BNP - Griffin faces leadership challenge

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This month’s Searchlight contains the fascinating story that BNP Führer Nick Griffin is facing a leadership challenge from hardline Nazi Chris Jackson, formerly the party’s North West regional organiser (pictured)

The local elections in May were pretty disastrous for the BNP. Despite standing many more candidates their share of the vote fell, in many places dramatically. In the East Midland in 2006 their candidates got 28% of the vote, one year later this fell to 18.5%; in the North West the vote fell from 20.6% to 14.9%. In every region the vote was down. The national average vote fell from 19.2% for 363 candidates last year to 14.7% this year, for 742 candidates.

The won 9 seats, but lost eight they were defending, and one BNP councillor in Stoke has left the party since the election.

Had they been predicting just holding on, they might have been philosophical, but they were confident of doubling their number of elected councillors from 49 to 100.

Of course the BNP vote is still troublingly large, but they are cherry picking favourable seats, and their ability to get a reasonable protest vote at local council level does not translate into sustained and stable electoral support.

Jackson’s leadership challenge would probably not have happened if Griffin’s strategy was paying off. As I wrote last year : “Knowing that the BNP is decades away from forming a government, Griffin is hoping to play the long game. It must seem very galling that a post-fascist like Gianfranco Fini can be deputy Prime Minister in Italy, while Cambridge educated Griffin is talking to 20 numbskulls in a pub skittle-alley in Keighley. In the medium term if the BNP could win a swathe of councillors across the country, it might be able to shift the political agenda so that race and immigration are part of mainstream debate. If it could distance itself from its fascist past it might be able to join coalition administrations in councils, it might get MEPs, and members of the London Assembly elected. With this higher profile it might become a permanent part of the political landscape, a much better foundation for launching a future openly fascist party.”

But why should hardline nationalists put up with Griffin’s attempt to water down their message of race hate in order to position the BNP as a post-fascist party like Fini’s Alleanza Nazionale, if it isn’t even working?

Again, as I wrote last year: “Any sustained organisation requires a cadre of activists that are motivated by an ideology. The current leadership and cadre of the BNP come from fascist backgrounds, and have the criminal records to prove it. This creates a complex difficulty for Griffin. To turn out the existing cadre to work in elections requires sufficient concessions to them that the BNP is not just a racist, but an active race-hate organisation, which is an obstacle to gaining greater respectability. What is more, the party is unable to have a truly candid debate about the need for a shift without revealing the Nazi ideology of many of its supporters, and even exposing them to prosecutions for incitement to racial hatred. The fascist core of BNP supporters are correct to fear the possibility that the BNP could become what it is pretending to be. If Griffin could get elected to the European parliament he would be mainly interested in sustaining his own electoral career.”

So Jackson’s leadership bid is significant. He is standing on behalf of the Reform Group, a small network of Tyndall supporters, and he is seeking to reach out to those fascists that have been excluded by the Griffin regime and are now huddled in the National Front, England First, and other miniscule groups.

As such, his base within the BNP is very limited, but he may tap into a wider discontent with the arbitrary and capricious way Griffin runs the party. Searchlight speculates that the BNP's cultural officer, Jonathan Bowden and elections officer, Eddy Butler, may back Jackson. Anything less than a convincing victory for Griffin, with 80% or more of the membership vote, would seriously damage his authority.

Certainly Griffin’s strategic choice to steer the party towards the political mainstream is problematic. As I argued before: “It is important to understand that the BNP are an openly racist not an openly fascist organisation. The interplay between its fascist and populist elements is a source of weakness for it.”

If Griffin fares poorly in the leadership election this will strengthen the open fascists in the party, weakening the electoral strategy, and increasing the party’s image problem. On the other hand, if Griffin wins a convincing victory, then the fascist cadre of the party may walk out, strengthening the mood that the party has lost momentum, and reducing the number of committed activists prepared to do the donkey work.

VICTORY: Griffin barred from Bath University

BREAKING NEWS: Bath university just issued the following statement. It is a shame that the University express their change of mind in quite the way they do, but this is nevertheless a great victory for common sense. It is very good news that Bath Student Union has voted to oppose Griffin attending the campus, as this student union does not have a "no platform" policy

"University refuses permission for a student-organised event to be addressed by Mr Nick Griffin to go ahead

"The University took the decision on 3 May, under its Code of Practice relating to Meetings on University Premises, that one of its students might organise an event on 14 May to be addressed by Mr Nick Griffin, Leader of the British National Party. This was subject to certain conditions being met by the student organiser and to the University continuing to be satisfied that the event would not present significant public order issues or transgress the boundaries of lawful speech.

"Not surprisingly, a very substantial number of people, within and beyond the University, have expressed their views about the proposed event over the past few days. Many of these have argued passionately against the event taking place, but a substantial minority have argued strongly in favour of it proceeding. Notably, as well as strong opposition from some of the University’s staff, the Students’ Union has voted to ask the University to refuse permission for the event. In addition, some staff and students have registered with us their serious concerns for their safety if this event proceeds, as well as fears of disruption to examinations given the likely scale of protests on the day.

"These considerations do need to be balanced against the need to hear and challenge a variety of opinions in an institution committed to high quality learning and research. Freedom of speech is a principle to be highly cherished by academic institutions. Indeed, our regulations require that the University does not so far as is reasonably practicable deny any premises of the University to any individual or body of persons on any grounds connected with the beliefs or views of that individual or of that body; or the policy or objectives of that body. The University has, however, now learned that a very large number of protesters intend to arrive on campus. This creates the likelihood of substantial public order problems and real possibility of disruption of the essential activities of the University community, making it impractical for the University to allow the event to go ahead.

"In the light of all these considerations the University has decided to refuse permission for the event to take place.


"Professor Glynis Breakwell, Vice-Chancellor, Mark Humphriss, University Secretary"

Danny Lake,

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I understand that Danny Lake is no longer involved with organised far right politics.

BNP stumbles

With just a few key councils still to declare we can happily say that the BNP has not made its promised breakthrough in the 2007 local elections. Despite standing over 750 district and borough candidates (and boasts of winning up to 60 seats) the current net gain is ZERO.

The BNP has so far won eight council wards but then they have also lost eight council wards.

BNP gains have taken place in Stoke-on-Trent (3), North West Leicestershire (2), Charnwood (1), Bradford (1) and Burnley (1).

However the BNP lost seats in Burnley (3), Bradford (1), Calderdale (1), Stoke-on-Trent (1), South Holland (1) and Broxbourne (1).

Particularly pleasing were the great results in Sandwell, Bradford, Kirklees, Epping, Dudley and Burnley. Even in Stoke-on-Trent, where the BNP won three, they lost in both of the key wards where a strong campaign was fought.

Searchlight’s campaign website has the full BNP results and they will shortly be producing a more detailed summary of the election results and campaign reports from around the country.

Voices from Spain

My grandmother died in 1936, one week after giving birth to her fourth child, she had lost a son who had died as an infant a year earlier. She was twenty seven years old. Poverty and malnourishment were certainly factors in these tragedies. My granddad had been out of work for four years. He was a fitter in the steelworks in Scunthorpe, and had been sacked for refusing to shake the hand of an aristocrat being shown round the works.

It was an act of immature ultra-leftism, but the left had been driven a bit crazy after the defeat in the general strike in 1926. My granddad used to tell me how the strike in Scunthorpe had been completely solid, but when they were sent back to work by the TUC and their own union’s leaderships (The AEU in his case) the bosses were standing at the gates, and known militants and CP members were not let back into the plant. They were tapped on the shoulder, and told: “Not you, lad”.

Unemployment in the 1930s meant appalling poverty, and means test inspectors. The family subsisted largely on vegetables grown on my granddad’s allotment. (My mother has recently been widowed, and was means tested for her pension credit, which she found deeply shocking – it shows how few roots New Labour have in the history and traditions of our movement that they don’t understand the disgust her generation have for means testing). My grandparents stayed politically active, and my mum tells me that one of her earliest memories was the family sitting round the table making a detailed budget of their meagre pennies so that they could send as much money as possible to the Weekly Worker’s (now the Morning Star) fighting fund.

For class conscious workers the nineteen thirties brought tragedy after tragedy. In 1931 the Labour Party imploded, with prime minister Ramsey Macdonald and chancellor Phillip Snowden leading the parliamentary party into a national government with the Tories to cut unemployment benefit. In the ensuing election the unions effectively refounded the Labour Party by backing those candidates who refused to support the national government, but these real Labour candidates were decimated at the polls.

In 1933 the biggest and most organised working class movement in the world was utterly defeated by the Nazis coming to power in Germany. In 1934 fascists came to power in Austria, but there was a chink of light as workers in Vienna rose up and fought. Of course the full horror of Nazi rule was still in the future, but everyone still knew that these were parties that would crush dissent with an iron heel, and were prepared to return to the full scale carnage of war, still a recent memory.

So in 1936, when there was an attempted fascist coup in Spain, my granddad decided enough was enough and he would go to Spain to fight. The rise of fascism would have to be halted. He was not a well educated man, or a party cadre who followed the twists and turns of Palme Dutt's theories, but he knew in his heart that fascism had to be stopped, and that it would not be stopped by the “democracies” of Britain and France, it would only be stopped by working men and women like him taking up arms.

From the hindsight of the twenty first century it seems bizarre that he would consider leaving his pregnant wife and two children, but he had made arrangements that they would be supported by his family. Attitudes were different, and he was a man of his time.

But then, a few weeks before his intended departure, his wife died. Not only was he distraught with grief, but he had a new baby to look after: so he never went to Spain.

It is not a very remarkable story perhaps. But it is a story that illustrates the type of men who gave up everything and went to Spain, principled working men. The International brigaders were typically not George Orwells or Ernest Hemingways, they were trade unionists, engineers, clerks, shop workers, posties and railwaymen.

A lot of divisive commentary is written about the Spanish civil war on the left. The divisions and debates on the left at the time about how the war should have been fought belong to an earlier age, and we will never swim in that river again. Despite the self-assurance of those who follow Trotsky’s writings on Spain, we don’t know that there would have been a victory had his advice been followed (and certainly virtually no one was listening to him in Spain at the time). But we can be pretty sure that without Russian tanks and aircraft, and the heroism of the Russian volunteers who flew them, that Madrid would have fallen to the fascists in November 1936 and the war would have been over.

The important thing is to commemorate and celebrate the whole memory of those who fought, those who died and those who survived, which ever tradition they came from. These are the heroes of our class, who put their lives on the line to stop fascism.

It is therefore really valuable to listen to their own voices, which we can do through the book “poems of Spain” published by Lawrence and Wishart, and available from Philosophy Football for £10.99

What happened to my granddad? Well, rearmament meant he got his job back, and during the second world war he worked 12 hour shifts, six days per week helping to keep the steel mills working. The steel used to build the tanks, planes and bombs that won the war against fascism. He was a lifelong communist, and a member of the Labour Party (which seems a bizarre anachronism these days, but was not at all unusual in the past, which just underlines the transformation that Kinnock and Blair have achieved)

Historical Revisionism in Estonia

Yesterday’s violent clashes in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, due to the government’s intention of removing a war memorial to Red Army soldiers, and the defence of the monument by Estonia's Russian speakers, has thrown light the plight of the Russian minorities in Estonia and Latvia. (The other Baltic republic, Lithuania, does not discriminate against Russians)

Russians comprise 25.6% of the Estonian population and 29.2% of the Latvian population, but in both countries they are denied citizenship rights, and are not allowed to vote. New language laws also exclude non Estonian and Latvian speakers from certain jobs. Yet only 14% of Estonian Russians speak Estonian (a phenomenally difficult language to learn being Finno-Ugric), and only 23% of Latvian Russians speak Latvian.

Estonia is the darling country of the European Union (EU), with a successful market economy, and is supposedly a liberal democracy. The systematic discrimination against the large Russian minority is due to the state not recognising anyone as a citizen if they cannot establish descent from someone who was a citizen of Estonia in 1940. The Estonian government has also refused to cooperate with the Simon Wiesenthal centre in bringing to justice Estonian’s Nazi war criminals. In 2006 the Estonian state prosecutor, Heino Tonismagi, described the Nazi collaborator Harry Mannil, who personally murdered several civilians in Tallinn in 1941, as “one of the most outstanding Estonians” and cleared him of any criminal responsibility, on the ludicrous grounds that the Estonian authorities had no responsibility as the country was occupied at the time.

Significantly the EU has made no complaint about the denial of citizenship by Estonia and Latvia, and systematic discrimination against significant minority populations. Nor have voices been raised against Estonia’s protection of Nazi war criminals.

In 2002 a war memorial was raised in the Eastern city of Parnu celebrating the Estonians who served in the Waffen SS, describing the Nazi invasion of Estonia as “a war of liberation for the fatherland”. The worrying current here is the equation between Soviet communism and Nazism as equally bad.

Let us consider an analogy. There is a difference between a reckless driver who kills 14 people in a road accident, and a serial killer who systematically hunts down and murders 14 people.

The Soviet Union during the Stalin era did see terrible crimes, but this was in the context of a very backward country seeking to industrialise, and operating in a hostile environment where other states were threatening it and seeking to undermine it. What is more the official ideology of the USSR was to promote the concept of human liberation, and the excesses and crimes were despite not because of what the USSR stood for.

In contrast, the crimes of Nazi Germany were deliberately planned and executed by a state who intentionally sought to engulf the world in a nightmare of barbarism. One of the most economically developed and cultured countries in the world established modern industrial processes to slaughter human beings by the methods of mass production. The victims were transported by the most advanced railways, the extermination was administered using the most modern IBM computers, the gas chambers were designed by professional engineers, and human beings were turned into soap and lamp shades.

Had Nazism triumphed, this would have represented a catastrophic and cataclysmic defeat for the soul of humanity. The values of compassion, solidarity and fraternity would have been stripped away, and we would have been engulfed in a maelstrom of darkness, torture and despair.

Did those Estonians who volunteered for the Waffen SS know this? Or were they simple misguided patriots? With the advancing German Wehrmacht into the Baltic states in 1941 came the Einstatzgruppen. Special detachments who individually hunted and murdered Jews, gypsies, trade union activist and communists. Even before these Estonians joined the SS they would have seen atrocities against Estonian Jews by German troops. Did they know? Everyone knew.

Every Estonian, every Latvian and every Lithuanian who wore the uniform of the Waffen SS was a fascist murderer. During Nazi rule the Baltic states witnessed pogroms, in many case with mass popular participation, where Jews were murdered in their thousands.

Of course the history is complicated by the absorbtion of the Baltic states into the Soviet sphere of influence in 1940 following the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and subsequent repression. But we need to understand the context that the USSR did not believe after the defeat in Spain that the Western demcracies would ever stand up to fascism, and was seeking to build a military buffer zone.

And when the Red Army entered these countries the second time they did so as liberators. They stopped the mass murders. They stopped the transportation to the death camps.

It was a crime to forcibly incorporate the Baltic republics into the USSR, a deviation towards Russian chauvinism, and a mistake by Stalin.

But the current attempt by the Estonian government to equate the Russian annexation of their country with the murderous and genocidal occupation by the Nazis carries the terrible risk of normalising and excusing the fascist barbarism, and covering up the role of Estonian Nazi collaborators.

Hope Not hate - part 2

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"Blogger" is being very temperamental with regard to pictures lately. Early attempts to post a picture of this T-shirt converted it to blue (It is also available in blue. Was Blogger giving me fashion advice?), and the previous post about the Hope not Hate campaign refused to accept the picture at all.

Anyway, You can buy it from Philosophy Football here, and a proportion of the profits go to Searchlights campaign against the BNP in the May elections

Hope not Hate

It seems that the BNP are running a record number of candidates in the May elections, with full slates in several local authority areas. The key battle ground will be West Yorkshire, where the BNP will stand in every ward across five councils, and the West Midlands, where the BNP are making a big push in Dudley, Stoke and Sandwell.

The BNP are also standing slates for the Scottish and Welsh regional parliaments, but their weakness in these countries is exposed by the fact they have had to run English candidates to make up the lists, including Staffordshire based West Midlands organiser, Simon Darby, who is standing in Wales. The party even put out an appeal for English people with Scottish sounding names to put themselves forward!

Searchlight’s campaign has got off to a swinging start with an 8 page pull out in the daily Mirror, and a “Hope not Hate” battlebus, touring the country. To find out more about the campaign against the BNP visit http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/

Searchlight continues to provide invaluable intelligence led information against the fascists. For example this month’s issue exposes how Councillor Chris Beverley, the BNP’s only councillor in Leeds and Yorkshire organiser, just attended a fascist conference in Germany, and Sandwell councillor, Ricky Lloyd, has had his pub closed down after refusing to cooperate with the police over shooting incidents and a machete attack in his pub.

As a way of boosting the campaign, and sending a clear message against the facists, why not but a Hope not Hate T-shirt? Available from www.philosophyfootball.com

HOPE NOT HATE 2007 - Brighten up neighbourhoods blighted by the BNP with this beacon of unity. And on the sleeve proudly wear your principles of 'Hope not Hate'.

SPECIAL LOW PRICE - JUST £12.99 with profits helping to fund Searchlight local campaigns against the fascists.

Shirt available in yellow or sky blue, sizes small (36inch chest/90cms), medium (40inch/100cms), large (44 inch/110cms), X-large (48 inch/120cms) and XX-large (52inch/130cms).

The Daily Mirror backs HOPE not hate campaign

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Buy today's Daily Mirror!

Searchlight today announced that the Daily Mirror is supporting the HOPE not Hate campaign. Today's edition carries an 8pp supplement celebrating modern diverse Britain and opposing the politics of hate.

On Saturday a HOPE not Hate bus, organised by Searchlight and the Daily Mirror, will begin a 14-day journey across the country. It will start in Dagenham on Saturday morning and end in Glasgow on Friday 6 April. Along the route we shall be joined by national celebrities and visit local community groups at the forefront of offering a positive alternative to the BNP. Click here to see the route map.

The campaign is being backed by X-Factor winner Leona Lewis, boxer Amir Khan and The Apprentice's Alan Sugar.

Jon Cruddas, MP for Dagenham and joint secretary of the Anti-Fascist Fortnight steering committee, told Searchlight: "This is really exciting news. The support of the Daily Mirror takes our campaign onto a new level. I would urge everyone to get involved."

HOPE not Hate literature
Searchlight has produced a range of HOPE not Hate literature which local groups and unions can distribute. These include newspapers, leaflets, postcards, posters, balloons and badges. View the merchandise here.

Anti-Fascist Fortnight
Over the next two weeks there will be anti-BNP activities across the country. It is really important that we translate opposition to the racist views of the BNP to positive action. If we are going to prevent the BNP from winning council seats then we need to get anti-BNP literature out through doors. Please do you best to spare some time to help out. You can view the activities here.

£8,000 to defeat the BNP: Please support Searchlight
Searchlight still needs to raise £8,000 to fund its campaign. Every penny raised will go straight to our campaign fund. The more money we raise, the more we can do. The more we can do, the more we can stop the BNP. The more we can stop the BNP, the better life will be. It's that simple.

We would like to thank those who have already given generously and we would urge others, especially those who are unable to attend our activities, to support the campaign through a donation.
To dontate to the campaig click here
You can download a fundraising leaflet here
TOGETHER WE CAN BEAT THE BNP

Commemorate those who fought fascism.

Philosophy Football have just produced this excellent T-shirt to commemorate the comrades of the British battalion of the International brigade.

Seventy years ago this week the British battalion fought in their first battle at Jarama. Volunteers from the British Isles totalled 2,300, of whom 525 died in Spain.

The 16th British Battalion was formed in December 1936 from new arrivals plus veterans of the battle for Madrid. It comprised volunteers from Britain, Ireland and from various Commonwealth countries and beyond.


The battalion was formally integrated into the Spanish Republican Army in January 1937 as part of the 15th International Brigade, itself part of the 35th Division. Initially it was named the Saklatvala battalion, after the Indian Communist MP for Battersea, but the name never caught on and it was known in Spain as ‘el batallón ingles’. From November 1937, following a reorganisation of the Republican Army the British Battalion became the 57th Battalion. It was withdrawn in October 1938.

The anniversary T-shirt features a superb reproduction of the British Battalion's original banner, the slogan reads 'Freedom, Democracy, Peace' with battle honours listed including Jarama, Brunete and Ebro.

No Pasaran - remember our war heroes

Philosophy Football have organised a celebration to mark the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of Jarama, the first major engagement of the British section of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

FRIDAY 16 FEBRUARY 'No Pasaran: A Night of Protest Song, Verse and Film'

The night begins with a specially commissioned film mixing rarely seen archive film footage with interviews of surviving international brigaders. The film has been put together by Simon Green of www.eventful.org.uk

Attending the event will be Jack Jones, political commisar of the British Battalion's Number One 'Major Attlee' Company and Sam Lesser who was one of the first British volunteers to join the International Brigade, serving in the October 1936 defence of Madrid, and involved in propaganda work in Barcelona after being wounded at Lopera in 1937.The brigaders will be introduced by Jim Jump, trustee of the International Brigade Memorial Trust.

Poets Mike Rosen, Andy Croft and Lemn Sissay will be reading both from their own work and the poetry of International Brigders compiled in the superb collection recently published by Lawrence & Wishart, 'Poems from Spain'.

And closing this most special night folk legend Leon Rosselson, with Robb Johnson and Tracey Curtis play a set of protest songs old, and new. With soundsystem provided by our in-house DJ MelstarsUK: Music

With a late licence and food available another great Friday night out! Presented by Philosophy Football in association with the International Brigade Memorial Trust and supprted by the GMB's 'BNP-Free Zone' campaign. Starts 7pm at Offside Bar, 271 City Road, London EC1.

Its FREE, continuing Philosphy Football’s commitment to renewing a political culture of dissenting ideas and dangerous entertainment that refuse to be commodified!

BUT advance registration is ESSENTIAL. REGISTER by emailing them at events@philosophyfootball.com with name(s).

Do PLEASE spread the word but advise friends and contacts to register early!

The poster shown is by John Heartfield (a lesser known example of his photomontages) produced in 1937 to mark the first anniversery of the start of the war, for the German socialist publication, Die Volks-Illustrierte (the caption reads "for one year Spain has fought for Peace and Freedom")

Please also note the interesting post by Charlie Pottins of the forthcoming 100th birthday of International Brigader Howard Andrews from Taunton

The Flags of our Fathers

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Clint Eastwood's new film is built around the most iconic image of victorious soldiers raising the flag.

Good idea, perhaps, but he used the wrong picture and the wrong flag! (It is a symptom of our cultural domination by the USA that the equally iconic image of Russian soldiers hoisting the red flag over the rubble of the Reichstag is rarely seen in Britain)

The second world war has taken on a mythic status, as seen in the films of Steven Speilberg, etc. And the generation, like my father, who fought in that war, are regarded as the heroes, the good soldiers who fought in a clearly justifiable war.

But there was more than one war. There was a war to keep the British colonies, and there was a war between the Japanese empire and the British Empire and USA to determine which brutal superpower would dominate Asia. This is the war that Clint Eastwood celebrates.

Let us remember the other flag of our fathers, and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who enlisted to fight in the other war, the war against facism. Many soldiers in the British army who wanted to fight Hitler were diverted by the bosses to serve Britain's own sordid imperial interests in the Far East, but at the same time there WAS a people's war here in Britain - a popular mobilisation that overthrew Mussolini and Hitler. There was a war in Europe against fascism, a just war.

The defeat at Dunkirk had destroyed the authority of the Colonel Blimps and chinless wonders who wanted an unpoliticised "professional" army, and instead for the first time since the Putney debates at the end of the English revolution the British army were involved in democratic debate about war aims, and what they were fighting for. An unoffical soldiers parliament was convened in Cairo, the first act of which was to demand the nationalisation of the land and banks; and every army unit had an official political education programme, and the education officers were often CP members.

It as become fashionable in recent years to twin together Hitler and Stalin as equally terrible tyrants. What a travesty. The Soviet bureucracy was brutal and undemocratic, but they were not fighting to promote racial supremacy and they never created an industrial process to destroy human beings and turn them into lamp shades. Were the crimes of the Soviet bureaucracy worse then the crimes of the British government during its own industrial revolution?

The victory of the Axis forces would have thrown the human race into a dark barbarism beyond our most fevered nightmares. Fascism was halted in the Streets of Stalingrad by the Red Army, and the hundreds of thousands of partisans who harried the fascist armies, in the Ukraine, Belorus, Italy, France and elsewhere. But let us not forget the paradox that for those brief few years Churchill and Roosevelt also fought fascism, and young men from Britain and America were the people's soldiers.

Brilliant Socialist Theatre

Two years ago, Steve Trafford authored the really great play about Maykovsky, “A Cloud in Trousers”. I wrote a review of it at the time, and interveiwed Trafford. The interview is very interesting and worth reading.

It is therefore excellent news that Trafford has translated and adapted the classic Spanish play, “¡Ay Carmela!” by Josè Sanchis Sinisterra into English. It is currently playing in York, and the reviews are good. Writing in the British Theatre Guide, Julie Atkinson says, “Sinisterra's two-hander … presented translator Steve Trafford with a challenge: how to do justice to the author's poetic yet colloquial style. Despite not being a fluent Spanish speaker (he freely admits to using a literal translation, a French translation and Spanish and French dictionaries), Trafford succeeds brilliantly. The ear quickly becomes attuned to picking up his clever but unobtrusive use of alliteration and internal rhymes, yet the dialogue never sounds contrived or self-consciously "poetic" - quite an achievement in a work so strongly influenced by the work of Samuel Beckett and the Latin American tradition of magic realism.
“Elizabeth Mansfield, who co-founded Ensemble with Steve Trafford, is ideally cast as Carmela. As well as giving a wonderfully funny and moving performance she also has a thrilling singing voice which is used to the full in several musical numbers. Robert Pickavance gives a tour de force performance as the harassed Paulino, in comparison with whom Basil Fawlty is positively laid-back. The couple perform their flamenco routine with real panache and their interaction, both "on-stage" and behind the scenes, has the easy familiarity born of long experience. It's easy to believe that these two have been working together for years.”

“¡Ay Carmela!” was filmed in 1991 starring Carmen Maura, and concerns the fate of a Republican theatre troupe who stray behind fascist lines during the Spanish Civil War. They are arrested, and fear a firing squad, but they receive a reprieve from an Italian Fascist commander who loves the theatre. He arranges a performance for his troops, bargaining with the actors that they stage a burlesque mocking the republic in exchange for their freedom.

This theme of the relationship of the individual artist to facsism is of course reminiscent of István Szabó’s brilliant 1981 film, “Mephisto”, but the wider issues of artistic responsibility are also familiar territory for Trafford himself. He was a founder in the 1970’s of the Red Ladder theatre company but now earns his living writing for television. As he says: “We are in a … set of contradictions. Mayakovsky says "All art serves, either as we dream the world can be; or as the world is, contributing to more dust settling on our hopes." You are caught in that trap aren't you? What are you contributing? Attempting through your art to shift and shunt the way in which the world is moving? And artists today I think feel incredibly marginalised by commercial art.”

“A Cloud in Trousers” explored the difficult position of the explosive genius Mayakovsky and his responsibility to continue artistic rebellion even as the walls were closing in on him through Bolshevik conformity. ““¡Ay Carmela!” concerns itself with the closely related dilemma of whether artists should stay true to their beliefs or should bow to pressure and allow their talents to be used to serve reactionary goals.

These are serious questions, Trafford is a brilliant playwright, and the Ensemble company, including the extremely talented Elizabeth Mansfield, are performers of rare ability. It is a joy to see such first class socialist theatre being performed. Make sure you go and support this play.

“¡Ay Carmela!” is showing in York till 30th September, then Darlington, Bolton, Leicester, Farnham, Tunbridge Wells, Frome, Chipping Norton, Beetham, Shepperton, Taunton, Halesworth, London Shaw Theatre (7 to 18 November), Cardiff and Cheltenham.

Worth adding for those in London; The tour will include a gala evening on November 7th, at the start of the London run at the Shaw Theatre, in association with the International Brigade Memorial Trust, celebrating the heroism of men and women from all over the world who volunteered their lives in the fight against fascism.

Make Your Front Popular

Those nice people at Philosophy Football have produced a series of T-shirts to commemorate the Spanish Civil War.

As Mark Perryman says: “We've tried to break with all the sectarian nonsense around this period, whatever our views of the communists or anarchists these were men and women who gave their lives in the fight against fascism so the entire memory should be respected. We're hoping to raise some dosh for the International Brigade Memorial Trust.”

I think Mark is completely correct here. I recently watched that Ken Loach film “Land and Freedom” again and I was a bit weary of the caricature of the CP international brigaders. Not only was it bad history to only show one side of the story, it also reduced the dramatic power. For example the CP are only shown fighting other lefties, there was no hint, for example, of the immense role played by the Russian air force in preventing the fall of Madrid, and the fact that there was real substance to the CP’s argument that only a professionalised army could beat the fascists. In a bizarre twist of history the argument used by Trotsky for a professional army in the Russian Civil War was put forward by the official CP in Spain, while the semi Trotskyists of POUM echoed the position of Stalin’s supporters in the Russian Red Army, that there should be a proletarian militia.

In any event – the civil war was 70 years ago, and much of the historical baggage has simply got to be put to bed.

Philosophy Football have produced these shirts, because in Mark’s own words: “Seventy years ago in 1936 the Spanish Republic were joined by the International Brigade, thousands anti-fascist volunteers from around the world, in the battle for land and freedom. Their foe, Franco and his Fascists were backed by Hitler and Mussolini while the British and other governments shamefully hid behind so-called 'Non aggression' to starve the Republicans of supplies and munitions. The battle cry of the Republic was No Pasaran , 'They shall not pass', the heroism, solidarity and sacrifice in the face of Franco's overwhelming force has inspired anti-fascists ever since.”

The four shirts depict different forces united in Spain's battle. The flag of the Left Party of Catalonia, the Catalonians like the Galicians and Basques recognised the need to unite behind the Republic against Franco. The banner of the Tom Mann Centuria, formed by British volunteers in Barcelona this unit went on to become the basis of the British Battalion of the International Brigade. Tom Mann was a militant trade unionist and founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The banner of the POUM militia, the unit with which George Orwell famously served. And the banner of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-FAI, critics of the Popular Front government but allies in the fight against fascism.

Apparently sales have been going very well, and people have been buying combinations of shirts in an encouragingly non-sectarian way. Although I am pleased to report that the Tom Mann shirt is the most popular!

Come and See

Someone once told me, and I found it true, that you don’t really know what love is until you have children. Similarly I don’t think I ever really hated the fascists until I saw “Come and See”.

Last night we showed this Russian war film at our regular socialist film night in Swindon, there were 15 people there including officials from the T&G and GMB, and members of the Unison branch committee. The 1985 movie follows a young and simple peasant boy through leaving his family to join the red army partisans, separated from them he passes through the circles of hell, as he experiences and witnesses the bestial degeneracy of the Nazi occupiers.

The film has been described as a Russian “Apocalypse Now”, but that is a lazy comparison. The surrealism of “Apocalypse Now” was quite studied and literary, whereas the dream like quality of “Come and See” derives only from the difficulty we have of believing what we are seeing. In any event the narrative structure of portraying war as a charnel house run by madmen, and viewed through the eyes of a simpleton witness owes nothing to Hollywood, and was first used in European literature in the 17th Century in Grimmelhausen’s deeply disturbing “Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch“ (rarely read in English, but well worth it, usually translated as “Simplex Simplicissimus”) and his slightly later “Ausführliche und wunderseltzame Lebensbeschreibung der Ertzbetrügerin und Landstörtzerin Courasche“ (Mother Courage).

Normally war films, even those that portray atrocities, present them in such a familiar format, that we are habituated to war, and blase to the violence. To a certain degree this was even true of “Shindler’s List”, where the conventionality of the story and the Hollywood sentimentality stood as a barrier from the audience really being traumatised. The remarkable achievement of Elem Klimov’s film is that there is no sentiment, indeed there is hardly any character development, we do not identify with the simple boy because we are manipulated to thinking he is like us, but only because he is a human being.

We all know that the Nazis burned whole villages, women and children in barns, over 600 massacres in Belarus alone, but only in this film are you in the barn. We all know that the Nazi Einsatzgruppen were cruel murderers, but in this film we see (all too believably) both the Bacchanalian sensuality of the carnage, but also the detachment that it was only a job, and one they believed ideologically necessary.

But neither is the film inaccessible or boring. It has a slow start, but the tempo accelerates throughout the film, and it is thoroughly spellbinding.

To return once more to the “Apocalypse Now” comparison, in that film (following the theme in Conrad’s book) the Kurtz character finds the horror of what he is capable of by leaving civilisation behind. This is a fundamentally racist account of colonialism, whereas in “Come and See”, as the Einstazgruppe rounds up the families and children for slaughter, they are playing a propaganda recording to the Russians that they will be transported to Germany, which is a civilised country where everyone has a toothbrush. The barbarism of war is a barbarism not derived from our primitive past, but the dark underside of our own society.

Today the killing fields are not in Belarus but in Iraq and Lebanon. Neither the Americans nor the Israelis are politically comparable to Hitler's Nazis, but war has its own logic.

Racism and Fascism in France

There's a disturbing report of political opinion in France being carried by Doug Ireland's excellent US-based blog Direland - even after the triumph of the student and worker struggles against the CPE - headlined as 'FRANCE: ONE-THIRD IDENTIFY WITH NEO-FASCIST RIGHT IN NEW POLL' based on an IFOP poll in the Metro newspaper.

Immigration and crime are the key issues and indicate a predictable 'heightened climate of racism in France since last fall's ghetto riots' and '[t]he resurgence of that violence on the margins of the two successful nation-wide general strikes against a reactionary youth labor contract last month -- even though that much-televised disorder was mostly generated by only a few hundred ghetto youths out of millions of peaceful demonstrators -- also contributed to the increase in security hysteria and anti-immigrant sentiments this new poll' .