This weekend I’ll mostly be listening to… Robert Wyatt December 18, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, The Left, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....10 comments
Another very welcome guest This weekend I’ll mostly be listening to…from anarchaeologist…
After the party is / over my friend, / there will be nothing you can / put your finger on. / Just a parasol.
‘CP Jeebies’, Dondestan (1991).
Robert Wyatt’s music has… well, a reputation for being difficult. Google ‘Wyatting’ and you’ll see what I mean. I’d imagine this is a perception related to an understandable aversion to any type of music which throws together ‘jazz’ and ‘rock’ and indeed having forced myself to listen to the several Soft Machine lps for the purposes of this post, I have to admit that some popular prejudices are indeed founded on a fundamental truth. An innovative jazz drummer in his own right, Wyatt was the lynchpin of the Canterbury Scene, a quintessentially English, proto-prog movement which brought us the Soft Machine as well as Caravan, Camel and, err… Gong. The 1973 fall from a third floor window, leaving him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, forced a realisation that he’d never tap a hi-hat or a bass drum pedal again. This has pushed him towards other highly idiosyncratic approaches to making music, most (but not all) of which bears repeated listening. His solo career, though undeniably well within the parameters of the avant garde, has nonetheless produced tunes I come back to again and again.
But this is a leftie blog and Wyatt was/is an avowed communist (as was evident on the cover art of Matching Mole’s 1972 lp Little Red Record). In the absence of convenient information elsewhere, I wondered how easy (or not) it would be to chart the progression of his music (however crassly) over what must have been a challenging period for anyone holding such an ideologically staunch line. Moreover, as Wyatt has just released his 14th lp (not forgetting various compilations and a bagful of eps, his favourite format), it’s perhaps instructive to ask to what extent he has continued to keep the faith.
Wyatt’s communism was incubated by his wife Alfreda Benge, an artist who’d worked in the film industry and especially with the more cutting edge English directors such as Nic Roeg. Having being ejected from the Soft Machine (apparently on account of his vocals), Wyatt now penned his second solo lp off the Don’t Look Now set in Venice. His subsequent accident forced a temporary break from the music scene and he was offered ‘rehabilitation’ in a local factory painting chess sets. Benge however wasn’t having any of it. As a communist she refused to collude with such blatant exploitation for slave wages and in any case, she’d married a musician because they keep civilised hours! As he subsequently noted, Rock Bottom was released on the 21st anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks which had sparked the Cuban revolution. ‘Sea Song’, the first track, is sublime. A recent cover by the Unthanks is also worth checking out.
At least I won’t be shot for singing
I’m a free agent, I can “protest”!
This must be freedom, I must be happy…
‘Born Again Cretin’, Nothing Can Stop Us (1982)
Wyatt first registered on my cultural radar when he appeared on the Old Grey Whistle Test in ’82, singing what’s perhaps his best known recording ‘Shipbuilding’, a song penned by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer specifically for Wyatt’s frail, high-timbered and delicate voice. ‘Shipbuilding’ dealt with the social consequences of the Malvinas War and was a huge indie hit on its Rough Trade release. The Whistle Test performance was remarkable on a number of levels; for me however Wyatt’s appropriation of Che’s beard, beret and military shirt contrasted with his static confinement to his wheelchair, centre stage. This threw up a juxtaposition of strength and weakness adding to the poignancy of the lyrics and the delivery, one perhaps suggestive of a grander narrative of freedoms curtailed. The band also preformed another song, ‘Born Again Cretin’ where again a remarkable vocal performance conjured up images of Mandela in prison with the ‘freedom’ experienced by those of us outside the walls.
Wyatt had famously appeared on Top of the Pops in ’74, covering ‘I’m A Believer’, the old Monkees’ hit, and had fought with the producers to allow him use his wheelchair rather than a comfy chair which might have saved the viewers’ embarrassment at being confronted by a handicapped hippy crooning from the box of a Thursday teatime. Wyatt won out but it took some nifty camera work to avoid shooting his toes, which weren’t tapping.
While Martin J. and Robert M. play with printer’s ink
The workers ’round the world still die for Rio Tinto Zinc
‘The Age of Self’, Old Rottenhat (1986)
Wyatt’s contract with Virgin had forced him into recording several singles and in 1980 he had made his own a cover of a Chic song, ‘At Last I Am Free’ (reprised on his latest lp For the Ghosts Within). Again, the very idea of a paraplegic recording a track by such disco stalwarts was a revolutionary undertaking, one which questioned attitudes to the ‘disabled’ as much as it forced a rethink of my own musical prejudices formed at the high altar of punk rock. By this stage however my own political education was developing as I groped myopically towards a visceral understanding of ‘freedom’, surely a central tenet of Wyatt’s music. I was suitably intrigued to learn that he carried the card of the CPGB, an organisation which in the early ‘80s was in its penultimate stage of fragmentation, torn between the Moscow-aligned traditionalists and the Euro-Communists gathered around Nina Temple and Martin Jacques’ Marxism Today. The progressive wing of the traditionalist tendency (excusing the oxymoron) published Straight Left, and retained a significant influence within the trades unions, the CND, the anti-apartheid movement and what was left of the communist student movement. The group was also influential within the left of the Labour Party, although there were the obvious theoretical differences with the numerically stronger Militant Tendency. The fundamental direction of the Straight Left faction was suggested by its publisher Fergus Nicholson’s nom de plume ‘Harry Steel’, a combination of Harry Pollitt (a former General Secretary who’d been dismissed for his opposition to the Nazi-Soviet pact, to be quickly reinstated after Operation Barbarossa) – and of course Uncle Joe himself. The faction was particularly successful in re-establishing connections with non-reformist CPs in Iraq, Iran and South Africa and was much more focused on the international struggle – and especially the anti-apartheid movement – than the leadership was. It would appear that it was here among the Tankies that Wyatt had, for the time being, hung up his beret.
This however is possibly a convenient simplification on my part. In 1985 Wyatt contextualised himself within the various CP factions as ‘a Morning Star reader’, which then had “the makings of a good, all-round family newspaper: sympathetic to the international labour movement with a pop column, a gardening correspondent and the best tipster in Fleet Street” (interview with Sean O’Hagan, NME, 14 December 1985). Employing the infra-red rays of John Sullivan’s dialectascope, there exists here a contradiction which suggests a less than dogmatic line when it comes to sectional identities. Such leftie sectarianism is however inconsequential and his 1987 recording of Charlie Haden’s modern jazz standard ‘Chairman Mao’ is not necessarily indicative of Wyatt’s support for the Cultural Revolution. Wyatt has also spoken of a more personal politicisation from before this time, in particular the fight against apartheid and the influence of Joe Slovo, ‘a giant among men really, a successful communist who saw it through’. In a statement which will annoy those of us who pedantically adhere to leftie terminology, he told the New Statesman back in ’97 that if he were a stick of Blackpool rock, he’ d have ‘Marxist-Leninist’ right through the middle. Wyatt was of course a contemporary of Cornelius Cardew, a fellow traveller in a musical sense, who passes the more stringent test for Marxist-Leninism.
Wyatt has said he was galvanised to join the Party after the death of South African trumpeter Mongezi Feza, who had worked on Rock Bottom and its follow-up Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard, a death Wyatt puts down to neglect engendered by racism. “What I liked about the Communist party,” he told the Guardian (22 September 2003), “was that it was internationalist and opposed to the totalitarian global empire in which we’re enveloped. It was the only party to see things on that scale.” But as he joined, a new generation were about to embark on what Wyatt calls “a practice run for new Labour. So I was in the ludicrous position of joining it as a new member and immediately becoming an anachronism.”
Wyatt’s two most ‘political’ lps, if one can be so reductive, are the 1982 compilation Nothing Can Stop Us and Old Rottenhat (1985). The former mostly comprises covers, including ‘Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’’, originally sung in the ‘40s by the Golden Gate Quartet, an acapella group which presumably had modified its repertoire by the time the House of Un-American Activities began to focus on the international communist conspiracy. Wyatt also covered Lewis Allen’s ‘Strange Fruit’, the Billie Holiday standard and the ‘Red Flag’, a song presumably known to most of us at the CLR. The last two tracks aren’t preformed by Wyatt at all: ‘Trade Union’ by the London-Bengali group Dishari is followed by Peter Blackman’s reading of his own poem ‘Stalingrad’, which he saw as part of the ‘same struggle of people everywhere, in Vietnam, in Africa, in the face of Regan’s threatened holocaust’. Wyatt later said of the collection “each song was chosen on quite a consistent basis, all part of a conscious attempt to make un-misuable music: music that couldn’t be appropriated by the Right… I was pushed into this by an alarming occurrence: I was fiddling around on the short wave radio when I heard one of my old songs being played on one of those Western propaganda programmes – The Voice Of America or Radio Free Europe. Blow me, I thought, I don’t want my music used in this way. So, I consciously set out to make records where the ambiguity was removed, records that would have to be rejected by anyone promoting Western culture. Now I make sure I always put a spanner in the works’ (NME, 14 December 1985).
Everyone needs to feel at home / nobody wind who fights alone
‘Amber and the Amberines’, Work in Progress (1984)
An ep, Work in Progress, released in 1984 covered Peter Gabriel’s paean to Steve Biko (indeed a vastly superior version, another song Wyatt makes his own) along with a Wyatt/Hugh Hopper composition ‘Amber and the Amberines’. Wyatt, Benge, her elderly mother and their pregnant dog were the first protestors to gather outside the American embassy after the US invasion of Grenada on 25 October 1983. A few weeks previously US marines had conducted a military exercise code-named Amber and the Amberines, an obvious rehearsal for what was to come. Wyatt continued to support liberation struggles in Latin America and even became proficient in Spanish, although as he said himself this compensated somewhat for his ‘Englishness’, a state of being that has continuously exercised the singer over the years. Where events further afield influenced his recordings, the miners’ strike closer to home gave some focus to his increasingly rare live performances although his signing-up to the 1985 Red Wedge initiative raised a few eyebrows among the harder left.
Prior to the release of Old Rottenhat that year, Wyatt’s music had always been a collaborative effort and where old stalwarts of the prog scene (and the odd member of Pink Floyd) had helped out on Rock Bottom and his various single releases in the ‘70s, he returned the favour, working with Brian Eno among others, most notably on Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (1974 – surely this has to be the first British New Wave lp?) and on Music For Airports (1978). His fruitful relationship with Rough Trade contrasted with the treatment he received from hippy capitalist Richard Branson’s Virgin Records, which had released most of his ‘70s output. Rough Trade was a more comfortable home for his music and his politics and Wyatt’s presence there opened his music to another generation. Wyatt was now also appearing on releases by The Raincoats (Oddyshape 1981), Ben Watt (Summer into Winter ep 1981) and Scritti Politti (Songs to Remember 1982), the latter both former members of the youth wing of the CP. He also sang with Tracy Thorn on the Working Week single ‘Venceremos’ and contributed to the SWAPO Singers ‘Wind of Change’ single in ’85. More recently, he’s cropped up on Ultramine’s United Kingdoms [see here - WBS] to produce ’the most unlikely but exhilarating fusion of nineties’ drum patterns with forgotten Victorian protest songs’.
We get so out of touch / words take the place of meaning
‘Gharbzadegi’, Old Rottenhat (1986)
Old Rottenhat was a completely solo effort – a first for Wyatt – and was dedicated to Michael Bettany, the MI5 operative convicted in 1984 for handing secret material over to the Soviets. Musically jazz influences predominate although the free jazz of Ornette Coleman so evident on his earlier works was supplanted by a slower, more considered aesthetic. Think keyboards, muted horn, exquisite percussion and Wyatt’s ever-distinctive voice. Lyrically, it’s among the most accessible of any of his recordings, the album pinned around ‘The Age of Self’ which makes an observation as true today as it was 25 years ago (And it seems to me if we forget / Our roots and where we stand / The movement will disintegrate / Like castles built on sand). Underlying the songs is an examination of class politics (You say you’re self-sufficient / (but you don’t dig your own coal) on ‘Alliance’), the relationship between contemporary colonialism and the arms industry. Moreover, running through the album is an idea of displacement, whether that of the stateless refugee or Wyatt’s own discomfiture as a middle class communist working in that most capitalist and exploitative of industries. Surprisingly commercial, it got the thumbs down from the critics with Robert Christgau’s review particularly stinging: “Don’t deploy a slur like ‘aryan’ anachronistically or attribute a phrase of Harold Rosenberg’s to Noam Chomsky. Don’t insult the genocide in East Timor with minimalist obscurantism. Don’t preach to the converted until you’ve made more converts”. Not that Wyatt would’ve given a shit.
I realised my fists were clenched / I stretched my fingers to relax
‘Heaps of Sheeps’, Shleep (1997)
The collapse of state socialism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is perhaps tackled tangentially on Dondestan (1991), an album which saw Wyatt collaborate with old friends Hugh Hopper and Phil Manzanera, with half of the lyrics written by Benge, who’s done the artwork for all of his releases. Musically ‘difficult’, it was nonetheless critically acclaimed (as has all of his subsequent work), the title a reference to those displaced or dispossessed by global capitalism. For our purposes the opening track ‘CP Jeebies’ perhaps articulates a cynicism towards the leftie sectarianism we’re all too familiar with:
Picture the Scene.
“Hello, how are you?”
“Well I’m a green and yellow
Pinky blue.”
Dead alternative.
“Oh then, please step right in
to our nursery.
Just pick a group
that you can relate to,
now the grown-ups have gone.”
Dondestan was followed by a long silence as Wyatt struggled with depression (‘hibernat[ing] in winter of our discotheque’), eventually releasing Shleep in ’97, again a collaborative effort with among others, Paul Weller, Eno and Manzanera. Cuckooland (2003) was followed by Comicopera (2007), which Wyatt pronounced ‘Commie Copera’, both more in the jazzy vein with lyrical meditations on the Gulf War, the conflict in Iraq and Palestine and the persecution of the Roma and other minorities. Looser Latin and African influences began to soak in to the music; however on renewed listening to his back catalogue, they were always there. Here Wyatt covers a song ‘Del Mondo’ by Italian post-punks CCCP, whose moniker unambiguously suggests their political line with little in the way of post-modern irony. Which, I suppose, brings us back to the question I posed in the second paragraph above.
If Wyatt’s politics have been identified with his adherence to unreconstructed Stalinism of the ’80, his lyrical sensibilities have in recent years taken on a more humanist line, one however that’s staunchly anti-war and one which questions his own country’s complicity in supporting American foreign policy. His Stalinist past was broached in a recent interview with a Polish website where he accepted his Benge in-laws displeasure with his politics. His response (excusing my translation) was unapologetic: “I am surprised that anyone in Eastern Europe would want to listen to my music, in fact anyone who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain should immediately throw my records into the bin! I’ve never apologised about supporting the Party. Why? Because here in the islands, we observed the colonization process in the new countries of the former British Empire. The reasons [for supporting the Party] were always there. This could be the struggle against apartheid, or the tyranny of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. The British Communist Party was the only one who protested against this, and as far as I know, no one was ever killed or persecuted [by the CPGB]. The CP fought against racism brought on by this rising neo-colonialism. Communism was the only alternative to American imperialism… What drove us to despair was that people in the East, so very thirsty for freedom, were always ready to accept the intervention of the United States, which after all had behaved so badly in Indonesia, the Philippines and in South America. Anyway, now Polish soldiers are being killed in Iraq”.
Hmmm… In any event, Wyatt’s identification with those outside the hegemonic power structures continues unabated as does his insistence in making music his own way, irrespective of commercial considerations. If you’ve got a Santy in your life, ask him/her for the 5 cd box set eps by Robert Wyatt. Otherwise get Nothing Can Stop Us or Old Rottenhat (all recently re-released on Domino). For the Ghosts Within came out in the autumn and will appeal more to the jazz fan in you.
Sea Song
Shipbuilding
Born Again Cretin
At Last I Am Free
Venceremos (Working Week)
Amber and the Amberines
Biko
The Age of Self
Alliance
Gharbzadegi
CP Jeebies
Heaps of Sheeps
Brian Hanley: The IRA – A Documentary History 1916 – 2005, redux December 18, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, The Left.5 comments
I’d said I’d give a bit more detail on this book because I think it’s well worth more than a cursory examination. I mentioned I was fairly envious of it, which remains the case. It’s the sort of production, 230 odd pages in full colour throughout with lavish colour reproductions of an array of photographs and documents that would suit any archival source.
I also mentioned before that in that respect it fits neatly into a new, and very welcome, approach to history where rather than simple transcripts of texts we are now offered their physicality. There’s something particularly intriguing seeing a poorly typewritten set of notes from one meeting or another which gives at least some sense of place and time.
There’s also the interplay between those more covert documents and the more public manifestation of political groups. Page 135 has a reproduction of a 1957 copy of the United Irishman American Edition. American edition? I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing. And it’s small details like that which this book is particularly useful for.
The book follows a chronological sequencing in seven chapters starting with the War of Independence and engaging with the Civil War, the ‘Legion of the Rearguard’, the ‘Twilight Years’, ‘Towards Operation Harvest’, ‘A New Revolution and ‘From War to Peace’.
Within each chapter developments are dealt with in chronological order which is convenient. There is a main text and then shorter subsections which are used to illuminate individual images, as with ‘Support the Provisionals’ on page 173 which has a photograph of a PIRA member in the Bogside beside a mural with that slogan upon it and some text detailing the weaponry of the Provisional IRA. And the internal documentation is equally fascinating. For example, there are a number of pages given over to the minutes of the Official IRA Convention, 1972. As the text notes:
The Official IRA met in convention on October 22 1972, facing serious problems. The ceasefire declared in May remained in place but was under pressure, with several OIRA members killed in the previous few months. Cathal Goulding explained the thinking behind the Aldershot bombing and assassination attempt on Unionist MP John Taylor as ‘prestige type operations’, while Seamus Costello outlined how the Officials had taken £70,000 in robberies over the past two years. A total of £22,378 had been spent on arms but in some areas supplied had been depleted by British Army raids or by losses to the Provisionals…
There’s considerably more in that subsection but that is indicative of the amount of detail to be gleaned from it. I don’t think that the analysis contained in the book, which is essentially descriptive, will surprise anyone reading it. But in some respects it is surprisingly in-depth with a wealth of information that describes the rather more circuitous history of the IRA(s) over the past eight or so decades. And the linkage to the broader history of the island is useful.
For me one of the more striking aspects of the text was that areas which I had less familiarity with, for example the 1940s prove to be as interesting in their own way as earlier or later phases. Take the following referring to the 1940s ‘Northern Campaign’ from p.110.
…in February 1940, and IRA raid netted 30 rifles from the British Army’s Ballykinlar Camp in Co. Down. On Christmas Day of that year, 120 prisoners rioted in Derry Jail: in March 1943 a total of 21 men managed to tunnel out of the same prison (18 were recaptured in Donegal and interned in the Curragh). In 1942, an IRA Northern Command, under Hugh McAteer, was established to begin a campaign. McAteer was captured that year but in January 1943, along with Jimmy Steele, Paddy Donnelly and Edward Maguire, he escaped from Crumlin Road. At Easter 1943, the IRA took over the Broadway Cinema on the Falls Road and McAteer appeared and read out the organisation’s Easter statement.
To a certain extent one can see evidence there of an organisation in decline, with a curious half-life stuck between the occasional armed action and fending off the state on both sides of the Border. Indeed as Hanley notes about the later case of the execution of Thomas Williams who at 19 years of age was hanged for the murder of an RUC constable in 1942:
The case highlighted the Irish government’s differing attitude to IRA activities on either side of the Border. the press in the South was forbidden by the government censor form referring to Constable Murphy’s death as ‘murder’; but they were ordered to use the term ‘murder’ when reporting the deaths of gardaí in similar incidents. Williams’ co-defendants (who included Joe Cahill) were released in 1949. In January 2000, after a long campaign, Williams’ body was reinterred at Milltown Cemetary in Belfast.
The picture becomes more mixed in the 1960s, particularly the rupture of the movement into two competing groups at the end of that decade. The material from both formations is treated sequentially rather than in parallel. So one will read in Chapter 7 about the Provisional IRA, then the Official IRA, then back to PIRA and then a short section on the INLA.
There are some gaps. The Provisional IRA and other groups doesn’t have the same degree of internal documentation as previous incarnations of the IRA, and though this is hardly a surprise it does present some challenges. That said at that point the text leans more heavily on published materials such as leaflets and periodicals. That certainly works, but one can only look forward to future editions, and indeed other books, that will deal with any material like that that comes into the public domain. There are some other intriguing aspects. Despite formations such as the Real IRA and Continuity IRA now having been extant for over a decade there are no documents reproduced from either of them or from associated political groups. But as the Introduction notes:
This book is not a definitive history of the IRA, nor a complete study of it in any era.
And that instead it asks the question…
… what did the IRA actually say at various stages of its history? How were its arguments presented to members and supporters and did its key positions change over time?
This last question is central. Because beyond word of mouth the documents and publications in this book were the primary channel of communication with those who provided support and sustenance for these organisations.
What one comes away with most strongly is the sense of how active Republicanism, of whatever form, has been in terms of discussion, publications, and so forth across the 20th century, and on into the 21st.
Another review can be found here.
Bankers fleecing us? Markets out of control? Call in… er… Motörhead! December 17, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Economy.23 comments
Motörhead’s latest album, The World is Yours was released in the last week or so. As you’ll gather I keep my eye on these matters.
It’s a speedy little concoction which is no mean achievement after decades of output, with a hint of the Pistols in the riff, but imagine my surprise when I went to check out the video to new single… Get Back in Line.
Some might find the text on the cards thrown on the table at 0.39 interesting.
Top marks for references to unions and anti-banker sentiment (Perhaps deduct a few for the slightly dodgy sexual politics at the end…), and gaze in awe at how ver Motörhead continue on after all these decades.
That election date. How about never? How does never suit you? December 17, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.28 comments
Every week we get further musings on the issue and the timeline lengthens.
Fianna Fáil Galway West TD Frank Fahey has said he believes a general election is “unlikely” before April or May of next year.
Mr Fahey made his comments following the publication today of The Irish Times /Ipsos MRBI poll, which showed support for Fianna Fáil at a record low of 17 per cent.
Speaking on RnaG’s Athmhaidin morning programme this morning, Mr Fahey said his party was “worried” about the result.
Note the following…
Speaking on RnaG’s Athmhaidin morning programme this morning, Mr Fahey said his party was “worried” about the result.
He described the poll result as “bad news” for his party, saying it would only translate into about 30 seats if the election was held today.
Mr Fahey said he believed a general election would not be held until April or May, however, and insisted the Government has to proceed with implementation of the budget and the four year-plan.
Really? Now the ‘implementation’ of the Budget and four year-plan are part of the process. On that basis there’s no reason for the Government to go for quite some time yet.
Okay, on a constitutional level there’s a certain logic to his point. There’s no requirement for the Government to go to the polls before May 2012 (and there’s even a provision in extremis to allow for 7 year Dáil terms – oh bliss).
But the practical aspects of the matter make this unlikely. The Green Party are going to have to walk sooner rather than later. And when they do, although they could give external support to a minority FF administration, the chances are that the Government will be forced to concede defeat fairly rapidly.
But Fahey’s thoughts are instructive if only for an insight into the mindset of many FF TDs currently.
Which means that that the date of the GP’s departure is acquiring a particular significance. Expect the spotlight to shift back to them soon enough. And on the Green Party, look at this rationale… poor shell-shocked Green Party, horrified by the arrival of the IMF. But no problem, Frank’s filled with sympathy.
Commenting on the Green Party’s view that a poll should be held in January, Mr Fahey said: “I hope they look at where we are now”.
He said their difficulty was with the arrival of IMF. “Everyone had a difficulty that night,” Mr Fahey said.
“We are now proceeding with the budget and the four-year plan. Agreement has been reached with the IMF and EU, and from now on I believe things will improve month-on-month”, the Galway West TD insisted.
Yes. Yes he does.
This Week at The Irish Election Literature Blog December 17, 2010
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Irish Election Literature Blog.1 comment so far
A broad selection of material from the Left this week…..
Starting with two of a series of Christmas cards produced in 1984 by Rhymney Valley Miners Support Group during the Miners Strike in Britain.
On then to the 1991 Local Elections with a letter to residents concerning Blessington Basin from Mike Jennings of The Workers Party.
From 1995 “Banning umbrellas does not stop rain. Banning divorce does not stop marital breakdown” and other Yes to Divorce Ads
From 2003 a flyer from the Dublin Anti Bin Tax Campaign
A Leaflet for Paul Dale of the Socialist Party from the 2005 Local Elections in Enniskillen
The Winter 2010 People Before Profit Dun Laoghaire Newsletter.
and finally a series of old Posters (poor quality I’m afraid) from The Young Socialists, Militant and The Labour and Trade Union Group.
and finally finally A Democratic Left Leaflet from the 1992 Abortion Referendum
Willie O’Dea is OK (on the video) December 17, 2010
Posted by Tomboktu in Art, Class, Music, Reaction, Society.10 comments
I don’t listen to Joe Duffy, but Panti blogged about yesterday’s programme where the Rubberbandits’ Christmas video was the topic of discussion. Interesting to hear Willie O’Dea making sense and one of the indignant caller having their lack of understanding of art exposed, and by somebody with a broad working class Limerick accent to boot.
24 minutes into this Joe Duffy show, some of the up-on-their-high-horse set get ripped apart by somebody with a broad Limerick accent.
Rubberbandit: “Somebody needs to give that man a dictionary and he needs to look up the word ‘irony’”
and later …
Indignant caller: “I don’t watch MTV like Martin Scorcese”.
Rubberbandit: “Then, man, you’ve no business looking at art [...] We don’t create music for people like you who are going to interpret something literally. [...] It’s about metaphor, it’s about art, it’s about different viewpoints creating the meaning. Do you know what I mean?”
Indignant caller: “Absolutely not. Why would I as an individual who would watch that video once and listen to that track once come away with all that? That’s rubbish. [...] What’s coming out of that video is the usage and promotion of drugs. It’s a joke.”
Rubberbandit: “It is a joke, yeah. You’re hitting the nail on the head there, kid.”
And the offending video:
Responses to Stormont draft Budget… December 16, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, Northern Ireland, The Left.14 comments
Any responses from political parties/others to the draft Budget agreed at Stormont can go here. All welcome.
We start with éirígí who argue that:
If the political parties at Stormont, particularly those who claim to be left-wing, are genuinely opposed to the cuts being demanded by the British government, they should refuse to administer them and join the rest of us on the streets in a campaign of resistance.
“A failure to let the British government do its own dirty work and, worse, deciding where best to implement the cuts can only lead working people to conclude that what has happened over the last number of weeks at Stormont has been nothing but meaningless posturing.
“Despite the spin being put on Stormont’s draft budget, it is clear that the Six County executive has totally failed to challenge the British government assault on working class communities and on the most vulnerable in our society.
Send more and we’ll link to them in this post.
Here is the response from the Socialist Party:
Assembly Parties agree on CUTS CUTS CUTS
Join the Socialist Opposition
The cuts are coming – and the parties in the Assembly are not standing in their way – they have agreed that they will implement them, not oppose them. One after another, all the parties in the Assembly Executive are queueing up to identify where cuts can be made – cut education spending, privatise the Housing Executive, close hospitals, sell off Belfast Harbour, increase household rates for ordinary workers, cut civil service workers pay, introduce water charges…
None of the parties are prepared to stand up to the cuts agenda and demand that those who are responsible for the economic crisis – the wealthy stock market speculators, the billionaire bankers, bosses and capitalists – pay for their crisis. It is workers who are taking all the pain. 230 workers at the Bank of Ireland in the North are to be sacked yet Bank of Ireland chief executive Brian Goggin was paid over €3million last year, after receiving a massive bail-out!
The scale of the cuts will destroy at least 50,000 jobs in Northern Ireland – in both the public and private sector. £1billion will be taken out of the economy in the form of cuts to benefits alone. The cuts will hit the poorest households the most, but the richest are not feeling anything. All the parties in the Assembly are in favour of cutting tax on big business and are prepared to make extra cuts to public services in order to do so. There has been no hint from any of the politicians of making big business pay their rates in full. Big companies in Northern Ireland only pay one-third of what they should in rates. Workers are subsidising big business millions in unpaid rates, yet if we cannot find the money to pay our rates we are thrown in front of a judge!
Full Workers’ Party response to the draft budget available here
Under the terms of the Stormont Budget and that of the Con-Dems, at the very least there will be massive cuts in education, Belfast Harbour will be sold off, hospitals will close and welfare provision will become more draconian. As noted in the Irish News (16th December), the Budget is predicated on Stormont earning £540 million from the sale of public assets and this figure relies on a wildly optimistic expectation of future property prices. When this sell-off doesn’t work, the Sinn Fein/DUP Stormont Coalition will doubtlessly introduce even greater austerity cutbacks and levies.
But even as it stands, for thousands of workers this Budget will mean disaster. The pay freeze for the 12,000 civil servants under Stormont control and who earn over £21,000 is a clear attack on working class civil servants and their families and localities. In the UK as a whole 4,000 public sector managers get paid £117,000 a year or more. A pay freeze for this group of people might mean a few belt-tightening exercises but will hardly prove disastrous. For those workers earning in and around £21,000 a pay freeze will mean that they and their families will go without basic goods and services. More generally, the 29% of our people who earn less than £300 per week will be disastrously affected by cutbacks in public sector provision, while for the 25% earning £800 and above cutbacks will hardly affect them at all. Moreover, as unemployment in the public sector and related sectors increases, the number of unemployed workers will increase by the thousands. This is the class reality of the society in which these thatcherite policies will be put in place.
Sinn Fein must take special blame for agreeing on this budget. For all its talk of the necessity of spending our way out of recession, in this Draft Budget Sinn Fein has totally accepted the neo-liberal Con-Dem agenda. The Budget they signed up to affirms that “the challenge for the Northern Ireland Executive [...] is to both rebuild the economy in the aftermath of the recession and to rebalance it towards the private sector in the context of the constrained public expenditure position” (2.30) and Chapter 3 of the document sets out the background to the UK deficit in terms that entirely reflect the Con-Dem austerity agenda, with its talk of “reducing welfare costs and wasteful public spending” (3.6) . Following the public consultation “a draft Economic Strategy will be developed and this will also reflect the outcome of the UK Coalition Government Paper on rebalancing the Northern Ireland economy” (2.33). The Workers’ Party, along with the Trades Unions and progressive economists believe that “rebalancing” the economy means a further move away from public provision and the public good, a further growth in inequality as the rich pocket more, and a further attack on the working class. All this depends on the people of Northern Ireland accepting the austerity agenda. Recent protests and actions have shown that many thousands of people will not tolerate it.
Todays Ipsos MRBI Poll and a bit more…. December 16, 2010
Posted by irishelectionliterature in opinion poll.Tags: ireland, Irish Politics, mrbi, opinion polls
22 comments
Off we go again with another poll , this time today’s Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll
The headline figures are
Fianna Fail 17% (-7)
Fine Gael 30% (+6)
Labour 25% (-8)
Sinn Fein 15% (+7)
Green Party 2% (n/c)
Others 11% (+2)
Dotksis Irish Polling report translates that as
Fianna Fail 25
Fine Gael 58
Labour 48
Sinn Fein 23
Green Party 0
Others 12
Whilst Adrian Kavanagh on Politicalreform.ie translates it as
Fianna Fail 26
Fine Gael 58
Labour 46
Sinn Fein 18
Green Party 0
Others 18 (including 6 United Left Alliance/4 other Left wing candidates)
These I assume to be Mick Barry, Maureen O’Sullivan, Clare Daly, Finian McGrath, Joan Collins, Joe Higgins, Richard Boyd-Barrett,Catherine Connolly ,Catherine Murphy and Seamus Healy.
The last Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll was in September so this poll has confirmed what we’ve seen in recent Red C polls with Fianna Fails decline, Fine Gael being the largest party, Labour slipping slightly and of course Sinn Feins dramatic rise.
So Does this poll really tell us anything new compared to those recent Red C ones?
It does on a number of counts, it confirms that Sinn Feins surge wasn’t just due to the publicity gained by the announcement of Gerry Adams Louth candidacy and Pearse Dohertys by-Election victory. Although Dohertys performance since he entered the Dail has surely benefitted the party. To see Sinn Fein being projected to win 23 seats is something we haven’t seen before, even in the heydays of the Peace Process.
Another thing is the projected seat number for Fianna Fail. The 13% in the Sun Red C poll had Kavanagh projecting FF on 12 seats and Dotski Projecting 14.
So that 4% rise to 17% gives 14 or 11 extra seats to FF depending on which projection you are using. It gives an indication of how precarious an electoral situation Fianna Fail are in.
It show how significant a 4% rise (although different polling companies, methods etc) could be for the long term survival of Fianna Fail.
The Rise in the ‘Others’ vote looks encouraging for the Left .Given the state of the country and the budget cuts yet to be felt then surely these figures should rise.
Possibly the biggest part of the poll was the number of undecided voters which stood at 25%. This was an increase of 7% since the last Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll.
Another interesting thing to come from the poll was
The poll shows 64 per cent of people have made up their minds how they will vote while 34 per cent may change their minds.
Among decided voters, the figures for party support were: Fine Gael, 32 per cent; Labour, 21 per cent; Fianna Fáil, 19 per cent; Sinn Féin, 17 per cent; Greens, 1 per cent; and Independents/Others, 10 per cent.
This stat indicates that Labour has the highest percentage of voters who may change their minds.
Which leads on to Michael Marshs article in the Sunday Business Post of December the 5th which focused on the November Red C Poll and a fascinating new dimension to the polling questions.
Marsh wrote that
Questions in surveys about party preference typically focus on the outcome of the choice voters make – did you, or will you, vote for party A, B or C? – and ignore the other options that voters may consider, ie how likely is it that you would vote for A, B and C?
Typically, respondents are asked who they would vote for if an election were held tomorrow, or who they voted for in the last election. What surveys do not ask is whether the party indicated is the respondent’s clear-cut choice, or whether the voter is genuinely trying to decide between a number of parties. Yet this unasked question is important.
He went on
The questions used here ask respondents to indicate how likely it is – on a scale of 1 to 10 – that a given party would ever get their vote. Choosing 1 means that a respondent would never vote for that party and 10 means that the respondent would certainly vote for that party.
The Red C poll carried out two weeks ago put these questions to 500 voters, and the results give us a deeper insight into the state of the electorate.
From these results we get a Fianna Fail core vote of 8% (down from 21% in 2007), Fine Gael core vote of 10% , Labour 12% and in total 39% of voters were decided and not open to persuasion.
We also learn that
The size of the electorate beyond the reach of Fianna Fáil at present – those who give the party the lowest possible rating, indicating they would never (again) support the party – is a whopping 48 per cent, up from just 18 per cent in 2007. In these terms, it is now almost as unpopular as Sinn Féin (50 per cent), with significant consequences for its ability to collect transfers. This suggests that the drop in the first preference vote indicated by all polls will be carried through to second, third and fourth preferences.
We also get an indication of parties voters were considering and thus the potential battle grounds between parties for votes.
There is a lot of overlap between support for Fine Gael and support for Labour. In all, 44 per cent of these Fine Gael supporters also favour Labour, as 38 per cent of Labour supporters also favour Fine Gael.
Sinn Féin support is quite strong at 15 per cent, very close to Fianna Fáil’s level, but Sinn Féin shares 44 per cent of that support with Labour, and 33 per cent with independents.
There is a lot more in the article but it indicates that there are still a majority of voters who have yet to be fully decide what way they are going to vote and also what parties they are choosing between.
One final thought as suggested by a very very cynical friend of mine…..
Bit by bit the date of the next election appears to be slipping out….
The Greens said January, they then realised that more time was needed get some of their pet legislation through the Dail.
So it may be March. Barry Andrews comes out and says Fianna Fail have a few bits and pieces they want to get through too…
So we could be into an April Election or ….. even May……….
….by which time Brian Cowen would qualify for his Taoiseach’s Pension.
Sinn Féin and the Labour Party… December 16, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.11 comments
All this was written before the latest poll – thanks a bunch Irish Times for releasing them on Thursdays 
– of which more later, which makes the final sentence academic, but the basic points hold up.
They’re all talking about a Sinn Féin revival. The Sunday Business Post has a Backroom column which argues that ‘Sinn Féin needs Labour to mess up if it wants to grow’. But is that true, and are the precepts which underpin the analysis correct?
Meanwhile back at the House of Commons December 16, 2010
Posted by Tomboktu in British Politics, Democratic Unionist Party, Irish History, Northern Ireland.22 comments
[I think the link is unstable.]
Nigel Dodds in the London House of Commons debate on the Loans to Ireland Bill, yesterday evening.:
He couldn’t resist the opportunity for a dig:
However, it would be remiss of me and the people for whom I speak not to point out that the loan is being made merely months before the 90th anniversary of the secession of the 26 southern counties from the United Kingdom. For probably the vast majority of that time, and certainly in the past 30 or 40 years, politicians and others in the Irish Republic have spent most of their time denying the relationship between southern Ireland and the United Kingdom. However, the loan and all that has been said prove the interdependence of the Irish economy and the Irish Republic with—and, to a large degree, their dependence on—the United Kingdom. There are those who go around saying that the United Kingdom should keep out of their affairs and all that, but I think they now realise that in many ways the dependence is very great, and not just on Europe, but on the United Kingdom in particular.
But then he got around to speaking sense:
It is also worth spending a minute or two recapping how we came to this position. For many years, people referred to the great Celtic tiger that was the Irish Republic’s economy, and that includes those now in government, as has been pointed out. Those who raised issues about the way in which that economy was lauded were criticised as being driven by petty political considerations and told that their criticisms were not justified. There were those of us who pointed out that there were domestic issues to do with the great concentration on property. However, a recent editorial in The Guardian summed up the position well:
“Politicians kept consumer demand buoyant with generous public spending, while rewarding developer friends with public works contracts. Ireland’s narrow elite ran the economy like a casino and awarded itself free chips. No one, save a few lonely economists, had much incentive to call time on the party. By 2007, around one in five Irish jobs depended in some way on the property market.”
But he had to come back to the digs:
We in Northern Ireland have had our disputes with the Irish Republic, but relations are now much better than they used to be, and we do not take any satisfaction from the crisis that has enveloped it. Someone asked where the Irish Republic stood in relation to recent debates on Europe. People will remind us in this House of the Irish Republic’s attitude during the long years of terrorist activity in Northern Ireland, when the Republic became a safe haven for terrorists and refused to extradite wanted criminals to Northern Ireland for justice. Some of our constituents are now saying, “Why should we help them, now that they are in this situation?” They also remember the Irish Republic’s role in the formation of the IRA, back in 1969. They say, “We see all these inquiries, but what are we doing about that?” That is understandable, because lives were lost and families were bereaved as a result of the activities of Governments of all shades and opinions in the Irish Republic. All of them played a role, whether Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour or all the rest of them.
