kent's father, Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, who was - you guessed it - a Nazi party member and SS officer. There's also Prince Philip, the Royal Family's chief sexist, racist, homophobic bigot. Aside from his desire to be reincarnated as a "deadly virus" to stop the population "problem" (sounds like a nice guy, doesn't he?), there's also the question of his sister's marriage to a SS Colonel who named their son "Adolf" in honour of Hitler.

Oh, and there's also Harry's sensitive choice of fancy dress...

Hazel Blears and the Deathly Hollows

Has anyone else noticed that Hazel Blears and Professor Dolores Umbridge are clearly the same person? Did she really think a couple of bottles of extra-strength ginger hair dye would be enough to fool the discerning general public?

In her Hogwarts days Posing as a muggle cabinet minister

No to a Men's Society at Manchester University!

The plan to establish a Men's Society at Manchester University (you know, a place for men to engage in the manly pursuits that they simply can't engage in anyway else in this man-hating matriarchal society), have been greeted with support by a lot of people ostensibly committed to women's liberation. If you don't think men need a University society (and union funding) to drink beer, compete in strongman competitions, go to gadget fairs and perpetuate the myth of the gender binary, why not join this Facebook group to fight against the move?

There is a Women's Society on campus - technically the Women's Rights Collective - to campaign for the liberation of women in our society. If the Women's Group existed purely to promote knitting, makeup and cookery we would be outraged... And rightly so.

Let's fight plans to establish a testosterone-fueled society designed to promote old-fashioned gender stereotypes of how a traditional man should behave in a patriarchal society.