Child's Play

I was going to post some pictures of me at this year’s Manchester Gay Pride but can’t seem to find a single picture in which I don’t have an inane look on my face. So instead I bring you this: a little game of spot the difference for the grown ups...

1) "People Before Profit" 10 point charter (Socialist Workers Party) here

2) "10 proposals for working class action" (Workers Power) here

Yes indeed, after providing a damning critique of the SWP’s charter (“…The SWP do not make clear how exactly a charter of ten reforms will be the start of a movement”) Workers Power have decided on the radical new strategy of, well, copying them (just with a few more words this time). Wow.

400 million pounds for a house!

Last week an unnamed Russian billionaire agreed to pay €500 million (that's an astounding £397m) for the Villa Leopolda, a property in the south of France. It is the biggest sum ever paid for a private dwelling...

Oh well, I'm off to grumble to my partner about the price of bread.

BNP Rally Goes Ahead

Bizarrely, there did not appear to be a single coach leaving from Manchester for the British National Party's annual Red, White and Blue festival, held in a field somewhere in Derbyshire. I could not go and I imagine there were a few other Manchester residents who decided against spending £18 on the train to march around a field for two hours and have Unite Against Fascism (UAF) decide a sit down protest is the best way to deal with the BNP and/or police.

Apparently, the sitting down was kept to a bare minimum this time but Weyman Bennett, in his usual inimitable style, had a chat with the police and decided to send a delegation (yes, a delegation!) of 30 down to the fascists...

Jason Travis (Bolton NUT) reports here.

Monbiot vs Scargill

Arthur Scargill has decided to suffocate in a room full of CO2 for two whole minutes... On the condition that George Monbiot will stand in a room full of radiation for the same amount of time. Monbiot has accepted the challenge. Bets, anyone?

Scargill is 70 years old but in good health (probably striving to outlive Thatcher). Monbiot is... Actually, who cares about Monbiot?

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A kiss with a fist

I can’t help but think that the chorus lyrics to the song playing in the advert for 4’s new music channel, 4Music, are not much comfort to the 1 in 4 women (and indeed 1 in 6 men) who experience domestic violence in the UK. The advert features a woman repeatedly singing the words ‘a kiss with a fist is better than none”. Errr… No actually.

News Update: AWL leaders are still liars

Two weeks ago, AWL nutcase Sean Matgamna informed us that we shouldn’t condemn a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The more wise amongst us, realised that since these facilities are buried deep underground, there would be only one way to close them down… A nuclear attack. But apparently we can’t condemn the imperialist slaughter of tens of thousands of Iranians, no Sir, because that would be a little too ‘kitsch’.

This week, the AWL elite has decided to go on the war path. Not content with attempting to spread their own poison into the British workers’ movement, they have decided to tell a few more lies about Hands Off the People of Iran (Hopi), releasing a leaflet entitled ‘The left must say no to the Mullah’s bomb’. You can check it out here. Aside from a mysterious reference to Iranian “elf-determination” - has the AWL mistaken the Middle East for Middle Earth? - the text is light on intelligent analysis and anything remotely factual, and heavy on rhetoric, sniping and, of course, bullshit.

‘H-Bombs are not weapons of “defence”. They are weapons of mass murder’ writes the AWL. Yes, I’m sure we all agree on that… In fact, I suspect this is precisely why Hopi voted to include ‘for a nuclear-free Middle East as a step towards world-wide nuclear disarmament’ as one of its campaign statements. The AWL know this: bizarrely enough they even go on to quote us on it, after spending 1000 words pretending we would be in favour of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranian theocracy. There is, however, only one nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. Not Iran… Israel. This means there is only one country in the region with the capacity to use a nuclear weapon to annihilate the working class of another country and that is, obviously, Israel. Not Iran… Israel.

The AWL leadership needs to get this simple fact into their heads.

There is a great deal of consensus on the subject of whether Iran is currently developing nuclear weapons. It isn’t. The American imperialists say it isn’t. Israeli academics say it isn’t. The British Left, with the exception of the AWL, says it isn’t. Therefore, Iran does not pose a serious threat to Israel. Israel, on the other hand, poses a pretty fucking huge threat to Iran. It truly is that straight forward. Now the AWL has a choice: it can continue to talk in increasingly far-fetched hypotheticals to the very end, or it can start to engage in reality. Which is it to be?

Hopi does not believe Iran has a right to nuclear weapons. If the AWL can find a scrap of evidence saying we do, I suggest they bring it forward. Until then, issuing curious leaflets based on false logic and Matgamna's wet dreams, is not going to convince anyone even marginally sane.

Hopi is not a front organisation. Look at our steering committee. I’m on there and I’m used to looking round the table and seeing a CPGB minority. There are members from the LRC, the Jewish Socialists Group, Permanent Revolution, the Women’s Campaign Against All Misogynist Laws in Iran, the Green Party, Rahe Kargar and the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. We have Moshé Machover, an Israeli socialist who has outlined Hopi’s principled position on the subject of Iran and nuclear weapons time and time again. We even have an anarchist on our steering committee.

We have not all been duped by the CPGB!

Besides, if we’re going to talk in terms of front groups, what on earth is Middle East Workers’ Solidarity supposed to be? How is that not an AWL front group? Hopi has plenty of popular support; I would like to see the AWL try and get the 300,000-strong PCS (Britain’s fifth largest trade union) affiliated to MEWS, as it did to Hopi. It’s never going to happen.

For a far superior in-depth rebuttal of the AWL’s latest lies, read what Tami Peterson (LRC and Hopi steering member) has to say here .

The Secret Millionaires

On Tuesday night’s episode of ‘The Secret Millionaires’ (Channel 4) multi-millionaire James Benamor visited my old home, Moss Side. Here he posed as a working class volunteer investigating the effects of street violence and gun crime on the local community. As a capitalist living amongst the very victims of businesses like his own - Benamor had amassed his fortune giving loans to those who had been refused credit elsewhere - one might have imagined that he would feel a bit guilty, and, it seems, he did… To an extent. In the course of the programme, Benamor, who is worth seventy-seven million pounds, gave away a total of £136,000 to three separate Moss Side-based initiatives, Mothers Against Violence, the Manchester Settlement (an educational facility for kids who have failed in regular school) and Copperdale (a home for vulnerable boys).

I’m pretty cynical but even I indulged in a little teary-eyed blinking when the bumper cheques were handed over to their worthy recipients.

Now, as a proportion of James Benamor’s total wealth, £136,000 amounts to precisely fuck all (that’s a technical term). In fact, if my calculations are correct, it’s the exact same equivalent as me giving away 85 pence. So it would be nice if you could give the next person to slip a quick mention of this heroic millionaire into the conversation a quick slap for his or her stupidity, because one hundred and thirty six thousand pounds does not compensate for a life spent making profit out of poverty. After all, offering loans to people who have previously been refused the money is an exploitative and highly profitable business.

85 pence doesn’t mean a lot to me; I sincerely doubt £136,000 is enough to have turned James Benamor from Scrooge to Saint.

Manchester anti-fascists barred!

Today, myself and two comrades, one from Permanent Revolution and another from the Anarchist Federation, attempted to attend Manchester SWP's 'How do we stop the BNP' public meeting. On arrival, we were greeted by Andrew Cunningham (SWP) who offered to let my PR comrade into the meeting, but declined to admit myself and my anarchist friend. He reasoned that the meeting was too full for the two of us- however, through the open door we could clearly see that he was lying. Later on, we met other comrades, SWP and independent, in a nearby pub. They appeared outraged at Cunningham's sectarian behaviour and questioned why committed anti-fascists were being barred from an anti-fascist meeting that had been advertised to the public with the words "all welcome". In this case, it seems, all welcome does not extend to those on the Left who question the SWP's apparent inability to call for a class-conscious anti-fascist movement, direct action against fascists and a viable political alternative for the working class.