ALB
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I don't think Engels can be accused of "sexism" on the basis of not being "sympathetic to the women’s movement" of his day. In his day, this was a movement of bourgeois women demanding the same voting and property rights as men. If implemented this would have enfranchised bourgeois women leaving most other women and a third of male workers without the vote. Which is why we denounced the suffragettes as demanding "Votes for Rich Women".Also, Tristam Hunt (now a blairite Labour MP) was a hostile biographer. Even so, he records that in the 1876 elections to the London Scool Board (for which women could stand and propertied ones had the vote) Engels gave all his seven votes to a woman candidate. In view of her politics it can't have been for that that he voted for her, but just because she was a woman. As a comrade who did some research on this wrote:
Quote:Just did a bit of research and Engels definitely would have been in Marylebone Ward for the LSB elections (Regents Park Road was St Pancras but became part of Marylebone for the purposes). They had female representation from 1870 through 1891 (ie. when Engels was there). Interestingly the main rep, Alice Westlake (1876-88), opposed a ban on corporal punishment for girls as some "were of a very rough class and were insubordinate"), was married to the Board's solicitor (nepotism) and instigated a motion to remove married women teachers with children from their posts. She was a Liberal.In any event, his pamphlet of the Origin of Family, etc shows he was all in favour of equality of the sexes. Agreed he wasn't perfect. Nobody is.
That article from the Guardian about Ebbw Vale well illustrates my (and Meel's) point:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/25/view-wales-town-showered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-valeAnd part of it is Nye Bevan's and Michael Foot's old constituency. Lower down the valleys there were coal mines, now all closed. The miners were members of the CP-dominated South Wales Area of the NUM. Labour has 33 of the 42 seats on the borough council.
They sent us a promotional email about this and we wanted to review it to go in next months special issue of the Socialist Standard .on socialism (with and without inverted commas) in the US but two potential reviewers tirned it down. I had a look at the cartoons. Some of them are ok, but there's some trendy trotskyism in there too, e.g. that the struggle for women's equality under capitalism is part of the class struggle and that oppressed people have the right to use violence.
There are not many immigrants in the ex-mining areas of South wales nor (I assume) in the depressed areas of the North East. Perhaps the comrades in county Durham can confirm.I can't see either what Corbyn could have done to get them to vote Remain. I would have thought in fact that he would have had a better chance of this than the metropolitan Labour politicians who are now stabbing him in the back as an obstacle to their rise up the greasy pole, precisely because he doesn't come across as one of them.
Speaking of Hannan here's his vision of Britain after Brexit in 2020:
Quote:London, too, is booming. Eurocrats never had much sympathy for financial services. As their regulations took effect – a financial transactions tax, a ban on short-selling, restrictions on clearing, a bonus cap, windfall levies, micro-regulation of funds – waves of young financiers brought their talents from Frankfurt, Paris and Milan to the City.It was precisely to avoid such regulation that the maverick financiers who put up the money for the Leave campaign did so. They weren't concerned about the NHS or immigration, only with avoiding regulation of their activities as listed by Hannan.It might not turn out that way, according to a report today:
Quote:Britain's banks could lose automatic access to the financial centres of the European Union after Brexit, the European Central Bank has warned.London's banks and financial services giants depend on a so-called 'EU passport' to operate unhindered in capital markets across the Continent.And that passport could be withdrawn according to a veiled threat from ECB Governing Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau today, according to Reuters news agency.If Britain fails to secure continued access to the bloc's single market in its exit talks, this would make it difficult for UK banks to keep most of their staff and operations in London.'If tomorrow Britain is not part of the single market, the City cannot keep this European passport, and clearing houses cannot be located in London either,' Villeroy told France Inter radio.Villeroy, who is also governor of the Bank of France, added that Brexit talks must be quick to limit uncertainty.'There is a precedent, it is the Norwegian model of European Economic Area, that would allow Britain to keep access to the single market but by committing to implement all EU rules,' he said.'It would be a bit paradoxical to leave the EU and apply all EU rules but that is one solution if Britain wants to keep access to the single market.'Difficulties for Britain's financial giants with access to the EU would present an opportunity to rival finance centres like Paris and Frankfurt.This might not worry the Brexit financiers but it would worry the rest of the British capitalist class.
Yes, it does sound like a knee-jerk reaction (with the emphasis on the latter) of a mad marketeer to the very word "socialism" which he doesn't understand.
ItIt seems that those of us living in Remain areas like London (and Warwick) concentrated too much on attacking Brexit and failed to emphasise the title of the EC statement that "The problem is not the EU .. it's capitalism" and so neglected to address the thinking of workers in Leave areas that the EU was the cause of the problems they faced. But then we didn't distribute any leaflets or hold any meetings in those areas..
Young Master Smeet wrote:So, tomorrow is christmas for anoraks, I can hardly wait, either way, there'll be an interesting result, oodles and oodles of data to crunch, and big constitutional questiopns to examine and argue about till we're mauve in the face.Today's Times prints some revealing statistics:
Quote:83% of local authorities voted Leave where more than a quarter of the electorate do not have good GCSEs (at least five A*-C)86% of local authorities with a high proportion of manufacturing jobs vote Leave.79% of local authorities with house prices below the national average voted Leave.77% of local authorities with average earnings below £23,000 voted Leave.We shouldn't forget that 48% didn't vote for Brexit and that there were majorities against not just in London but Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff, Newcastle. Birmingham was an exception. But the traditional "rivers of blood" xenophobia of this not particularly run-down part of England would not have been enough to give Brexit a majority without the addition of the resentment of discarded workers and communities in the ex-mining areas of South Wales and the North East, traditional Labour areas where the Tories have never stood a chance and which have the least immigrants (London, on the other hand, has the most).
No, you don't they are here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_2016Only 28,033 out of 33,578,016 votes cast, which is 0.08%. We do better than that in elections. Turnout was 72%, which is not particularly high despite what the pundits were saying. So non-voters were 28% of the 46,501,241 registered voters or about 13 million.
Got that wrong then but I wouldn't call it an "idiots' revolt", more a protest vote by the so-called "white working class" in England and Wales outside London and Liverpool. Had to laugh though at the Tory Brexiters on TV claiming that this group had supported Brexit because they were concerned about governance, sovereignity, the constitution and all that crap, though I'm sure it will have been a protest at the fact that they don't control what happens to them.But we're right on one thing — the change is not going to be as big as both sides were arguing if the vote went for exit. No sooner was it clear that Leave was going to win than its proponents started back-tracking, saying there was no need to rush things. In fact it looks as if the UK is going to remain a member of the EU till at least the end of 2019. So no more immediate money for the NHS from "the £350 million a week sent to Brussels". No reduction of VAT on domestic energy. Not even any stop to migrants from the rest of the EU coming to fill job vacancies in Britain.These will turn out to be the usual empty politicians' promises. So, the "white working class" protest voters are going to be disappointed, "betrayed" yet again, though I don't suppose many had illusions about anything really changing.If I dare stick my neck out again, I still say that the outcome in 2020 is going to be like Norway, i.e not in the EU but with continued access to the single market in return for a payment to Brussels and acceptance of the principle of the free movement of workers looking for jobs.
Your introduction didn't make it clear than this is a plea not to vote Brexit or Lexit. Makes some good points:
Quote:So when we 'take our country back' are we going to take our workplaces back? Control over our own labour back? No one is talking about that.gnome wrote:There's been a last minute revision of the EU Referendum voting paper…This is the ballot paper I'm going to put in the ballot box as well tomorrow (or is it today now?)
Thanks but the other thing you are ignoring is the actual question (see the Zeitgeist voting paper above). It's
Quote:Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?So it's not about what the Leave mob promise or threaten to do if the UK votes to leave. What would happen in that event is an open question, to be decided by negotiations between the UK and the EU. All their promises and plans are so much hot air, even though they have stoked up anti-immigrant and xenophobic prejudices.One outcome would be that the UK ends up like Norway, i.e. with full free access to the single tariff-less market with common standards but still having to pay something to the EU for this access and having to accept the free movement of labour.Given that a majority of the UK capitalist class and of UK MPs are for Remain in order to have access to this market, this could well be the most likely outcome in the event of a Leave vote. Norway, incidentally, has ended up in this position after twice voting in a referendum not to join the EU. Maybe, as the UK has more clout than Norway, it could get a better deal, but basically it would be no change. The only change would be in the institutional arrangements for decision-making.So Keep Calm and Carry On.
No it's not. That doesn't follow. Why is an abstention a vote for one of the two sides and why for Leave and not Remain? From your point of view, Stuart, as you've already acknowledged, it's not a vote for Leave:
stuart2112 wrote:I prefer your abtaining position to that of the dreaming Lexiteers.So, for you, abstaining is the lesser evil !
