alanjjohnstone
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Jonathan Cook once again has written about the smear campaign against Corbyn and the BBC’s complicity.
With Panorama’s Hatchet Job on Labour Antisemitism, BBC Has Become the Tory’s Attack Dog
“…The question is why did the BBC’s flagship political investigations show decide that the marginal problem of racism in Labour was a much more urgent matter than the provable and significant racism in the Conservative Party? Unlike Labour, the Conservatives are actually in power and, through policy-making, are in a position to improve or damage the fabric of life for minority communities in Britain. This isn’t about protecting Corbyn. It is an expectation that the BBC sticks by its commitment to assess dispassionately British political life rather than interfere, as it did with the Panorama special, in an overt, partisan manner.”
A forlorn hope by Cook, i’m afraid. The BBC won’t change
As we proudly proclaim, no individual or group, holds undue influence over the Party. We have demonstrated this time and time again.
We have expelled whole branches for going against the democracy of the Party and along with them some outstanding contributors to the Party but personality is not suffice defence. As we always say it is the case not the face, nor the number of times one has wrote or spoken on behalf of the Party. The will of the majority democratically prevails within the SPGB.
When we grow in numbers, of course, there will be new issues arising on expressing the views of the Party and how they are put into practice, but we have in place the democratic rules which can be built upon and adapted whenever new circumstances appear.
When the Party does grow to be a mass socialist party, as we strive to be, there will be relationships with other working-class organisations to be formed such as with trade-unions and the many one-issue reform lobby groups.
We do endeavour to become a class party (in a sense, we already are by reflecting the interests of our class), where our members are active in every aspect of social and civil life. They shall participate foremost as ordinary members of the working class but equally as extraordinary class-conscious workers who are socialists.
This will inevitably differentiate ourselves from other fellow-workers (emphasis on the fellow) and result in contending positions within the politics and strategies of working-class in combatting our masters. Once again our democratic principles safeguards the democracy LBird values so much.
Our foundation is that we are a majoritarian Party, who hold by majority decision-making whether a chess-club or community council. Unlike vanguardists, we wish to win the battle of ideas by argument and not by imposition of will upon the unwilling.
Even on this forum, to give an example, we have demonstrated these facts with LBird in person by permitting his views to be voiced without constraint or censor and we have shown its democratic process by suspending him when he has broken agreed rules as has also been done innumerable times with actual members of the Party and then lifting suspensions when the need for sanctions has passed for a fresh start once more.
How we treat LBird is how we treat all disagreements. But for sure, when numbers grow into the tens of thousands and hundred of thousands and millions, we will need to adjust the process but without breaking the democratic essence. I can’t foresee what rule changes there will be. But one thing is very clear – workers democracy (SOCIAL DEMOCRACY) is fully integrated and incorporated within the SPGB. We shouldn’t shy away from saying so. It as separated us from all other political parties.
“Antisemitism is a poison, it is vile, it is wrong,” he said. “It is a poison in our society and any other society … It is not acceptable in any form. Corbyn noted that anyone in the party who commits any act of antisemitism faces withdrawal of membership or expulsion, and “that we have done”. He said: “We investigate every case that comes up … It’s less than 0.1% of our membership that have ever been involved in any accusation, never mind any resolution of the issue.”
A BBC statement on Saturday said: “The BBC stands by its journalism and we completely reject any accusations of bias or dishonesty. The investigation was not pre-determined, it was driven by the evidence. The outcome shows the serious questions facing the Labour party and its leadership on this issue. The programme adhered to the BBC’s editorial guidelines, including contacting the Labour party in advance of the broadcast for a full right of reply.”
Well, if anybody who has been on this forum for any length of time will know, I particularly detest the hypocrisy and cant of the BBC, and its constant refrain of balance…
If the SPGB ever gains a foothold in the political arena, we too should fully expect a campaign of disinformation and misinformation aimed at us from the BBC.
A 1907 analysis of the SPD by the SPGB
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-lessons-of-german-elections-1907.html
UK sends another war-ship into the region.
Mohamed ElBaradei, a former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, asked the UK not to get involved in US plans for military convoys to protect oil tankers in the Gulf. Accusing the US of behaving like a “bull in a china shop” and taking the world down a dead-end street, he said the confrontational approach of the White House was not going to solve the threat posed to the nuclear deal by the US decision to withdraw from it.
ElBaradei said: “They [the US] are applying a waterboarding method to Iran, drowning Iran and then saying to them: ‘Let’s have a dialogue without pre-conditions.’”
He said he was horrified by the US policy on Iran. “The new crazies are going out of the way to look for confrontation. This is an opportunity for the British to say that they are standing behind values and principles and not continuing to act as a proxy for the US.”
The former nuclear inspector described its plans to enrich uranium beyond the limits set in the deal as “trifling, symbolic and a cry for help”.Unable to physically attend I look forward to the time we can watch on Skype (or whatever) and pose our questions to the speakers from afar.
I recall having a debate with now ex-member of the SPGB (DD) when I was a non-member while he and I were in the IWW together about the policy of paid officials. He was very much in favour.
Having experienced full-time union officers, I am still very reticent about them without the strictest means of control. AGMs and elections fall short of holding the reins over a well-entrenched layer of union officials.
I recall someone who studied the revived CNT that he had no knowledge of any recall and thought such rules to be a token gesture, mere lip-service.
We too have had that debate within the SPGB about paid officers. If we were a mass party then it will mean for efficient administration having paid duties rather than reliance on volunteers. When we have hundreds, nay, thousands of members who are dependent upon the SPGB for their income, then we too will face the challenge of ensuring we are not hi-jacked by those who Upton Sinclair described ” It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
I trust by then we will have in place the ways and means of retaining members democracy.
I think regard to attitudes when I suggested they were anti-elite, it was their political strategy of Mass Strikes to give the initiative to the working class organisations themselves rather than the political incumbents of Parliament. Luxemburg fell victim to her anti-leadership principle. Like all leaders she actually followed the popular movement, even when it was suicidal as it was with the Spartacists. (And later with the KAPD in the 1921 March Action)
But I am also reminded of that maxim that reasonable minds can draw different conclusions from the same set of facts. Nothing wrong with comradely disagreement.
“..I think that the disaster of 1914 could have been foreseen, by any socialists who had a proper basis in Marx’s ideas…”
And indeed it was…by the SPGB whose observers to the 2nd International saw through it and recommended the SPGB should not affiliate. 😛
But LBird, equally you must explain why the likes of Luxemburg and Pannekoek who had critiqued elitism and stuck with the SPD until the middle of the war before joining with Kautsky and arch-revisionist Bernstein to form the Independent Socialists.
What was it that Luxemburg and Pannekoek recognize which meant they declined to break with the SPD?
I suggested that it was a class party, something you challenged. But I emphasized that it incorporated a class view on all aspects of everyday life from music to drama, to literature and journalism, to sports and social activities where play-writers became presidents in Bavaria’s Workers Republic.
The Party had become the class, dissolving the separation between politics and people. Culture and politics merged (as they again did during the Russian Revolution).
Their aspiration was in the name – social democracy.
We can learn lessons from the failures and one was and has to be the organizational structure where they devoted too much importance upon full-time careerists who did usurp power from the members. Pannekoek himself drifted away from the idea of mass parties to workers councils. Did he throw the baby out with the bath-water? The SPGB says he did. Our organization implemented countervailing ideas of decision-making in the hope of not replicating the errors of the past.
US accuses Iran of provoking the UK…
Always thought that it was the model of the German SPD that all socialist parties at the time aspired to be, even our own.
It was a class party, not just politically but socially, apart from a mass membership and vote, it also sponsored sports clubs, numerous national and local newspapers, many cultural societies and a lot more expressions and reflections of the German working class everyday life.
But this brought with it the professional politicians and party-machine bureaucrats. The political managers. And of course they required ideological pillars to support them.
The political manifestoes had become watered-down reformism even in Marx’s time and Kautsky, as much as Bernstein, did play his part in this process, as well as the legacy of Lassalle sowed its seeds that took root and grew. They were others complicit too Karl Liebknecht? August Bebel? A host of others.
Being Marxists we try not to assign blame to individuals but explore the broader and deeper material reasons and causes, while acknowledging the culpability of certain personalities, something I admit i’m not qualified to really explain, not being a fan of their style of writing.
But the left-wing was not without influence, it was not a fringe, ineffectual tendency but one that still had potential.
We in the SPGB did learn some lessons from the rise and fall of the SPD but I am not sure if our analysis is fully definitive. Well worth one of our more cleverer members to do a study on the topic, reaching back in time to contemporary sources and using hindsight to bring out the consequences (not sure if that is the scientific manner of a materialist student of history, not being an academic but I think you all know what I mean)
Could you refrain from using the tools here, italics, bold etc.
There is a bug which results in your posts being difficult to read.
There was no mention, and as far as I can see, reading between the lines, the return to “socialism” is to the more left-wing post-war SPD governments.
Again my point is that there is the opportunity for a German socialist to raise the relevance of the radical wing of the SPD from the past. I have read the German DW website regularly and recall very few references to it.
There seemed to be a vacuum on the post-WW1 revolutionary upheaval as if the only events were the murders of L and L. It is as if they seek to hide it all from modern eyes.
If we had a German companion party, I am sure we would be concentrating the centenary commemorations of the lost or stillborn revolution as two historians have described it as.
I think this shift within the SPD is not a sea change in attitudes but simply the door beginning to open.
It has been a very long time since I last heard from our Comrade Sander so I am guessing we possess no German or Austrian contacts for us to use as a springboard.
Muslim Council of Great Britain is to launch a campaign in Parliament for fairer media coverage later. The council said there was “a serious problem” with the way the UK media reported on Islam and Muslims. It looked at more than 10,000 articles and TV clips from the last three months of 2018, and said 59% of print articles linked Muslims with negative behaviour.
The study found the Mail on Sunday had the most negative coverage of Islam, with 78% of its stories featuring Muslims having negative themes.
So the Russian media is less trustworthy than the British…a plague on them all.
RT and Sputnik news agencies have been banned from attending the conference on media freedom – a bit of irony there. Around 60 ministers and 1,000 reporters and members of civil society are due to attend the event this week. But the UK Foreign Office refused accreditation to both RT and Sputnik.
