A Channel Four documentary tonight is set the launch the first full-on mainstream media attack on the evils of nasty, nasty Trotskyism for at least 20 years. As a middle-aged ex-Trot myself, I feel two decades younger already. It’s been too long, guys.
If advance write-ups in the Sunday Times and Observer yesterday are anything to go by, C4’s Dispatches strand will tonight ‘exclusively reveal’ what anybody in the least interested in such things has known full well since 2000; many of London mayor Ken Livingstone’s six-figure salary bag carriers are or were members of a small far left grouplet known as Socialist Action. What’s more, the programme will say that like it’s a bad thing, at a time when a mayoral election is due in a matter of months.
Apparently, there will be specific allegations of wrongdoing. If there is a prima facie case - and the London Evening Standard’s Andrew Gilligan insists there is - then of course such accusations absolutely must be investigated, and charges pressed if appropriate.
Corruption cannot be tolerated at any level of Labour politics. I mean, thank goodness Tony Blair and Lord Levy were ultimately exonerated by the cash for honours probe. We’d all hate to think that Britain is governed on the same basis as the Premier League transfer market, wouldn’t we?
But what, in principle, is wrong with a leftwing mayor surrounding himself with leftwing political advisors? Of course I’m pissed off that Livingstone didn’t pick me; I could do with a £121,000 wedge myself. If you are reading this, Ken, I’d happily work for two-thirds of the money. Go on - twist my arm - half, even. But what can be remotely objectionable about a senior politician picking staffers on his own political wavelength?
First, full disclosure. As I said, I am no longer a Trotskyist. But unlike Alan Milburn, Lionel Jospin and Alistair Darling, I am not in the least ashamed that once I was. As a student Labour activist, I joined the Socialist League - the supposedly ‘secret’ entrist organisation that then published the newspaper Socialist Action - in 1983.
This is the grouping that was known in the sixties and seventies as the International Marxist Group. It wasn’t quite the same formation that now trades as Socialist Action; but it is certainly the political tendency from which the current avatar derives.
If memory serves, it had about 600 members in this period. Yes, they included John Ross, Redmond O’Neill and Jude Woodward, all reportedly spotlighted in tonight’s documentary. Atma Singh, the Socialist Action defector who features as a key witness for the prosecution, claims to have been around at this time. If that was the case, he wasn’t prominent.
Incidentally, I was recently told that the political comedian Mark Thomas - then a student - was sufficiently sympathetic to sell the paper, although he couldn't be arsed to stump up membership dues or anything. Sensible bloke.
A few points here. Ross is a highly experienced Oxford trained economist. Plenty of Oxford trained economists end up in well-paid positions; Ross's pay packet is not exceptional for a top local government bureaucrat. The Marxist morality of being on that sort of dosh is a separate question, but I somehow doubt that's the angle Dispatches is going to take.
Nick Cohen’s Observer column yesterday picks Ross up for some spectacularly duff predictions. And? Again, many Oxford trained economists in highly-paid positions make spectacularly duff predictions. I’m sure Blair will soon find that out for himself in his new $5m a year gig at J P Morgan.
Similarly, unless it can somehow be proven that O’Neill and Woodward are somehow not up to their jobs, then why shouldn’t they be working for the Greater London Authority? Remember, too, that Livingstone was elected as an independent. Labour Party members potentially faced expulsion for taking the Red Ken shilling, so his choice of appointees was limited from the start.
And what if Socialist Action continues to have private meetings in a room above a pub in Islington? Lots of people have private meetings. As a punter, I cannot just barge in on get togethers of the Jockey Club; although I am member of the Labour Party, I have no right to sit in on sessions of the cabinet. Having meetings is what political groups of all stripes do, and cannot be adduced as evidence of undesirable clandestinity.
Cohen - sometimes given to sending me the odd abusive personal email for no reason in particular - asks how the media would react if a Tory mayor of London appointed British National Party supporters to his cabinet.
This point is as offensive as it is plain damn stupid. Whatever one thinks of Trotskyist political prescriptions, revolutionary socialists are politically motivated an entirely noble desire to see an end to exploitation, oppression, poverty, violence, hunger, racism and injustice across the planet.
Look, my present political relationship with the Socialist Action clique - ‘the Rossites’, as we called them back in the Socialist League - is as poor as only political relationships between former comrades can possibly be. But there is no valid comparison between their ideals and the ideals of fascists.
Cohen’s attack is worthy of a certain 1950s senator from Wisconsin. Are they now or have they ever been? Yes, they have. But in a democratic society, adherence to far left beliefs should be no bar to public office. We thankfully never got round to implementing a Berufsverbot in Britain, Nick.
Posted at 18:48, 20 January 2008
Comments (70)
I remember Jude Woodward, Redmond O'Neill and John Ross from the old IMG days. I was not in their faction, guess what, you'll never believe this but I was always drawn to minority factions. Anyway, I agree with what you say, Pete. To be honest, I don't want ot reduce it to a slanging match, but I read the Nick Cohen article with his interview with Atma Singh, and quite frankly Singh didn't strike me as the sort of chap 'forged in the struggle and tempered in the fight.'. The bloke's been off work sick for months due to all this!
You don't strike me as a Groganite, either, Sue. Which faction were you in? I signed up with Peter P.
"But in a democratic society, adherence to far left beliefs should be no bar to public office."
Does this also apply to far right beliefs or is this a one way thing?
Vintage Cohen:
"Speaking of the BNP, imagine if a Tory version of Livingstone had given a eulogy at the funeral of a leader of the National Front and surrounded himself with supporters of a neo-fascist ginger group when he was mayor of the capital of this country. It's fair to guess that the media would have had hysterics. But because Livingstone is from the far left rather than the far right, he's treated with an unwarranted softness."
He's as mad as a bag of snakes.
Melanie Phillips watch out.
Well Tim, the BNP have groups of councillors on several local authorities. I presume this entitles them to appoint taxpayer-funded political advisors. I am unaware of anybody on the left suggesting that they should be stripped of this privilege.
Ah bless, another simpleton who equates far left politics (dedicated to creating a better world for everyone) with far right (dedicated to creating a dominant master race). Both in relation to some nebulous 'centre' which takes capitalism as a given, presumably.
In other words, a Tory I suspect.
I was around, though not a member of the American SWP Tendancy and later supported John Strawson. Peter P must have been after my time, because I can't think of anyone of that name. As I was at university in London and lived in the centre of town, I spent a lot of time hanging round the Centre, when it was in Kings Cross and then when it moved to Upper Street. I knew all the full-timers in that period 1975-1979. I can't go down Upper Street without feeling wistful and thinking how everything has changed. I remember Redmond from his student activism days, and John Ross was the great theoretcian and Jude Woodward, I think she was a teacher then. Hope I'm not giving too much away. But don't it just warm the cockles of your heart to remember the days of your youth!
PS: I've still got all my own teeth too.
"Does this also apply to far right beliefs or is this a one way thing?"
Don't worry Tim, we're not talking about libertarians.
Cohen is completely over the top about Socialist Action.
Not that many of us will have much fondness for them.
Ross was a swaggering bully in the IMG and I imagine is now. Leader of Tendency B in the 1970s. If he was Oxford ''trained' by virtue of having an Oxford degree, his economics were cack (and not just on the Soviet Union). Remember all that stuff (ultra-nationalist in reality) about the Alternative Economic Strategy and against the EU? A minor economics lecturer in North London Poly his best known (a relative term) written work was on the decline in the core Tory Vote. That would have been better slightly wittled down and published as a column in Socialist campaign Group News. During the period when I was in the IMG it was noteworthy that Tendency B drew much of its ideology from another bully-boy, James P Cannon. No doubt that continues.
Socialist Action have consistently opposed left positions defending secularism, and have been consistent Islamophiles, breaking with radical class based politics in these, and many other areas. They have attacked critics of their multiculturalism as racists, that is anyone who disgrees with their cosy relationship with Islamicism. There's no doubt they supported the exclusion of the Hands off the People of Iran (HOPI) campaign from teh StWC, and have been resolute opponents of the radical democratic left for as long as they have existed.
The way they operate is not exactly open, but hardly as a 'cult', as Cohen alleges (no more than his mates around the Euston manifesto, and the Henry Jackson Society are one). That they are greedy bastards in the same vein as Blair and Blunkett is hardly a surprise.
These facts have been known for a long time. Why SA's presence in the Court of King Livingstone is brought up now is again too obvious to comment on.
Indeed, Andrew. As before the last elections too. Of course, it's fine when a 'shadowy group' of one-time Trots 'infiltrate' the media, but only if they've abandoned their politics absolutely first; where as the proto-Tankies from Socialist Action just became...hmm, what have they become, incidentally? Or were they always like that? Has there been some 'political development' (taking on Livingstone's like, perhaps?) or were their particular positions always like this?
Ex-IMGers, do tell all.
Well, DZB, two Ross articles stand out in my memory. The first, published in Socialist Action circa 1984, repudiated the notion of insurrection; controversial in a Trot paper.
The second was circa 1990 in Socialist Action Review, arguing that the collapse of Stalinism was, like, so the worst thing ever, and that the Fourth International had abandoned Marxism by failing to recognise that. I think this may have been a major reason as to why they lost official USec status.
And it's very easy to go from saying the collapse of Stalinism was the worst thing ever, to saying that it was and is probably the best ('actually existing') thing ever, I suppose...
On the "London Embassies" thing that Livingstone has had set up - I know Britain isn't quite a federal state (yet), but the German states have their own embassies in Berlin, in Brussels, and probably elsewhere too. Widely acknowledged to be a massive waste of money, but when it comes to the ego-massaging of regional politicians who can statistically write off their chances of getting any higher in their careers, it seems there's always enough money to go round...
One publicly funded campaign which deserves investigation is that launched by Livingstone against French secularism. It was promoted to attack the republican ban on ostentatious religious symbols in French state schools. the campaign told many a falsehood (aka, brazen lie). When the mass movement against the new rules fell by the wayside, or rather never appeared, Livingstone's campaign went very quiet.
I for one would like to know how much public money went into this campaign against secularism, who was given it, and what they did with it.
What precisely have they managed to achieve in all their years as Livingstone's advisors?
The Olympics is going to make London unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of people. He is using a PPP to develop the East London line. He calls on union members to scab in RMT disputes and so on.
They have made it their mission to serve as the bureaucracy's wrecking crew in everything they've been involved in. Theirs is a peculiar sort of socialism.
Liam, though this appears of less interest than discussing ranting on the Net, or indeed the (positive) ideas for new methods for the left to project itself on the Web, it's important. At any rate probably enough to devote more time to than Ian Donovan's latest meanderings.
I suspect that having whittled down their ambitions so much the Livingstone left couldn't really give a toss about criticism. Anyway, I doubt if SA members, on their salaries, would have had, and will have, problems finding a nice gaff and some tasty eats.
With the cited talk about London being a Socialist City State they're right out there blazing a trail for revolutionary realism. Building a United Front with the inhabitants of Icara, Blithedale, and the Pantsocracy that is.
Yeah, I should have added - if London is a socialist city-state, life under socialism is kinda disappointing after all.
Andrew Coates can't help himself.
After making some vaguely disapproving noises about Cohen he then wades in with some unsubstantiated allegations of his own, as we've seen before, centred around misuse of public money.
In the past this has also involved naming people he has a personal grudge against and calling for investigations of misuse of public funds.
I can take your eccentric Islamophobia Andrew but leave the financial smears to the likes of the daily Mail and Evening Standard eh ?
Livingstone's published a press release, which makes me think that Galloway and Rees/German might somehow be involved in all this:
http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=15216
nick cohen's column was totally out of order. not that i'm surprised by this apologist for new labour and imperialist wars.
this documentary wont have an impact i don't think. the younger generation and those new to britain since the 80's wont give a toss about 'trot' advisors. the 'red scare' is the best the tories and their helpers can come up with!
as dave has said though, the left should of course defend the right of the left to hold public office (whether we approave of them and their strategy, wage etc. or not).
will a respect be standing against livingstone for mayor?
ks
Very good post dave
Considering that Cohen was happy to do an interview for Horowitz (who'd previously published a Jared Taylor article), him bringing up the far right is somewhat cheeky, to say the least.
Dave,
that abusive email from Nick Cohen that you linked to. What did he mean by: " I think that since the death of socialism . . . "?
Dave,
One of your better posts, if anything this attack on Livingstone is pretty pathetic, it is caught like so much else these days in a cold war time warp hence few will give it a second thought, it is a rerun of the Red Ted stuff. Ken Livingstone likes to surround himself with left wingers, hold the front page. Far from being a scoop it is a dollop of recycled shit. As someone has already posted, that members of socialist action have slotted into Livingstone's regime is hardly news or even important.
However it is relevant in that it shows just what little these people have in their armory to attack Ken with. As to the attack on Atma Singh? of course it is nasty, but Livingstone is a politician thus this is what they do, surly Atma did not believe he could stick his head in a tigers mouth and keep it attached to his neck and the rest of his body.
"Well Tim, the BNP have groups of councillors on several local authorities. I presume this entitles them to appoint taxpayer-funded political advisors. I am unaware of anybody on the left suggesting that they should be stripped of this privilege."
Perhaps not, but I know a number of people who insist that the BNP (as an example) should not be allowed a platform. While I find their views vile I don't find them any more so than some groupuscules on the left.
As to that "Tory" dig, Grrr: I'm a classical liberal.
I knew I recognised the name "Martin Bright" from somewhere! He's the journalist who claimed that Mayday demonstrators would be armed with "samurai swords"- http://www.guardian.co.uk/mayday/story/0,7369,477048,00.html
Does uncritically repeating obvious Special Branch propaganda count as links with a tiny and sinister group?
Still considering that Livingstone sent in the cops to hem people in that day, it's hard to not feel a certain schadenfreude.
Well the stuff about the Trots isn't that damning, although on the face of it Lee Jasper seems to have paid Anne Kane £14,000 to draft an article for Blink slagging off Trevor Phillips using taxpayer money. That stinks, somewhat, if you are a taxpayer, but nice work if you can get it, and if you're one of that particular Trot group you can.
In other news, the Mayor seems to like a drink and doesn't obey the rules he sets for his own staff, he is contemptible of elected members who are there to hold him to account, the LDA sloshes out barrel loads of cash to god knows who without checking that they really exist, the Venezuela deal is a rip off for the people of Venezuela.
All pretty mild stuff, really. Nothing like as hard a time as the Scottish meeja giives the Scottish Executive and Parliament. Why has the press given Ken such an easy ride for so long?
They've had secularism in France for 100 years and until recently (I think the controversy started in 1989 or something like that?) it didn't include the idea that pupils in schools (as opposed to staff, who represent the state) should be prevented from displaying 'ostentatious' religious symbols. That's not secularism at all, it's anti-clericalism.
DZ - alas, I don't think Rees and German can provide giant Russian dolls these days.
I'm astonished how weak the programme was - and disgusted to see Nick Cohen pitching in so eagerly. Did anyone on the Left not know about John Ross's GLA 'unit', or about the Ted Knight/Labour Herald/WRP connection? Is anyone shocked to learn that Livingstone likes a drop?
The programme was like a flashback of those red-baiting days of the Sun back in the time of a Minister of the Drought and 3 TV channels. No more than a snatched look by me at Page 3 as I was instead strangely drawn to the demolition of Red Robbo and the like in the simply written sentences that were the main source of information about what's going on in the world to the guy who gave me his paper to me every day to look at as we shared a lift.
Amongst the ‘words of wisdom’ tonight were those from Marc Wadsworth, a Labour Left doing a McCarthy turn, ranting about Socialist Action being the Communist Fourth International bent on world domination from their base, in, er Moscow!
And they was also just simple childishness. A LibDem MP blabbering about how she had seen the Mayor with a glass of whisky “before 11”. Oo-er. You could tell her siblings would have hated her for grassing their every youthful misdemeanour to their parents.
But the programme really was a lost opportunity. How about comparing what the Mayor said to what he has delivered? Remember that promise about affordable housing - how many have been built?
The broadcast wasn’t without merit. I was pretty astonished to learn that more than half of the revenues are raised by the congestion charge is used in running the scheme! How much of that is Capita, who run the scheme, squirrelling away?
(And of course the Congestion Charge shouldn’t be supported. Revolutionary socialists don’t support taxes that see the poor pay a greater proportion of their income as tax as happens with the Congestion Charge (although Greenies and Labour types do). We support the opposite.)
And apart from missing out on an expose of Ken, the businessman’s friend, the programme was obsessed with looking for some spurious Leftism in the motivations of its targets rather than just reporting on their quest for their self-preservation.
Organisations like ‘Black Information Link’ really are a nepotistic cabal of hangers on just there to provide mutual support - rather than anything like a ‘Black Information Link’. They don’t hesitate in always siding with Labour aligned blacks against other blacks such as in fights between Labour and the Left.
And spin Ken’s crew do. Ever read the constant stuff about how bus fares are being kept the same or going down again? Which is funny as I distinctly remember paying 65p and 70p within the last few years whereas now fares are ‘just’ 90p after having been reduced from £1.
I was interviewed for senior job in media relations at the authority. I could tell the interview went all wrong when I told Joy Johnson, his communications boss (who previously did the same for the Labour Party) that the authority’s paper, The Londoner, was without credibility - it reads like it’s written by Livingstone’s mother.
I also did some work at a senior level for the LDA. The pro-Mayor spin expected in all comms. output wasn’t written down but was made clear in calls from his close advisers but it’s more the type of lowlifes working there in advisor positions that I remember the most.
I recall talking to one of these political consultants who mistook me for one of the key advisors to the Mayor. After about 3 minutes of conversation he spotted his intended target and just stopped talking to me in mid sentence and then walked behind me to talk to his target and without saying a further word to me.
There were a lot of lowlifes like that working there. I wrote previously about Lee Jasper and his sterling work in possibly creating more racists at http://southpawpunch.blogspot.com/2007/01/live-by-river.html
I’m supporting Lindsay German in May, the Respect (and SWP) candidate. She beat the Greens last time and should be able to take votes from Lefts who have lost any illusions in the Future Lord Redken (as Socialist Organiser once called him when he bowed to the Queen).
I even claim credit for helping getting the German campaign going. I threatened last week to launch my own unofficial site supporting her unless the SWP pulled their finger out. They have now assured me that everything will be starting today - leaflets, news releases, etc. The full details of why I support her are here - http://southpawpunch.blogspot.com/2007/05/respectlondon-mayorfrancescotlandlabour.html
Good post comrade.
Livingstone may be utterly egocentric and Socialist Action may be a weird bunch with little left of their politics but what the media is up to is just red baiting and witch hunting.
Livingstone has been a disappointment but we have a real choice between real Mayoral candidates (as opposed to pretend ones).
Ken may not have chosen the best former trots to be his bag carriers but we can't go electing Boris Johnson just because Ken's judgement is clouded under the influence of sycophancy!
It takes considerable effort to link the WRP and Gerry Healy to Livingstone, because their connections are tenuous in the extreme, and the best Cohen can do can do is to say Livingstone attended Healy's funeral in 1990, a full 18 years ago. This seems rather thin.
After portraying Healy as the rapist bogeyman, Cohen's crucial linking sentence is: "Few had the stomach to stick with Healy after that. Among those who did were the Redgraves and Livingstone." This rhetorically links Livingstone with the Redgraves, Healy and rape. It's a sly but rather obvious ploy. To the unwary, this may sound convincing. Anybody interested in the truth, however, should note that the Redgraves may have been tight with Healy, but Livingstone certainly was not.
It rather lends Cohen's portrayal of Healy a somewhat cynical light too. No doubt Healy was seedy, but Cohen's clunky device of linking the graphic picture to Livingstone is just too obviously a piece of unbalanced electioneering.
Cohen clearly has an axe to grind, and he makes a terrible noise doing it. But I fathom its not Livingstone taking the hits, but instead an accurate, balanced view of events.
Livingstone spent the 1980s as leader of the GLC and a Labour MP. He worked with a wide range of people, and his closest confidants were certainly not the WRP and Healy. He had links with variety of groups both within and without the Labour Party. Refer to John Carvel's Citizen Ken, which seems more fair, balanced and informative than Cohen's highly strung opinion piece. In fact, I've just checked the book, and it mentions Healy just once, in a brief discussion of splits on the left, not in connection with Livingstone.
Benji: Have a read of Livingstone's introduction to "Gerry Healy: a Revolutionary Life", and then re-evaluate that statement.
Singh's credibility took a dive last night. He claimed that Socialist Action was linked to the Fourth International, *based in Moscow*!
“I also witnessed him with my own eyes drinking from a tumbler of whisky at People's Questions at Ilford Town Hall, a public platform where he faced questions from London voters. Although it was an evening event, I felt this showed a degree of disrespect for the audience. No member of the assembly on the platform was drinking anything other than water. There is no question that the substance in the glass was alcohol. We have conclusive scientific evidence on that.”
Martin Bright (aged 8) New Statesman, January 2008.
It’s the…“Conclusive scientific evidence – aka WMD” (sic) that did for Ken! Hey, just like Gerry Healy’s sweaty fondness for a tipple or six…know what I mean… join the dots.
“London a City State/region”…UK Planning and (EU) urban policy orthodoxy/puffery in the 1980s and early 1990s…or whiskey fueled Moscow Trot subversion? Hey, who cares? My mate Nick says…
An incredible shabby piece of journalism (and broadcasting) from an incredibly sloppy and ludicrous journalist. But that’s now the “Dispatches” brand.
Benjamin (Hong Kong): if you can cut and paste comments across numberable websites, so can I. As you already know (hang on, I'm assuming you read anything people bother to write in reply to you, which is possibly a false assumption):
those extremely "tenuous" connections include:
"Ken" speaking at Healy's funeral
"Ken" writing a very long introductiion to an eulogy of Healy published a few years after his death
"Ken's" full-colour (this was the early 80s!) paper in the Labour Party, the 'Labour Herald' being printed, edited and funded by the WRP
Otherwise:
It seems to us at Workers' Liberty to be very unlikely that Livingstone is an anti-semite on the level of prejudices against individuals who are Jewish or of Jewish background. That Livingstone has wallowed in the political anti-semitism that poisons the kitsch “revolutionary left” is a plain matter of fact. In the mid-80s he publicly rectified some of his earlier statements on Israel and Palestine to substitute the term “Israeli nationalist” for “Zionist racists”.
He has signed a call from the Israel-Palestine Socialist Solidarity Group for “Two states, Palestine and Israel… with national and personal security”. But he continues to link himself with Islamist reactionaries such as Qaradawi. He is surrounded with highly-paid “advisors” who are members of a strange semi-underground, semi-organisation which calls itself “Socialist Action”. These are long ago “Trotskyists” turned Livingstone-sycophants such as John Ross, Redmond O’Neil and others. They share the defining dogma of the kitsch left on Israel-Palestine, rejecting a two states solution and advocating the destruction of Israel.
In the past Livingstone has associated with such out and out anti-semitic “left” organisations as Gerry Healy’s Workers Revolutionary Party, which for four years up to its collapse in 1985 helped Livingstone publish a newspaper, Labour Herald (It’s regular contributors included David Blunkett).
Yes, Richard, it was *in general* a very sloppy piece of work.
But before that, soem further points on Cohen.
Cohen seems to think that Socialist Action has had a mesmerising effect on the Mayor of London. If that's so, why did Livingstone support NATO intervention in the ex-Yugsolavia, when SA strongly opposed it? And since Cohen considers anyone linked with the WRP such bug-bears how does he explain away his fellow Eustonian, Attila Hoare, who co-operated with one of the former WRP fragments on this issue, the Balkans?
I wish Cohen would get it into his head that the vast majority of the left during the later period of the SLL/WRP's existence would not touch it with a hundred metre long barge-pole. Apart from some forgetable silly comments on Healy there is no evidence that Livingstone in general had any relationship with the WRP. And I for one would consider anyone with ties to the Henry Jackson Society (the neo-con pro-interventionist foundation which many Eustonites regard with affection) to be implicated in vicious violent politics with rather more of a devastating results than the WRP's battles against Paboloite revisionism.
Back to the Dispatches programme. Singh provided no more evidence than that leading Livingstone advisers were in/around Socialist Action. He was pretty incoherent about their ideology. As have been those journalists who have dug up some remarks Ross made about revolution in the 1970s. Hardly a secret, in the IMG we used to chant:' Armed Road, Only Road, One Solution, Armed Revolution'.
The stuff about co-operation with Islamicists is, nevertheless, important. It was a bit disengeneous for Thatchell to declare hmself shocked at the reaction to his protests against this (I write generally as a supporter of Thatchell in this): it was hardly a secret that any criticism of this would incur the wrath of the Islamophiles. The use of the Mayor's office to promote a pro-Islamicist stand is an enduring problem - though not apparently for Eddie Truman.
As for the rest, there were specific points about potential misuse of public funds, ranging from the unproven (the cash lent for development), and other grey areas. They did not add up to a massive scandal, and I would guess similar cases arise in all large cities. Indeed if you want an example: Chirac's years as Mayor of Paris involved a gigantic web of corruption and nepotism which makes anything in the GLA look like the goings-on of a Parish Council in comparison.
The entire tone of the Dispatches porgramme was, I would say, just far too dramatic for the slender information that it contained. As for the very idea of Boris getting his pudgy mits on the GLA, I would say that judging on his staiend apst recrod, he would dole out favours even more brazenly than Livingstone.
@Jon Rogers
It is that poverty of politics expressed by you that helps keep us in the state we are in.
‘There’s nothing we can do about it - we may not like him but we have to accept him. Otherwise it’s Boris Johnson
What would be the scenario of the privatisation of the tube infrastructure came round again?
Johnson would agree with it. Livingstone would protest and then agree it (as he did) and German would be likely to try and organise a fight.
German received a good vote last time, beating the Greens (but not the BNP). One of the reasons that there is little support for hard Left candidates politics in this country is that people like you argue to accept the unacceptable.
If the initial vote for a hard Left candidate is seen as too small you will argue to keep it that way instead of building something that you may personally be more in favour of.
It’s just as well your arguments didn’t dominate 100+ years ago or Labour would never have split from the Liberals.
@Andrew Coates. It was Wadsworth who made the Moscow comments but you wondered how Singh could have been the member of anything other than a stamp club.
correction - German did beat the BNP (and the Greens) in 2004 and came fifth.
The media blitz surrounding the documentary suggested a major expose. Instead we got "Ken drinks whisky in the morning" and "Ken is rude to London AMs"... it was pathetic.
Of course, Livingstone's made lots of enemies inside and outside Labour over the years, so they all lined up to have a pop.
WHat's noteworthy is that the protagonists - Bright and Cohen - claim to be on the left. Bright's claim that he was a Ken supporter until last Monday (eh?) was a bit dull - by then the editing must have been finished, let alone the filming. It's clear that the programme started from a premise of "Get Ken", which is why they piled in every conceivable bit of dodginess in the hope that some muck would stick. That's the way TV documentary works if you haven't got a killer punch!
Cohen - has anyone analysed when exactly he switched from being a vaguely interesting Observer left-leaning columnist to being a rabid (and extremely predictable) pro-war witch-hunter? Give him five years and he'll be writing for the Mail.
Agree with all above who say pathetic hatchet job. |Amounted to - Ken likes a drink and has some advisers who used to be Trots. So what.....FYI Marc Wadsworth used to be ultra-left in NUJ . Par for course.....Sad to see Tatchell lining up to Ken-bait,though.
As a piece of journalism it was astonishingly bad. Daily Mail tripe.
"Hey junior...when he finishes speaking , grab that glass and whip it down to the lab for prints and a full alco trace...I've had a tip from one of Ken's goons...that amber liquid sure ain't cold tea...Ken's got a 24/7 drink habit and I'm going to bust him wide open..."Alki Trot Cyrpto Castroite Freedom Hating Meglomaniac...would you vote for this evil sick bastard?" Commies? Every damn one of them has a weakness if you just know where to look! An' I do! With Leon T. it was foreign travel."
(c) Martin Bright ~ "Red Ken's Last Gasp""
£1.50 all good bookshops.
Having just watched it (the wonders of the internet)...so what, eh? Livingstone drinks, his advisers are Moscow- (or is Caracas?) controlled Trotskyists who want to increase the GDP of London - revolutionary stuff - , he spends a fair amount of tax payers' money on room service, he can't make the buses run on time, Len the lorry driver can't get his toilet rolls to Londis any quicker than before the congestion charge, and judging by that photo, Simon Fletcher has put on a bit of weight and is less fashion-conscious than when he was hanging around for SA at Goldsmiths' College a decade ago (no surprise on that salary). Oh yes, and a Tory GLA member says it would be justified to say he is crap. And other GLA members say they can't do anything. And Livingstone played down the relevance of the Tiennamen Square massacre - while standing in it, on an official visit to the place. What a bloody surprise.
Is that Livingstone's *fault*? The arguments against Presidential-style (local) government and elected mayors were all there, but it was all lost in laughable 'we stole his glass and got it tested by forensic scientists' hot air, with background music, and some badly-trained movement of hands to try and emphasise the very weak points. Is this the shit that passes for documentary these days on British telly?
And as someone else said, there is some dodgy stuff going on there. On the level of a local council. Every local authority mayor goes on junkets to the other side of the world. It doesn't mean it's right - but it's hardly groundbreaking stuff and mafia-style corruption.
It is inaccurate to say that Livingstone's links with Healey were that of an admirer from afar. Healey's sect financed "Labour Herald" the newspaper of Livingstone and Knight.
Whilst Dispatches was mainly silly attacks on Livingstone and his advisors, this is not a reason to be soft on Livingstone.
His use of the cops at Mayday has already been mentioned, as well as the domination of the Social Forum. His links to reactionary groups, his call for strike breaking ... In a person he exemplifies all that it wrong with the left.
Susan- I think Tatchell's (minor) role in the documentry was probably a bad idea. But the substance of his criticism was one of the most legitimate attacks in the whole thing. (It's arguable how much Tatchell would have been told about the content as a whole, anyway).
SPP/Tony- Absolutely. (Well, apart from the fact I'm not convinced Lindsey 'Shibboleth' German is that great either).
I'm certainly not going to start falling into line behind the loathsome Livingstone because of this. He's still a scab when all's said and done. But attacks from the left are very different then the right wing hackery that most of this piece was taken up with.
Interesting that the ESF should be mentioned considering that both Livingstone and German are standing, considering that was pretty much stiched up by a Socialist Action-SWP alliance. Including false allegations of racism.
There's also an issue that seems to be going unnoticed here. The BNP. While Johnson would obviously be a bad idea, I think we also have to look at the long term issue. And if the radical left all line up with the mainstream on this one, it's going to play right into the BNP's strategy of presenting themselves as the 'anti-establishment' rebels in politics. Which has paid dividends for them since the election of Beackon onwards.
Was labour herald funded by Healy?
I always though that Roy Tearse and the discussion group were behind it.
Andrew Coates;
"The use of the Mayor's office to promote a pro-Islamicist stand is an enduring problem - though not apparently for Eddie Truman."
Andrew you're turning into a one man Daily Mail.
Last time you said that public money had been used to promote a Livingstone campaign against the French Hijab ban (or more accurately the ban on ostentatious religious symbols in schools but the crucifix doesn't count).
Where was it ?
There wasn't one.
Livingstone may well have expressed an opinion that it was a stupid, discriminatory piece of legislation, which it was, but there was no campaign.
You made that up.
When it comes to anything related to Muslims and Islam you are more than happy to make up smears, usually involving public money.
Ffs if Livingstone had used public money to campaign against the French Hijab ban it would have been the centrepiece of the programme, far meatier than any of the garbage dished up.
Without Comment: Mayor hosts press conference against hijab ban
6-2-2004 047
Mayor of London Ken Livingstone will host a press conference jointly organised by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and Muslim Women Society (MWS) on Tuesday 10 February 2004, prior to the French Parliament's vote on banning the Islamic hijab and other religious symbols from public schools and workplaces throughout France.
The Mayor will join speakers from MAB and MWS, as well as representatives of a number of faith communities and human rights and legal organisations.
Speakers will outline the dangers of adopting such laws, and how they will play into the hands of the far-right, extremists and xenophobes throughout Europe. Also highlighted will be the way these laws breach the fundamentals of human rights and personal freedoms.
The press conference will take place on Tuesday 10 February at 10:45am. Media wishing to attend should confirm in advance and will need to bring recognisable press identification. Please allow time for security on the door.
And:
London AssemblyFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Conference on Hijab Ban. Following my expression of concern earlier in the ... members and stakeholders to promote equality and campaign against racism. ...
www.london.gov.uk/mayor/mayors_report/2004Docs/mayors_report43_july.pdf - Similar pages
So, apart from a press conference, Livingstone hosted a one-day conference "to debate and discuss the implications of the ban on the hijab and other conspicuous religious symbols in French state schools on community relations in London".
The subsequent repeated demands by the likes of the Daily Express for a ban on the veil in the UK surely demonstrate that this was an entirely legitimate use of City Hall's facilities.
And, as I recall, his (unpaid) human rights adviser Yasmin Qureshi visited Paris to report on the situation there.
Seems to me this falls rather short of a taxpayer-funded "campaign", still less one aimed at overturning French secularism, as Andrew Coates would have us believe.
There is a campaign that defends Muslim women's right to wear hijab - the Assembly for the Protection of Hijab (Protect-Hijab) - and it was they who organised the one-day conference at City Hall.
Is this campaign in receipt of GLA funding? Or is that just a product of Andrew Coates' imagination?
So a press conference is a publicly funded campaign is it ?
Don't be so bloody ridiculous Andrew.
The Labour Herald was definitely a Healyite job. Yes, it had Tearseites, such as Matthew Warburton (if that's how it's spelt), in it, but the layout was just like Newsline in its smart appearance and good quality, it was printed by the WRP's printshop. The Tearseites didn't (and probably couldn't) produce any public documents at the time, let alone a plush paper like this. Their political involvement in Labour Herald was baffling too.
The fact is that Livingstone had a relationship with Healy. He turned up at Healy's funeral; he wrote a preface to a 'life of the saints' biography of Healy; he repeated the silly tales of the Healy fan club that MI5 broke up the WRP.
Neither Healy nor Livingstone would do anything like Labour Herald unless each thought he could make some political advantage out of the deal. What did Livingstone reckon he could get from Healy? And vice versa.
Assuming it's the same person, I remember Atma very vaguely. I think he was in the Huddersfield branch of the IMG and then went to Newcastle. So he probably has been around, sort of, for a long time.
Anyway Dave, I agree with nearly everything you say in this post. Perhaps I'd better find another thread!
Eddie, the Mayor took a major step in intervening in French politics (where he was out of his depth). Clearly there is an underlying campaign involved, but this can hardly be justified by reference to calls (much later) to ban morally coded dress from British schools. Or indeed, without any reference to the bullying campaign by Islamicists to enforce the veil in London described in Ed Husain's The Islamicist. It was focused on France. Full stop.
The Conference Anon refers to was *jointly* organised by the Mayor of London and the Protect Hijab campaign - presumably the former means that it was financially sponsored by the GLA. At present I assume it is subsumed in the wider Livingstone backed campaign to protect religion from criticism, known hypocritically as the Coalition to defend freedom of religious and cultural expression.
I have no idea of how much money was involved, or how much time was/is spent by Livingstone’s advisers on this issue, or on other aspects of his pro-religious campaigning. If this Conference was 'legitimate' it was a highly curious way of establishing the Mayor's commitment to democratic debate. There was not a single representative of the important North African secularist and feminist movements which supported the ban on ostentatious religious symbols in France (just to cite an obvious gap) present on the platform. The virulence of the response suggests something to hide. Opps, here it is, present was that well-known democrat Qaradawi starred:
"The inaugural event of this assembly will be a conference entitled: ‘Hijab: A Woman’s right to choose’ to be held on 12th July 2004 and hosted by the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and the Greater London Authority at City Hall, London. The Conference will be officially opened by the Mayor of London and the guest of honour is the jurist Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, Head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Dr Tariq Ramadan and Sarah Joseph will also address the audience regarding the significance and status of the Hijab in Islam and the European Muslim identity." (My emphasis).
The same exclusion of, notably, feminists from Muslim countries opposed to Islamicism, was enforced by Livingstone's minions and assorted Respect types at a session on the same topics at the Alexandra Palace European Social Forum. In the workshop, Hijab, A Women’s Right to Choose, Salma Yaqoob, Christine Delphy, Shami Chakrabarti, Raghad Altikriti effectively excluded any dissent – despite its massive presence in the very country most affected, France (see: http://www.niputesnisoumises.com/ and the dissident (and much better) http://www.insoumises.org)
Livingstone further attempted to attack French secularism directly, writing to Raffarin (PM at the time) urging him to remove the ban.
Sarkozy is now trying to take on ideas from British multiculturalism in order to attack secularism, announcing that France “a besoin des croyants” (France needs believers). One wonders why Livingstone has not followed Blair and paid him a respectful visit.
So far we've established that Healy was somehow involved in the Labour Herald rag, as was Livingstone, and that Livingstone repeated some crap about Healy at his funeral and in a book.
And when was this? Yonks ago. This is almost nostalgic. It's still very thin stuff.
I think some of the criticisms of Ken from the left carry more water. However, the contrived shock horror red scare is very silly.
Good post Southpawpunch.
In think the campaign by Lindsay German is what is needed to push the left forward. Also those for the GLA and the elections in Leyton and Preston.
Whatever might have been the rights or wrongs of recent splits. Whats done is done. We now need to look to the future and take a pragmatic view.
The reality is that the campaign against Livingstone by Nick Cohen and Martin Bright is motivated almost exclusively by their opposition to his alliance with Muslim organisations.
Cohen expressed this quite clearly in the London listings magazine Time Out in December when he stated:
"Bizarrely, since the world has talked of little else since 9/11, most people here don't understand Islamic politics, so the sight of Livingstone embracing supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't shock them as it should. Let me put it bluntly: it is no different from the Mayor embracing the BNP as the authentic voice of white Londoners. Go Lib Dem, Green or Tory if you must. But don't vote for this wretched man. He has betrayed the honour of the British left."
This form of attack does at least have the merit of honesty, but the problem is that, as Cohen himself recognises, your average punter hasn't the faintest idea who the Muslim Brotherhood or Jamaat-e-Islami are. Voters are hardly likely to be persuaded to reject Ken on the basis that he is supposed to have an alliance with organisations they've never heard of and which pose no demonstrable threat to them. To most people in London, Cohen and Bright's obsession with Islamism just appears cranky.
So Cohen and Bright have to cobble together an alternative line of argument in order to discredit Ken.
Cohen is by far the less effective of the two. Devoting the main section of his Observer piece to Ken's 1980s links with Gerry Healy, a man who died nearly two decades ago and never had more than the most marginal impact on political life in the UK, must have struck most readers as no less obscure than Cohen's denunciations of Ken's links with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Bright at least had the sense to concentrate on issues that might have some resonance with the electorate. Hence the attempt to pin the charge of alcoholism on Ken (admittedly, Cohen would not find it easy to make that particular accusation against a political opponent) and the allegations about secret Trot sects, the role of politically restricted staff etc.
However, even Bright couldn't produce a coherent case against Ken. It just resulted in a scattergun approach which I think most viewers would have found unconvincing, as it came over as a politically motivated attack which, contradictorily, lacked any clear political focus.
But I suppose that's the difficulty you have when you can't campaign against Ken on the basis of your actual (in this case, anti-Muslim) politics and just have to make stuff up.
Andrew Murray's response to Martin Bright here.
Interesting insight into the sort of forces who are rallying round Boris Johnson's candidacy here.
You're all missing the point here. Clearly your misty-eyed reminiscences about 1970s sectariana have blinded a lot of you to the real issues at hand.
On Socialist Action, they don't need genuine activists to defend them. I'm sure O'Neill and Ross's £110,000/year salaries can stretch to a decent attorney. And the problem with their politics isn't that they're "Trotskyist", it's that they're disgusting, inveterate Stalinists and defenders of anti-working class dictatorships in Cuba, China and North Korea.
But more fundamentally than any of that, Socialist Action are courtiers to an out-and-out Blairite politician with an explicitly pro-business agenda who's consistently attacked workers across London (including the RMT, probably the best organised and most militant section of the British working-class) and called on union members to break their own disputes. Socialist Action has helped him do it.
They're scabs. End of.
Also: Open Ken's books, but don't back Boris!
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/01/23/open-kens-books-dont-back-boris
Benji;
If Livingstone had been Healy's personal butler, you'd describe it as "so he made him a few cups of tea, this is all very silly". It's your schtick.
So, who do I vote for in the forth-coming election?
One of my posts seems to have disappeared. So to recapitulate quickly:
Clearly the attack on Livingstone by the ex-liberal neocon "left" is fundamentally right-wing in character; clearly we reject many of their criticisms, and obviously their support, de facto or open, for the Tories is a disgrace.
At the same, we need to have our own left critique of Livingstone in power - and the role of Socialist Action.
Would that Socialist Action did hold "far left beliefs"; would that they were "Trotskyites". In fact, in addition to being deeply Stalinist in terms of their world politics (China, North Korea etc), this is a group that has gone along, no, been at the centre of, a fundamentally anti-working class and pro-business politician and administration:
- Embracing property developers, the City of London etc
- Privatising the East London Line
- Attacking Tube workers' terms, conditions and union organisation, and calling on RMT members to cross their union's picket lines
- Backing the police over Jean Charles de Menezes
- Backing the police over their attacks on anti-capitalist demonstrators in 2000
- Actively supporting Gordon Brown to become Labour leader, arguing there shouldn't even be a contest
- Paying advisers (including many SA members!) over £100,000; and paying Bob Kiley millions for doing nothing
I could add much more. So the point for us, surely, is that Red Ken is not not red and Socialist Action are not socialist!
Who should you vote for? There's a case for voting for Livingstone on the grounds of the Labour Party's links with the labour movement - now pretty much destroyed with the abolition of LP conference, but we should wait to see if that is consolidated before declaring Labour dead. Or there's a strong case in my personal opinion for backing SWP/Respect's Lindsey German - now the links with Galloway etc are broken.
Yes, she's rubbish in many ways - but on what issue where she is bad is Livingstone not worse? And she is, broadly, a socialist.
Sacha Ismail: "there's a strong case in my personal opinion for backing SWP/Respect's Lindsey German - now the links with Galloway etc are broken".
Lindsey German got 3.2% of the vote in the 2004 London mayoral election. That was in the immediate aftermath of the mass movement against the Iraq war and with a single united Respect party behind her.
In 2008 she'll be lucky to get 2% in my opinion.
There are only two candidates who can win the London mayoral election in May - Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, and a victory for the latter is an increasingly real threat.
At the end of the day, we have to cast a vote for Livingstone - either first or second preference - because the alternative is having Boris Johnson as mayor.
For anyone on the left with half a brain, that surely can't be a difficult choice.
In defence of Ken:
Half-price bus travel for Londoners on income support.
Ken has supported the living wage campaign for London (see http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=8090)
Deborah Littman, Co Chair of LONDON CITIZENS Living Wage Campaign said:
"London Citizen’s welcomes today's announcement by the Mayor of the 2006 Living Wage for London. He has set a powerful example in implementing this pay rate in the GLA group and across its contractors. The London Living Wage has already made a material difference to thousands of London’s low paid workers".
Improvements to London buses including bus workers wages with a special bonus from Transport for London (see http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/transport/buses.jsp).
He fought the PPP for the tube, even taking it to the High Court.
He is a high profile politician who has criticised the Govt over the Iraq war and has backed Chavez (though ludicrously the likes of AWL and the Tories would hold that against him).
As for "attacking Tube workers' terms, conditions and union organisation", has he really or is that just ultra-leftist hyperbole?
The above poster has asked a very relevant question. Will the likes of AWL and the SWP call for a 2nd preference vote for Livingstone?
Isn't the logical conclusion of the argument from those calling for a Livingstone vote on the grounds the alternative is worse, that we should always support candidates from the Labour Party (no matter how wrong they are), if they're standing in a marginal seat?
That's logical coming from the Labour left, even if I don't agree with it. I don't see quite how it's consistent for those outside the Labour Party though. If you think that the sensible (tactical) thing to do is to support Labour, doesn't it make more sense to do that from inside the party?
I notice you don't answer many of my criticisms. In answer to yours:
1. "Ken has supported the living wage campaign for London..."London Citizen’s welcomes today's announcement by the Mayor of the 2006 Living Wage for London. He has set a powerful example in implementing this pay rate in the GLA group and across its contractors."
Not on London Underground, where many cleaners - in addition to generally being treated like shit by the management and contractors which Livingstone wholeheartedly backs - are paid more like £5.80 an hour. Livingstone has been in power 8 years; you'd think at the very least he'd implement the crappy £7.20 rate on the Tube.
2. "Improvements to London buses including bus workers wages with a special bonus from Transport for London".
I wouldn't necessarily deny this - but it's hardly the sign of a socialist mayor! Meanwhile we still have to pay through the nose for travel, the East London Line is being sold off etc etc.
3. "He is a high profile politician who has criticised the Govt over the Iraq war"
Much like Ken Clarke!! It's good that Livingstone's anti-Iraq war, but this is hardly evidence of great radicalism, is it?
4. "and has backed Chavez (though ludicrously the likes of AWL and the Tories would hold that against him)"
Yes, the Tories who support the right-wing, pro-US opposition to Chavez and the AWL who support revolutionary socialist trade union activists in Venezuela who mobilised againt the far-right coup but are calling for an independent workers' party - we're exactly the same!! This is classic.
5. As for "attacking Tube workers' terms, conditions and union organisation", has he really or is that just ultra-leftist hyperbole?
Eg the return of the North London Line to Transport for London is being used as a Trojan horse to introduce security guards, agency workers, lower wages etc into the whole Tube. Eg on the East London Line, drivers' jobs are being readvertised for £4,000 less than the old rate when the lines reopens in 2010! I could go on and on... ask any RMT activist.
We haven't discussed it yet, but yes, I imagine we will call for a second preference for Livingstone - but on the grounds of Labour's residual links to the labour movement (or the fact that their destruction is not yet consolidated), not the fact that he's the lesser evil to Johnson. If it was Johnson vs a Lib Dem, we wouldn't call for a transfer.
Livingstone is indeed a grave disappointment in many ways. Something has to be done about this. One way would be to back a candidate who will get a tiny percentage of the vote. Another way would be to try to intervene in the Labour Party and to mobilise what is left of trade union influence, plus the many thousands of individual Party members who vote for the CLGA candidates in the NEC elections against New Labour.
I appreciate that some on the left are dismissive about the latter approach - but does the former really hold out such great hopes?
@Jon Rogers
That's completely wrong.
It's an election by proportional representation. It is most likely that the final two candidates left in the voting system will be Livingstone and Johnson.
So vote with your heart (and head) and put Lindsey German as your first preference.
I'm tending to putting Livingstone as my 2nd pref but I may not put anyone. If you do see some merit in Livingstone over Johnson then put him as your 2nd pref and no 'harm' done and you get to build the socialist vote.
Not on London Underground, where many cleaners - in addition to generally being treated like shit by the management and contractors which Livingstone wholeheartedly backs - are paid more like £5.80 an hour. Livingstone has been in power 8 years; you'd think at the very least he'd implement the crappy £7.20 rate on the Tube.
Doesn't this just encapsulate the sectarian stupidity of the AWL?
Livingstone may have been in office for 8