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Reply from the author of the article:The writer of this comment, Jon Griffith, was one of three European mountaineers who in late April were at some 21,000 feet up Mount Everest, working to establish a new route to the summit unassisted by ropes or oxygen, when they were attacked by a group of Sherpas who were laying some fixed ropes nearby. The incident was reported by, among others, Oliver Thring in the Sunday Times of 5 May. In that report Griffith was quoted as saying ‘For people like us the normal route to climb Everest is just like walking.’ He was also reported as expressing negative feelings about those he called ‘commercial climbers’ – presumably referring to people who pay a lot of money to be luxuriously accommodated before being respectfully guided up the mountain. And then there were his thoughts on the restrictions which arise from such arrangements: ‘Being told not to climb on a certain day just because other people are there is against the freedom of the hills.’Jon Griffith also questions the statement in the article that the Nepalese government had intervened. In fact a report by Ed Douglas in the Guardian on 1 May stated that the Nepalese authorities had intervened, by trying to involve all parties to concede that mistakes had been made and that there would be no more violence. But the Europeans rejected the offer and returned home with Griffith saying that he no longer felt safe above base camp on the mountain. In addition the Nepalese police arrested three Sherpas.In its entirety the piece was intended to set out one of many examples of how Mount Everest, once regarded on one side as holy ground and on the other side as a supreme test of moral fortitude, has descended into just another sordid participant in capitalism's commodity culture.

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This will be shown at the TUC in London on Thursday 20 June. We've asked for a ticket so we can do a review, but anyone can go as long as you book earlySERTUC FILM CLUB- FREE ADMISSION Screening + Director Q&AA new documentary feature film by Michael Wayne & Deirdre O'Neill- THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASSRuntime: 82 mins Everything changes and yet everything stays the same. 1844: Friedrich Engels writes his book 'The Condition of the Working Class in England', a classic denunciation of the appalling living conditions for working people living at the heart of the industrial revolution in Manchester, England.  In 2012: a group of working class people from Manchester and Salford have the job of devising a theatrical show from scratch based on their own experiences and Engels' book. They have 8 weeks before their first performance. The Condition of the Working Class follows the process from the first rehearsal to first night and situates their struggle to get the show on stage in the context of the daily struggles of working people facing economic crisis and austerity politics.Review: http://vimeo.com/66049819Thursday 20 June, 7- 9.30pmLOCATION              TUC Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LSFREE ADMISSION    Booking essentialBOOKINGS:             sertucevents@tuc.org.uk or 020 7467 1220Please book early to attend (all welcome).

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That's crap.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Former Co-op Bank chief executive Neville Richardson’s left the bank in 2011 with a package worth £4.6 million, including a £1.4 million payment for ‘loss of office’, and the same amount as ‘compensation’ for leaving.

From yesterday's London Evening Standard:

Quote:

The new chief executive of the Co-op Group, Euan Sutherland, today also saw off his deputy Martyn Wates who had been at the group 16 years. He was paid £970,000 last year including a £164,000 bonus and is likely to receive a year's pay off.

Very ethical! What a bunch of hypocrites.

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Thanks, Janet. Interesting stuff. As you are on the ground there can you cast some light on the group behind this leaflet that was handed out at the May Day demonstration we went to in London:

Quote:

No constitution without Alevis. Alevism cannot be forbidden.We Alevis are raising our voice for recognition in Turkey. Alevis are once again protesting Turkey's Alevi policies. We are demanding a "Secular and Democratic Turkey for Equality for all". British Alevis says NO to discrimination, assimilation and Alevi rights violations in Turkey. Freedom for Alevism.This protest is for:(…) compulsory religious lessons to be abolished.To terminate Ministry of Religious Affairs(…) Stop building mosques at Alevi villages and towns.Policies promoting assimilation to be stopped.Stop our homes being marked, threats and blackmailing.Stop alienation of those fasting or not fasting (…)To end Sharia domination in Turkey.To end questioning of people based on their religion, language and ethnic background.

It was signed "Alevi Cultural Centre and Cemevi".According to wikipedia "Alevis" are a breakaway group from mainstream islam (similar to the Alawites who are said to hold sway in Syria). They seem an enlightened lot. Wikipedia says they could make up as much as 25% of the population of Turkey. In which case they could be a bulwark against the re-islamisation of Turkish society pursued by the present government there.Have you come across them? Are they involved in the current unrest?

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The EC Minutes for the period December 1917 to June 1918 shed some interesting light on the background to the August 1918 article.The first mention of the "Bolshevik Revolution" is in the Minutes for 11 December 1917 when Tottenham branch send in a resolution:

Quote:

Re: Bolshevik Revolution: That the EC be asked if they have any evidence on the nature of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. If not, this Branch requests that they take steps to obtain this and to make an Official Statement as to the Socialist Party's position regarding the Bolshevik movement.

To which the EC replied:

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That Tottenham Branch be informed that the EC have no evidence on the so-called Bolshevik Revolution that would warrant an official pronouncement from the EC at the present juncture. If however members of the Tottenham Branch are in possession of such evidence we should be pleased to have same forwarded to HO.

The Minutes of the 18 January meeting recorded Tottenham's reply:

Quote:

Re: Bolshevik Party. Tottenham Branch stating that information re the Bolshevik Party in Russia can be obtained from their accredited representative, M. Litvinoff, at present resident in London.Fitzgerald & Fryer moved: -"That the Tottenham Branch be informed that the EC have no reason to believe that Litvinoff is allowed to obtain any more information with reference to the Bolshevik movement than any non-governmental person in this country, nor has the EC any means of verifying what information he might give. The EC  see no reason to assume that any good would accrue from an interview with Litvinoff." Cd. 10-0.

Tottenham branch persisted in asking the EC to approach Litvinoff, supported by Walthamstow branch, and the EC considered the matter again on 22 January:

Quote:

Re; Litvinoff and Russia: (…) Substantive Resolution now reads: "That no action be taken in view of the difficulty of verifying any information that might be got from Litvinoff".Webb & Dryer moved as amendment: "That a series of questions to be hereafter decided upon be sent to Litvinoff". After much discussion Webb & Dyer moved: "That the vote be taken". Lost 5-5. After further discussion. Amend: Lost 4-7. Resol: Cd 6-3.

Further exchanges took place between the EC and Tottenham and Hackney branches on the matter. The 18 June Minutes record:

Quote:

Re: Bolshevik :Tottenham  Branch encl following resolution:- "The EC be informed that a booklet on Russian Revolution by Maxim Litvinoff and a pamphlet by Leon Trotsky called 'War and Revolution' are now available & the Tottenham  Branch thinks that the EC might obtain information as to the nature of the Bolshevik Movement in Russia from a perusal of the above mentioned publications."Dryer & C. Morrison moved: – "That Tottenham be informed that the 2 works mentioned in their letter of 17/6/18 will probably be reviewed in the next issue of the SS." Cd 5-0.

Hence the article that appeared in August 1918.The EC were evidently concerned that, due to the censorship then in force, it would be difficult to obtain reliable information about what had happened in Russia, not even from the Bolshevik representative in London.Maxim Litvinov became a top Russian diplomat and was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1930 till 1939. In 1951 he was assassinated on Stalin's orders.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

The AKP government, however reactionary, is democratically elected (As far as I understand), except that it relies on a large conservative rural vote.  The worry I have is that some of the protestors would support a dictatorship in the name of liberalism and secularism.

Incidentally, why? Why should the secularised and generally more politically advanced people of the large cities and towns accept to be "islamised" by a government relying on a "conservative rural vote"?Under these circumstances formal political democracy is merely what Marx called a "means of dupery". After all, he had first-hand experience of what happens when the vote is extended to everyone in a country with a rural conservative majority: a nephew of Napoleon won a landslide victory in the presidential election and within a couple of years proclaimed himself an emporer and suppressed radical dissent in Paris. We've recently seen the same sort of thing happen in Egypt.I agree with you, though, that the best that can come out of this is to force the government in Turkey to back down and not try to impose backward ideas and practices on the big towns.  Otherwise the ghost of Ataturk might well return and put the Islamisers back in their place. Remember that the last "democratically elected" Turkish prime minister who took re-islamisation too far, Adnan Menderes, was deposed in an army coup and hanged. A similar fate might await Erdogan. I wouldn't shed any tears.

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The other interesting part of this survey is right at the end of the City AM report:

Quote:

Out of the 10 largest firms by profit — which together make a staggering 50 per cent of revenues and 57 per cent of the FTSE 350's profits — three work in natural resources.

The Times (3 June) reported this as follows:

Quote:

The Profit Watch UK study also demonstrates the extent to which the share market is concentrated on just a few companies: the top ten companies account for 50 per cent of all revenues, while the top ten by profit accounted for 57 per cent of after-tax profits.

Talk about the concentration of capital (like Marx).

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

I am  astonished how there is more indignation of the possibility of the rich pensioner being deprived of his or her free tv licence than the imposition of an annual tax upon us all to maintain an establishment mouth-piece is readily seen as acceptable.At times i wish the SPGB was a campaigning reformist party because i know what supposedly independent corporation would be in my sights for abolition to save us all a few quid.

If we were a campaigning reformist party I think we should be careful what we wish for. The abolition of the BBC is what the Daily Mail is campaigning for and would leave the field free for the likes of Murdoch. Given the choice, I'd rather campaign for the abolition of the Daily Mail and Murdoch.I do agree, though, that the famous poem does apply to BBC journalists:

Quote:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.

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I see he reveals that he was once a hard-line Trotskyist (member of the US SWP, not to be confused with the UK one).Anyone know whether or not the whole event was a flop?

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J Surman wrote:

It will be interesting to see what happens today and tomorrow as there's been a union call for a 2 day strike. On TV Russia Today has reasonable coverage -( you can watch RT online if there's no satellite coverage – is it banned in UK like Press TV is? They also do reasonable coverage.)

No, we can watch RT here in Britain. It's even on Freeview. Lots of members watch the Kaiser Report. Didn't know Press TV from Iran was banned, but you live and learn.More news on what's happening in Turkey here:http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/3/a_turkish_spring_over_1_000

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Socialist Party Head Office wrote:

Further reply by letter from Laurens Otter:Mr Clayton is on the one hand citing the Aug. 1918 SPGB case; (Soc Standard, Aug 1918), arguing that Russia was not ready for socialism; (though, arguably the party's case was more nuanced, than that might suggest, Sammy Cash used to recollect that the Party's General Secretary sent Lenin a telegram of congratulation in December 1917.)

This Lenin Telegramme will be another figment of Laurens's fertile imagination. I wouldn't have thought either that Sammy Cash (a well-known Party member in the 1930s and 1940s who eventually left) said this. What the Party did do was publish an article in the January 1918 Socialist Standard congratulating the Bolsheviks for having stopped the slaughter on the Eastern front:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1918/no-161-january-1918/russian-situationThis is repeated in the famous August 1918 article (unfortunately, not yet available on line):

Quote:

As is admitted by the various sections of the capitalist Press, the Soviet representatives at the Brest-Litovsk Conference stood firm on their original proposals to the last moment. That they had to accept hard terms in the end is no way any discredit to them, but it was a result of conditions quite beyond their control. If they had done no more than this, if they had been compelled to give up office on their return, the fact that they had negotiated a stoppage of the slaughter and maiming of millions of the working class would have been a monument to their honour, and constituted an undeniable claim to the highest approbation of the workers the world over.

The article ends, hoping that the Bolsheviks and the Russian workers are not going to be punished for this:

Quote:

With the mass of the Russian people still lacking the knowledge necessary for the establishment of socialism, with both groups of belligerents sending armed forces into the country, with the possible combination of those groups for the purpose of restoring capitalist rule, even if not a monarchy, in Russia, matters look gloomy for the people there. If the capitalist class in the belligerent countries succeed in this plan, the Soviet Government and its supporters may expect as little mercy as—nay, less than—the Khirgiz Tartars received. It may be another Paris Commune on an immensely larger scale.Every worker who understands his class position will hope that some way will be found out of the threatened evil. Should that hope be unrealised, should further victims be fated to fall to the greed and hatred of the capitalist class, it will remain on record that when members of the working class took control of affairs in Russia, they conducted themselves with vastly greater humanity, managed social and economic matters with greater ability and success and with largely reduced pain and suffering, than any section of the cunning, cowardly, ignorant capitalist class were able to do, with all the numerous advantages they possessed.

Our criticism was of the claim made by some Bolsheviks and their supporters in Britain that what had occurred in Russia was a "socialist revolution" and that socialism was being established there, or could be in the existing economic and political conditions. So any hypothetical telegramme to Lenin would have said "Congratulations on stopping the slaughter on the Eastern front" (not "Congratulations on having carried out a socialist revolution").Later, when more information about what the Bolshevik government was actually doing emerged we took up a more critical position towards them, while still crediting them with having tried to stop the slaughter on the Eastern front (as we still do).In checking Laurens's claim by looking up the EC Minutes of the time I came across some interesting things which I might write up separately.

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Another relevant news item:http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/article3781429.eceQuestion for those who think a bank can create money from thin air by a stroke of the pen: why did the Co-op Bank not do this instead of asking for a loan from the Bank of England?  The answer that they would have regarded this as "unethical" won't be accepted.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

I'm not sure if this is just a bit of clever placement of "establishment" news such as we had in the General Strike with police v strikers football or a genuine sincere Xmas Day Truce 1st World War game of footie between Brits and Huns but worth noting.Tea and biscuits and a game of football between mosque and EDLhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-22689552Nevertheless, it is an echo of our own approach that the solution to political violence is not counter-violence but a reasoned rational response, not demonisation

Apparently this is not a one-off:http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/ipswich_edl_walk_through_town_centre_ends_without_incident_1_2218950Maybe someone will now organise a football match between the UAF and the EDL. More likely, though, is that the UAF will adopt a policy of: "No tea and biscuits for the EDL".

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

I find it mildly amusing that one ex-member’s enthusiasm for Occupy’s style of democracy has evolved into support for a left-wing united front which endeavours to create another political party by participants possessing principles of top-down decision-making and who sadly have not presented any self-criticism of such policies they hold but in fact desire to replicate them within Left Unity

I'm not sure that he has embraced top-down organisation (though that's how the proposed Left Unity party may well end up being organised), but he does accept that the "consensus decision-making" favoured by Graeber is not appropriate for a party. Here's what he says in reply to one comment on his report of the 11 May LU meeting:

Quote:

The only alternative I know of to motions and so on is Occupy style consensus. This is great, creative and very good at building solidarity. Is this what you had on mind? I’m not convinced it would be appropriate for Left Unity but would be open to hearing the arguments.

Yes, when a decision-making body gets beyond a certain size consenus decision-making is not even practical, however desirable it might or might not be.  Then motions, voting, majority-decision-making have to be brought in to ensure democratic control.

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