Three Alligators
Posted on June 22, 2008
Another success for the free market
The sorry end of Harun Thiyanantham¹, murdered in a London squat, the conditions of which have been described as ‘beyond Dickensian’, prove once again the ruthless efficacy of ‘the market’ at finding the true value of everything — in this case human life. What is that value? For the majority it is nothing, as long as there is a large enough army of reserve labour to ensure the continuing production of commodities and people to buy those commodities. The lives of the proletariat are worth no more than sundry other machine parts — an unfortunate ‘on’ cost to be borne by ‘the business’.
Earlier this week the British Minister ‘for Women and Equality’ Harriet Harman boasted that the government ‘removes’ over 50,000 individuals every year — approximately one every 10 minutes — that’s 50,000 people like Harun Thiyanantham or Ama Sumani, the Ghanaian woman dragged from a Welsh hospital bed by officials of the Border and Immigration Agency and deported to die in Ghana, those officials fully cognisant that their actions would cause her death. All so the Home Secretary can be seen to be ‘tough’ on immigration as ‘New Labour’ and the Tories compete to outdo one another winning votes by pandering to reactionary and racist sentiment.
An insane dictator ‘appointed’ by ‘God’
In Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has announced today that it will not participate in the latest sham election², a pointless exercise considering dictator Robert Mugabe has declared himself divinely appointed and sworn that ‘only God, who appointed me, will remove me’ and promised that the MDC will never rule Zimbabwe, ‘never ever’. Withdrawal from the election process is also the sensible course of action given the number of MDC supporters who have been murdered or made homeless by the criminal Mugabe’s thugs. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said that Mugabe has ‘declared war by saying that the bullet has replaced the ballot’. Tsvangirai has also appealed to the United Nations and African Union to intervene to stop ‘genocide’. The MDC has its roots in the Zimbabwean trade union movement, with its support based mainly in the urban working class and Ndebele peasants. Despite splits — and reunions — and a drift towards a more ‘business friendly’ orientation, the MDC represents the true expression of the yearning of workers and peasants and the only realistic prospect for the delivery of the Zimbabwean people from starvation and the yoke of the authoritarian neo-liberal Mugabe régime.
Popular frontism 2008 stylee
Once upon a time — or was it last week? — popular frontism and cross-class alliances were socialist anathema, for very good and well understood reasons. Now this week, following the resignation of the former shadow Home Secretary in a political stunt intended to strengthen his position on the right of the Tory party, popular fronts are the height of summer fashion as former socialists who really should know better and seem to have very short memories flock to the banner of David Davis. Independent socialist action has fallen down the back of the couch, Lenin’s admonition that socialists should not merge with reactionary social forces, but
should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form³
ignored or more likely forgotten — as history repeats itself, albeit this time as farce. Instead of standing an independent candidate in Haltemprice and Howden on an actual civil liberties platform, they are supporting a candidate who voted to increase detention without charge from 14 to 28 days, a candidate who has never spoken out against the removal of the right to silence, a candidate who supports increasing the number of CCTV cameras on Britain’s streets and expanding DNA databases, a candidate who voted against the repeal of Clause 28, equal age of consent and adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples, a candidate who voted to lower the abortion limit and, to top it all off, is a strong supporter of hanging. In other words he is an old fashioned right wing Tory authoritarian opportunist and unfortunately, it transpires he has no shortage of willing dupes.
¹ Beyond Dickensian — Guardian, 10 June 2008.
² Zimbabwe’s Tsvangirai quits run-off — Al Jazeera, 22 June 2008.
³ Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions — V I Lenin, June 1920.
