Bijou Drains
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AJ – Biden is a one-term president
To be fair Alan, at 78 later this month, that might not be his biggest concern, even if he gets to that point, đź‘ż đź‘ż
I don’t think the BBC and others will give him the same coverage as a recent actor.
You can understand the coverage given to a recently deceased actor, after all Bobby Ball was a legend
LT, if I had ÂŁ10 for every false prediction I had heard from Trotskyists over the last 40 years, I would be able to retire comfortably, instead of having to drag my aged bones out to bloody work every week.
Beginning with predictions of the development of mass “marxist” Labour Party in the 1980s, ( I remember being in Militant HQ when Benn lost the Labout deputy leader vote and being told that this was a high water mark for the right in Labour Party by one the inner sanctum of their leadership) the collapse of British Capitalism after defeat in the Falklands (who can forget the SWP with the heading The Malvinas es Argentinas on the front of their paper and Tony Cliff and his mob supporting the Fascist Galtieri) and how the miner’s strike was going to lead to the British Revolution, etc. etc. The list is ongoing.
With the number of Trotskyist internationals and parties world wide, you’d think the odds are they would finally get one prediction right, but so far no sign of that.
I think the biggest service the Trostksyist collective could do for the working class, is to get all of the different Trotskyist parties to start giving individual horse racing tips, then we wouldl know exactly which horses to avoid!!
LT – “Trotsky knew, like the rest of the soon-to-be council of people’s commissars of the RSFSR, that gaining power (the coup) and more importantly holding power would be impossible without a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat. If you read any of the works of Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov and studied some Russian history, you would understand the challenges the councils faced, challenges like insurrections that lasted right up to the mid 1930’s throughout Russia.”
If it was a dictatorship of the proletariat, why were they so busy suppressing that very proletariat who were leading the insurrections, Kronstadt to name but one? The Bolshevik, Blanquist, Junta didn’t even have majority support of the Russian proletariat, never mind majority support in the country as a whole. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin’s cabal were a dictatorship over the proletariat, not a dictatorship of the proletariat.
I wasn’t trying to elicit an apology, so no offence was taken Alan. I was merely trying to point out exactly what YMS has pointed to, the issue of class. The contruct that is sometimes made is that because the people who benefited from slavery, etc. were white, therefore all white people benefitted from it, or as an alternative, “Britain” benefitted from the slave trade therefore “the British” en masse benefitted from the slave trade. We need to be opposing these false and divisive narratives. This does not mean that we should ignore racism, sexism, homophobia, we must call this out wherever it exists, however our case against these prejudices is two fold, like the reformists we oppose it because of the impact it has on the day to day experience of our fellow workers, but unlike them, we oppose it because anything which divides the working classes is an impediment to the long term solution of these problems, socialism.
ALJO- “Had a job down the pit…BD…lucky devil…”
Alan, at the risk of appearing a humourless git, I wonder if you would have felt as comfortable posting a sketch by a bunch of Oxbridge graduates lampooning the conditions of slavery in the US in the 1850s.
I don’t know if you have ever watched anyone die of mesothelioma, not a laugh a minute experience. There are still a reported 2,500 deaths per year from the disease, a condition which was known about by the employers in the 1890s.
There has been much needed discussion about how much slavery contributed to the so called “national wealth” and the misery this caused. The discussion about other sources of “national wealth” have not be so eagerly pursued. It is unusual to go to a local graveyard aroung here that hasn’t got the grave of someone killed in a pit accident, or find an ex pit village that hasn’t got a memorial to the local pit disaster.
As the Alex Glasgow song goes:
Close the coalhouse door, lad
There’s blood inside
Blood from broken hands and feet
Blood that’s dried of pitblack meat
Blood from hearts that know no beat
Close the coalhouse door, lad
There’s blood insideClose the coalhouse door, lad
There’s bones inside
Mangled, splintered piles of bones
Buried ‘neath a mile of stones
Not a soul to hear the groans
Close the coalhouse door, lad
There’s bones insideClose the coalhouse door, lad
There’s bairns inside
Bairns that had no time to hide
Bairns who saw the blackness slide
Bairns beneath the mountainside
Close the coalhouse door, lad
There’s bairns insideClose the coalhouse door, lad
And stay outside
Geordie’s standing at the dole
And Mrs Jackson, like a fool
Complains about the price of coal
Close the coalhouse door, lad
There’s blood inside
There’s bones inside
There’s bairns inside
So stay outsideI was out for a walk yesterday and was reminded of just how much my ancestors benefitted from the privilege of being white working class, when walking through Earsdon Churchyard. I remember being taken to the memorial their as a young kid and had been aware of the story of Hartley Pit all of my life having been born and brought up just a couple of miles away from Hartley.
https://www.wavmm.com/2020/05/28/the-hartley-pit-disaster/
a quick trawl through the internet shows this was not a rare occurance, just a few further examples of many:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udston_mining_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresford_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Stanley_Pit_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haig_Colliery
As someone who lost a father, a grandfather and two great grandfathers to industrial deaths, I find the idea of white privilege as a bit of a joke, was being white any privilege at the battle of Orgreave, or when the police turned whole swaiths of the North East into a police state during the big strike?
Alan, all of this positive spin you’re putting on the Poope, you wouldn’t have a completed Form A application in the name of Jorge Mario Bergoglio tucked in your back pocket, would you?
I would imagine that there are two not very bright racists, with very distinct handwriting, who are not going to sleep very well tonight, having realised what a prick they have made of themselves. With handwriting like that they may as well have put a return address on the letters.
Also Chomsky does not include his encouraging others and campaiging for others to vote for the less or least awful candidate, which distracts from the “going back to work”
So effectively T M, you are saying (very roughly) Henry 8th took the role of Stalin (Crown ownership = State Ownership, dissolution of the monastries = collectivisation of farms) with Cromwell taking on the role of Putin (dividing the crown/state spoils amongst his cronies)
twc -“If “we” constructed “our” world “for us”, “we” did a lousy job.
- What compelled “us” to construct “for us” our entry into “our” world through the vagina?”
Perhaps we all felt that at such an important moment in our lives, it was important to be near our mothers
According to to our Greek friend to be an “Independent Nation it is necessary to have an independent currency”. The logical conclusion is therefore, that the Irish Free State never existed and The Irish Republic came into being on 30 March 1979, when the Irish Punt became subject to an exchange rate. I would expect that celebrating the 30th March will be a big date in the Irish National Calendar following that revelation.
