Art Attacks!

Thee Faction find themselves fitting into the social context. Socialism is served via the medium of R’n’B as the UK awakens to the lie of Capitalism.

 

Music as an art-form and as social commentary, however, is a long way from being relevant. There is a real need for a polemic with modern British pop practices as critics have raised ordinary music made by middle class kids designed-to-be-hits up onto a pedestal (we suspect because the critics are of a similar hue).

 

Records are no longer an intrinsic part of our lives. We hear music in commercials, we see it on bubblegum TV then we leave it behind. It is one more element in the meh which surrounds us. Critics exhalt, we read the critics, we close the web-page or throw away the ‘paper.

 

Whilst we accept that the disposable and democratic nature of pop music as an art form is part of its charm: we in the guild crave pop music which will find longevity. Art is supposed to be, we feel, a two-way communication. Pop music used to develop –  and it ran hand-in-hand with social and individual needs (we make that last statement with the hindsight of history of course).

 

Most musicians can only make a living at the behest of corporate paymasters as a sales tool. The essence of the likes of Mumford & Sons is that they use the clichés of rock and play the suffering poet; but they simply reflect a bourgeois way of life. It is banal because the ruling classes need it to be banal. The ruling classes recognise the history of pop and rock music as potentially dangerous so have simply refracted its message – what Terry Eagleton called “ a glamorous substitute for baulked political energies, an ersatz iconoclasm in a politically quiescent society”.

 

Thomas Mann saw the artist as an outsider: “..so the art does not devolve into a mere function of social need. The essence of art involves maintaining a certain oppositional position vis-à-vis reality, life, society”.  An artist accepting a bourgeois society is useless. Socialised art can only be achieved through autonomy. We live in a society with an emphasis on the cash nexus and notoriety. The concept of creative ingenuity has been replaced by the concept of “getting to the top”.

 

Thee Faction do not exist to “get to the top”. Thee Faction exist to get to the people.

 

Thee Faction own their means of production. Thee Faction have the ability to interpret and comment on reality. Thee Faction strive, via the template of R’n’B, for a pure aestheticism with meaningful communication and a sense of beauty. A mix of art and politics is not a fundamental solecism, it’s the reason for the bloody art in the first bloody place.

 

Thee Faction use the conceits of R’n’B because the avant-garde in music (whilst challenging the norms) is essentially content-free. There is no need to be purely visceral, one must be intellectual too.

 

Thee Faction have a specific political agenda, as you may have noticed: thus cannot use the lingua-franca of rock ‘n’ roll lyrics. Lyrics tend to be about the self. No matter how idiosyncratic, surprising, fascinating or shocking these lyrics are they will always lead up a cul-de-sac and therefore makes it difficult for the lyricist to re-enter the world at large, which is why so many musicians signed up into the sausage-machine of the music business are so frazzled: they are using personal experiences, family deaths and arguments with girlfriends to make money. Western art and music has a pre-occupation with self-reverential “therapeutic” forms, voyeurism and romanticism. How dull. The state will always feel more comfortable supporting a “therapeutic” rather than a interrogatory culture.

 

Finally, on the question of humour – Socialism ain’t sour. It’s fun to agitate. Thee Faction, through the form of R’n’B, suggest a position of alternative social values.  R’n’B is the root of all great pop: therefore it was chosen by Thee Faction as the perfect tool  – as the original R’n’B has become accepted by bourgeoisie. It’s a “dangerous” sound in the correct hands. The subversion of the ephemera/conceits of pop music/R’n’B, is used by Thee Faction in the same way the Dada movement of the 1920s used the ephemera of their time – i.e. to make farcical jokes and minimalist works of art – but always with a critical purpose. Thee Faction are not jesters. Thee Faction entertain, so folks will come along. And listen.

 

Modern music is full of facile careerists and “retro fetishists” stealing from and diluting all we in the guild find beautiful about pop music. Musicians have the power to prevent their sounds being used to sell product. Musicians that allow this are disgusting. Thee Faction occupy a quasi second-culture, marginalised. But like persistent and ineradicable weeds Thee Faction flourish.

 

 

Government? What Government?

a fatcat, yesterday

Let’s get one thing straight, comrades. Thee Faction are not frightened of this government. We don’t enamour them with powers they do not possess. Whilst it is always prudent not to underestimate your class enemy it is equally important not to overestimate them.

Thatcher and Cameron did not engineer trade depressions as part of the class struggle against the working class. Economic crises are not engineered by governments.

Cameron of course is a total and utter bastard who will side with employers against workers, but it’s daft to believe governments and employers deliberately plan to create depressions. It is like saying that they want their profits to be lower and love to see employers going bankrupt. That would be masochism for their wallets.

The idea behind the theory is that heavy unemployment brings wages down and therefore leaves a larger profit for the capitalists. This allows the social democrats of the centre-left to make politics child-like by painting the Tories as pantomime villains and their own reform policies as virtuous and commanding of our attention.

Labour governments have been unable to do anything to prevent economic crisis anymore than the Tories had had the power to engineer them.

The Coalition cannot create “a double-dip recession” through government cuts any more than the Thatcher government did by “squeezing the economy” during the early 1980s.

In the real world the time when profits are highest is during booms, when unemployment is lowest. In periods of expanding production total profits and total wages go up. In depression both go down but the fall in wages is almost negligible compared to the fall in profits. If the capitalists, or the government who act on their behalf, controlled the ups and downs of the market – which they don’t – they would plan to make the boom and full employment permanent. The last thing they want is the cost of keeping millions of workers idle, workers they would like to see busily at work producing profits.

Governments do not control Capitalism. It’s the other way around. Capitalism has its own laws which periodically result in economic crisis, trade depressions, bankruptcy and high levels of unemployment. It’s not good enough for us to just blame “the bankers” and bleat that the government pursue tax evaders.

As Marx wrote, “…capitalist production moves through certain periodical cycles. It moves through a state of quiescence, growing animation, prosperity, overtrade, crisis and stagnation..” Economic crises are one of the destructive contradictions of the profit system. Capitalism cannot behave in any other way.

Politicians and their economists are crap at predicting economic crises. We do not have to continue to endure the economic and social consequences of unemployment anymore than other social problems like war, poverty and exploitation.

We remain entrapped within capitalism because we unwittingly conspire to keep the capitalist system in place. Let us take conscious and political action in 2011 to resolve the problems created by capitalism by replacing the wages system with something economically sensible.

Communism.

UP THE WORKERS!

Brothers, Sisters, we don’t need this fascist Gove thing

The Guild hate many things. Capitalism, War, Mumford & Sons – all the things you’d expect. But we admire competence in our enemies: Michael MacIntyre is good at pointing out funny things about cupboard contents, Denis and Margaret Thatcher’s self-actualisation, whoever turned the Tory logo into a tree, that kind of thing.

But is there a bigger joke than Education Secretary Michael Gove? He’s a wistful Tory, a man setting about destroying the ambitions of the working class and a liar. So tick off those boring reasons to dislike him. But somewhat surprising, and encouraging (and so God-damn likeable about him) is that he is just so..RUBBISH.

Today he was embarrassed into a U-turn and now won’t scrap Labour’s flagship school sports programme. (Cameron is turning on the lights at the Olympic site today so thus avoids that bit of eggy-face).

Gove said he would restore some of the £162 million of funding for a nationwide network of PE teachers, “School Sports Partnerships”, instead of scrapping it altogether. Thee Faction applaud this, although with the usual TF caveat about Tory cuts, that they’ve probably got away with what they wanted in the first place by going in high and negotiating.

But this volte-face on the project was so easy for Gove’s Shadow Andy Burnham to take the piss out of. Gove’s argument was so shit all Burnham had to do was write a one-page email to the statistics “watchdog” (Sir Michael Scholar, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority).

The Department for Education (DfE) sheepishly admitted that the funding is disappearing altogether, and not being subsumed into the general schools budget, as had been previously claimed.

The £162m Gove claimed was being “saved” is not being added to the overall budgets of schools in England. That contradicts previous government statements that the money was no longer going to be ring-fenced, but would still be available for head-teachers to spend on sport or other priorities.

Burnham said: “Michael Gove has used misleading statistics and sought to imply that funding is simply being devolved to head teachers. But the truth is that school sport has been earmarked for severe cuts. Olympic athletes, head teachers and hundreds of thousands of young people have condemned this move – does he really think he knows better than them?”

When Gove was asked by Andrew Marr on his BBC television show in November if the sport money was going, he replied that it wasn’t, before adding: “We’re increasing spending on education overall, so head-teachers can decide on their own priorities.” LIE.

Gove told Marr that “we haven’t seen the increase in the number of people playing competitive sport”. That, Burnham said, is disproved by the school sport survey earlier this year, which found that 27% more boys and 60% more girls now take part in interschool competitive sport than in 2006.

The withdrawal of the £162m means that heads will have to pay for PE and sporting activities out of their usual budgets. Gove admitted to the Commons education select committee yesterday that schools would not be receiving a real-terms increase in their budgets, as inflation is higher than had been forecast.

Gove and the Tories have a sickening Ladybird-book sentimental view of teaching based on their own private and grammar schools, which is based more on preaching than teaching.

Gove wants to give Christians, rich locals and the market freedom from the national curriculum and freedom from national pay and conditions for staff.

Thus your taxes will be handed over from Whitehall to self-selecting groups to manage privately. Gove, naturally, hasn’t said how he will choose between competing bids from the same locality as this scheme is so full of holes and totally impractical. What if the “new providers” get bored after their kids have gone through their school?

Bidders will rent or purchase a suitable site then hire a private contractor of educational services to do the teaching. So to increase profits these companies will employ fewer qualified teachers and use computer programmes run by classroom assistants.

The new provider will also need to buy in specialist services. Using YOUR MONEY. Human resource managers, lawyers, architects, builders, payroll and accountants will charge handsomely and divert even more money away from teaching. What a waste of time. A few will be set up at a cost of millions to the tax payer, a few hundred rich kids will be educated. What a load of CRAP. Gove thinks you’re STUPID.

In October 2009 the Tories set up the New Schools Network (NSN) to import such fucking quack ideas. The completely inexperienced Rachel Wolf is NSN’s director. Her priority is to institute “competitive school provision” in every area.NSN claims to have drummed up a number of takers. That prick Toby Young is leading the campaign to set up a west London “free school”. He claims that his 500-strong group of supporters want a “comprehensive grammar school” in their W3 postcode.

There will be a wave of protest to stop Tory education secretary Michael Gove from fucking up our schools. Support this.

Gove’s scrapping of more than 700 school rebuilding projects across England, and the fiasco that followed, show two things.

First, the Tories are out to steal everything they can from working class people and their children.

And second, they have such disdain for you that they can’t even be bothered to be accurate about their attacks.

The Tories are coming for your job, your pension, your hospital and your services.

We have a government of millionaires that is hellbent on attacking our most basic services. But it is so clumsy it’s quickly enraging millions of people who have the potential to bring it down.

If Gove is forced out, it could be the start of driving the Government back over all the other attacks.

Taxing Questions

Why on earth is Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) giving Vodafone so much leeway on their tax bill?

For ten years HMRC and Vodafone have been wrangling over Vodafone’s contribution. Private Eye estimate the money owed is £6bn. HMRC Chief Dave Hartnett has agreed on £1.25bn: £800m up front and time to pay the rest.

Private Eye’s story lead to protests outside several Vodafone stores last week. Therefore the mobile phone giant and HMRC got their PR people to bat off the “£6bn owed” as an “urban myth”.

HMRC’s press wrangler Paul Franklin was quoted on the Daily Mail website thus: “following a rigorous examination of the facts and an intensive process of negotiation that tested the arguments of both parties..it was agreed that Vodafone’s liability was £1.25bn and at no point was a liability greater than that established.”

BUT tax self-assessment laws in the UK are very clear about this: no liability is established until a negotiation is complete. AND the original tax inspectors on this case were after much more than £1.25bn (the final set of negotiations this year involved HMRC representatives who were nothing to do with the original case).

Vodafone’s own accounts from 2006 show they’d put aside £2.1bn. This cash was paid into their Luxembourg company (VIL) which has been building up plenty of interest. In court HMRC’s counsel considered there was a good chance of getting the lot; but these lawyers weren’t consulted in the last round of talks. Incredibly the new deal includes an agreement not to tax any future income diverted to Vodafone’s Luxembourg operation.

Thee Faction believe that this outside-of-the-courts resolution that Dave Hartnett/HMRC have concocted with Vodafone sets a dangerous precedent – i.e. keeping these disputes out of the public eye.

Thee Faction believe the UK Government has not so much a spending crisis, but a tax avoidance crisis. Richard Murphy of Tax Research believes this to be £25bn a year, tax evasion is at £70bn, and outstanding debts to the tax service to £28bn: a total of more than £120bn, about 75% of what the government is saying is the “deficit”, and over 80% of what HMRC are supposed to collect. Let’s compare this £120bn with the benefit fraud figures the right-wing press get in such a lather about and the Con-Libs are using as justification for the “squeeze”: £1.1bn.

As we’ve explained in this blog in the past, and it is worth repeating here, HMRC is, astonishingly, being hit by the spending revue. Staff will be cut from 68,000 to 56,000 by 2015. According to the Association of Reveue and Customs ; money invested in HMRC to deal with tax avoidance and evasion brings in £60 for every £1 spent.

Thee Faction say if HMRC could even get 20% of what HMRC are owed the most damaging cuts could be reversed. The right-wing press are attacking the poor, to keep us divided by blaming scroungers and scrutters for waste.

It’s clear the Tories have freed corporations from their obligations to society, and, as usual are protecting the rich.

At risk of repeating myself, THIS IS WHY THEY GOT INTO POLITICS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The Curse of Thee Faction: Pickles in a Pickle

As predicted in this very blog on October 21st, not all of the Con-Lib cuts will happen, because ideology is overriding sense.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has lost a court battle over his decision to scrap the last government’s regional housing targets in England .

The move was ruled unlawful by the High Court. No appeal is planned, but Pickles’ Department will regard it as a technicality. (Legislation is to be presented next month).

Housing developers had asked the court to block it, arguing Mr Pickles had abused his powers. What this judgement clearly identified is that Pickles isn’t entitled to make the decision in the way that he did.
Primary legislation should have been introduced, giving MPs the opportunity to debate an issue crucial to future planning in England . Pickles thinks he can just pile in and revoke parliamentary acts. The house-building targets, introduced under the 2009 Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act.

This is typical Tory arrogance and stinks of amateurism. Scrapping targets without anything to replace them has caused widespread confusion.

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, said the decision to get rid of the targets was “a hasty and damaging move, which has already seen plans for over 180,000 homes scrapped”.

Note for TV satirists: well done for noticing Eric Pickles is fat, but do a bit more research. He is a class-traitor – he turned against Socialism and joined the Tory party in 1968. He enthusiastically embraced Thatcher’s drive to privatise public services when leader of Bradford Council. He voted against the rights of gay people to adopt and the repeal of section 28 that banned councils from promoting homosexuality. Worst peformance ever by a Tory on BBC’s Question Time when he just wittered on about his second home which is 35 miles from London? How about his department’s chauffer-driven £70K Jag (trading up from the £20,000 eco-friendly Toyota Prius of Labour predecessor John Denham). He is, first and foremost, a hypocrite.

The first ever Facebook-era Protest!

Just a brief note concerning the ‘student riot’..

Well, it was a little bit crap but it was certainly better than nothing. Just a few notes on the ‘rolling news coverage’. Not naming any names but there were a few downright pieces of utter bull crap coming out of the TV:

1. The march was not “hi-jacked” by “anarchists” or anyone else. The live pictures inside the foyer of 30 Millbank were of young people, unmasked: how stupid does Sky news think we are? They were clearly amateurs..(just a tip kids, if you are going to smash up public buildings, don’t take photos of yourselves doing it and then tag them on Facebook)
2. One snooty right-wing reporter was quoted as saying “they’re not even anywhere near the Tory offices”. Shut up. Yes they were. Very near, thanks. And the police f*cked up.
3. Same guy on tuition fees  “this was a new Labour policy”. No it wasn’t. We have a Tory government, dammit! And as for “David Cameron is in China” where one of the things he’s “talking about” is “Chinese Students studying in Britain” and speculating whether the pictures would inspire or “put off” the “foreign students” was a new low in British TV Journalism. There you go, Universities, control your students or lose business. Stone me.
4. Dear Boris Johnson: we do not have a “right to protest”, it was taken from us by Thatcher
5. Apparently, according to one BBC Journalist (watching the pictures from Television Centre) because “The Socialist Worker newspaper” was being sold on the march that the “violence” had a “political nature”. Well DURR. Students, posh though a lot of them may be, are also entitled to be “Political”. Of course it was “Political” you dolt, it was protesting against Government policy. Stop making it sound like the sons and daughters of the watching Daily Mail readers were being somehow brainwashed by Trots
6. How odd that Tory HQ was being attacked yet it was the Lib Dems selling out their election promises that became the agenda. Is the the first time an angry mob has attacked Party A’s HQ causing the total destruction in faith of Party B?
7. Rolling news will eat itself, comrade. It needs pictures and conflict. Add an ‘on diary’ story involving the “Westminster village”  What better to put to put public anger against the cuts right at the top of the nation’s agenda by showing hours of footage of young people smashing stuff up (and right on their doorstep too, the BBC has its “Westminster village” office in the Millbank Tower). Because of its salacious need for coverage of this sort of thing revolt can be turned into style. The revolution will be televised.

Marxism (as a critical tool and an economic realignment) is a better idea. Capitalism is corrupt and inefficient. Today’s other big news story which got somewhat overshadowed: Mervin King, Govenor of the Bank of England says the UK is not going into a “double-dip” recession. But, the cost of living is rising. So there you go, right from the mouth of “the Man’s” man, the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer. We’re so compliant they’re just playing with us now.

Communism in Surrey

Communism in Surrey in the 70s

Using Reigate as the centre of counter-hegemonic activity may seem to be pushing against a stiff door, but revolutionary planning isn’t simple, comrade.

Surprisingly, for a county steeped in Tory MPs for many decades Surrey does have something of a history as a focus point for counter-cultural activity.

During Cromwell’s Republic Gerrard Winstanley set up a commune on common land at St. Georges Hill, near Weybridge – now one of the most exclusive areas of the country; home to Cliff and Brucey.

Diggers all

Those gathered around Winstanley were known as the Diggers. They promoted a form of Christian anarcho-communism, stating in The True Leveller’s Standard Advanced (1649) that:
…the Earth (which was made to be a Common Treasury of relief for all, both Beasts and Men) was hedged in to In-closures by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made Servants and Slaves: And that Earth that is within this Creation made a Common Store-house for all, is bought and sold, and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great Creator is mightily dishonoured, as if he were a respector of persons, delighting in the comfortable Livelihoods of some, and rejoycing in the miserable povertie and straits of others. From the beginning it was not so.

The group planted vegetables a time when food prices had reached an all-time high.  The word was put out for “..all to come in and help them, and (we) promise meat, drink, and clothes.” They intended to pull down enclosures and get the local populace to come and work with them.

Winstanley explained his forward-thinking egalitarian beliefs in The New Law of Righteousness (also 1649):

Every one that gets an authority into his hands tyrannizes over others; as many husbands, parents, masters, magistrates, that live after the flesh do carry themselves like oppressing lords over such as are under them, not knowing that their wives, children, servants, subjects are their fellow creatures, and hath an equal privilege to share them in the blessing of liberty.

Sir Thomas Fairfax of the New Model Army bought down some troops but concluded the Diggers were doing no harm. The local landowners organised gangs to come and set fire to houses and administer beatings. The Diggers moved down the road to Cobham and eventually the group dispersed, after a court case where they were not allowed to defend themselves (on trumped-up charges of being members of the outlawed licentious ‘Ranters’) . Nevertheless, their legacy lived on: in the 1960s a group in San Francisco called themselves Diggers in their memory.

In the 19th Century, Surrey again played host to another experiment in communal living. A group centered on the Christian socialist and education reformer James Pierrepont-Greaves set up a commune at Alcott House in Ham Common (between modern-day Richmond & Kingston) called the Concordium. The group, including Charles Lane , William Oldham, and Henry Gardner-Wright, believed that spiritual and social renewal would be achieved by a change of lifestyle. As such they promoted vegetarianism and hydrotherapy. Perhaps a little ‘hippy’ for us….

In 2010 Surrey is home to Thee Faction and Communist R’n’B. If you’d like some advice on how to set up your own Communist R’n’B group, label or club please contact us: tass@TheeFaction.org. Surrey is the ideal place to start…

Erik Horsebalm’s TV review

Ann Widdecombe on ‘Strictly’? It turns our guts. Please tell anyone that watches this programme and is tempted to think of her as a mad old loveable aunt that this once Tory minister, Privy councillor and member of the shadow-cabinet is an odious right-wing toad.

So why did she want to go into politics? “Largely it was to fight socialism.”

Let us not forget her disgusting antiabortion speaking tour/film “Passion for Life”.

She is hostile to gay/bisexual/TG equality: “I think it is wrong to promote those sort of lifestyles”; “I do not think that it can be promoted as an equally valid lifestyle to marriage”. Although she has said she is against gay discrimination she consistently voted in Parliament against equal gay rights and government plans to allow unmarried and gay couples to adopt children.

She converted to Catholicism in 1993 in protest against the Church of England’s decision to allow women priests. She is vehemently pro-capital punishment (though how she squares this with her very public Catholicism she won’t say).

She supported a zero tolerance approach to marijuana until it was revealed that the majority of her Shadow Cabinet colleagues had smoked it in the past.

She supports a tough line on immigration.

Margaret Thatcher was, says Ann, “a very outstanding Prime Minister”.

She retains some popularity because most of the press coverage about her has concentrated on her ugliness, her virginity and the fact that she refuses to watch TV, rather than on the fact that she is a twit (Miss Widdecombe is less capable of stringing together a coherent argument than any other right-wing politician we have seen in the last 30 years).

Thee Faction find her world-view abhorrent. Where women are driven back to the back streets when they find themselves pregnant at the wrong time, where gay people are driven back into their closet, where the nuclear family is the only place you’ll find love.

Dance off.

CUTS

Cuts. Object! And they may not happen. There’s been little consultation. This is ideological: a method of browbeating us into submission to protect the rich. Osborne is hoping that the public sector cut “squeeze” will save £80bn. But the political reality, is that nothing like those savings are achievable. If they get away with it a million people will be added to the dole.

Thee Faction believe If you assembled 50 retired permanent secretaries in a room and asked them, they would admit that only 50% of the cuts are likely to be achieved. Thee Faction are not fond of conspiracy theories, but it’s a business trick used in any form of negotiation to aim high and compromise on what you wanted in the first place.

It’s a lie that the interest is going to “foreigners”. It’s a lie that business leaders will ‘move abroad’ if they are taxed too hard – we cannot control the economies of other countries. It’s a lie that we need to make these cuts (we have no connections to the SWP, but they’ve produced an excellent poster explaining why: here).

THIS IS HOW IT WILL AFFECT YOU

Pensions

If you’re a public sector worker you’ll see fundamental reform. Wherever you work, however, if you were in any way looking forward to retirement, you’re in for a nasty surprise.

All women will end up retiring later than they expected to, as will any men under the age of 56, as the retirement age will increase to 66 by 2020. If you’re still in your thirties or younger you can expect the goalposts to be moved several more times before you stand the slightest chance of retiring, and can safely assume that you’ll never actually be old enough to retire. Make your own pension plans.

Jobs

The scale of job cuts is overwhelming, with almost half a million public sector jobs to go in the next four years. Add to that the predictions of the knock-on effects on private sector jobs, and up to a million people could be put out of work. This could be you. Put some money away and be prepared for the worst.

Benefits

If you receive any benefits at all, including child benefit, there’s a good chance that your entitlement will be changing, or at the very least that you won’t be getting any kind of increases in the next few years. Talk to the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, who will talk you through all the changes.

Transport

The loss of bus subsidies and the raising of the limits on how much can be charged on regulated fares, on trains or tubes – you could be in for a nasty shock. A 45 minute bike ride may suddenly not seem quite such a laughable notion.

Culture

The Tories historically hate the BBC. The freeze in the licence fee and the edict that the corporation will now pay for the World Service (with the government reserving the rights to decide on bureaux) proves they see it as a way of balancing their own books, as a state broadcaster with little independence and want to see it struggle in a world of market forces. In real terms this is a 16% cut in the BBC’s budget. Murdoch must be creaming himself.

The Culprits

The Royal Bank of Scotland, bailed out by £45 billion of our money and 84% owned by the government, paid £1.3 billion in bonuses earlier this year to 17,000 market traders. Can we also remind you that Vodaphone owe HMRC £6bn. We did not cause this crisis. The banking industry should be fully nationalised under democratic workers’ control and planned to serve ordinary people’s needs. Compensation should be paid only on the basis of proven need.

Action on Saturday

In France seventeen million people have taken to the streets over the last month. In Greece there have been six general strikes. Here in Britain the cuts are among the most severe in Europe. The TUC is planning a day of action planned for next March. Meanwhile this Saturday ..

• TLondon: the RMT and FBU in London are currently at the front of fighting vicious cuts. The RMT has already had one successful day of strike action against massive job cuts which will compromise safety on the Tube. The Fire Bridae Union (FBU) is balloting for strike action against the threat to sack the entire workforce. Assemble outside the RMT head office, 39 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD at 11am.
• Edinburgh: Assemble East Market Street, Edinburgh, 11am for rally at Ross Bandstand at 12.30pm.
• Birmingham: protest at 12.30pm, Victoria Square
• Bristol: demonstration and rally, Castle Park, Broadmead, assemble 11.00am for march through Bristol city centre.
• Cambridge: assemble 12 noon at Parkside Fire Station, rally at 1.30pm at Cambridge Guildhall
• Cardiff: march against cuts, assemble Cardiff City Hall, 12 noon. Other action is planned in Wales.
• Leeds: assemble Victoria Gardens (outside the art gallery), Headrow, Leeds, noon Lincoln: assemble Castle Square, march to rally in the Cornhill, noon
• Manchester: protest outside the BBC from noon
• Norwich: protest against austerity, meet Hay Hill 12.30pm
• Plymouth: petitioning and campaigning with charities, campaign groups and trade unions. Meet at the Sundial in the city centre from 12 noon
• Portsmouth: demonstration, 11.30am Guildhall Square
• Sheffield city centre, meet outside the Town Hall, 12.30pm.
• York march and rally in the city centre, assemble 1pm in Parliament Street

Remember and repeat

The Con-Libs are:

• slashing third of council spending by 2015. That means a third of council jobs to go, a third of crucial council services axed.
• the increase in the state pension age will be rushed forward four years to 2018 for men and 2020 for women.
• they want £1.8 billion savings a year from public sector pensions. That will mean an average increase in contributions of £450 extra per year, on top of a pay freeze of up to three years. That means a big pay cut for millions
• social housing projects is being slashed by 60 percent. New council tenants will be forced to pay “market rents” and will not have secure tenancies on their home. The average rent for a three-bedroom social home is £85 a week-that could triple to £250 a week. Housing benefit won’t go up to cover it. Any single person under 35 will be forced to share accommodation or lose benefits.
• £7 billion a year will be taken from the poorest people in society. Disability benefits are under attack. The time you can claim sick pay will be halved. Tax Credits will be slashed. There will be a 10 percent cut in money that families rely on to help with childcare costs.
• the government claims it is protecting the NHS but in reality it is cutting health spending by over £20 billion; 0.1% rise year-on-year is a CUT.
• a 60 percent cut in capital spending in education. Up to 40,000 school teachers’ jobs in England will go.
• Osborne has abolished the Education Maintenance Allowance for 16-19 year-olds. As well as pricing working class students out of education with enormous fees, the Tories have cut the universities’ budget by 40 percent.

The banks who took £1.4 trillion pounds will be left with almost all their loot and there’s endless cash for the war in Afghanistan.

As usual The Tories will shift wealth from the poor to the rich. THAT’S WHY THEY GOT INVOLVED IN POLITICS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Vive La France!

The French government on Friday ordered riot police to pile into workers occupying an oil depot near Marseille (the Fos-Lavéra). Similar attacks were carried out at depots in Cournon d’Auvergne in central France and Ambès on the coast. Bus loads of cops turned up. More protests and punch-ups are promised this week.

Port, transport and energy workers, joined by students* and teachers around the country, are striking to oppose the unpopular “austerity” policies of President Sarkozy. They’re at the ports to cause a petrol shortage. Students blocked railway lines in several cities, including Rennes, Reims and Agen.

(*Not only Students from University. A lot are secondary school pupils: 934 schools in France have been on strike this week, both pupils and teachers are outside on the picket lines).

There’s been a week of huge protest actions against the pension cuts in France, which include a two-year increase in the retirement age and pay-in period.

This proves the immense social power of the working class, which can bring the economy to a halt if it engages in a proper struggle.

The French police denounced “scenes of urban guerrilla warfare” and demanded harsher “means to intervene.” Seven policemen were wounded in punch-ups between youths and Police in the Parisien suburbs, though the most seriously wounded officer was not hurt by protesters but by a truck driver who tried to ram protesters after becoming angry over being stuck in traffic.

(The Paris police said they wouldn’t use rubber bullets after a student was badly injured when police shot him in the face with a rubber bullet on Wednesday).

Phew!

George Osborne is planning worse than Sarkosy, yet the British will grumble rather than get out on the streets. Is this because we don’t really understand what the Con-Libs are up to? Or that Britain is by nature a conservative, capitalist, laisse-faire country?

Or that we have no traditions of protest? Brtish law does not recognise any special right of public meeting for political or other purposes.

Comrade Wilkes (not to be confused with Comrade Wilko)

Protest gets written out of the history of the development of civil liberties here. Many of the victories of the 18th and 19th centuries were only achieved because behind a John Wilkes, a William Hone or a Henry Hunt stood a crowd. When the state gradually backed down from restrictive measures and began to reform itself it was partly because the threat of violence stalked in the background. Yet protestors have always been seen as being part of the losing side of history. But Wat Tyler, the Levellers, the Chartists, had a profound impact on our politics without, as it were, winning a match.

Westminster is an intimidating place for anyone who has an opinion. You can’t protest on Parliament Square. Because of the tourists. No wonder disengagement with politics is endemic, it’s no fun any more. The government and the police have an arsenal of laws and equipment out of proportion to the threat of disorder.

Of course, it’s always been this way, baby. Our statute book and common law bristle with restrictive laws and always have done. In the volatile 1930s the state was adept at shutting down any manifestation of dissent, from Communist AGMs to humble soapbox orators. Often it just dusted down long-forgotten acts of parliament. A meeting could be broken up by a constable if he decided that a breach of the peace was likely, if it impeded other citizens or if a policeman considered that a person of “reasonable firmness and courage” might be alarmed. Thus the campaigner against unemployment was lumped together with a member of the British Union of Fascists. The fact that the neglected statute book needed to be brought down from the shelf suggests, for the optimistic at least, that willing amnesia on the part of officialdom can allow liberty to thrive.

The Death of Wat Tyler

Rare, however, is the government which possesses these liberal instincts or is scared into inaction. Taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut is an ingrained habit for those in power in this country; perhaps it goes back to 1381.

When John Wilkes was on trial the judge tried to silence his rowdy supporters. “This is not the clamour of the rabble, my lord,” Wilkes replied, “but the voice of liberty, which must be heard.” Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the two, and it has been a repeated failure of British politicians to make the effort. By taking a tough line every time something looks like getting out of hand, the state intimidates the voice of liberty as much as it prevents anarchy.

“Anti-social behaviour” is a semantic brickbat used to suggest one of the great crimes of the age. And what could be more more “anti-social” than blocking a street, picketing, closing an oil terminal, or embarrassing the government by shouting? Passivity has become a virtue. We’re encouraged to help society by popping down to the retail park and buying crap.

Protest can sometimes damage democracy. But it is also clear that protest has been crucial to the development of democracy. Protest is often people’s first and most profound involvement with politics.

Thee Faction say “on your side comrades” to the girls and boys in France. (In French, obviously).

Today’s unpopular cause is tomorrow’s political orthodoxy. Do Your Bit.

Don’t Give Up; Rise Up.