The Most Dangerous Song in the World - A Rewrite

Interesting article in the latest issue of Industrial Worker, journal of the Industrial Workers of the World, on the workers anthem, 'The Internationale', and the various lyric changes down the years, depending on who the song was beng sung for and by.

The author of the article, Len Wallace was a member of the Socialist Party of Canada, a sister organisation of the SPGB, for over 25 years until political disagreements led him to resign from the SPC/WSM about 4 or 5 years ago. That was a shame 'cos, in my opinion, he is one of the best socialist writers that I have read in recent years. I understand that he was a founder member of the World in Common group, but I'm not sure if he is still active with them.

He mentions Billy Bragg's version in the article, and as much as I love Billy Bragg's work usually, I don't think it is one of his better musical decisions. I remember him singing his rewritten version in the Leftfield Tent at Glastonbury a few years ago, for him only to be confronted with a few hundred blank faces. No bugger knew the words to his version. Give me his reworking of the Red Flag that he recorded with Dick Gaughan any day. That tune kicks arse, and puts to bed once and for all the funeral dirge version that the Labour Party has been singing (reluctantly in recent years 'cos it's too old school) these last one hundred years.

Studs Terkel - Redux

There was me wittering on about Studs Terkel on the blog recently, when I had totally forgotten that there was a canny article from the Socialist Standard from a few years back that better articulated what was the continuing appeal of Studs.

Granted the first half of Paul Bennett's article is given over to a discussion of the politics of the think-tank, Project for a New American Century, but the second half of his piece writes of the "other side", and discusses in part Terkel's book, My American Century, which sought to bring together selections from his best known oral histories from the past thirty years into one compendium.

Good stuff from a good lad.

Rebranding Earth

I'm a few days late in posting the links up, but I thought I would just let you know that the August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard is now online, and it can be either read in its entirety as a PDF here or as individual articles at the links provided below.

The current issue is a bit of a mix bag, opening with an editorial on the Israel's bombing of Lebanon (and Hezbollah's bombing of Northern Israel), which drew a lot of comments and controversy when I posted it on myspace, and it also carries a couple of historical articles that touch on two anniversaries this month: the Battle of the Somme and the Spanish Civil War. The latter anniversary is obviously something that is still debated over ferociously by the various contesting traditons on the left - with the anarchists referring to as the 'Spanish Revolution' - and the SPGB have not been immune from those controversies and debates. Both then and now, there has never been a monolithic position within the Party on what was the correct position to take on Spain within the Party, though that never stopped the Party taking adopting an 'official' position on the question. Such is the way of political parties, and I'm sure that the article in this month's Standard will add to that debate. (On Spain, a couple of Socialist Standard articles from the thirties can be viewed here and here). One year on from Hurricane Katrina, there is an article on the 'looting' in New Orleans, a media obsession at the time of Katrina, and which can only be viewed in the context of the underlying racist and anti-working class nature of the mainstream media. The author of the article, a member of the World Socialist Party of the United States, has written a longer piece on what he terms 'An Unnatural Disaster', which I hope to post a link to at a later date.

Editorial

More Slaughter in the Middle East

Regular Columns

Pathfinders Radioactive Days & the Sting

Cooking the Books Commodity Markets & Was There An Alternative?

Greasy Pole Be Kind To A Hoodie

50 Years Ago Drugs and the Death Penalty

Main Articles

Globalisation - what does it mean? We begin a two-part article on the continuing surge in capitalist globalisation.This month we deal with the globalisation of capital.

Foreign takeovers: a non-issue A recent poll shows public opinion in Britain is becoming increasingly perturbed by the changing ownership of the companies that make up the British economy,but does it matter to workers who owns the company that exploits them?

Who Are the Looters? A year after hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans we look at what was a media obsession at the time.

For Whom The Bell Tolled This summer has seen commemorations for the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil war which remains a conflict shrouded in myth, heroism and controversy.

The Battle of the Somme The recent 90th anniversary of the human tragedy of the Somme saw the politicians,the churches and the organisations charged with remembrance giving history a makeover.

Thirty-five Billion & Calling Home

Reviews and Letters

Book Reviews Noam Chomsky by Wolfgang Sperlich; Dining With Terrorists by Phil Rees; & The Imaginary Time Bomb: Why an Ageing Population is not a Social Problem by Phil Mullan

Radio Review "Red Elvis" Dean Reed: Death of a Comrade. Radio 2, 11 July. Presented by Mark Lamarr.

Letters to the Editors Civil War in Uganda, Defending Galloway & Ban the Ultra-Right?

Voice From The Back

The Price of Oil, A Tale of Three Virgins & Science and Profits.

Another Piece on Bookchin

Whilst I'm down there, another article from the dusty vaults of the Socialist Standard. This time it's a review of one of Murray Bookchin's most famous essays, 'Listen, Marxist!':

'Listen, Anarchist!'

Before any anarchists out there decide to round up a posse to rip me a new one, please also check out Murray Bookchin 1921-2006 and What Marx Should Have Said To Kropotkin.

"So, Thatcher is dead, the victim of a rotten egg . . ."

I hate it when you a good image at your fingertips, but you don't have a plausible excuse to use it. It's my dilemma with the pic above, which I stumbled across amongst a *cough* pile of books in a dusty library stack. (That's me coughing 'cos of the paper dust, not because I'm shameless enough to misquote Harper Lee).

I guess I could remind readers of this excellent post from *cough* - that bastard paper dust, again - two days ago, but that would to be to err too far on the side of shameless self-promotion. (A typically Thatcherite characteristic.) So I'll save the day by providing a link to this excellent article from the vaults of the Socialist Standard:

Why The Left Needs A Thatcher

Published in the May 1989 Socialist Standard on the tenth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher becoming Prime Minister, it was a knockabout piece that stuck the boot into Thatcher, the Labour Party and the left, and thus ties in nicely with the doctored pic above. In fact, perhaps I should have opted for the alternative title of Margaret Thatcher - Militant Class Warrior, which is a paraphrased quote from the article, rather than using the article's opening line instead.

Mentioning in jest that Thatcher is dead in the title of a blog post in the modern times of RSS readers and keyword internet search engines is how blog whispers get started, and the circulating rumours of the death of one dictator from the eighties is enough for one week, thank you very much.

UPDATE

A kind reader has sent me the following link. Christ, does this mean that there may be a sub-culture out there that has elevated Thatcher to the status of counter-culture icon or is it just nightwear for the balding middle-aged Monday Club members, who like to wear Mrs T's image close to their man-boobs whilst they dream about their halcyon days alongside Harry Phibbs and 'Guido' in the Federation of Conservative Students during the eighties?

The more that I think about it, I'm actually dreading the day when Thatcher joins Keith Joseph in the right-wing think tank in the sky; there will be such an outpouring of crocodile tears that I'll have to wear waders and an inflatable life jacket for the two weeks after her death.

Quote of a Late Day

"Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it." - Harper Lee

Totally love this quote, and that's despite the fact that I am the poster boy for people who have minds like empty rooms. Naturally, I didn't find this quote in amongst the library stacks, but stumbled across it on someone's MySpace profile.

Whatever.

"It's a football team, Jim, but not as we know it."

Don't mention this to Jim, but somebody found the blog through searching for 'Kilmarnock Jokes' on google. Ouch!

SWP . . .

. . . as in Shaun Wright-Phillips scored in last night's friendly against Celtic in a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge. (For the record Gary Caldwell scored the first goal in the game for Celtic.) Strachan has played the financial card in interviews, explaining that Celtic have to play these friendly games during the season to generate revenue, and as the crowd last night was about twenty thousand and the result is not a repetition of this, this and this, I guess they can take the money and run with not too much flak coming the team's way this time.

Noted that Stephen Pearson got a run out last night, so I wonder if that has any bearing on the reports that Billy Davies at Derby County is putting in a bid for him. (I can't be arsed to google, but didn't Davies manage Pearson at Motherwell?) Also, depending on what reports you read, Mo Camara is going to either Derby or Leeds Utd on a season loan. I'm sure that the official line from Celtic Park is that by releasing a few players on loan and/or off-loading some of the fringe players, Strachan will have a bit more money to spend on new players but I can't help feeling it is more a case of reducing the wages bill full stop, rather than freeing funds to invest elsewhere. For me, that's confirmed by the news that Petkov failed to impress Strachan when he was at Celtic Park recently.

On the matter of disappointing Bulgars, the latest back page tattle is that newly appointed Aston Villa manager, Martin O'Neill, is considering making a bid for Petrov. No idea if this is true but Petrov, at 27 and a tried and tested player of international class for O'Neill in the past, wouldn't be that much of a gamble if the latter looks to meet Celtic's transfer requirements. It's also the case that O'Neill is one of those managers who has a tendency to pick up players from former clubs when he moves on. He done the same with Steve 'Talisman' Guppy at two or three clubs, and there is even speculation that he is also looking at Lennon as a possible Aston Villa acquisition. O'Neill is known for his managerial pragmatism so I wouldn't put it past him to look at former players, and with two old favourites, Hartson and Sutton, already bedded down in the West Midlands I bet there are more than a couple of Chairmen in that part of the country who are putting up 'Get Your Tanks Off Our Pitch' signs as I write.

On the subject of Martin O'Neill becoming the new manager of Aston Villa, I have to admit that I find it a bit of a weird 'yin. He could have had his pick of jobs if he had bided his time, and I'm sure that there were more than a few Newcastle and Man Utd fans out there who were dissapointed when they heard the news of O'Neill's appointment at Villa Park. Granted, Villa are yet another one of those cliches of English football, the 'Sleeping Giant', of which there are about 27 at the last count, but it's not inconceivable that O'Neill couldn't turn things around for them.

He has a habit of sticking around at a club, whatever the room temperature, and in John Robertson and Steve Walford alongside him, he has the continuity of a ready made backroom staff. It's also the case that he has the overwhelming support of the Villa fans, who know that they've lucked out with his appointment ( . . . and Birmingham's relegation last season). He is also in a win-win situation with regards to the shenanigans at the top at Aston Villa. Either Deadly Doug Ellis will decide to stay on in the hope that O'Neill will deliver him the success that he has always craved, throwing a bountiful transfer fund at O'Neill in the process, or the new money will come in - that many egos in the mix, I refuse to list them - and they will do the same as Deadly, but more so.

However, for all that, I do wonder if O'Neill has made the right decision? As has been pointed out in the press, the timing of taking this job now means that the chances of him becoming the next manager of Man Utd have all but disappeared. And my amateur psychology, from all of four thousand miles away, tells me that want O'Neill wants now at this point in his career more than anything else is not just a fresh challenge and the success that could conceivably come with the Villa, but to manage a successful club that would be truly great. Akin to the Forest side of his old manager Brian Clough or the great Liverpool teams of Shankly and Paisley - teams that will be remembered for more than their silverware and I wonder if he can ever achieve that at Villa Park.

UPDATE

There's a more detailed report of last night's game in today's Glasgow Herald. My favourite newspaper. ;-)

Americans Vanguardists Don't Do Irony

Granted it is not as majestic as this piece of journalistic sabotage from yesteryear, but hats off to the copy editor on the editorial staff of the Socialist Worker who let this wee sideswipe against the authoritarian culture of the Socialist Workers Party slip past its editor, Chris Bambery, into its latest issue:

"I’d like to see the party [the Scottish Socialist Party] run by the rank and file.”
(Norma Anderson, a member of the Moray branch of the SSP, and a supporter of Sheridan, speaking in response to the political fall out between the contesting factions in the SSP, following the verdict from libel case, and quoted in the Tommy Sheridan defeats injustice article).

What do you mean the article's author, Esme Choonara, quoted Ms Anderson in all sincerity, and that in all probability neither she nor the copy editor cottoned onto the irony of rank and file party democracy being talked up in the pages of the Socialist Worker? Next thing you'll tell me is that the Socialist Worker Platform in the SSP acted in all sincerity in politically aligning themselves with Tommy,and didn't see it merely as an opportunity to mobilise against what was the old International Socialist Movement platform, whose members made up the bulk of the leadership positions within the SSP?

I also wonder how this passage from the article, A Win For Machismo, in yesterday's Guardian, ties in the SWP's commitment to rank and file democracy?:

"At an emergency national council meeting in May, a number of male members of the Socialist Workers Party heckled the women who spoke against him. "They were shouting, 'You cunt' and 'Shut up, you bitch,'" says [Catrinoa] Grant. "It was really scary."

Christ, I wonder how that ties in with democracy full stop?

Spoilsports

I'd set my heart on there being a street party on a par with Betty's twenty-fifth in '77 or when we chewed on a chilli dog to Chuck and Diane's wedding back in '81, with this song blasting over the nation's airwaves on permanent loop, but to no avail.

Looks like I'll have to r.s.v.p for this event, after all.