WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME-Stop The Endless Wars

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

An Oligarchy Has Broken Our Democracy

Each new election year promises change. We will choose a new president and new representatives in Congress; fresh faces will make their appearances in Washington DC, while old ones disappear. But what about the people who stay in power, one election after another, less exposed to the public eye?  The concept of a ‘Deep State’ has been around for a while, but rarely to describe the United States. The term, used in Kemalist Turkey by the political class, referred to an informal grouping of oligarchs, senior military and intelligence operatives and organized crime, who ran the state along anti-democratic lines regardless of who was formally in power… These operatives use their proximity to power and ability to offer high-paying jobs to government officials to achieve outcomes foreclosed to ordinary citizens. As professor Martin Gilens of Princeton, who studied the correlation between American popular opinion polls and public policy outcomes, concluded: “[T]he preferences of economic elites have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do ... ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States.”   More

 

OXFAM: 62 people own same as half world

Runaway inequality has created a world where 62 people own as much as the poorest half of the world's population, according to an Oxfam report published today ahead of the annual gathering of the world's financial and political elites in Davos. This number has fallen dramatically from 388 as recently as 2010 and 80 last year.  An Economy for the 1%, shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world's population - that's 3.6 billion people - has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010. This 41 per cent drop has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period. Meanwhile the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76tr. Just nine of the '62' are women… Globally, it is estimated that super-rich individuals have stashed a total of $7.6tr in offshore accounts. If tax were paid on the income that this wealth generates, an extra $190bil would be available to governments every year.  More

 

Bernie Sanders Gets Group Endorsements When Members Decide; Clinton When Leaders Decide

In the war for endorsements in the Democratic presidential primary, there is a clear trend. Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide. And several of those endorsements were accompanied by criticisms from members about the lack of a democratic process. It’s perhaps the clearest example yet of Clinton’s powerful appeal to the Democratic Party’s elite, even as support for Sanders explodes among the rank and file… The one major labor union that did allow for a vote was the Communications Workers of America. CWA followed a three-month process that included meetings with members, telephone town halls, and an online polling voting process. “We conducted an online membership poll from mid-September to early December,” said CWA spokesperson Candice Johnson in a statement to The Intercept. “Tens of thousands of members voted in the poll, with Sanders getting a decisive majority.”    More

 

Mass. Dem Primary Pits Underdog Sanders Against Establishment Favorite Clinton

Massachusetts, we are told by the purveyors of conventional wisdom, is solid Clinton Country. We're talking big-time Hillary to the bone. That convention, and the built-in advantage that comes with it, makes it an uphill battle for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's chief opponent, to mount any kind of challenge ahead of the state's March 1 Democratic presidential primary. Thousands of Sanders's supporters have felt "the Bern" and rallied in Massachusetts over the course of the campaign, but that hasn't translated into institutional support for the socialist Democratic Vermonter.   More

 

On the other hand. . .

 

 

Senate Democrats Block Republican Anti-Refugee Bill

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid successfully linked the controversial legislation to GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s highly-criticized proposal to ban all Muslims from the United States. The House overwhelmingly passed the refugee bill last year, but the Senate version stopped short of garnering the 60 votes necessary to advance for final approval.  “Over and over again, Republicans remain committed to pledging loyalty to the divisive platform they have built for Donald Trump,” Reid said. “We’ll not allow Republicans to hijack the Senate floor to play politics with our national security.”  Republicans in turn accused Democrats of endangering national security, and warned that measures needed to be taken to prevent the Islamic State from posing as Syrian refugees and entering the United States.  More

 

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder claims Flint lead crisis is 'absolutely not' environmental racism

Snyder has faced increasingly intense criticism and calls for his resignation as the lead crisis in Flint continues. Yesterday, President Obama approved $80 million in water aid and infrastructure to the city of Flint after researchers and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services found elevated blood levels of lead among people who drank or bathed in city tap water. The lead exposures came at the tail end of a number of drinking water issues following Flint’s temporary switch to the Flint River as a water source. The decisions that led to the switch—along with the campaign to minimize test results and the subsequent lack of regard for citizen complaints about the water—have led to calls that the Flint crisis is an end result of environmental racism. Flint is predominantly black, and according to the 2010 Census, almost two-thirds of its citizens are nonwhite.   More

 

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Free Speech for French Magazine CHARLIE HEBDO can also be Vile Speech. . .

(Refers to incidents in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve when women were molested by groups of men which included migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East)

 

CHARLIE HEBDO: “What would have happened If little Aylan had grown up? Ass groper in Germany”

Drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi on the coast of Turkey

 

Our Response Must Be Against Sexual Violence, Not Race, Say Feminists

The women's rights activists wrote: "It is harmful for all of us if feminism is exploited by extremists to incite against certain ethnicities, as is currently being done in the discussion surrounding the incidents in Cologne. "It is wrong to highlight sexualised violence only when the perpetrators are allegedly the perceived ‘others’: Muslim, Arab, black or North-African men, i.e., those who are regarded as ‘non-Germans’ by extremists… "Combatting sexualised violence must be the political priority every single day, because it is omnipresent… "One in three women over the age of 15 have experienced physical and/or sexualised violence. Statistics by the German Federal Police count more than 7,300 reported rapes and sexual assaults in Germany every year, amounting to more than 20 every day. Not to mention the many more that are never reported," it said.   More

 

The Battle Rages- Jerry Lee or Elvis?- Jerry Lee Lewis’ “High School Confidential”- Billie And Peter Paul Square Off

The Battle Rages- Jerry Lee or Elvis?- Jerry Lee Lewis’ “High School Confidential”- Billie And Peter Paul Square Off

 

 

From The Pen Of The Late Peter Paul Markin

 

With A 2015 Introduction By Sam Lowell

 

If you did not know what happened to the late Peter Paul Markin who used to write for some of the alternative newspaper and magazine publications that proliferated in the wake of the 1960s circus-war/bloodbath/all world together festival/new age aborning cloud puff dream, won a few awards too and was short-listed for the Globe Prize this is what is what. What is what before the ebb tide kind of knocked the wind out of everybody’s sails, everybody who was what I called “seeking a newer world,” a line I stole from some English poet (Robert Kennedy, Jack’s brother, or his writer “cribbed” the line too for some pre-1968 vision book before he ran for President in 1968 so I am in good company.) I will tell you in a minute what expression “the Scribe,” a named coined by our leader, Frankie Riley, which is what we always called Markin around the corner we hung out in together in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor in our hometown of North Adamsville, used to describe that change he had sensed coming in the early 1960s. Saw coming long before any of the rest of us did, or gave a rat’s ass about in our serious pressing concerns of the moment, worries about girls (all of the existential problems angst including about bedding them, or rather getting them in back seats of cars mainly), dough (ditto the girl existential thing to keep them interested in you and not run off with the next guy who had ten bucks to spend freely on them to your deuce, Jesus) and cars (double ditto since that whole “bedding” thing usually hinged on having a car, or having a corner boy with some non-family car to as we used to say, again courtesy of the Scribe via scat bluesman Howlin’ Wolf, “doing the do.” The Scribe though wanted to give it, give what we were felling, you know our existential angst moment although we did not call it that until later when the Scribe went off to college and tried to impress us with his new found facts, his two thousand new found facts about guys like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Like I said we could give a rat’s ass about all that.

 

All I know is that ebb tide that caught Markin kind of flat-footed, kind of made him gravitate back toward his baser instincts honed by every breathe he took as a kid down in the projects where he learned the facts of life, the facts of fellaheen life which is what one of our junior high school teachers called us, called us peasants, called it right too although we were the urban versions of the downtrodden shanty peasants but they were kindred no doubt, is still with us. So maybe being, having been a “prophet, ” being a guy who worried about that social stuff while we were hung up on girls,  dough and cars (him too in his more sober moments especially around one Rosemond Goode), wasn’t so good after all. Maybe the late Markin was that kind of Catholic “martyr saint” that we all had drilled into us in those nasty nun run Sunday catechism classes, maybe he really was some doomed “n----r” to use a phrase he grabbed from some Black Panther guys he used to run around with when he (and Josh Breslin) lived in Oakland and the “shit was hitting the fan” from every law enforcement agency that could put two bullets in some greasy chamber to mow down anybody even remotely associated with the brothers and the ten point program (who am I kidding anybody who favored armed self-defense for black men and women that’s the part that had the coppers screaming for blood, and bullets).

 

Here is a quick run-down about the fate of our boy corner boy bastard saint and about why stuff that he wrote forty or fifty years ago now is seeing the light of day. I won’t bore you with the beginnings, the projects stuff because frankly I too came out of the projects, not the same one as he did but just as hopeless down in Carver where I grew up before heading to North Adamsville and Josh who was as close as anybody to Markin toward the end was raised in the Olde Saco projects up in Maine and we are both still here to tell the tale. The real start as far as what happened to unravel the Scribe happened after he, Markin, got out of the Army in late 1970 when he did two things that are important here. First, he continued, “re-connected” to use the word he used, on that journey that he had started before he was inducted in the Army in 1968 in search of what he called the Great Blue-Pink American West Night (he put the search in capitals when he wrote about the experiences so I will do so here), the search really for the promise that the “fresh breeze” he was always carping about was going to bring. That breeze which was going to get him out from under his baser instincts developed (in self-defense against the punks that were always bothering him something I too knew about and in self- defense against his mother who was truly a dinosaur tyrant unlike my mother who tended to roll with the punches and maybe that helped break my own fall from heading straight down that Markin fate ladder) in his grinding poverty childhood, get out from under the constant preoccupation with satisfying his “wanting habits” which would eventually do him in.

 

Markin had made a foolish decision when he decided to drop out of college (Boston University) after his sophomore year in 1967 in order to pursue his big cloud puff dream, a dream which by that time had him carrying us along with him on the hitchhike road west in the summer of love, 1967, and beyond. Foolish in retrospect although he when I and others asked about whether he would have done things differently if he had known what the hell-hole of Vietnam was all about was ambivalent about the matter. Of course 1967, 1968, 1969 and other years as well were the “hot” years of the war in Vietnam and all Uncle Sam and his local draft boards wanted, including in North Adamsville, was warm bodies to kill commies, kill them for good. As he would say to us after he had been inducted and had served his tour in ‘Nam as he called it (he and the other military personnel who fought the war could use the short-hand expression but the term was off-bounds for civilians in shortened form)  and came back to the “real” world he did what he did, wished he had not done so, wished that he had not gone, and most of all wished that the American government which made nothing but animals out of him and his war buddies would come tumbling down for what it had done to its sons for no good reasons.

 

And so Markin continued his search, maybe a little wiser, continued as well to drag some of his old corner boys like me on that hitchhike road dream of his before the wheels fell off. I stayed with him longest I think before even I could see we had been defeated by the night-takers and I left the road to go to law school and “normalcy.” (The signposts: Malcolm X’s, Robert Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King’s assassinations, hell maybe JFK’s set the who thing on a bad spiral which kind of took the political winds out of any idea that there would not be blow-back for messing with the guys in power at the time, the real guys not their front-men, the politicians; the rising tide of “drop out, drug out, live fast and die young” which took a lot of the best of our generation off giving up without a fight; the endless death spiral of Vietnam; the plotted killings of Black Panthers and any other radical or revolutionary of any color or sex who “bothered” them; and, the election of one master criminal, Richard Milhous Nixon, to be President of the United States which was not only a cruel joke but put paid to the notion that that great unwashed mass of Americans were on our side.)

 

Markin stuck it out longer until at some point in 1974, 1975 a while after I had lost touch with him when even he could see the dreams of the 1960s had turned to dust, turned to ashes in his mouth and he took a wrong turn, or maybe not a wrong turn the way the wheel of his life had been set up but a back to his baser instincts turn which had been held in check when we were in the high tide of 1960s possibilities. (Josh Breslin, another corner boy, although from Olde Saco, Maine who had met Markin out in San Francisco in the summer of love in 1967 and who had also left the road earlier just before me was in contact until pretty near the end, pretty close to the last time in early 1975 anybody heard from Markin this side of the border, this side of paradise as it turned out since Josh who lived out in California where Markin was living at the time confirmed that Markin was in pretty ragged mental and physical condition by then).           

 

Markin had a lot invested emotionally and psychological in the success of the 1960s “fresh breeze coming across the land” as he called it early on. Maybe it was that ebb tide, maybe it was the damage that military service in hell-hole Vietnam did to his psyche, maybe it was a whole bunch of bad karma things from his awful early childhood that he held in check when there were still sunnier days ahead but by the mid-1970s he had snapped. Got involved in using and dealing cocaine just starting to be a big time profitable drug of choice among rich gringos (and junkies ready to steal anything, anytime, anywhere in order to keep the habit going).

 

Somehow down in Mexico, Sonora, we don’t know all the details to this day a big deal Markin brokered (kilos from what we heard so big then before the cartels organized everything and before the demand got so great they were shipping freighters full of cold cousin cocaine for the hipsters and the tricksters and big for Markin who had worked his way up the drug trade food chain probably the way he worked his way into everything by some “learned” dissertation about how his input could increase revenue, something along those lines) went awry, his old time term for something that went horribly wrong, and he wound up face down in a dusty back road with two slugs to the head and now resides in the town’s potter’s field in an unmarked grave. But know this; the bastard is still moaned over, moaned to high heaven.

 

The second thing Markin did, after he decided that going back to school after the shell-shock of Vietnam was out of the question, was to begin to write for many alternative publications (and I think if Josh is correct a couple of what he, Markin, called “bourgeois” publications for the dough). Wrote two kinds of stories, no three, first about his corner boy days with us at Salducci’s (and also some coming of age stories from his younger days growing up in the Adamsville Housing Authority “projects” with his best friend, Billie Bradley before he met us in junior high school). Second about that search for the Great Blue-Pink American Night which won him some prizes since he had a fair-sized audience who were either committed to the same vision, or who timidly wished they could have had that commitment (like a couple of our corner boys who could not make the leap to “drugs, sex, rock and roll, and raising bloody hell on the streets fighting the ‘monster’ government” and did the normal get a job, get married, get kids, get a house which made the world go round then). And thirdly, an award-winning series of stories under the by-line Going To The Jungle for the East Bay Other (published out of the other side of the bay San Francisco though) about his fellow Vietnam veterans who could not deal with the “real” world coming back and found themselves forming up in the arroyos, along the rivers, along the railroad tracks and under the bridges of Southern California around Los Angeles. Guys who needed their stories told and needed a voice to give life to those stories. Markin was their conduit.

 

Every once in a while somebody, in this case Bart Webber, from the old corner boy crowd of our youthful times, will see or hear something that will bring him thoughts about our long lost comrade who kept us going in high school times with his dreams and chatter (although Frankie Riley was our leader since he was an organizer-type whereas Markin could hardly organize his shoes, if that). Now with the speed and convenient of the Internet we can e-mail each other and get together at some convenient bar to talk over old times. And almost inevitably at some point in the evening the name of the Scribe will come up. Recently we decided, based on Bart’s idea, that we would, if only for ourselves, publish a collection of whatever we could find of old-time photographs and whatever stories Markin had written that were still sitting around somewhere to commemorate our old friend. We have done so with much help from Bart’s son Jeff who now runs the printing shop that Bart, now retired, started back in the 1960s.

 

This story is from that first category, the back in the day North Adamsville corner boy story, although this one is painted with a broader brush since it combines with his other great love to write about books, film and music. This one about music, about doo wop, women’s side which always both intrigued him and befuddled him since the distaff side lyrics (nice combination term that Markin would have appreciated especially that distaff thing for women who also as this piece will speak to, befuddled him, befuddled him straight up). It had been found in draft form up in Josh Breslin’s attic in Olde Saco, Maine where he had lived before meeting Markin in the great summer of love night in 1967 and where he had later off the road stored his loose hitchhike road stuff and his writerly notebooks and journals at his parents’ house which he had subsequently inherited on their passings. We have decided whatever we had to publish would be published as is, either published story or in draft form. Otherwise, moaning over our brother or not, Markin is liable to come after us from that forlorn unmarked grave in that Sonora potter’s field and give us hell for touching a single word of the eight billion facts in his fallen head.     

 

Here is what he had to say:                        

 

 

 

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Battle Rages- Jerry Lee or Elvis?- Jerry Lee Lewis’ “High School Confidential”- Billie And Peter Paul Square Off

 

By The Late Peter Paul Markin

 

This is the back story, the teen listener back story if you like, going back to the primordial youth time of the mid to late 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the schoolboy mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Ya, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own.

 

Billie and I spent many, many hours mainly up in his tiny bedroom, his rock heaven bedroom, walls plastered with posters of Elvis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, somewhat later Jerry Lee Lewis, and of every new teen heartthrob singer, heartthrob to the girls that is, around, on his night table every new record Billie could get his hands on, by hook or by crook, and neatly folded piles of clothing, also gathered by that same hook or by crook, appropriate to the king hell king of the schoolboy rock scene, the elementary school rock scene between about 1956 to 1960. Much of that time was spent discussing the “meaning” of various songs, especially their sexual implications, ah, their mystery of girls-finding-out-about worthiness.

 

Although in early 1959 my family had started the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe, I still would wander back there until mid-1960 just to hear his take on whatever music was interesting him at the time. These commentaries, these Billie commentaries, are my recollections of his and my conversations on the song lyrics in this series. But I am not relying on memory alone. During this period we would use my father’s tape recorder, by today’s standard his big old reel to reel monstrosity of a tape recorder, to record Billie’s covers of the then current hit songs (for those who have not read previously of Billie’s “heroics” he was a pretty good budding rock singer at the time) and our conversations of those song meanings that we fretted about for hours. I have, painstakingly, had those reels transcribed so that many of these commentaries will be the actual words spoken during those conversations(somewhat edited, of course). That said, Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.

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High School Confidential lyrics-Jerry Lee Lewis

 

You better open up honey it's your lover boy me that's a knockin'

You better listen to me sugar all the cats are at the High School rockin'

Honey get your boppin' shoes Before the juke box blows a fuse

Got everybody hoppin' everybody boppin'

Boppin' at the High School Hop

Boppin' at the High School Hop

Shakin' at the High School Hop

I've rollin' at the High School Hop

I've been movin' at the High School Hop

Everybody’s hoppin' Everybody's boppin'

Boppin' at the High School Hop

Come on little baby gonna rock a little bit tonight

Woooh I got get with you sugar gonna shake things up tonight

Check out the heart beatin' rhythm cause my feet are moving smooth and

Light

Boppin' at the High School Hop

Shakin' at the High School Hop

Rollin' at the High School Hop

Movin' at the High School Hop

Everybody’s hoppin' just a boppin' just a boppin'

Piano Solo!

Come on little baby let me give a piece good news good news good news

Jerry Lee is going to rock away all his blues

My hearts beatin' rhythm and my soul is singin' the blues

Oooooh Boppin' at the High School Hop

Shakin' at the High School Hop

Rollin' at the High School Hop

Gettin' it at the High School Hop

Everybody’s hoppin' Everybody's boppin'

Boppin' at the High School Hop

********

Peter Paul Markin comment:

 

“Who are you taking to the hop? Come on now, tell me, tell me, your old buddy Billie, who you asked? Was it Theresa? Was it Donna? Was it Karen?” That was the incessant bugging by my old elementary school boy compadre, Billie, William James Bradley if you didn’t know already, every time a school sock hop came up. But you know, or you should know, that was just a little way that he had to bait me about my shyness, or rather my awkwardness around girls. Around girls that he, king hell king of the late 1950s rock night “discarded” and left for the rest of us, especially for me.

And he knew, he knew damn well that I had not gotten up the nerve to ask any of those three ex-flames, or any girl, to the dance coming up in a few days. For one thing because, as king hell king of the rock night, and therefore king, crowned or uncrowned, of the sock hop he had all the configurations, combinations, set-ups, and, and, no-go bust-ups all computed out, no, not on some machine memory depot but in his head. For another because he didn’t know that I had decided just to go to the dance alone and maybe getting lucky there. Heck, I had done it before, a few times, although not with any great success but if there is any rhyme or reason to youth it is around the possibilities of getting lucky. Of course, old Billie had “selected” Laura as his escort, no awkwardness in Billie, although I had heard, heard from more than one budding teenage source that she “liked me,”(don’t ever tell him this though for I will deny it on seven stacked bibles). Or liked my seriousness, and my clowny, get in the way bookishness. So I am going “stag” on the hope, the hell or high water hope that Billie will let his old buddy, his old amigo, his, well you know, have a dance with his escort to see if I have some “magic.”

 

Now, and ever since I heard about her opinion of me, I have been wracking my brain to figure out this question. How could she “like me”, or not like me for that matter, I do not know because although I had looked over in her direction in class dreamily (yes, dreamily) more than somewhat I had never said word one to her, or her to me. Now this Laura, if you want a description is not drop-dead beautiful, at least by Billie-Markin defined drop-dead beautiful, twelve and thirteen year old girl beautiful, but she has something else that I would not (and Billie definitely would not) figure out how to say for many years, she was fetching. Definition: nice figure, meaning having a shape, if you really want to know, because when you think about it, boy or girl, twelve and thirteen year old boy or girl, any girl that had a shape (meaning had womanly contours, hips, breasts, nicely-formed legs) rather than a stock stick figure tomboy-like girl was bound to get ahead in that be-bop night, and probably now too.

 

But more than that, for me, if not for Billie, she didn’t giggle, silly giggle like the other girls when a boy said something stupid-funny (and the twelve and thirteen year old boy universe is more than somewhat filled with stupid-funny stuff done by eons of clueless guys, trying, trying just like me, and just like Billie if he could have ever been honest about it, to figure out the key to the girl-charm thing, yes, there is plenty of room in that universe even now for the stupid-funny) and, she carried herself in a way, sometimes with a certain thoughtful look, sometimes by a thing she did by putting her fingers to her lips, and maybe the most important, that she knew she was a girl and was content with that knowledge. She would lack for no dates or admirers, ever. Oh, ya she was also smart, not Billie street smart, not Markin two-thousand facts smart but asking and answering teacher smart, without being crazy smart about it that you also knew every boy, or almost every boy, in the twelve and thirteen year old boy universe did not like in girls then, and maybe now for all I know. It only gets sifted out later.

 

But enough of Laura, of Billie, christ of Markin as well, of pre-sock hop arrangements, derangements and dreamily kid in the night be-bop stuff let us get to the sock hop. Hey, wait a minute, you know what sock hops are, or you heard from your parents or grandparents what sock hops are, right? Back in the fifties, yes, the 1950s (and a little bit into the 1960s but the term had kind of died out by then, at least for “non-squares”). If you don’t then I’ll fill you in quickly now, but you’ll see you really know about all of this because it is nothing but a “primitive”, maybe Stone Age when you hear it, version of any school dance scene since they started making teenagers a separate social category in the world, the whole wide world even. Okay the idea was to hem in this mad dash, this mad craze to dance, and dance guys with girls and vice versa, that kids have been into since the radio and jukebox came on the scene, maybe back in that Stone Age now that I think about it.

So dear mother and father, you name the generation, figured out if you can’t beat them join them, and the schools (and churches later) were in cahoots. So every once in a while to keep three eyes on this stuff (and to avoid the feared, seriously feared, basement or “family room”-launched “petting parties” if kids are left to their own devices), maybe a few times a month they would throw a sock hop (the sock part comes from the fact, the hard fact, that most girls, most twelve and thirteen year old girls, wore ankle socks. Ya, no nylons, etc. If you don’t believe me look it up on Wikipedia, or something). Now, most times, this was nothing but some parent or teacher acting as dee-jay and "spinning platters” (records) in some dank, well-lighted, too well-lighted school gym or church basement, christ more than once in the school cafeteria when the gym was being used for other purposes that night. Yes, the night, the night in those days being from seven to about ten in the evening so you would have to think pretty hard about not going, stag or dated up, to the dance if for no other reason than to be able to get out of the house, the cramped, nowhere project house (really apartment) for a few hours un-cramped freedom.

 

This night, this night that Billie kidded me about, this Billie and Laura night, though somehow, although I am vague on the details of how they were brought in, we are not reduced to cranky, scratchy records but a real live local band, a band that prided itself, I heard, on doing covers of the “hot” new singers and groups we knew from American Bandstand (an afternoon television show that had Philly kids, older Philly kids, dancing and swaying to whatever dee-jay Dick Clark, is he still around?, decided was wholesome and fit for the ears of America’s afternoon rock obsessed youth). So this is a time you definitely did not want to miss. And to truth to tell I went early, nervously early if you must know, to see what was up and watch the band set up.

Now this is not just any time in the 1950s, although the sock hop thing, the worried parent, worried about those “petting party” things(and more, much more, about sex things) and this wild and woolly rock obsessed thing their no understand what kids are into could have been anytime from about 1955 on, from the time that Elvis exploded onto the scene with those swiveling hips, that jumping girl guitar, that unkempt hair (ya, unkempt to them), and that permanent sneer came onto the scene.

No, this is 1958 when the Elvis thing had died down a little now that he was dead, or we thought he was dead, and for a fact he might have well have been dead in the constant teen chew-up of rock talent from the kind of music and movies he was into after giving us such great stuff like Jailhouse Rock, Good Rockin’ Tonight, Heartbreak Hotel and One Night With You. Ya, the king was dead, long live the king, and let’s move on, okay. Billie and I talked about it, about how guys, rock guys that is, seen to have a short shelf-life, but as Billie knew, knew from his own bumpy rock “career”, that’s show biz. So this night we are wondering, wondering like crazy, how the band will work out and whose music they will cover.

 

Like I said I got there early and watched the band set up, including a piano besides the guitar and drums so I figure maybe they will do some Little Richard or Fats Domino stuff. Seven o’clock comes and here comes Billie with Laura. Wow, Billie has on a nice jacket, wide lapels like all the rock guys are wearing these days (I’ll tell you about how he got it sometime but you can figure that a projects boy didn’t get it as a birthday present from Ma and Pa). Really sharp. But double wow on Laura who has on a cashmere sweater, some wide skirt and, can you believe this, nylons, to show off her nice legs. Oh ya, and just a hint of smile on her face like she is here with the king of the rock night, crowned or uncrowned, and she has staked out the territory as queen, demure queen, but queen nevertheless.

Yes, fetching (although we will agree between ourselves that I don’t know that word, or how to use it in relationship to describing girls and their charms just yet, alright). But here is where the sweetest part comes in when Billie and Laura make their royal entrance and come over to where I am standing when Billie introduces me, formally introduces Laura to me, she gives me this, well, I don’t care if I do wear out the word, fetching smile and says “I’ve seen you in class but you never seem to pay any attention to me. I thought that report you gave on Greek democracy in class was very well done.” Be still my heart, she actually remembers the report… and me. And here I am wearing some bedraggled (always bedraggled, always) stripped (stripes, jesus) white collared shirt, ratty black pants, and old Thom McAn Easter-bought brown shoes. Well, she remembered my report, that’s a start, and it actually was pretty good because I went to the Thomas Crane Public Library right up in Adamsville Square to look the stuff up.

 

But enough of reports, and "be still my hearts" because the music is going on. A few covers of Little Richard and Fats as I expected, with that piano and all, some Buddy Holly that sounded a little tinny, a few other non-memorable odd and ends, including some Elvis that sounded, and I again swear on seven bibles, like old time parents’ music, like Frank Sinatra, or those guys. The suddenly, the leader of the band said that he had a special guest on the piano for the next number. We all wondered what the song would be while they were setting the piano up closer to the front. I heard somebody say it was going to be something by a new guy, Jerry Lee Lewis. Whoa! I have only heard him once or twice but I thought his piano was smoking so maybe this guest guy could do a good cover on it. Billie, Billie king hell king of the rock night, must have known something was up, and why (always why) because he brought Laura over and asked me if wanted to dance the next dance with her. Me, two left feet, or two right feet, stag, coming to the dance stag just hoping that I would get lucky with “discarded” Theresa, Donna, or Karen dance with fetching Laura. No way. The she said “but I really want to dance with you, you being Billie friend, and he says you are a good dancer,” and then turns a very whimsical smile on me.

Well what are you going to do when a woman (alright girl, but a girl with a shape) wants to dance with you, and had something nice to say about your school report, and, oh yes had that smile, that come hinter smile that leaves a man (okay, boy) anywhere from twelve to twelve hundred weak at the knees. Well, the music is starting so I say yes, okay yes.

 

And what does our guest pianist do but a cover, a hot cover by the way, of Jerry Lee Lewis’ latest, High School Confidential, which I had heard about but had not heard. Great. Laura and I are dancing away and she is doing nothing but give me meaningful smiles and, maybe that rumor about her “liking me” was true. I am just dancing away like crazy and people are looking at me like where did he learn how to do that. After the dance I returned Laura to Billie, a little miffed Billie but I could have been wrong on that. And then Theresa came over and asked if I wanted to dance. A few dances, a few Laura-less dances later the call for last dance came, and not feeling like watching Laura with Billie just then I headed home.

 

The next morning, a Sunday morning, if I recall, Billie came over to the house and was fuming/hangdog as we talked, talked obviously about the sock hop doings. Fuming because I had switched up on him. How? Well, apparently, Laura, sweet fetching Laura, spent more than the allotted time talking about me, rather than about Billie’s virtues and he had used the dance, the Jerry Lee Lewis manic rock number that he had found out the band was going to play to make me look silly (his word, although mine when I heard it was more of an expletive). Hangdog because he felt bad now that he had done his best friend wrong, wrong over a girl although, in Billie fashion, he tried to step back and argue that maybe he did me a favor getting me out on the dance floor. See, though what he didn’t know (and don’t tell him either, if you know his whereabouts) is that I had been taking lessons from his slightly older sister, Carol, on how to dance this latest faster dance stuff.

 

So that is the end of the story, or almost the end. A few days later Laura knocked at our apartment door in the afternoon after school. My mother answered the door and invited her in, although she, my mother that is, said Laura was coming in no matter what from the look on her face. She was fuming, although as it turns out good fuming, because she said she had been smiling at me like crazy when we were dancing to give me the “hint” to ask her for the last dance, the last close to her dance. Sorry, Laura. And then she blurted out her command, “You and I are going to the next sock hop together and you had better not say no.” Well, when a woman (girl, are you happy) "insists” on something, almost anything like that, and on top of that had that kind remark about that school report, and that shape, what is a boy, a boy of the twelve and thirteen year old universe to do but say yes. So at the next dance I won’t be dancing with Billie “discard” Theresa, Donna, or Karen although they are okay but with fetching Laura. So there Billie, we are even. And if anybody asks you, like they asked me once-Elvis or Jerry Lee? Jerry Lee, long live the king.

*********

Billie, William James Bradley comment:

I am fuming, fuming six ways to Sunday if that is possible, fuming until the cows come home if there are any cows around, and if they have wandered I am still fuming. Why? I just called up Laura, Laura that I took to the school dance last week, to ask her if she wanted to go to the church sock hop scheduled for this weekend, Saturday night. Now it wouldn’t be as good as the last school one with a live band, and all, but even with just records and just ten thousand poor as church mice chaperones doing their chaperone thing to get grace or something, for real, we could still have a good time.

And do you know what she said. “I’ve got a date.” What, no way, no possible way, when everybody knows that she is my “personal property.” “Who is the guy, who is the guy, who is the guy who would dare cross the king of the rock night? This world is not big enough for the two of us, give me his name,” I said as I readied my arrows. “It’s Peter Paul, and before you get all crazy I asked him,” she darted back the sound of her voice pleased, pleased as punch the way she said it. “Double what?” I shouted over the phone so everyone within a twenty square mile area could hear, if they wanted to. And she came back, all sweet reason just like every girl, every stick or shapely girl, women even “I like you, I definitely like you, you’re funny, and you’re a good dancer, and you sure know a lot about rock ‘n’ roll, but you seem too bossy, and you take that "king of the rock" thing that Peter Paul keeps telling everybody about way too seriously. If Peter Paul hadn’t spent what seems like half his life building you up as, what did he call it, oh ya, “king of the be-bop night” you might be a better boy to be with. But the big thing, and here is where it all comes down on you, I found out, found out from Karen, that you tried to make a clown out of poor Peter Paul when you let him dance with me and you knew, or thought you knew, that he couldn’t dance for beans.” After she let that set in my head, uneasily in my head for a minute, she continued “So, yes, I went right over to his house and told him, no, what did he say I said, ‘insisted’ that we were going to the next dance together.” But get this, get this dagger thing aimed right at my heart. She finishes off with “And he makes me smile with his silly bookish ways, and you don’t okay. Next dance I’ll go with you, your highness, maybe.” And then she hung up. Ouch!

Two-timing that is all that it is. I can see that now. No, not Laura, you know how girls are, twelve and thirteen year old girls, with their hard to figure giggles, their starting to get shapes, and their monthlies (my sisters, Carol and Donna, told me all about it, sorry, tough luck girls). No, Peter Paul, Markin, that s.o.b., two-timed his best friend that’s all it can be. Probably went to the Thomas Crane Public Library branch that is attached to the school and read up everything that was on the shelves about two-timing, the history of two-timing, boys two-timings girls, girls two-timing boys, everything on the subject back to Pharaoh Egypt times. Just to two-time Billie, William James Bradley, known far and wide, despite what Laura said, as the king of the be-bop rock night. And Markin, no more Peter Paul nice guy now, didn’t have diddley to do with that. Period

But how did he switch up on me? I don’t get that. First, I know, I know from Karen, I know from Donna (not my sister Donna, Donna O’Toole, Cool Donna O’Toole, or was until I ditched her, or what did Markin call it, “discarded her”), I know from Theresa, and I know now, because I just asked her before she went out the door, from my sister Carol, that Markin never said word one to Laura before I introduced them the other night. Although now that I think about it I am still ticked off at Carol for not telling me about helping Markin learn to dance, rock dance, not that silly cowboy, barn dance, square dance thing that he calls rock dancing. I also know from Carol that Markin did not know much about jumping Jerry Lee Lewis. He was just hoping to get maybe an Elvis One Night With You, Good Rockin’ Today, Jailhouse Rock chance. Or a Chuck Berry Sweet Little Sixteen, or a Bo Diddley Who Do You Love? chance with Theresa, Karen or Donna (O’Toole). No way he believed, and I am going to go over right now and ask him about it, that he was going to step up to Laura’s league. Hell, it couldn’t have been that silly report, that silly report that he kept hammering me about as he leaned each new thing, Jesus Christ, Greek democracy, what are you kidding.

At his house I confront him. “Okay Markin what gives, what, how, why, where, when did you figure out how to break my time with Laura? And don’t play innocent and definitely, I warn you, start talking about that report, that silly Greek geek report.”

Of course I do not believe Peter Paul’s story, is who me story, no way. No way in hell, excuse my language, is a nice shape like that Laura, a nice shape in all the right places, or trying to be in all the right places, and smart, real smart going to go off the deep-end for a, let’s face it, ragamuffin boy like Markin. Christ, even he said it, a guy with a clowny outfit, a shirt, a shirt, a white stripped shirt for Christ sake, if you can believe that, a Bargie special, or straight of the back-rack at Woolworth’s, black chino pants with cuffs, jesus, cuffs and those square, too square Thom McAn brown shoes that I haven’t worn since about first communion is going to put the whammy on a babe like Laura.

Against me, against the king of the rock night in these parts, with my smart-looking wide lapel two-tone sports jacket just like Eddie Cochran, my black pants (ya, black pants, the black is okay it is the chinos, and, and the cuffs that have to go) nicely-pressed (ya, ma-pressed), my Elvis-style hair-do with just the right length sideburns and my foxy, spit-shined Florheim suede shoes (no, not blue suede, that’s squarey square now).

Ya, it was some drugstore medicine whammy he put on her at the dance that night. No question, although I haven’t quite figured out how he did it, because everybody knows, or I know anyhow that Peter Paul and science don’t mix. Don’t mix since he tried that rocket ship caper last year, trying personally to beat the commies at their own game after Sputnik jumped the night sky, when he tried to send some balsa wood rocket into space when he punctured a CO2 cartridge with a nail and a hammier and almost got us all killed. Or when, after that, he started to mix some chemicals in his cellar to go about it another way with some three-stage rocket concoction and almost blew the whole place up. I’ll tell you about that sometime but right now I wish, I wish, well I wish. See, Peter Paul is really about things like Abigail Adams, or her son John Quincy, or about literary guys, like this guy Fitzgerald who wrote about rich kids with names like Basil something and Josephine this or that and their hi-jinks ages ago that he has been yakking about lately. Ya, reading about rich kids, rich, rich guys having fun with rich girls like that is going get us out of the projects, and like reading that stuff is going make him rich, or even get him a pass out of this dungeon project.

Hey, wait a minute, no, no, it is not about science, it’s not about some silly book report, and it’s not about Peter Paul suddenly being a lady’s man. Why didn’t I think of it before? It’s about this new rocker- Jerry Lee Lewis and his be-bop thing, be-bop piano thing. Ya that's it. They say he is going to replace the king, and for all you squares, cubes, and fourth dimension guys and frills, that means Elvis. And if you don’t know that name you must have been up in space with the dogs, monkeys, or robots or whoever is riding those rockets.

Okay, okay I can take a joke. The spell is not Markin, it’s Jerry Lee. Hell, a momentary thing, maybe a few weeks while the king is resting up and waiting to go into the service, or something. No way someone who jumps up and down on a piano, and is kind of a wild man ever going to be, in his wildest dreams, better than Elvis. No way, no comparison, forget it. Name song names, okay. Heartbreak Hotel, That’s When You’re Heartbreak Begins, Jailhouse Rock, Good Rockin’ Tonight, Hound Dog, One Night (that alone says it all). Come on now, I listed enough. And Jerry Lee, High School Confidential. Ya, it’s good, its be-bop but this guy is strictly a one-hit Johnnie. Ya, okay I’ll let Peter Paul have his moment of glory, and maybe a kiss or two, if he’s not scared like usual, but Laura will be back with me at the next dance. Who knows, if I cut in at this Saturday's dance that's coming up, to spare her having to dance with Peter Paul and his black chino cuffed pants all night, maybe this dance. Then Peter Paul can go back and try his luck on those stick girls that are more his speed anyway. Ya, Elvis and Billie. Long live the kings!

A View From The International Left-Class War in the British Labour Party-Tories, Blairites Turn the Screws on Jeremy Corbyn

Workers Vanguard No. 1081	15 January 2016

Class War in the British Labour Party-Tories, Blairites Turn the Screws on Jeremy Corbyn

 

LONDON—Ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the British Labour Party last September, the party has been in a state of internal class warfare. Corbyn is a decades-long member of old Labour’s left wing and is hugely popular among working people. Pitted against Corbyn and his followers are the vast majority of Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) who uphold the legacy of Tony Blair and are unashamedly committed to “free-market” capitalist exploitation and imperialist military slaughter in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

The latest round in Labour’s class war erupted over a New Year reshuffle of the shadow cabinet. Corbyn’s plight brings to mind a quip by Harold Wilson (who had an undeserved reputation as a leftist) after his election as Labour leader in 1963: “You must understand that I am running a Bolshevik revolution with a tsarist shadow cabinet.” To his credit, Corbyn managed to rid the parliamentary party leadership of some of his most vociferous right-wing enemies. He removed Maria Eagle from shadow defence secretary to a harmless post in “culture.” Eagle had ostentatiously solidarised with the public declaration by the commander of Britain’s armed forces that Corbyn is unfit to become prime minister. Coming from the serving head of the country’s armed forces, the general’s statement invokes the spectre of a military coup.

Amid much controversy, Corbyn allowed Hilary Benn to keep his post as shadow foreign secretary, but it appears that Benn has to keep his mouth shut if he wants to stay in the shadow cabinet. Benn’s claim to fame is his much-lauded speech in Parliament in December backing Tory [Conservative Party] prime minister David Cameron’s motion for British forces to join the U.S. bombing in Syria. Grotesquely, Benn evoked “internationalism” to mean that Labour had a duty to respond to the call from French “President Hollande, the leader of our sister Socialist party,” to join the bombing campaign in Syria in the wake of the criminal terrorist attacks in Paris last November. Benn’s speech was met with wild cheering by Tory and many Labour MPs, and lavish accolades in the bourgeois media. At the same time, it was hilariously lampooned by Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle as Hilary Benn’s revenge on his late father Tony, in the spirit of the Johnny Cash song, “A Boy Named Sue.” Tony Benn was the elder statesman of the Labour left and until his death an opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Corbyn’s attempt to assert his leadership over the party resulted in threats of resignations from several members of the shadow cabinet, if, for example, Benn got the axe. In the face of constant attempts to destroy him—which are orchestrated by Blairite Labour MPs in cahoots with the military, the BBC and other bourgeois media—we Marxists defend Corbyn’s right to run the Labour Party, and in his way. We say good riddance to the right-wing Labour cabal from the shadow cabinet. Any measure that will weaken the hold of the Blairites on the party is in the interest of the working class and its struggle against the capitalist order. At the same time, we counterpose our proletarian, internationalist and revolutionary programme to Corbyn’s parliamentary reformist framework.

Reprinted below is an article which first appeared in Workers Hammer No. 233 (Winter 2015-2016), newspaper of the Spartacist League/Britain.

*   *   *

From the moment he was elected as Labour Party leader, the bourgeoisie’s gangs in Westminster and their attack dogs in the capitalist press have been out to destroy Jeremy Corbyn. Day after day he is slandered and vilified by everyone from the military’s top brass to the capitalist press and of course [Prime Minister] David Cameron. However, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, while Corbyn’s opponents sit on the Tory benches opposite him, his enemies are the vast majority of Labour MPs sitting behind him who are determined to depose him.

Barely a week after Corbyn’s election, an unnamed British general was quoted in the Sunday Times (20 September 2015) predicting “an event which would effectively be a mutiny” in the armed forces should Corbyn ever become prime minister. What gored the ox of the military chiefs was Corbyn’s opposition to renewing Britain’s Trident nuclear missile system and his statement that, as prime minister, he would never press the nuclear button. On the occasion of “Remembrance Sunday” the head of Britain’s armed forces, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, appeared on television in military dress uniform to pronounce Corbyn unfit to be prime minister. Corbyn formally protested against Houghton’s breach of the convention that serving military officials do not comment on political matters.

Houghton’s attack on Corbyn was immediately seconded by Labour’s shadow defence secretary, Maria Eagle, who is prominent among the “get Corbyn” cabal. Another is Simon Danczuk, the right-wing Labour MP from Rochdale, who has threatened to instigate a coup against Corbyn as leader if Labour performs poorly in the local elections next May. Many in this claque of MPs disavowed Blair when his name became so toxic that it would spoil their chances of ever being elected. But their lust for bombing in Syria, for shoot-to-kill, and their gut-level commitment to fleecing the poor while further enriching the rich, show them to be unreconstructed Blairites.

Tristram Hunt, the former shadow education secretary, recently addressed the Labour club at Cambridge University. To rally his young, elite class brethren, Hunt told them: “You are the top 1%. The Labour Party is in the shit. It is your job and your responsibility to take leadership going forward” (Guardian, 2 November 2015). Hunt and Chuka Umunna MP, who like to refer to themselves as “The Resistance,” formed Labour for the Common Good, one of the myriad groupings within the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) that would like to eject Corbyn.

The bourgeois media was apoplectic when Corbyn appointed Guardian columnist Seumas Milne to be his director of communications and strategy. Milne is critical of the British establishment, particularly for their military interventions in the Near East. The Financial Times was outraged by Milne’s simple factual statement that “Western claims to be the champions of human rights and humanitarian intervention are treated with derision across much of the world” (FT, 23 October 2015). To the FT, and to the City [of London] bankers and capitalist entrepreneurs whose interests it serves, Milne’s cardinal sin was that he supported the miners union during the epic 1984-85 strike. (For a review of Milne’s book on the strike, The Enemy Within, see “1984-85: What It Would Have Taken for the Miners to Win,” Workers Hammer No. 145, April/May 1995.)

In the warfare within the Labour Party, we are seeing the effects of two classes co-existing in one party, an inherently unstable situation. As we wrote last issue, we welcomed Corbyn’s campaign for party leader, which addressed issues that are deeply felt by working people. These fundamental issues cannot be solved within the framework of Corbyn’s parliamentary reformism. However, Marxists have a side in this conflict, in defence of Corbyn against the Blairite and other bourgeois forces who want to take him down.

Imperialists Out of the Near East!

The event that really put the wind in the sails of the right-wing Labour MPs was the “national security” hysteria whipped up by Cameron & Co. following the horrendous attacks by Islamic terrorists in Paris on 13 November. We Marxists utterly condemn such indiscriminate attacks on civilians. We also recognise that it is the imperialists’ crimes in the Near East—U.S., British and French—that are the primary cause of the bloody chaos in Syria and Iraq today.

When the Cameron government seized on the Paris attacks to endorse shoot-to-kill by Britain’s police and to beat the drums for joining the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Syria, Labour’s right wing howled along with the Tories and ramped up a campaign to paint the Labour leader as untrustworthy on matters of “national security.” Like rabid dogs they seized on Corbyn’s refusal to give blanket support to shoot-to-kill, as though it were high treason. Unison [public workers union] general secretary Dave Prentis joined Corbyn’s attackers, grotesquely declaring that “rows over Trident or shoot to kill are distractions no one needs” (Independent, 21 November 2015). Unite [Britain’s largest trade union] leader Len McCluskey also piled in, lecturing Corbyn to stop making “inappropriate” comments on shoot-to-kill. McCluskey feigned support for Corbyn when thousands of Unite union members were active in Corbyn’s campaign, only to stab the Labour leader in the back when he came under fire from the right.

Shoot-to-kill was part and parcel of British Army and police “justice” for Northern Ireland’s oppressed Catholics. Following the criminal bombings in London in 2005, cops on an “anti-terrorist” shoot-to-kill mission brutally executed Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes on a Tube train. At the time, the role of the police in his murder was staunchly defended by then London Labour mayor Ken Livingstone, who has now placed himself in the Corbyn camp.

As regards Syria, Corbyn told Sky News “I’m just not convinced that a bombing campaign will actually solve anything,” indeed it “may well make the situation far worse” (16 November 2015). His views incensed Blairite MPs, who provided the bourgeois press with a steady stream of invective. The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, hounded him in a television interview, and in a follow-up article cited (unnamed) Labour MPs complaining that Corbyn “is not fit to be our leader or in any senior position in this country” (BBC News, 16 November). Kuenssberg’s piece also baited Corbyn over his links to Stop the War, sensationalising a blog that had appeared on its website linking the Paris attacks to Western interventions in the Near East.

Stop the War removed the blog from its website when it became a focal point of the witch hunt. Afterwards its author, Chris Floyd, who is not associated with Stop the War, ridiculed the hooha that was manufactured around what are in fact well-known truths. He asked rhetorically: “Is it really controversial to say that without the US invasion of Iraq, there would be no ISIS? I don’t think even the supporters of that war dispute this fact. Is it controversial to say that the NATO intervention in Libya has turned that country into a chaotic spawning ground for violent extremism?” Floyd’s piece mentioned other inconvenient truths, including that “the United States and Saudi Arabia helped organize a worldwide network of violent jihadis in order to provoke the Soviet Union into intervening in Afghanistan,” and that Ronald Reagan sat down in the White House “with the forerunners of the Taliban and al Qaeda” and praised them as “freedom fighters” (“Bleaters and Tweeters: On Briefly Being a Political Football,” chris-floyd.com, 17 November 2015).

As Trotskyists who defended the Soviet Union, we have long pointed out that the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) are all first- or second-generation offspring of the U.S.-sponsored “holy war” against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Against the numerous reformist groups that joined the imperialists in demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops, we called for the defeat of the CIA’s Islamist cut-throats and proclaimed, “Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!” The Soviet Union was based on a historically progressive collectivised and planned economy—a product of the Bolshevik-led workers revolution of October 1917—albeit, beginning in 1923-24, under the rule of an anti-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy. The final overturn of the Russian Revolution in 1991-92 was a shattering defeat for working people in the former Soviet Union and everywhere else in the world. The U.S. ruling class proclaimed itself the sole “superpower,” swaggering and slaughtering its way around the globe, loyally backed in its military adventures by British imperialism.

Blairites Spit on Working Class

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the British capitalist rulers thought the class war was all over, that they had won, and all of this nonsense about the working class was history. Describing their view in the 1990s, deputy editor of the Telegraph Allister Heath wrote: “It seemed as if the free-market counter-revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, had finally killed off socialism. The choice from now on would be between a particular brand of capitalism” (Telegraph, 31 July 2015). The “free-​market counterrevolution” was a sustained assault on trade-union rights and on the living standards of the working class in Britain.

When Blair took over as Labour leader in 1994, he made it clear that Labour was unequivocally committed to the City of London fat cats. The Blairites did away with even lip service to socialism, abolishing Clause IV [of the Labour Party constitution—nominal commitment to “common ownership of the means of production”], and set out to transform Labour into an overtly capitalist party by cutting Labour’s links to its historic working-class base. Then, over 20 years later, along comes Corbyn, talking about socialism, trade-union rights, immigrants’ rights and opposition to NATO, to huge acclaim from the have-nots who elected him Labour Party leader. This was not supposed to happen.

Corbyn’s nomination for the leadership was a fluke, but the outpouring of support for his campaign was not. Under the Blairites and the Tories, a huge amount of social tinder was building up at the base of British society. Blair was and remains widely despised for his decision to join Bush’s war and occupation of Iraq in 2003, as well as for his commitment to further privatisations of the public sector. A 2013 survey showed that almost 70 per cent of the population favoured the renationalisation of gas and electricity, and two of every three wanted to see rail and the post renationalised. Opposition to George Osborne’s attempt to eliminate tax credits for working-class families was so huge that it seeped into the Tory backbenches and the House of Lords, forcing the government into a U-turn. And there is broad public support for the defiance of the junior doctors who are protesting against new contracts proposed by the government. If the trade-union misleaders launched any serious attempt to beat back the capitalists’ attacks, such sentiments would find expression in support for strike action. Instead the grievances of the working class, minorities and the impoverished came to the surface on the parliamentary plane in support of Corbyn’s campaign for Labour leader.

The Blairites’ continual bleating that Labour under Corbyn is “unelectable” is in fact a statement that they and their masters in the ruling class will do all in their power to ensure that Corbyn will never be prime minister. At the same time, a recent poll of the party membership reveals that 66 per cent think he is doing well as leader. Since the Corbyn campaign took off in the summer, the membership of Labour has nearly doubled to some 370,000, far exceeding the membership of any other party. Significantly, the Fire Brigades Union voted on 27 November to re-affiliate to Labour.

Leninism vs. Labourism

To believe the bourgeois press, anyone might think Corbyn is a flaming Bolshevik. In fact he is not, and does not claim to be, a revolutionary. He is a principled and steadfast exponent of the politics of the old Labour “left,” embodied in the “little England socialism” espoused by the late Tony Benn. All old Labour governments have loyally served the capitalist rulers, carrying out attacks on the working class at home and supporting British imperialism in its wars—including World Wars I and II. The “parliamentary socialism” espoused by Benn and Corbyn is based on the illusion that the way to advance the cause of the workers and oppressed is through winning a parliamentary majority and introducing changes through legislation, while leaving the capitalist state intact. Implicitly or explicitly, this means collaborating with the ruling class on matters of “national interest.” Corbyn joined the Queen’s Privy Council (although he did not kneel to the monarch). He and his team attacked the Tories for their proposed cuts to the police budget (which the Tories have since abandoned).

The police, as well as the military, the courts and prisons are the core of the capitalist state, whose function is to protect the class rule of the bourgeoisie and its profit system. As opposed to Corbyn’s Labour reformism, which aims to take over and administer the capitalist state, Marxists understand that workers revolution must shatter the old state machinery and create a new state to impose the rule of the working class. A workers government will expropriate the bourgeoisie as a class and establish a planned economy, as a first step in a series of revolutions internationally, leading towards a socialist future.

Contrary to Corbyn’s perspective of the “democratisation” of politics through “citizens’ assemblies,” parliament cannot be made accountable to the supposed will of the people. In his seminal work on the state written on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, V. I. Lenin summed up the real function of parliament, saying:

“To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament—this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.”

He added that “the real business of ‘state’ is performed behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancelleries and General Staffs” (The State and Revolution, August-September 1917).

In Britain, the military chiefs—who owe allegiance to the monarch, the head of the armed forces—have made it clear they are not disposed to obey the will of Parliament should Corbyn become prime minister. The City bankers and businesses are not going to voluntarily give up their vast wealth for the common good. Moreover, Corbyn’s solution to Britain’s participation in U.S.-led military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria is for Britain to adopt a more rational foreign policy. This perspective is shared by Stop the War. But whether or not the imperialists decide to yet again attack a weak semicolonial country, it is in the nature of the imperialist beast to plunder, conquer and subjugate weaker nations. Wars and militarism are no more than a concentrated expression of the normal workings of the capitalist system, which condemns millions of people around the world to death by starvation, lack of medical care, poverty and exploitation.

What is objectively posed in Britain today is the need for a new kind of party. We seek to build a revolutionary workers party, based on the lessons of the Bolshevik Revolution and modelled on the party led by Lenin and Trotsky that brought it to victory. Such a party will be part of a Leninist-Trotskyist international and will start from the understanding that only through mobilisation in mass struggle can the working class fight for its own interests and in defence of all the oppressed. The overall aim must be the root-and-branch overthrow of the capitalist order through socialist revolution, as a first step towards the elimination of poverty and inequality in a global socialist order.

Building such a party requires sharp political struggle against the existing misleaders of the trade unions, who refuse to wage the class struggle, including against the Trade Union Bill that is now going through Parliament, the worst attack on the trade unions in years. Its provisions include raised thresholds for strike votes and further restrictions on picketing. The bill also permits the use of agency workers as scabs, which is currently prohibited. Yet the only action the TUC [Trades Union Congress] officialdom has taken to “kill the bill” is to “mobilise” several hundred trade unionists for a lobby of Parliament. Treacherously, Len McCluskey, the head of Unite, has made an offer to Cameron to drop opposition to the bill if the government will allow electronic balloting instead of postal votes on strikes (which the union leaders say will increase the numbers voting).

It was not the anti-trade union laws that defeated the workers at Grangemouth oil refinery in 2013 when they voted to strike in defence of their union representative. Rather it was Len McCluskey who called off the strike before it even began, leading to a terrible defeat for the workers [see “Union Bashing at Scottish Oil Refinery,” WV No. 1035, 29 November 2013]. What greater argument could there be for a new generation to come forward in the trade unions to form a new leadership, one that is committed to waging the class struggle—the means by which the unions were built.

Building on the enormous support that swept him to leadership of the party, Corbyn supporters in October launched Momentum, an organisation of both Labour members and non-members. Momentum’s website lists among its aims to “encourage mass mobilisation for a more democratic, equal and decent society.” Various reformist groups including the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party (SWP) have joined or declared their support for Momentum.

The Blairite grouping Labour First cautioned MPs against this “Hard Left takeover” of the party by Corbyn supporters. We oppose witch hunts against the left in the Labour Party, as we opposed the purge of the Militant tendency in the 1980s. But we would point out that much of what is being described as the “hard left” of Labour is to the right of Corbyn on a number of key questions. The Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) for example, refused to call for British troops out of Iraq and, during the NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, issued a statement (23 March 2011) titled: “Why We Should Not Denounce Intervention in Libya.”

The Socialist Party, which in an earlier incarnation as the Militant tendency spent decades within the old Labour Party, is now making it known that they would like to be re-admitted to Labour. On the day of Corbyn’s victory they wrote: “All those who have been forced out or expelled in the past for fighting against cuts and for socialist ideas should be invited back” (socialistparty.org.uk, 12 September 2015). The Socialist Party formed its electoral vehicle, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in 2010 with elements of the RMT union bureaucracy. TUSC grew out of the reactionary 2009 construction strikes at the Lindsey oil refinery which called for “British jobs for British workers.” Because of this adaptation to chauvinism, we have said “No vote to TUSC!” in elections.

Expropriate the Capitalist Class

The solution offered by Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell to the ravages brought by capitalism is increased public spending and a programme of renationalisations. Marxists support renationalisation of vital services like rail and utilities. But we counterpose expropriation of the bourgeoisie to Labourite illusions in nationalisation schemes, such as Corbyn proposed for workers in the steel industry facing job-slashing. In October the Thai-owned SSI on Teesside went into liquidation, with 2,200 jobs lost, followed by Tata Steel announcing 1,200 job cuts in Scunthorpe and Scotland. Overall, at least one in six of the 30,000 remaining steel jobs in the country are slated to be eliminated.

The response on the part of the trade-union leaders in Unite, Community and the GMB unions was to blame China for “dumping” their cheaper steel in the British market and to call on the British government to enact protectionist import controls. Corbyn also pushes protectionism, which is inherent in his old Labour programme. Protectionism provides a cover for rejecting the class struggle in favour of class collaboration and promotes vile anti-foreigner racism. To such wretched appeals to one’s “own” government, Marxists counterpose a class-struggle fight by the trade unions against closures and for jobs for all, with no loss in pay. What’s needed is a perspective of international solidarity and struggle.

And it takes some chutzpah for the trade-union leaders to blame Britain’s deindustrialisation on the Chinese when the steel workforce was decimated under Margaret Thatcher [in the 1980s]. Corbyn and McDonnell have engaged in China-bashing, obscenely attacking the Tories for cultivating close links with Beijing. As opposed to lining up with the imperialists, the working class must defend China, where capitalist rule was overthrown by the 1949 Revolution.

The Socialist Party called for “the steel trade unions and Jeremy Corbyn to demand nationalisation of the steel industry” (socialistparty.org.uk, 11 November 2015), and the SWP demanded that the unions should “force the government to nationalise the industry” (Socialist Worker, 20 October 2015). The devastated steel industry is itself a testament to the bankruptcy of old Labour reformism, which regards the nationalisations of industry by the post-World War II Labour government as a step towards socialism. In fact these nationalisations were undertaken as a giant bailout of declining British capitalism.

Buried under the mound of protectionist, social-democratic rubbish over the latest steel closures is the fact that in 1980, most of the country’s 150,000 steel workers went on strike against Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government. This was Thatcher’s first assault on a major union. Had the steel strike won, it could have stopped the “Iron Lady” in her tracks. We, along with thousands of militant strikers, called for a general strike to repulse the anti-union offensive. But the TUC allowed the steel workers to hang.

The defeat of that strike cleared the decks for Thatcher’s showdown against the miners. The miners were defeated, not mainly due to the massive state repression the union faced, but to the treachery of the union leaders whose perspective did not go beyond the election of a Labour government. While the Labour leadership under Neil Kinnock was openly hostile to the strike, the “lefts” such as Tony Benn offered no alternative, despite many speeches about solidarity with the miners.

Following the defeats of the steel workers and the miners, the Thatcher government intensified the deindustrialisation of Scotland, South Wales and the north of England, while increasing the dominance of banking and finance in the City of London. The English chauvinism of successive Westminster governments—Labour and Tory—has fuelled the rise of Scottish nationalism. Today the Corbyn-led Labour Party is trying to win back the support recently lost to the bourgeois nationalists. But simply to begin to address the issues of jobs for all, free quality health care and education for all, as well as to regenerate the former industrial areas requires the overthrow of capitalist rule. The Westminster Parliament embodies the pre-eminent status given to finance capital, centred in London. We Marxists uphold the right of self-determination for Scotland and Wales, as part of our programme for a voluntary federation of workers republics in the British Isles.

Our aim is to build a multiethnic revolutionary workers party, forged in political struggle against Labourism, which has served to tie the working class to the capitalist exploiters for over a century. A Leninist vanguard party will be built on the understanding that the interests of workers and the oppressed are utterly counterposed to those of the capitalist exploiters and can only be realised through a government based on workers councils (soviets), not the bosses’ Parliament.

In his writings on Britain, Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the Red Army, debunked Labourite illusions that parliamentary “gradualness” ran in the blood of the English working class. Trotsky pointed to the tradition of revolutionary struggle embodied in the Cromwellian bourgeois revolution of the 17th century and in the nascent proletarian revolutionary Chartist movement that emerged in the first half of the 19th century. James Bronterre O’Brien, an Irish-born leader of the Chartists, gave voice to the need for the working class to fight in its own interests instead of begging its oppressors:

“My motto is... ‘What you take you may have.’ I will not attempt to deal with the abstract question of right, but will proceed to show that it is POWER, solid, substantial POWER, that the millions must obtain and retain, if they would enjoy the produce of their own labour and the privileges of freemen.”