Living Marxism: No. 63, January 1994

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THE RIGHT

OFFENSIVE

Question everything, ban nothing UK &2 January 1994 Nobs,

TO BE

For the *Happy News' 770955 244026 that they want us to hear, turn to back cover

Pularibe 56 When peace means war; Recession over slump continues: Police torture 58 Peacekeeping means imperialiem; Aids: the truth about the Day report; 62 They're all PC now; Women and sex in the nineties; Handieapped or oppressed; Make cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd and send to BCM JPLtd, London WEIN 3XX

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in USA; Bosnia: a mess made in the West: Romper Stomper The new authoritarianiem; Why they love a good war crime: Recolonising Africa; The great royal non-debate Why Clinton bombed Baghdad; Britain: a free country?

Nasty little breeders?: the state declares war on single mothers; Europe after the ERM; Bosnia: bloody liberals Children's rights? Wrong: The real dangers of Juraasic Park; Illusory peace in the Middle East; Anti-racist police?

61 You can't ban had news; Foeus on Eastern Europe-what could be

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They're all PC now worse than capitalism; Peace in Ireland?; Why the BP won; Rising Sum Environmental imperialism; Privatisation: another government handout; Index Living Marrism index. Issues 1-58; WIN 3XX or phone (071) 278 7699 0 0

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International Editor: Daniel Nassim • News: Andrew Calcutt • Living: Kenan Malik Books: James Heartfield • Design: Richard Stead • Production: Michael Kramer US mailing address: Junius Publications Ltd, PO Box 769, Murray Hill Station, New York, NY 10156 Subscription rates: Britain and Northem Ireland E19.50 • Europe (airal) E27 • Outside Europe (airmail E37 • Overseas (surface mall E23 • institutions add E7.50) • Make cheques payable ta Junius Publications Ltd and sand to Junius Pubications Lie, BCM JPLTD, Lancon WCTN 3XX: Fax (071) 278 0844 • Districuted in the UK by Comag Magazine Marketing, Tavistock Road, Wast Drayton, Middleser UBT 7OE; Phone: West Drayton (0895) 444 055; Fax (0B95) 445 255; Telex B81 3787 • Distributed in the LSA by Berhard DeBoer he, 113 Eas: Centre Street, Nutlay, New Jersey 07110, USA; Phone 201) 667 9300 Typeset by Junius Puelicatons (TU)Ccopynght Revolutionary Communist Party Printed by Rueseil Press (TU), Nottingham ISSN0955-2448 January 1994. Ungoicited manuscripts are welce, but can only be returned if an SAE is encland Editorial Letters Happy news read sod all about it cadie veele 10 Bulger trial: a morality play for our times Ann Bradiey Violence, lies and videotape Alec Campbell 14 Welfare Targeting practice Willam Deighton 15 Do you deserve to live? Debre Warner 17 Ane Bradley Back to whose basics? James Heanfield 22 Rebellous youth Andrew Calcutt 24 North Korea: nuclear Gooks?

John Gibson 28 Green patsies John Gibson 30 Miners: cap in hand gets kick in teeth Mike Freeman 33. South Africa s new constitution Charles Long/ora 34 Much ado about Nafta James Malone and Nancy Morton 37 Toby Banks Living: Nick Homby, Lord Horror Merlace Il Society Frank Cottreil-Boyce on TV 48 The Marxist Review of Books Editor: Mick Hume Peter Ray, Alec Campbell • Managing Editor: Phil Murphy

CONTENTS

Advertising Manager: Andrea Jaeger • Business Manager: lan Scott 'Where will the West strike next?

Iraq? Iran? North Korea? Cuba?

(Living Marxism, May 1993) Since we wrote those words last spring, the Americans have launched a Cruise missile strike on the centre of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad; threatened to blow North Korea off the face of the Earth in the row over nuclear non-proliferation (see centre pages); and sent flying gunships to mow down civilians in Mogadishu, Somalia-all with the support of the Iranians, Cubans and others are nervously awaiting their turn in the gunsights. The trend towards overt Western intervention in the third world has been a defining characteristic of international affairs in the 1990s. It is a trend that is set to gather pace in 1994. Which is why taking a stand against Western militarism will be a bigger priority than ever for Living Marxism this year.

The question of whether the future holds war or peace for the world is up for grabs today. In March, the Campaign Against Militarism will be staging a major international initiative with its War Drums and Peace Talks conference at Wembley.

Living Marxism is fully behind the campaign's bid to break the consensus supporting the West's right to dictate to the rest of the world at gunpoint. For full details of the conference, see page 29.

We wish an unhappy New Year to warmongers everywhere.

Western allies. The

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Let's get serious Mick Hume his month we publish the Living Marxism declaration on the right to be offensive (see opposite), an initiative that came out of our successful November conference, the Perils of Political Correctness. The declaration is, above all, a call to take a stand. It is designed to aid the creation of a new opposition current in society. Today the government is getting away with murder. But nobody is calling it to account. There is silence from the prosecution. It is time to get serious about challenging the culture of conformity.

The Conservative Party in Britain, like the Republicans in the USA and Christian Democracy in Europe, is in a state of turmoil. Despite all of the Tory government's promises of upturn and its statistical gimmicks, the reality of economic refuses to disappear. When it slump comes to policy, meanwhile, Conservative cabinet ministers do not have a decent idea between them. John Major's Back to basics' initiative is the political equivalent of a man wanting to get back to the womb because he cannot cope with the harsh real world outside. Whatever its problems might be, however, the government is having little trouble getting away with attacking our living standards and our liberties.

The government is now attempting to make working people pay for the problems of the capitalist economy. Its austerity policies are affecting the lives of every one of us. But to judge by the state of political debate, you would think that nobody had noticed. The huge outs in public spending on jobs and services proposed in the 4 January 1994

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November budget were nodded through the House of Commons almost without a murmur. The chancellor's plan to impose an effective pay cut on five million workers in the public sector was greeted by the parliamentary opposition in silence, as if it was no more important than putting tuppence on a bottle of wine. And the campaign to defend the miners has finally evaporated just as the government prepares to complete its pit closure programme. Alongside the imposition of cuts and closures, the state is proceeding to tighten its control over society through a spreading web of authoritarian measures. Yet nobody in public life seems to think it important to point this out, never mind The charade of parliamentary democracy becomes increasingly transparent.

More and more areas of life are run by government-appointed quangos Typically, the enabling act through which the government wants to pursue its war on 'red tape' will give ministers more power to abolish workers' rights and tear up health and safety regulations without reference to parliament. The Queen's Speech confirmed that such few new policies as the Conservatives have focus on the repressive politics of law and order. A national police force is in the process of being created, armed and with bigger clubs, more guns increased powers of arrest.

The long arm of the law gets longer all the time; police now have a hand in everyfrom deciding whether football thing matches go ahead in bad weather to running anti-racist campaigns and rape crisis centres. And the system of state or semi-state surveillance of working class life now extends from video cameras in city centre pubs to social workers prying into the most private of family affairs.

The rise of this new authoritarianism in our society is remarkable enough. What is even more remarkable is that the increase in state interference appears to be invisible to most commentators. It has passed more or less without critical comment, as if it were perfectly natural for the police to take over public affairs and professional do-gooders to dictate our living arrangements. It's not as if people are indifferent to all of this, either. There is a great deal of bitterness about mass unemployment and the government's cuts and pay restraints, and considerable misgivings about the intrusions of officialdom into people's personal lives. But there is no focus for these concerns, no obvious outlet through which to express the outrage. In short, there is no opposition. The opposition movements of yesteryear, the Labour Party and the trade unions, are dead. Labour can still pick up anti-Tory points in the opinion polls, but it is a hollow shell of a party that stands for nothing, with no real existence in society.

still boast about having Union officials millions of members on their books. But their corpse-like status is better revealed by statistics which show that last year, while union members' jobs continued to disappear and real wages shrank, the level of industrial action fell to a record low. The labour movement is strong on paper, but pathetic on a picket line.

The lack of an opposition movement that can pool their experiences leaves

THE RIGHT TO

BE OFFENSIVE

A challenge to these uncritical times Question everything-ban nothing If you would like more information about Living Marxism readers' groups in your area, write to Helen Simons, Living Marxism, BM RCP, London We are living in a culture of conformity.

There is no acceptable pretext for censorship.

Whether it is justified as a measure to combat The media is becoming tamer than ever, faced with racism, to protect children or to safeguard our privacy, high-level demands for more 'happy news! and less censorship is an authoritarian infringement of our critical coverage of the government.

rights. It should always be opposed. Bans are for bigots and Big Brother. The traditional puritans of the back-to-basics right and the new puritans of the politically correct left No taboos are both calling for more censorship.

From questions about race to matters of sexual And everywhere from the universities to the workmorality, many issues are now considered unplace, it seems that criticism and strong arguments suitable for critical discussion. Instead we are are now condemned as unacceptably 'offensive' to expected to avoid offending anybody, and stick to the moral line laid down by the self-appointed one group or another. guardians of the public good, be they government These are dangerous trends. In the circumstances ministers, priests or PC professionals.

of today, we need to defend the right to be offensive at all costs. The idea that we should not be offensive may sound like a call for sensitivity. In fact it is another Society is at an impasse, with the market economy demand for censorship. It is a not-in-front-of-thein a state of slump and mainstream politics in children attitude towards public debate, which a state of exhaustion. There is a pressing need for insists that we either say nothing controversial or a critical examination of what exists and an open nothing at all. debate about the alternatives. Instead we are confronted with a censorious climate that narrows the Such uncritical regard for convention and public terms of every discussion and stifles dissent.

sensibilities is having a stultifying effect. It is a guarantee that society remains stuck in its current rut.

In response, there are two principles that we should If we are to change things for the better, we must insist upon. have the right to challenge conventions, to outrage existing public opinion and to argue for new ideas No censorship regardless of who might be offended. Taboos are for the superstitious and the stupid.

Any demand for bans or restrictions will alwavs make matters worse. Calling for censorship If you have had enough of happy news' and the strengthens the ability of the authorities to dictate culture of conformity, join us in defending the right what we are allowed to see, hear or read. Bans can to be offensive, It is time to take a stand, to shake only add to the repressive atmosphere and strangle things up, and to tell it like it is.

more life out of our conformist culture.

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MARXISM

WC1N 3XX, or phone (071) 278 9908 LIVING MARXISM January 1994 5 • oh nt iS B. IS le

If you would like more information about Living Marxism readers' groups in your area, write to Helen Simons, Living Marxism, BM RCP, London people to react to society's problems as isolated and insecure individuals. They have no collective voice of their own to speak out against pay restraint or state repression. Instead, most people are left relying on the voices of important intermediaries to speak up on their behalf.

Sometimes this means that we hear the whispering tones of politically correct professionals pleading for more support for society's victims, while counselling those on the receiving end to come to terms with their lot. Sometimes it means the patronising voice of a Tory back bencher, or the sermonising drone of an archbishop, asking the government to show a little compassion to the miners or the pensioners. Either way, the result is always disastrous for the voiceless majority. There is a high price to pay for getting VIP voices to speak on our behalf.

It means we have to be inoffensive. We have to limit our demands and campaign methods to whatever middle class public opinion will accept. We have to bow our heads and look pathetic. We have to behave as passive victims rather than fighters for justice. All of which might just about be acceptable if it paid off. But it doesn't. Look at what has happened to the miners. The big campaign against pit closures that took off in October 1992 forewent any notion of militant protests or industrial action, relying instead on public relations exercises, mass walks in the park and the sympathetic voices of news- Tory right paper editors and rebel wingers to thwart the government's plans.

As a consequence, the campaign won lots of sympathy from the middle classes.

WC1N 3XX, or phone (071) 278 9908 We need a new voice that speaks a language of self-respect and fighting back It has also lost the battle to save miners' jobs. As we examine elsewhere in this issue of Living Marxism, the miners' campaign has been a hard lesson in the iron law that cap-in-hand gets kick-in-teeth.

It is time to forget about getting influential people to speak for us, and set about organising a collective voice of our own.

We need a voice that speaks a language of self-respect and fighting back, rather than of respect for the authorities and their rules and conventions Creating an opposition movement that can give working people a collective voice will involve cracking the present culture of conformity. That is why it is important that we insist upon the right to be offensive.

Without upholding that right, we will have little chance of winning any others.

If we bow to today's censorious climate, in which challenging conventional wisdom is considered offensive and bans and taboos are on the increase, we will be stuck with society the way it is. Any new idea worth having will never please everybody. But the fact that an argument is offensive does not mean it is wrong

EDITORIAL

What chance do we have of changing the world for the better, if we are afraid of offending the public opinion-makers in the media, parliament or the PC establishment? If we want to resist the government's austerity policies and the new authoritarianism of the state, we must insist upon our right to offend the powers that be.

If we want to get serious about furthering the cause of human liberation, we must uphold our right to trample on the sensibilities of those who stand in the way.

In this kind of fight, inoffensive means ineffective. Supporting the declaration on the right offensive, and spreading to be the message to as many others as possible, is a step in the right direction. Of course, a piece of paper alone cannot achieve anything. But if it can become a focus around which to raise a new voice, and help to bring together a core of people who want to shake things up. it will be a start. First offenders, one step forward LIVING MARXISM January 1994 5

LETTERS

Bringing up babies As a secondary school teacher, Claire Foster's article ('Sunday school teachers', December) left me somewhat disappointed. Your analysis of PC as a liberal veneer for conservative values is persuasive, but does this mean that state education is as much a tool of state repression as, say, the police?

Ms Foster asserts that through Personal and Social Education and other 'PC ideas' such as Schools Council, 'young people are being enlisted to police their peers-and even to police themselves'. I am involved with both PSE and Schools Council in my school. I am well aware that both these fall well short of their objectives as laid down in statutory guidance.

a valuable educational objec- But there is tive here. Through organising themselves to deal with their problems pupils are introduced to the possibility of action independent of the establishment. They can and do break down the Isolation and loneliness on which bullies thrive.

They may confront the consequences of racism and sexism collectively and thrash out collective solutions. Not so long ago the prevailing opinion was that discussion of these issues made the problem worse and in any case children did not have the experence to deal with them 'properly' (unlike a white middle class teacher). While sharing her scepticism for government motives, would Ms Foster admit that by admitting these issues onto the agenda the establishment has created a loophole in which progress can be made?

Mass state education provides an opportunity to foster the critical frame of mind required for social change. It broadens perspectives beyond the narrow horizons demanded by society. It is the lack of a radical alternative that has led many progressive teachers to accept the Department for Education's rhetoric. Ms Foster's article suggested no altemative and consequently sounded like a call to complacency.

Paul Morris Rusholme, Manchester Contrary to Gail Bradbrock's opinion that 'young peopie start life as loving, cooperative, dynamic (letters, November), in really they. are necessarily greedy, selfish, dynamic little gits", of the who see themselves as the centre universe. It is only through the process of socialisation that children come to appreciate the needs and expectations of others.

The iberal middle class may be 'confused about how to behave towards young people' but, as we have seen, their involvement in our horrendous consecuences. lives can have Bradbrook's use of words like 'adultist and the statement that young people wouldn't play up if they hadn't been mistreated' could be passed off as phrases from Peter Pan, If the authoritarian undertones weren't so serious.

In the real world, children play up because they can't always have what they want. Like the

LIVING MARXISM

6 January 1994 right to eat sweets 24 hours a day, go to bed when they please, or play with matches till the house burns down. Therefore, most parents re cognise that there comes a time when the best solution is to give the buggers a good clattering and get them up them dancers to bed.

Bob Pounder Ashton-under-Lyne Support groups aren't sinister Frank Fred's article (PC-the philosophy of low expectations', December) appeared to be nothing more than a rant against therapy.

counseling or any other form of emotional support. He worked from the assumption that most people don't need help to get through life's traumas. Support groups and counselors seemed to acquire a sinister image as oppressive agents of the state.

This is absolute nonsense. Among the largest organisations in this country are Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous. These 12-step organisations are completely self-supporting, and have as part of their "traditions' no affiliations with government or political agencies. The point was also made that seeking help from groups or professionals" led to a climate of 'passivity'. Again I feel this is nonsense. Trying to sock help and overcome the problems one is facing, strikes me as a very 'active thing to do.

I would also disagree with the notion that people do not need counselling or advice Voluntary counselling organisations such as Relate have up to 12-month waiting lists in some areas. Many people are desperate for the help Frank Füredi so despises. If people can 'cope' so well as the article suggests, how do we account for the massive amounts of alcoholism and drug abuse in our society, not to mention the vast numbers of people addicted I realise the point of the article was to underline the problem of state interference in private life, but | hardly think this takes the form of something as innocuous as grief counselling Heather McEvoy Bath Mind your language To my great disappointment John Fitzpatrick's article (Spelling fashism, December) was a stereotypical display of what an 'expert has called language shamanism: the mystification of language posing as clarification.

Throughout John confuses speech, writing as illustrated by his methat and language, example, a fault he shares with establishment commentators. People who can't spell at all are well aware of the difference between hats and This is not to say that intelligibility might mats. not be affected by a general disregard of standard spelling, but there is no evidence either way. There may be good reasons to encourage some standards in spelling but defending Standard English is hardly one of them.

To confuse Standard English disinterested with uninterested is not a spelling mistake and what is more would never confuse even the most woolly-minded Guardien reader. Nor have I ever found myself in a right mess because a student omitted d in advert: only shamans suffer from these complaints.

There is some sense to John's concem language proficiency, literacy and about access to society, but having made a good start he boldly plunges into more and more serious confusion. Black people, for example, Standard benefit if they are able lo speak Eng ish in a variety of situations. No one doubts that. What is objectionable is the suggestion that use of 'dialect or patois...could undermine the user's competence in Standard English.

This is the kind of nonsense up with which I cannot put. To suggest that black people may be less competent in Standard English because of their use of other vaneties or languages lays the responsibility for educational failure (among other things) on black people rather than on the British state. Moreover, while laking a side swipe at parochialism, John is inadvertently suggesting that the solution to disadvantage lies in the hands of black people alone: black seif-help through not speaking patwa. The evidence, which the establishment is keen to dismiss, is that a recognition of the existence of other varieties of English and of other languages in an educational context can result in improved mastery of the Standard. But I guess this is more liberal nonsense in John's world view. article provided firm evidence that The ability to write grammatically is no substitute for a clear idea or two. Jim Tyson Deptford, London John Fitzpatrick conceded we do. have to accept that the established language of our culture was established...by those who have had the power to do so'. If the value-laden nature of language is conceded, why does Living Merxism find it necessary to ridicule and condemn efforts made to highlight this relationship? The answer seems to revolve around the belief that those who do express such an interest are solely concerned with this issue. Hence we arrive at the argument that those who wish to change the word 'chairman' to 'chairperson assume that this alone will effectively end women's subordination. have never met including women from American anyone, universities, who have seriously put forward such an argument. It could be argued that those interested in such issues are merely a diverse group of people genuinely attempting to organise some form of counter-hegemony; an embryonic resis tance to dominant linguistic connotations. This is not an end in itself and should not be thought

We welcome readers' views and criticisms.

Please keep your letters as short as possible and send them to The Editor, Living Marxism, BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX, or fax them on (071) 278 9844 of as such, but must be incorporated in a wider process of organised resistance. What is the alternative here? Living Marxism appears to operate a sort of guilt by association policy with respect to ideas and movements outside its particular sphere of reference. It is undoubtedly true that the state has adopted the trappings of 'political correctness'. Living Marxism has correctly identified the hegemonicising process at work.

The ruling bloc has always absorbed ideas and concepts which are potentially challenging and re presented those in concepts terms favourable to its continued existence as the ruling bloc. Yet a recognition of this process does not mean that any of these movements can be simply reduced to that relationship.

I find Living Marxism a very stimulating and polemical read but only in a negative sense.

*I have read your critiques concerning current methods of dealing with and conceptualising crime, education, racism, sexism, environmental issues, etc, but that's usually what they remain, critiques. What are the alternatives?

David R Clarke Brighton Handicapped or oppressed?

I must write to you over Michael Fitzpatrick's outrageous article (Handicapped oppressed?', December). He argues that it is unreasonable for people in wheelchairs to expect society to organise itself to overcome the 'constraint of being wheelchair-bound. We must accept that 'some residual handicap is 'inescapable'. Fitzpatrick's use of the word 'handicap' gives his game away. It is clear that he believes that people in wheelchairs not complete human beings. He a Ba ridicules the discussion of the 'social oppression of handicapped people, then he comes out with the sort of prejudice which is the root of our "social oppression. I am disappointed that Living Merxism could carry such backward sentiments in its pages. Whatever hap pened to for each according to his needs, from each according to his ability?

M Hamilton Birmingham Anti-fascism v anti-racism The left's knee-jerk reaction to the BP election calls for 'something to be done', without considering why they won and what responses to take. This narrow focus on fascism ends up calling for state action because state institu tions can claim to be anti-fascist and hence allies (of sorts); the same state which instituenforces anti-foreign feeling tonalises and through immigration controls The opportunism of Militant and the Socialist Workers Parly is dangerous because it means trying to deceive your audience, hyping up the threat whilst avoiding the real problem of institutionalised racism.

The Revolutionary Communist Party's problem is that ts stance has no real effect, as if nothing can be done to combat racism. Hence it's a cop out for doing nothing except holding jamborees occasionally.

And surely some alliance against fascism is better than none, as a start?

Nurjahan Mali Woiverhampion Ben Bruges writes I am sure you agree with anti-fascism (letters December). Have I got news for him. 1 do not agree that 'fascism is a...growing threat. The far right in Britain is marginal and entirely inconsequential. The electoral success of Derek Beackon in the Isle of Dogs was no signal of fascist menace: it was a measure of popular disenchantment with mainstream parties expressed in conjunction with traditional British racism. Nor do I agree that it [fascism] forms a focus around which racism in all its forms can be actively challenged. Anti-fascist activists seek to rekindle the Blitz spirit by denouncing the British Nationa Party as descendants of Hitler. Depicting the BNP as German-flavoured Nazis strengthens the idea that the British way of life must be protected from alien influences.

It is a left-wing version of Margaret Thatcher's infamous 'swamp' speech of 1979, and its implications ('we shall fight them on the beaches) are no less reactionary.

Anti-fascism cannot be the start of an effective anti-racist movement; it is a step in the wrong direction. David Yates London Idiocy over Lockerbie My disgust at the US military's high-tech biunder in slaughtering the innocent occupants of a passenger airliner was matched only by my repulsion at subsequent attempts to cover-up and justify this terrible act. James Heartfield (Framing Libya', November) surpasses this idiocy in describing the Lockerbie murders as a desperate retaliatory blow as opposed to a fanatical act of ideologically motivated terrorists'. Wou'd Mr Heartfield like to define his criteria for a fanatical act? Was it not ideologically motivated? Were the perpetrators not terrorists?

Mr Heartfield's faith in retaliation, his euphemisms, hypocrisy and inhuman analysis would not be misplaced either in the corridors of Western powers or in the cells of ideclogical terrorists. In the same foul breath, Mr Heartfield names 'the people of the Midle East' as party to this barbarism. Please attempt to find contributors with a degree of maturity and comprehension equal to the severity of the subjects about which they write.

Simon Collin Bristor Misplaced foreskin No one would deny children should be loved, cared for and protected from abuse. But Kevin Reid (letters, December) makes some seriously flawed points to press his case.

Firstly a small misleading aside linking male and female circumcision needs clarifying. The male equivalent of female 'circumcision' would be the removal of the sensitive area-the last half to one inch of the penis. That would be truly maiming Second and more sericus is Mr Reid's cavalier attitude to oppression. I assume Mr Reid feels he is oppressed because he lacks his foreskin. I make this assumption because the tone of his letter is one of personal outrage Oppression is not a generic term but a political one used to define sections of society who are treated as second class citizens. Women, blacks and Irish people, for example. Not redheads. Not chidren. And certainly not men without foreskins. In the face of the hornfic atrocities carried out against oppressed people the world over, Kevin Reid's outrage at circumcision is not only misplaced but disgusting.

A Corrigan Newcastle Tokyo calling The Living Marxism readers' group in Tokyo has a new telephone number: 03 5614 1042.

LIVING MARXISM January 1994 7

The 'happy news' headlines he 'happy news" bandwagon is picking up speed and power all the time. When top BBC newsreader Martyn Lewis first launched his campaign for broadcasters to put more emphasis on 'happy/good/positive news", he was derided by many other journalists. Since then, however, Lewis has won the support of various establishment worthies. First BBC governors backed his message, and now prime minister John Major and Prince Charles have leant support to the happy news cause. The drive to get more emphasis on happy news is not as innocent an exercise as it might sound. It is the subtle face of censorship today; censorship that is exercised not with crude bans and blue pencils, but through the control and packaging of that information which we are allowed to read or hear. Sugar coated Too much of the criticism of Lewis and his campaign has tended to focus on the more trivial aspects of happy news", the banal That's Life-style human interest (and animal interest) stories which are already becoming more prominent in news broadcasts.

But there is a far more sinister side to happy news than stories about dogs which sing and dance.

The fashionable emphasis on happy news' involves wrapping the bitter truth about Britain in the nineties in a sugary coating. It means slanting the coverage of so-called hard news issues, in a way that will show the problems of capitalist socicty in as soft a focus as possible.

When Martyn Lewis launched his 'happy news' crusade last year, he listed some positive stories which, he claimed, had not been given the prominence they deserved by other gloom-mongering newsmen. These included stories about the record profits of a motor corporation, and a statement by EC finance ministers talking up the prospects for economic recovery.

As Living Marxism pointed out at the time, such stories read like public relations press releases. By playing up the 'good news' for corporate directors and government ministers, they play down the bad news for ordinary people.

Bad news like the mass redundancies, wage cuts and shopfloor speed-ups that created those record profits for motor manufacturers, or the little matter of 17m officially unemployed in the EC that the finance ministers forgot in their excitement about the impending economic recovery.

In his recent attempts to keep the bandwagon rolling, Lewis has sought to highlight an issue which even more clearly reveals the true meaning of happy news': social 8 January 1994

LIVING MARXISM

and political conditions in the continent of Africa. The dispute about news coverage of African affairs began affairs editor and a frequent reporter Lewis" concept of "happy news".

Lewis counter-attacked in a speech in been unable to mention one example of a positive BBC news report from Africa, 'perhaps because no such example from the past few decades of TV news coverage of Africa came easily to mind. I wonder why not?'

The clear implication of Lewis As the campaign for more 'happy news' gathers support, Eddie Veale argues that it is the subtle face of modern censorship Read sod all about it. when John Simpson, the BBC's foreign from Africa, went into print criticising November. Simpson, noted Lewis, had question was that the BBC foreign affairs team had downplayed the good news from Africa in favour of the dramatic disaster stories.

Yet anybody with a passing knowledge of Africa's terrible history over 'the past few decades' would not have to wonder why' there had been no happy news from that downtrodden continent.

Africa has been torn apart by wars and conflicts which are either directly sponsored by the great powers, or are the indirect products of colonial divide-and-rule policies. Its economy has been left in ruins by the trade, investment and banking stranglehold exerted by Western capitalism.

WONDERFUL WORLD!

For more 'Dog-doesn't-bite-man' stories, turn to page 8

HAPPY

MARXISM

UK E2 January 1994 Nol Switzerland Major edges isn't at war "PM of the Year' with anybody award Freezing pensioners 'at low risk of Aids' 20 000 HS hospital beds remain open in England Clinton pledges not to bomb South Korea or Kuwait Photos: Scottish chicken has octuplets Just about the only good news to liberation movements against on the peoples of Africa should be news coverage from South Africa • Walsall woman puts deposit on new car

WHAT A

come out of Africa in recent decades was the temporary victory of national imperialism. But that is not the kind of thing that the BBC likes to celebrate.

Today, the message from the happy news men is that the horrors inflicted given less prominence than the good news. Like what? Well, like the fact that the African National Congress has signed a deal with the apartheid regime in South Africa. So the recent happy has focused on the smiling faces at the negotiating table, and kept silent ••••. ... All the news that's fit for you to read 2im people in UK still have jobs 23m blacks have not been killed in South Africa Royal exclusive: Charles & Di still not divorced Sport: British footballers save air fare to USA Martyn Lewis' driving ban only lasts 6 months about some unhappy realities in the real South Africa outside the conference room: like the fact that black people in South Africa have paid for this 'peace" with up to 15 000 deaths since the release of Nelson Mandela alone, or the fact that the compromise settlement ensures that an elite white minority will retain effective power into the next century.

Whatever its proponents might say, happy news is not about cheering us all up. It means pleasing the powers that be, by putting a smiling mask over the blood and dirt stains on the face of modern capitalism. Little wonder, then, that it has won support from people like John Major and the Prince of Wales. The most unpopular prime minister in living memory and the discredited heir to the throne have good cause to want news coverage controlled even more strictly than it is already.

The interests of such establishment figures are being well served by the advance of happy news.

And make no mistake, happy news is advancing. Martyn Lewis takes over the Six O'Clock News in January, and as his approach to news coverage gains increasingly high-level support, many of the journalists who initially scoffed at it are having second thoughts and withdrawing from the fray. Those news broadcasters who remain publicly critical of happy news are trying to play down the importance of the debate.

But they are wrong. Polite questions Peter Sissons, who is moving to the Nine O'Clock News, has taken a pretty rational line on the happy news issue.

*What is news is an editorial judgement, he told the Sunday Times in November. "What is good news or bad news is essentially a political judgement. Fair enough. But Sissons also insists that he does not want to argue with his friend Martyn Lewis, especially since the happy news debate 'really is a trivial sideshow compared with the big issues that affect television'.

In fact the campaign for happy news is playing an important part in the creation of a sanitised, uncritical media that reinforces rather than questions the conformist climate of our times. This is a trend evident in the decline of investigative reporting, in the instructions from BBC chiefs that interviewers should be more polite to government ministers.

and in the steps to impose more restrictions on the media under the pretext of protecting privacy.

The consequences of allowing such a censorious trend to go unchallenged will be far from trivial. Public and political discussion in this country is already being reduced to the status of la trivial sideshow.

Meanwhile the truly big issues in society—like unemployment, poverty, militarism—are allowed to pass without serious criticism. The kind of front cover pictured here is alright if you know it's a joke. But it's another matter when such distortion and banality is offered up as serious news coverage. Readers can rest assured that this magazine has no plans to convert to Happy Marxism permanently. The unhappy news for the Majors and De Klerks and Windsors is that Living Marxism intends to keep telling it like it is

LIVING MARXISM

1954

A morality play for our times P erhaps we will never know exactly why young Robert Thompson and Jon Venables killed little James Bulger, but there is no mystery about why the case dominated the headlines throughout November. Many commentators tried to depict the murder of James Bulger as a gruesome act which was somehow characteristic of modern British society.

In fact, as a cursory glance at the figures shows, such killings are extremely rare. In the 10 years between 1982 and 1991, just 10 children under five were killed by strangers. The Bulger murder was not a symbol of nineties Britain; but the media reaction to it was.

The Bulger case was turned into the ideal morality play for our time. This rarest of murders has been transformed into a symbol of everything that is wrong with Britain today. As the media pursued each new sub-plot of the courtroom saga, it issued another little moral message for the nation to take on board.

SHOTO: VICHAEL KRAMER

Moral message: "It's an evil world and we need strict rules!

Why did it happen? That was the question on everybody's lips for three long weeks. How could two 10 January 1994

LIVING MARXISM

10-year old boys attack a toddler with such brutality? The search for a rational explanation for murderous behaviour was abandoned very early on. It was enough that the authorities had found something that everyone could agree was absolutely and unequivocally wrong. Indeed, those who persisted on the trail for a reason were soon condemned. The Times declared it facile' to "pretend' that there are rational explanations for child crime. This case, we were told, is a perfect example of the fact that some things are beyond human comprehension. Why was the death of James Bulger and the trial of his killers turned into the biggest news story of last year? Ann Bradley looks into the message of the media circus For the Times, which does not usually give its editorials over to murder stories, the Bulger case was la reminder of humanity's most ancient and bestial instincts', and an example of the three evils. 'In the lexicon of crime', said the Times, 'there is metaphysical evil, the imperfection of all mankind; there is physical evil, suffering that humans cause each other; and there is moral evil, the choice of vice over virtue'. These days, when the church talks about 'original sin' and the devil lurking to find a way into our hearts, most people are inclined to laugh. But, by using the language of

Sun 27 50008 д. Iron the inner. Boys who battered James Bulger 1o death locked up for very many years' criminology, the media were able to use the Bulger murder to restore the notions of pure innocence (little James) and born evil (his killers) in a way that few were prepared to question.

Psychologists were wheeled out to probe into the minds of the child-killers-and, while they were at it, to dissect the minds of the rest of us too. After all, the assumption seemed to be, if those two boys could do it, so could others. Are we all not tainted by the 'three evils'? Project back into your own childhood, the experts invited us. Could we not remember acts of bestial cruelty.

moments of being tom between *Evening Standard

THIS HORROR STORY DEVOID OF HOPE

STEPHEN CLOVER'S SPECIAL REPORT ON INE POSERS OF JAMES BURGER: PAGES 18 TO 22 This boy and his pal murdered James Bulger, 2 and will

THE INDEPENDENT

29 An act of unparalleled evil it never happens again!

IMED

BOYS

Anthony Burgess dies of Cancer 35 balcon Killers jota small group of dangerous children in high-security schools right and wrong? So perhaps there's a little of the murderer in all of us.

And if it really is the case that the veneer of civilisation is so thin, how important it is to have strict laws and rules and regulations to govern our behaviour. How can we trust ourselves?

Moral message: 'We are all guilty, and we must make sure The rediscovery of 'original sin' in the two boys did not let society off the hook altogether. Even if the two young killers were gripped by evil, the media coverage made clear, they could not The James Bulger trial have carried out the killing if the citizens of British society had been more vigilant. At least 38 people on Merseyside saw James Bulger being dragged along by the boys who were to kill him, yet none intervened. During the trial several were paraded before the court, to weep in the witness box and explain their lack of action. What happened to the active citizen?', asked the Guardian, despairing at the low level of social responsibility demonstrated by Liverpudlians. Does no one "have a go" any more?' But, of course, all those who ignored the palaver had perfectly reasonable explanations for doing so. They thought "it was just kids being kids", or the older boys said James was their brother", or 'the older boys said the little one was lost and they were taking him to the police station'. One man even raised his concern that he might have been suspected of wanting to molest the toddler had he interfered.

With the possible exception of the child abuse excuse, everybody can relate to all of these reasons.

People know that in similar circumstances, they would have been just as likely to turn away.

And so the guilt is spread among all of us. Because we are an uncaring.

heartless public-only concerned LIVING MARXISM January 1994 11

The parents of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were paraded as pop-up book examples of the underclass The James Bulger trial uveni

THIS HOR

PREPHEN GLOVER'S SE

This b and his murde James Bulger and w January 1994 12 about our own lives—a little boy was killed. As Bryan Appleyard put it in the Independent, 'people like us saw him and failed to save him....This was our own special slice of evil, we owned it, it belonged to us'. And, it soon became clear, we were going to have to pay for it. The collective howl of mea culpa became the trigger for a discussion on modern social values and the need for community vigilance. The champions of 'Back to basics", who were not making much headway elsewhere, must have been delighted at the way in which the Bulger trial gave rise to demands for a return to the good old days of nosey neighbours, when everyone knew what everyone else was doing and why, and people cared for each other rather than relying on the welfare state. No doubt the Conservatives will be quick to remind us of this sentiment when explaining why they are not to blame for old people dying of cold: It's not our fault, the neighbours should have been active citizens.

Moral message: 'Single working class women are unfit mothers!

Perhaps the cicarest moral message of all to come out of the coverage of the Bulger case was that some families stand outside civilised society. They fail to educate their children about the accepted moral parameters, they fail to regulate their behaviour to conform to society's values and expectations.

And, in failing to teach their children the difference between right and wrong, they undermine the very fabric which holds society together. If there are just a few who fail to teach their children that it is wrong to pull the heads off pigeons and beat toddlers to death, then none of us is safe in our beds.

The parents of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were paraded as pop-up book examples of the

LIVING MARXISM

underclass. Social security minister Peter Lilley didn't actually say, 'You've heard me talk about social security-scrounging, inadequate single-parents, well here's some I found carlier. He didn't need to; an army of reporters did it for him.

We were told how Ann Maric Thompson, mother of seven children (three in care) was a troublemaker, a smoker with dyed hair (!) and a heavy drinker. Jon Venable's mother not only had boyfriends, but regularly visited a local public house where she drank lager, and vodka and tonic. His absent father was said to watch (and to allow his son to watch) horror movies.

Jon as 'the classic product of a broken home' instantly implying that tens of thousands of other children from "broken homes' were at that moment roaming the streets in search of toddlers to slaughter. Keying in to the high-profile discussion on absent fathers, the Mail remarked that, 'friends noticed what they called an atmosphere of neglect in the absence of a father figure", Strange isn't it how these "friends' adopt the language of academics and social workers when taking to the Mail. Strange, but convenient for the moral crusaders against the sins of single parenthood.

Moral message: "It's all the fault of the sixties liberals!

When it comes to looking at why there are broken homes and atmospheres of neglect, the blame is usually placed at the feet of liberals. The people to blame are those who, in earlier decades, sought to distribute contraception on the NHS, to make divorce easier, to decriminalise homosexuality, to introduce benefits which might allow people to live outside proper' families.

These liberals, we have heen told, are responsible for the social breakdown which results in dissolute communities and breeds violent children. Even the Tory government has come under attack from the Daily Mail for failing to go far enough in pressing home the need for the traditional family unit and the traditional roles of men The Bulger case prompled pundit Piers Paul Read to explain to Mail readers that, "despite the rhetoric about Victorian values, and the current slogan "Back to basics", the general drift of government policy is to relegate the traditional family as an optional lifestyle and continue the progressive emasculation of the married man', His critical swipes at government support for equal opportunity programmes and anti-racist and anti-sexist education, and their tolerance of "morally indifferent TV programmes, is the kind of criticism the government would like more of. Read concluded that for years false freedoms have been foisted on the unsophisticated.

James paid for them with his life'.

That notion of dangerous "false freedoms' being 'foisted' on people is one that the establishment would like us to take to heart.

All of the various moral messages which the media drew so obligingly from the Bulger case point in one direction: towards the need for more authoritarian controls and censorship.

Who, ask the authorities, can object to the installation of even more surveillance cameras to pry into our comings and goings, when they proved so vital in finding the killers of James Bulger? Who would dare suggest that the rights of the boy's father were infringed when the police obtained a list of videos he had hired from the local shop? Who can argue against the banning of violent films now that it has been proved that Venables' father hired Child's Play III (even if the boy never saw it? Who would oppose an increase in the presence of police officers in Bootle when an alert policeman might have stopped the abduction, or the introduction of truancy officers to check the behaviour of children walking the streets? And who will object to increased interference by the social services in working class family life, and stricter regulation of those who live in "broken homes?? Object to any of these things, the message is, and you may be responsible for the death of a toddler. Of course,

Violence, lies and videotape this is all nonsense. There is no connection between increases in state power and improvement in public safety; indeed, the opposite is more often the case. Yet by exploiting the tragedy of James Bulger as an emotive weapon, the authorities have been able to create a consensus behind the need for firmer controls. Which makes it all the more important that we resist such emotional blackmail, and continue to challenge every advance of authoritarian state power, whatever the pretext offered.

There should be immediate cause for suspicion when a case like the Bulger killing receives such high-profile treatment in the media.

The profile never flows from the facts of the case. When, back in 1968, 11-year old Mary Bell was convicted of killing a three-year old and a four-year old, there was no equivalent media circus. Quite the opposite. The BBC banned the story from the early evening news, and there were no queues to get into the court, never mind baying mobs outside it. In her book on the case, Gitta Sereny remarks that, 'the press and the public not only resisted but rejected the case of Mary Bell'. But then the past is another country, and they do things differently there. In 1968, Mary Bell's behaviour was seen for what it wasa rare act of child violence. In the more optimistic society of her times, the killings were not turned into a reminder of humanity's most ancient instincts, nor of the darkness within all of us. Quite the contrary; she was described as an "abnormal child". Mary Bell too came from a "broken home" reliant on social security. But her alcoholic father and mentally unstable mother were not caricatured as symbols of an inadequate generation. And when Mary Bell claimed that an episode of the detective series, The Saint, had prompted her to strangle those young children, people ignored it; nobody demanded that the Roger Moore vehicle be banned from the nation's television screens. The Bulger case has been turned into a modern parable because it chimes with the current political climate, and suits the authoritics' moral agenda. The themes which commentators associated with the killing have keyed into fears about family breakdown, reinforced the contemporary mood of irrationality, and provided further justification for more state interference and repression in society. Why, asked trial judge Mr Justice Moreland after the bors had been convicted of murdering James Bulger, had two mentally normal boys aged 10. commitled this terrible crime le isn't for me to pass judgement on their upbringing he said.

before proceeding to do just that but 1 suspect that their exposure to violent video films may in part be an explanation. This throwaway remark, of the kind that you might hear from Baily Mail readers in the saloon har of any suburban pub on • Sunday lunchtime, quickly became the basis for a national panic. The police announced that their investigation into the video viewing habits of Neil Venables.

father of one of the convicted boys, revealed that he had rented Child's Play It. in which an evil doll in beaten to death by children.

Guardian announced that one could draw parallels belween the film's plot and James Bulger's plot The illiberal Sun drew the parallels directly in a banner frontbage headline: For the sake of *13 our kids..burn vour video nasty and launched a campaign to destroy all copies of Child's Play I!

Video stores around the country pulled the film from their shelves, and the marketing director of Scotland', biggest video chain, Azad, reportedly burned more than 300 copies. Within days of the trial right-wing MPs were handing the home toddler. The liberal Alec Campbell The James Bulger trial secretary proposals for a blanket han on horror films heing released on video.

Yet there is no evidence that the bays ever sau Childs Play 1IT Even if they had watched it a dozen times, there is nothing to snggest that it would have caused them to kill a doll, let alone Despite all of the expensive research done.

nobody has ever produced any real evidence of a causal link between film violence and real violence. And every survey into children's attitudes towards what ther watch on television confirms that they can distinguish fact from fiction.

But none of this prevents politicians and journal ists who support the real violence of the police and the military from blaming the fictional violence of a video for brutality in our saciety.

The scare about the role of video nasties in the killing of James Bulger reveals how irrational panics can take off in the fearful and insecure atmosphere of today. And it shows that these days, what begins as a moral panic always ends up as a call for more censorship. When it comes to provoking people into lashing out, Chucky the doll from Child; Play has got nothing on a truly scary character like Mr Justice Moreland LIVING MARXISM January 1994 13

In their plans to reform welfare services and the benefits system, the only welfare the Tories are defending is their own, says William Deighton Targeting practice 'm old fashioned about pledgesyou stick to them, promised social security minister Peter Lilley in a TV interview with Brian Walden.

But Lilley's pledge to keep the retirement pension a universal benefit isn't worth the manilesto it is written on. Lilley's pledge was widely reported as a retreat from his previous stance on pensions. Before the autumn budget, Lilley, along with fellow cabinet right-winger Michael Portillo.

had canvassed the idea that pensions should be privatisedthat people should provide for their own support in later years rather than expecting the state to pay. Two-faced But look closely at Lilley's pledge to keep the state retirement pension, and you see that no retreat was intended. 'Everybody can use it as a platform on which to build additional provision", he added. Once a pension was a pension. Now it's to he a platform, That means that your state pension won't be enough to get by on, and if you don't want to live in penury, you will have to buy in to some additional schemes, In effect there is no pledge to keep the retirement pension because the accepted meaning of the word has been abandoned. Lilley's two-faced little pledge is characteristic of the way that, in their

PHOTO: MICHAEL KRAMER

current campaign to slash public.

spending. the Tories have been able to get away with rewriting the meaning of welfare. They come out all hurt at the suggestion that they do not have everybody's welfare at heart, and

LIVING MARXISM

14 January 1994 promise to protect the welfare state.

But in the fine print there is a catch.

In spelling out what they mean by defending welfare, they redefine it to mean something else entirely.

Welfare is no longer defined as the provision of basic services like education, health (see box opposite), pensions and social security to everyone. It now means a two-tier system where the 'basic" services are so depleted that anybody who can tops them up out of their own pockets. Giro millionaires The Tories have a new word for dismantling the system of universal welfare benefits. It is called targeting.

like they are giving something away, getting extra help to those who need it most. All it really means is taking basic welfare services away from anybody who is not living on the edge of poverty-and cutting welfare services targeting benelits, it is not getting more services that the rest of us had taken for granted into targets for cuts.

It is the universal benefits that are in its line of fire. When Bill Byrnie won t2m on the pools he was still entitled to his invalidity benefit because it is not as yet—a means-tested benefit. Tory backbencher David Faber took the opportunity to slate the "barmy" social security rules in the Sun. It shows the absurdity of giving the rich the same entitlements as the poorest, Faber fulminated, invalidity and child Targeting benefits makes it sound to the hone for those who remain in the system. When the government says it is help to the most needy; it is turning the henefit should be targeted on those who need it most' (3 December 1993).

Who could disagree that millionaire pools-winners do not need state handouts? Bill Byrne didn't.

He handed in his benefit book, foregoing the advantage of a weekly trip to the post office for E100.

But targeting does not mean that pools-winners will be ineligible for invalidity benefit. It means that anyone with any other means of support, like a partner in work, will lose out. Where once invalidity benefit meant help for anyone who could not work through ill-health, targeting would mean that it became another name for means-lested income support. As far as Tory backbenchers are concerned, anyone that is not living in misery is too rich to deserve support if they fall ill.

Middle class perks In today's climate, any universally available benefit can be denounced as a 'perk'. Higher education can no longer be taken for granted as a way to better yourself. With the Tories threatening to introduce student fecs and cutting grants by 10 per cent.

higher education will not be something people can expect to be provided, but a luxury that they will have to pay for themselves, through loans and part-time work. The Tory case for undermining support for students is that higher education is a privilege paid for by hard-working bus drivers and other wage-earners-as if it were students, not the deregulated bus companies that were holding down drivers wages.

Peter Lilley claims to be the best defender of the welfare system, because (continued on page 16)

Health and welfare Do you deserve to live? Debra Warner explains the ethics of rationing healthcare Harry Elphick died last July, just live days before his appointment for a heart-bypass operation, having suffered a cardiac arrest in February. At the time. Elphick had been refused an operation on the grounds that he had a 25-a-day smoking habit, and had only managed to get the later appointment by giving up for four weeks Is it ethical for the medical profession to deny treatment to people because they smoke? After Harry Elphick's death, the pages of the national press were sharply divided between the yeas and the nays. What is the point of expersive preventative medicine if the putting, hacking patient Immediately nullifies it? Masked a Guardian editorial.

Once it was a matter of common sense that everyone was entitled to treatment on the NHS. Today, we cannot be so sure. Last year the goverument published the Health of the Nation white paper which places the onus for healthcare onto each of us individually. We are to be responsible tor our own health, rather than expecting the NHS to pick up the pieces It is surcly just a matter of time before the denial of medical treatment to smokers is extended to peo ple who drink, are sexually active or eat too many chips.

Doctors are increasingly expected to distinguish berween the deserving and the undeserving sick, a recent television documentary even suggested that the treatment Rationing in the NHS has already become a fact of life. Last April, Pulse magazine reported that official lists of treatments which ate no longer available have heen drawn up by many health anthorities Those treatments most widely rationed include sterilisation, vasectomy reversals, in viro fertilisation and cosmetic procedures such as the removal of varicose veins. Many drugs are also being restricted because they cost too much. The NIS has already blacklisted seven categories of drugs meaning many brands are not available on prescription It is now planned to extend the list to cover a further 10 categories, including contraceptives, vaginal treatments, anti-allerg and eczema preparations and anti-rheumatics.

Rationing is a big talking point in the medical profes sion. At the British Medical Association's conference last year, doctors agreed that rationing in the health service is inevitable, and suggested that patients should be involved in deciding which treatments to axe. Many now argue that NG MARX|SM January 1994 15

Health and welfare * the Department of Health should issue explicit guidelines to ensure that rationing is done fairly. Meanwhile, the real decisions about which treatmenis are available arc already being taken through the cost-cutting operation of the internal market in the health service: a fairer system of rationing only legitimises what is already taking place These days, even getting on to a waiting list in the NHS is not guaranseed. Before the NHS reorganisation, money was allocated to hospitals according to their usual case load. Today, hospital reatment is bought by health authorities or fundbolding GPs, Before accepting a referraL a hospital must ensure that the patient has been paid for If the hospital's contract has already been fulfilled it will be reluctant to add more patients to its list. Where fundholding GPs Bave used up their budgets, they are rehictant even to refer patients for an initial consultation at a hospital. Ar the moment, many hospitals around the country are only accepting emergency admissions hecause their funding for the year has already been used up The government has won generil agreement that the NHS has limited resources that should be restricted to the worthiest treatments, When five-year old Lanra Davies proposed multiple organ transplant hit the headlines.

people asked whether the NIS should spend so much money on what is basically a medical experiment. When the cost of her high-risk treatment could pay for severil routine opcrations with a better chance of success.

A recent report from the royal medical colleges proposes that operations should not be carried out without i realistic hone of success, and the dental of treatment to smokers and the elderly has been justified on the grounds that the risk to benefit ratio is higher in these cases. This argument has an inexorable logic; the sicker a person is the worse the risk to benefit ratio becomes, and so the range of ilinesses which are no longer worth treating can he constantly extended. The argument that the NHs should priontise the most effective meatments is a red herring. Many effective treat ments are withheld because they are not judged essential.

For example, an age cut-off operates in many coronary care units despite the fact that there is a high success rate for treatment of heart disease in the elderly, white without reatment the chances of fatality are high, Infertility treatments and plastic surgery are quite effective and in great demand bot they are nonerheless being rationed as a result Many health professionals who are repelled at the idea of market forces determining access to treatment propose That rationing through waiting lists is fairer than rationing by cost. They argue that the old-fashioned waiting list, for all its faults, is at least an egalitarian institution. Rationing might not be very pleasant hut, like the Blitz or British Rail catering, it does at least ensure that everyone suffers alike.

In fact the waiting list has never been an gitarian institution for everyone, but a last resort for people who cannot afford to go elsewhere li is estimated that 10 per cent of heart cases die while on the waiting list cach year.

One health authority which contacted all 400 patients on its waiting list found that 150 had either died, moved away or gone private. The NHS is moving ever further away from providing the services people need By dressing up the issue of rationing as 2 moral dilemma in shich we all share. the government can justify the elimination of more and more services Ai the same time, the market realities of the health service are dictating what care is available, rather than providing the care that people need. Tie accept their right to make cuts on the basis that some of us don't deserve treatment, we can kiss our healthcare goodbye. •

LIVING MARXISM

16 January 1994 Arguing for not demographic. Newspeak Targeting practice (continued from page 14) Spending on social security is hardly rising in real terms at all if it is not restricted to those on the breadline it will collapse under its own weight. Lilley's argument is that there is an inexorable rise in demand for welfare as people live longer, while at the same time there are relatively fewer people working to support them. People who oppose "largeting' in the welfare state are therefore actually its worst enemies because it will fall apart.

Blame the Aged Unfortunately Lilley's demographic argument does not stand up. According to a major study recently commissioned by the Rowntree Foundation, three quarters of the British population year 2041. Furthermore The Future of Welfare: A Guide to the Debate shows that spending on social security is barely rising in real terms at all, having grown by only 0.3 per cent of Gross National Product between 1980 and 1989. In the fifties and sixties there was some increase in welfare spending, but this has been held down since the 1970s. It is not the weight of welfare spending that threatens the economy, but the relative weakness of British capitalism that drives the government to restrict any claims on the budget. The motives for targeting are entirely political, None of the Tories arguments for doing away with universal benefits holds water. But that does not stop the government getting away with them.

It says: "targeting benefits", cutting perks, and defending the integrity of the welfare state', when it means cutting benefits, introducing privilege about the chancellor of the and undermining the welfare state.

But however much Newspeak the government uses, it goes all but unopposed in parliament and the media.

Instead of challenging the Tories' attack on wellare, the official opposition is itself seeking to force the pace of redefining universal welfare out of existence.

Labour's Commission on Social Justice was formed to rethink the party's commitment to the welfare state, after three election defeats signalled that Labour could not win on a platform of traditional welfare policies. The commission's deliberations amount to little more than translating the Tory welfare cuts into acceptably concerned language.

In the lexicon of today's Labour Party.

undermining universal welfare is deemed to be a legitimate exercise in recognising people's "diverse needs".

Where the Tory arguments for targeting services could be exposed for the attack on ordinary people that they are, Labour's shadow cabinet warns instead of 'tough choices on social security in advance of the election' (Tribune, 3 December 1993).

Labour's willingness to adopt the Tory agenda means that the Lilley version of defending welfare-by cutting it goes unchallenged and on its way to becoming accepted common sense.

Nodding along But are we really at the point where everybody assumes that they should be paying for the things that once they expected as of right? After all, you could be forgiven for thinking that you had already paid extra for healthcare and pensions, as national insurance contributions and taxes rise while real wages fall. Yet, when the government says you are going to have to pay for them all over again.

the pundits and opposition parties By getting everybody to think like an individual taxpayer, shouldering the burden of a massive budget deficit, the Tories are getting everyone else to make the sacrifices British capitalism needs to keep going. exchequer's problems, we could ask why they can't afford the pensions, education, invalidity benefit and other things that make life, not luxurious, but bearable. After all, if Lilley & Co are right, and the existing social system really cannot provide a basic pension for everybody who needs one, there could be no better argument for changing the system. The Future of Welfare: A Guide to the Debate, John Hills, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, €8.50

Of voles and men A 1 last scientists have discovered what makes a man an "absent father" If you don't like kids, if you are promiscuous, and you have problems displaying affection, then the answer could lie in a hormone deficiency.

The latest revelation from American sociobiologists is that fatherly behaviour, nurturing impulses, monogamous inclinations and a desire to snuggle up with your partner is quite literally in the blood. If your levels of the hormone vasopressin are on the low side, then you are probably a lack-the-Lad. beer-swilling philanderer, with roll-on-polloff technique. If, on the other hand, your levels are high, you are hikely to be a contender for a father-of-the-year award.

The experts have reached this conchision by studying prairie vales They can, we are supposed to believe extrapolate from voles to humans because this kind of vole has a monogamous, egalitarian child-rearing pattern of behaviour that is supposed to he pretty close to our own.

(Suspend your disbelief for a moment.

There is no and put on hold your queries about what egalitarianism means to voles, because it evidence that behe our only This what they reach This admirable vale warse.) maturity. Young voles, we ane told, are voles have irresponsible. (How, exacily? Are they out partying all night, perhaps?) But as recreational sex soon as they have intercourse, a release of vasopressin triggers a mid life crisis, Accerding to a report in the Times, the hormone goes into action, causing the male to prefer his female partner to all others, and making him aggressive towards strange voles who invade his territory. He also tends to cuddle the female vole (1 ask you, how can voles cuddle when they don't have arms? and usually becomes her partner for life, sharing the rearing of the litter of pups* Dr Thomas Insel. a neuroscientist responsible for some of the experimentation in the study, also discovered that when vasopressin release was blocked the male vole was still willing 1o mate with females, bur afterwards showed no interest in pairing up and looking after the young. He also showed no signs of attachment to the female tbrough ageression towards other voles, and he stopped grooming the pups. When the male voles without partners were given vasopressin, they apparently behaved like a husband to the nearest female, although the relationship was never consummated, and tried to protect her Dr Insel isn t suggesting that vasopressin supplements could create sensitive men but he does think it costd he used to improve social bonding in antistic children, who apparently produce lower levels of vasopressin than the normat population.

I have reported this in length. borrowing from Kate Muir's report in the Times, because I was so gobsmacked when 1 read it I accept that Kate Muir is a little tongue-in-cheek in her reporting.

but the principle that you can study the behaviour of voles and learn something abour our own hehaviour is unchallenged by Kate Muir.

ANN BRADLEY

by Nature magazine (which published the study) or by Dr Tasel.

No doubt the pituitary glands in voles and in humans produce a common substance, in this case vasoptessin. Nor am I disputing that this hormone may have a similar physiological effect. My medical dictionary says it stimulates intestinal activity, constricts blood vessels and inhibits the secretion of urine The dictionary doesn't say whether it does this in voles as well as people, hut I'm perfectly prepared to helieve that it does. There are aspects in the physiology of mammals which are similar and comparable. If this was not the case then it would not make sense to lest drugs on animals, but there is, so it does. There is, on the other band, absolutely no similarity between the social habits and emotional behaviour of humans and voles.

The factors that make a female vole attractive to a male probably are hased on hormones. There is more to it with us-although a lot of perfume manufacturers (especially those who specialise in the new pheromone products) would prefer you to think otherwise. The relationships we have with out partners, and with our children for that matter, are dominated by the way we live.

You only have to consider the decisions you make when it comes to starting or ending relationships to sce the difference Maybe there is a chemical element to sexual attraction, but there's a lot of conscious consideration ton. Are you intellectually compatible? Can t imagine voles dehating politics. Are you sexually in tune? There is no evidence that voles have recreational sex. Do you share a lifestyle? Voles only have one way of living. Are you nancially viable? will your family approve? All kinds of things come into consideration, none of which have to do with hormones.

There is an irritating tendency among scientists (who, since they put a lot of stock in objectivity should know belter), to observe animals and read human characteristics into their bebaviour Just because a rodent carries out a physicalaction similar to that of a human doesn t mean it's done for the same reason. You wrap your body round your loved one to show affection that's cuddling My gerbils (now deceased) used to sleep wrapped round each other for warmth. Same action (approxi mately) different motivation Then there is the other side of the tendency to equate human and animal actions. Having imposed human motives on animal actions, the experts say that, since animals behave like humans, we can lear something about human society from them. So family breakdown ends up as a consequence, not of a lack of money or decent housing, bat of a lack of vasopressin. Vasopressin levels in voles will tell us ahour vasopressin levels in voles. On a good day we might gain an insight into their physiological effect such as whether they stop you from peeing. We certainly won't Icar anything about family values.

• LIVING MARXISM January 1994 17

we have in common. But it is better to unite against the Tories' moral agenda than for it, argues James Heartfield whose basics? John Major wants us to return to the basic values ohn Major's Guildhall speech in November called for a return to basics, to the common values we all share. According to the prime minister, those common values are first, economic-the free market.

low inflation and sound finances and second, moral-respect for the law, neighbourliness and self-discipline. Instinctively, many reacted against the Tories' moral agenda.

Cynical newspaper editors had a point when they asked whether government should be in the business of telling people how to live their lives.

They had a point, too, when they suggested that the Tories must be short on new ideas. After all, who had been running the country while the moral standards supposedly slipped if it wasn't the Tories? The Labour Party attacked the government's apparent hostility to the most hapless members of society, like single mothers, and then its poor record on reducing the crime statistics. Some, like the comedian Stephen Fry, challenged the government's right to lecture us about morality given the marital indiscretions of its ministers.

But while the Tories' concern with morality was greeted with suspicion, it was also thought by some to have its Back to

LIVING MARXISM

January 1994 18 known for letting the weak go to the wall, a new-found emphasis upon the values of community and care looked like a welcome change of heart.

For some on the left the government's is seen as a timely corrective to the narrow individualism of the eighties.

In his introduction to a Gallup poll on juvenile crime, the Labour Party academic AC Halsey attacks modern social policy's giorification of the individual", adding that the equally important demands of community or have been increasingly disregarded in recent years. thinking that a return to moral values can put the brakes upon cighties-style Institute for Public Policy Research, argues that men who 'spend their time stealing cars and videos or selling drugs' could be encouraged "to be caring and attentive parents" through government action.

of 'Back to basics, then, many of the government's critics share its support for what are seen as society's core values. Their only real difference is the belief that they, not the Tories, positive side. From a government better recent concern with civic responsibility "society" as distinct from the individual Halsey is not alone on the left in selfishness. Anna Coote, of the radical Despite the widespread criticism know best how people should behave.

According to Halsey and Coote, or Labour's shadow home secretary.

Tony Blair, the left is the true guardian of the community.

But are there really any such things as core values? If Major had stuck to talking about his core economic values-like the free market and sound financesthe problem would become clear. After all, the free market may be considered a valuable concept in the boardroom, but for many people the experience of the free market today is about redundancies and pay cuts. And while the sound finances which the chancellor promised in the budget were cheered by the City financiers, most people were far less enthusiastic about the prospect of big cuts in public expenditure on the services they need. If the government's appeal to the country was based on 'economic values alone, it would only succeed in emphasising the things that divide us, setting the majority who are on the receiving end of market cconomics apart from the minority with a real stake in the system. By shifting attention to 'basic moral values" instead, Major has sought to smooth over those social divisions.

The problem with buying in to the government's moral enterprise is that the very idea that there are common values that serve the whole of society is wrong. For most people, submitting to the values of the government and the dignitaries assembled at the Lord Mayor's dinner at the Guildhall means losing sight of what is in their own best interests.

John Major's basic moral values are an affectation of community in the face of conflict Conservative morality John Major's appeal to community is a way of covering up the real divisions in socicty by appealing to everybody to pull together. In fact there is no such community of interests.

There is only the appearance of a common set of values that hides the real inequality between the ruling elite and the rest of us.

But the appeal to community does more than cover up inequality.

The emphasis upon personal responsibility shifts the blame for what goes wrong away from the market system and on to the mass of powerless individuals.

Have you shirked responsibility for your dependents, or failed to bring your children up to respect the law?

Or perhaps you have not been neighbourly enough, or have been too unwilling to provide for yourself.

These, according to John Major are the reasons for the hardship and conflict that threaten the social fabric.

The way this argument works can be seen in the government's assault on single mothers. Where once it was seen as society's responsibility to provide a safety net for those unable to support themselves, the attack on single mothers puts the blame on individuals for their predicament.

Not unemployment and poverty, but family breakdown is presented as the reason for personal hardship.

In November, leaks of a 50-page government report on the problem of single motherhood indicated that the cabinet was looking at a variety of measures to penalise single mothers on social security. These included; benefit cuts for couples that separated and • LIVING MARXISM January 1994 19

Back to basics own welfare 20 January 1994 for single mothers who had more children, counselling for single mothers who applied for benefits, reform of the divorce laws to make separation more difficult, and making young single mothers dependent upon their parents for support. Of this last measure, the health minister, Virginia Bottomley, said that it was designed to free Peter Lilley argues that we need a welfare society—he means that people should provide for their single mothers from dependence upon the state. In the budget, chancellor Kenneth Clarke seemed to offer single mothers a hand-up into work with the announcement of a childcare allowance in addition to family credit— except, of course, that family credit is offset against income, so that you would have to earn less than your benefit to be entitled to the new allowance. The principle of encouraging single mothers to fend for themselves is still the background to the budget changes.

Dressed up in the language of moral concern, the government's case against single parenthood seems to be a selfless attempt to repair the social fabric.

According to this argument we all stand to lose if the family breaks down.

as lawlessness and deprivation are the likely results. Broken down into bare economics, however, it looks rather different. Behind the concern for morality is a more basic desire to cut the budget deficit. Defending the family turns out to be a way of shifting responsibility for welfare away from the state and on to individuals, and keeping capitalist society going at the expense of hard-up people like single mothers. According to John Major there should be no differences about basic values. That is what he means by calling them basic. In his argument everybody is a citizen with the same interests and part of the same community, so they should share basic moral values. On the face of it, Major's argument might seem fair enough. Everybody should be playing by the same rules.

Consequently, he argues, everybody should be free from state bureaucracy: business should be free from government red tape in just the same way that single mothers should be free from the interference of the

LIVING MARXISM

Department of Social Security.

But, in reality, freeing business from government means something very different to freeing claimants from government. Freeing business means taking away the rules that curb employers' exploitation of their employees. The 'red tape" ministers complain of is not a collection of outdated rules, but the few remaining workplace regulations that safeguard workers' health, safety and other conditions. Already unwilling to meet the minimal standards contained in the European social chapter, British business is to be set free to balance its books at the expense of its workforce.

Welfare society In contrast, freeing claimants from dependence on welfare means robbing them of the bare safety net provided by the state. Peter Lilley argues that we need a welfare society instead of a welfare state. He means that people should provide for their own welfare. Not government, but savings and insurance should meet the cost of unemployment, Same rules, different result.

The reason that the same rules— freedom from the state-can have such different results is because it is not the rules that make inequality, but the power of money over the majority of people. If you have enough capital to meet a wage bill, you are free to make people work for you. I all you have is a wage slip, you are free to work for someone else at least for as long as they can use you. All that the rules do is hide the systematic inequality that is written in to the market system. Business and Treasury There is no basis for a common morality. In an ideal world everyone could agree with John Major that neighbourliness is a good thing.

But in this world few have the time or the means to take on responsibility for elderly neighbours, or the mentally ill left to the care of the community.

While the government has shirked those responsibilitics, there is no real community in place to care for those who cannot look after themselves.

The real community appealed to in Major's so-called core values is the community of those few who have a genuine stake in maintaining the status quo. Business can agree with the Treasury that people should take more responsibility for their own upkeep. Police chiefs can agree with education officers that criminality begins in the home. The powers that be are happy to agree that the source of all difficulties is ordinary people. But for ordinary people, the only community on offer in the current climate of discussion is a community of blame for everything that goes wrong.

Take the question of single mothers.

The example of single parenthood shows how self-serving the Tories basic moral values are. Most single mothers would leap at the chance to carn themselves a decent living, but are held back because few jobs carn enough to cover their childeare and their bills. Everybody knows what they need to help them to help themselves-nurseries.

The socialist family So why aren't there enough nurseries?

In a report on Britain's education.

former civil servant Claus Moser put that question to the minister responsible, John Patten. His answer was that there isn't enough money in the kitty. Now you know why the government says that sound finances are a basic moral value too, Those left-wing critics of the government that have rallied to the cause of community hope that they can hijack the moralistic rhetoric for better ends. As they see it, John Major's new-found concern with the community is a concession to their own criticisms of the excessive individualism of the eighties. Professor Halsey goes so far as to embrace the feats over the spread of single motherhood. "The family', he says, 'is a socialist institution'.

But instead of hijacking the government's moralism, its critics on the left have allowed themselves to become part of the consensus that puts the blame for society's problems on to ordinary people. It is no great surprise that the Tories are less willing to argue the case for the unalloyed free market at a time of slump when most people are suffering under it. But Major's emphasis upon common values is not an alternative to the market, it is an excuse for it. It says that the problems caused by the market are everybody's responsibility. Professor Halsey's affection for the family only serves to reinforce the Tories" case that the real damage to society comes from those who are unwilling to conform to basic moral values. Made and remade Far from there being any core moral values that are good for all time, values are made and remade in accordance with the exigencies of the day. For this government that means covering up the real cause of the problems in society by getting the weakest to bear the burden of the failures of the market. Values worth fighting for are unlikely to be inheri from the past. There is little point in going back to the basics that got us where we are today.

T W ) S

Revolutionary ideas for today 22-28 July 1994 A week of discussion organised by the Revolutionary Communist Party at the University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1.

Tickets cost £45 waged/E30 unwaged before 7 March, and £50/835 before 1 June, &55/E38 before 22 July and E60/E40 on the door.

School/FE Students S.20. Make cheques payable to RCP Association and send to BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX. For further details phone (071) 278 9908 LIVING Sponsored by MARXISM

It gives me a buzz' Andrew Calcutt asked some young people what they hate about nineties Britain-and what they think they can do about it. All of them were angry about something; but while some were just cynical, others had joined the Campaign Against Militarism to have a go Erik, student at sixth form college going on in Britain-racism, sexism and the rest of it.

explain things to other people, that I can make an impact on events so why can't we all?

LIVING MARXISM

22 January 1994 Is Rubbish. My mother's German and I got called "Nazi" at school. So I had a youthful distaste for what was It is satisfying being able to and to get them moving. There is a proposal for my college to be merged, and this will mean cuts.

Because I opposed it the other students got activated. I am sure the problem. Xanthe, student I don't believe what the media tells me and I wouldn't trust any politician to represent me, I'm more interested in the state of mind which people carry around with them. If an individual's mindset is not in synch, he/she could be in the most beautiful landscape in the world and they'll still make an ugly atmosphere.

Reality is inside the mind of every one of us. The old rap about changing the world outside...it's an outdated idea. Sean, unemployed Being a teenager is crap. I'll be staying in tonight because I've no money to go out. Ihope my parents go out so 1 can get some peace. What can I do? As Blur said, Modern Life Peter, school student I enjoy challenging the Tories.

1 get a buzz from challenging all the people who tell me how to live my life. Why believe things are inevitable? If you want to bring about change you have to look to see what is the real cause of Lee, student at technical college Doing Economics and Politics at college you are consistently told that one of them will work-Labour will make a go of it or Keynesian economics needs a second chance.

And you just can't believe it.

I was thinking that economic recovery was a joke and what was on offer was a joke.

Like getting out there and convincing people of the need for an opposition. I like the challenge, 1 was always a bit of an idealist there shouldn't be war, we should be equal, there ought to be decent wages. Now I realise I'm fighting in my own interest as much as anything. Janet, care assistant It was the miners' campaign last ycar that got to me: I knew that the government was taking the piss, and I didn't want to let it happen without a fight. There's nothing different about me. I just don't want to be docile.

I hate what Britain is about-the complacency, the lack of ambition, privileges for the minority. I joined the Campaign Against Militarism because it's a movement that's three steps ahead

tea, student es technical college I started reading Living Marxism and it was saying things I'd been thinking which no one else had said. I was looking for something different because I thought my ideas were better than the mainstream.

Like me, a lot of people are looking for something. All right.

they are also cynical. I was convinced by a logical argument, why shouldn't they be? When the Schools Campaign Against Militarism went into schools and colleges, 30-40 people were coming to meetings in a lunchtime.

It's exciting to be part of something that is new and different and especially important because no one else is doing it. Graeme, hot dog salesman and student Respect to your views but you can't expect to achieve your aims.

Let's all go to a higher level.

Anita, office temp Legalise it! Cannabis is as natural as tea or coffee. Allow the home cultivation of cannabis. These are my slogans. And free tap water in the clubs! Eddie, student They tried it in the Soviet Union and look what happened. Equality, justice of course that's how it should be. But people are not ready for it. Geraldine, student Where is the economic recovery?

about. Everything is out of control.

Personally I'm concerned about the spiral of violence against women, and I want to see women protected against violence at home and harassment in social life. But generally speaking the world's problems are too big for anyone to sort out. The politicians can't do it.

Neither can 1 and neither can you.

Tony, trainee printer People don't want change.

Most people are scraping by.

Not flush, but getting along.

They won't get off their arse.

I'm not fooled by the people in power, I don't like what's going on any more than you do. But you re speaking to such a small minority.

British people will never do anything different. Nobody knows what they're talking about it. workss Rebellious youth? Emma, GCSE student The issuc of militarism really angered me, copecially what the British state does in the name of Queen and country. The whole idea of Rule Britannia—that we have the right to dictate good and evil-it's moral hypocrisy. A lot of people who say no politics still hold strong opinions.

My best friend got really wound up about the bombing of Iraq but she didn't think of it in "political" terms.

There is a general feeling that something isn't quite right. People are not stupid, they think about things, But they divorce their anger from thinking they can do anything Through the Schools Campaign Against Militarism we've been connecting with pissed-off young people and showing how to turn it into a real fight. The whole thing gives me a buzz. Therese, local govemment For centuries my history has been ignored or censored or distorted.

My concern right now is to establish the truth about my history. This will help me to be a stronger person.

That is as far as I am prepared to go at the moment. LIVING MARXISM January 1994 23

The non-proliferation row Nuclear 'Nuke the Gooks' has long been the racist cry of the American right eyeing North Korea.

Now president Bill Clinton has threatened to destroy that state for allegedly developing its own Bomb. But is Kim Il-Sung really holding the world to ransom? Or is the USA using the non-proliferation row as an excuse to hold a gun to the third world's head? John Gibson investigates

HOTO: AFP

In the eye of the beholder? Bill Clinton on the border lor 24 January 1994 LIVING MARXISM

Gooks? ince the middle of $ 1993, the possibility of North Korea having a nuclear bomb has been presented as something which, in Newsweek's words, 'may well be the greatest threat to world peace' (29 November 1993).

Speaking to American troops at the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea last July, US president Bill Clinton cited the North Korean threat as the reason why US troop numbers could not be cut in South Korea and Japan. Don't even think about using a nuclear device, he warned the North Koreans, or America will 'annihilate" you.

The issue of nuclear proliferation in the third world has risen high up the list of Western concerns in recent years.

In January 1992, the first-ever summit of the United Nations Security Council was convened to discuss this issue.

First, the possibility of Iraq getting the Bomb dominated the news.

Then attention shifted to North Korca.

The imagery was the same: the world was being held to ransom by an unstable dictator with his hands on the Bomb. It was common to link the two countries. "The UN Security Council cannot avoid thinking about North Korea in terms of the Tragi experience', argued Ronald F Lehman, former US Assistant Secretary of Defence (Washington Quarterly, Summer 1993). History may not repeat itself, but watch the Korean peninsular for a disturbing sequel", warned the Economist in an article entitled 'Apocalypse Asia' (26 March 1993).

There is indeed a link between Irag and North Korea: they are both impoverished third world nations that have been set up by America.

ng out for North Korea's atomic bomb under cover of concern over nuclear proliferation. • LIVING MARXISM January 1994 25

Nuclear Gooks? Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spent a good part of 1992 crawling all over Iraq without finding much. And yet Trag continued to he demonised and occasionally bombed by the USA, If Yongbyon is inspected, and found to be empty, another dangerous site will be pinpointed as a potential nuclear threat.

In 1993, again without any hard evidence of a Bomb, North Korea became the new demon. The reality is not that Kim Il-Sung is holding the world to ransom, but that America is threatening to destroy North Korca in the same way as it has Iraq.

What evidence is there of a North Korean nuclear threat? The American argument goes as follows. North Korea has had civilian nuclear power for years, a by-product of which is plutonium, the basic ingredient of an atomic bomb. Knowing how long the plants have been opcrating, it is possible to calculate how much plutonium would have accumulated.

If it isn't at the plants, it must be somewhere else. Hence the IAEA wants access to check. North Korea refuses to let IAEA inspectors into its nuclear plants. The CIA insists that satellite photographs of Yongbyon have shown that there is/was a reprocessing plant designed to separate out plutonium from the fuel rods used in civilian nuclear reactors, and possibly a separate reactor to produce plutonium. It claims that the plant may have been moved, they know not where, last year. North Korea has refused the TAEA access to Yongbyon.

North Korea is also said to possess rockets capable of reaching Japan and China. And, the icing on the cake as far as the CIA is concerned, North Korea has said that it is developing a nuclear bomb, and tried to withdraw last March from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Despite this apparent evidence, the CIA's case does not hold together.

The basic science needed to make an atomic Bomb is widely known.

This does not, however, mean that it is easy to make one. Besides the USA, Britain, France, the USSR, and China, the other states that are thought to have developed nuclear weapons since the Second World War are Brazil, Argentina, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan and India. None of this latter group managed without acquiring, openly and clandestinely, crucial technologies from the existing nuclear powers, or from other advanced capitalist countries. The controls

LIVING MARXISM

26 January 1994 on North Korean access to such technologies have been much tighter, making it highly unlikely that they have made a Bomb, or are anywhere near making one.

to make a Bomb: 1) highly trained physicists; 2) reprocessing technology 3) a sophisticated trigger mechanism to create a critical mass of plutonium in a concentrated space in a fraction of a second; 4) a rocket to deliver the bomb. Even were North Korea to make a Bomb, it is highly unlikely that their rockets would be able to deliver it.

Isracl recently revealed that the US Patriot Missile Defence System used against Iraq's Soviet-built Scud missiles during the Gulf War was useless-there is no evidence of a single intercept. The reason there were so few Israeli casualties was that Iraq's missiles were even more hopeless. North Korea has similar missiles, dubbed "flying dustbins" by military experts. But even if North Korca had a perfect delivery system, the construction of a Bomb presents a big enough hurdle.

Even the industrialising states now thought to have nuclear weapons could not independently develop the technologies needed to separate out plutonium and make a trigger mechanism. China got crucial assistance from the USSR before links were broken in 1959.

The Latin American countries, India, and Pakistan got technology from France and Germany in the 1970s, when cconomic recession increased competition between suppliers of nuclear technology.

Isracl and South Africa were always in a special class: as key allies of the Western powers in sensitive regions of the world, their acquisition of nuclear technology was quietly ignored. (For more details on this see J Newhouse, The Nuclear Age).

On its own Afier the Sovicts helped China to get the Bomb, they became much more China, too, was very careful about that neither gave assistance to North to control North Korean nuclear a Bomb on its own, North Korea's chances appear very slim.

far from collapse. There are four basic things needed cautious with their nuclear technology.

whom it assisted. It is well documented Korea. In fact, the Soviet Union entered into direct cooperation with the IAEA supplies in 1977. So, if North Korea is trying to develop a Bomb, it is doing so alone. If India was unable to develop North Korea is not in a position to threaten anybody. It is a diplomatically and technologically isolated state not North Korea has a population of 22m people. Its economy is shrinking at an annual rate of around 20 per cent.

The government has launched a campaign for people to eat only two meals a day because of food shortages, and clothing is in short supply. Both Russia and China now have stronger ties with South Korea, and have said that they would not support aggressive action by the North.

Indeed South Korca now has a more powcrful army than North Korea.

and it is backed up by the might of the USA. They conduct annual joint manoeuvres on the Korcan border- 'Operation Team Spirit' during which America will not say whether or not its forces carry nuclear weapons.

IAEA inspectors North Korea's obstruction of the IAEA, and declaration of its nuclear ambitions, look like nothing more than a bid to get some bargaining power with the South and the USA. It is a desperate step by a fragile regime, and a high-risk strategy. But whichever way you look at it, Kim Il-Sung is only a problem for the North Korean people.

Despite what they say in public, the US authorities are well aware that North Korea almost certainly has no Bomb. North Korea bent over backwards in 1991-92 in an attempt to secure assistance from the West.

IAEA inspectors made five inspections in 1992, and by the end of that year most commentators agreed that North Korea had no nuclear potential.

But then the plant/ex-plant at Yongbyon was 'discovered' (despite the fact that the CIA had known of its existence since 1989 at least), and more inspections were insisted on. No doubt if Yongbyon is inspected, and found to be empty, another dangerous site will be pinpointed. As in the case of Iraq.

every empty building will simply be taken as proof that the devilish reprocessing facilities have been moved elsewhere. Some commentators now talk about underground tunnel systems containing nuclear technology. It looks as if the Americans won't be happy until they have dug up the whole country. This is because they are not really looking for North Korean nukes. The US authorities have their sights on bigger targets in the debate on nuclear non-proliferation: their aim is to assert Western authority over the third world, and to maintain America's position as the leading world power. The issue of nuclear non-proliferation has always been about Western domination of the third world. Clearly it is not about nuclear weapons as such, since the massive arsenals of the Western powers never come into the debate. Instead, the debate on nuclear proliferation is about drawing a line between the haves and

the have nots. It is all a question of whose finger is on the trigger.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which came into law in 1970, forbids all signatories from possessing the Bomb unless, of course, they already had it. Furthermore, the American dominated IAEA was given the power to interfere in the internal affairs of non-nuclear states to ensure that they werent making bombs. As the head of Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission put it in 1990, 'the non-nuclear weapon states are effectively required to surrender part of their national sovereignty in return for vague and as yet unfulfilled promises of nuclear cooperation.

In the past, however, the exercise of Western domination over the third world was limited by the exigencies of Cold War diplomacy. The existence of the Soviet Union helped provide the space for third world nations to assert some independence from the West, through forums such as the Non-Aligned Movement. In order to get third world nations to sign the treaty, the nuclear powers had to offer some swecteners, of which transfer of technology for civilian nuclear power was the most significant. What's more, the third world states that were bent on acquiring nuclear weapons-Brazil, Argentina, India, and Pakistan in particularrefused to sign the treaty. And there were limits to the measures that the Western powers could take to stop them developing a Bomb. India, for example, used its diplomatic links with the Soviet Union to counter US opposition to its Bomb programme in the 1970s, while Pakistan played East-West tensions the other way around.

Post-Cold War, however, the balance of power has shifted much to the advantage of the West. Last November Clinton proposed that the NPT be made tougher. Plutonium *The non-nuclear weapon states are effectively required to surrender part of their national sovereignty' production, he said, was 'not justified on either cconomic or national security grounds, and its accumulation creates scrious proliferation and security dangers'. Of course, since America has more plutonium than it knows what to do with, it won't be affected by any ban on its production. The real consequence of any ban would be to give the West the power to close down the third world's nuclear industry.

Today, in the row over membership of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the USA is giving orders to North Korea on how to conduct its foreign affairs.

Under international law, there is from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as it tried to do last March.

And there is nothing which says that a non-member of the NPT cannot have nuclear weapons. By threatening North Korea, America Like the mafia, Washington insists that membership is for life.

nuclear proliferation is a symptom of the changed balance of power between the West and the third world.

In the post-Cold War world, nuclear proliferation is being used as another The USA and the Western allies are not worried about countries like North Korea acquiring an atomic bomb. They are more interested in constructing the image of third world demons with the Bomb, in order to legitimise Western militarism and intervention around the globe.

Out of demons Back in 1991, after destroying Iraq, out of demons...I'm down to Fidel Castro and Kim II-Sung.' (Quoted in W Bello, People and Power in the Pacific, p28) The elevation of nuclear proliferation on the Western powers" agenda has been a response to this shortage of credible demons in the third world. It has been easy for the West to create the notion of a nuclear threat from the third world. All it took was hiring themselves out to third world dictators, added to the spectre of DIY bombs made possible by the flow of plutonium around the globe, In this way, even the weakest nation can be converted into a global threat. By depicting Kim Il-Sung as a dangerous villain simply because he might have the Bomb, the Western powers are seeking to solve Powell's problem by inventing a world full of demons.

proliferation does not stop at talk.

Tray has already been destroyed, partly on the pretext of preventing Saddam's nuclear programme.

The January 1992 summit of the UN Security Council on non-proliferation issued a direct threat to all third world states: step out of line, and you'll get the same treatment as Iraq. Now North Korea finds itself in America's gun-sights on the same issue. There are also regional reasons making North Korea a likely target for the USA. The Pacific region is set to be a key area for world capitalism nothing to stop North Korea resigning has forced it to remain within the NPT.

The tightening of the regime on stick with which to beat the third world.

General Colin Powell, then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: I'm running a few stories about ex-Soviet scientists The US campaign against nuclear Nuclear Gooks? into the next century. America is facing the squeeze economically from Japan, while China is emerging as a major player with its own interests. Baring its teeth against North Korea is a way of reminding everyone, especially non-nuclear Japan, that America remains the region's policeman.

Hiroshima America, with British support, has used the nuclear proliferation issue in a bid to remind the major non-nuclear powers who holds the whip hand in the Western alliance. The January 1992 UN Security Council summit (permanent members: America, Britain, France, Russia, Chinathe nuclear club) coincided with Japanese lobbying to become a permanent member. Not yet, was the message.

In 1993 Clinton cranked up the rhetoric against North Korea whenever America's wider role in the Pacific region was up for discussion: during his Asian tour in July, and during the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum in Seattle in November.

CIA's most florid fantasies were true.

What if North Korea has got a Bomb?

And what if Kim II-Sung is certifiable?

North Korea still wouldn't he the problem. The threat to peace does not come from the poorest states on Earth, nor from crazy little dictators, but from the power games being played out in the third world by the USA and the other Western powers. Lest we forget recent history: the only country to have used nuclear weapons is the USA. American president Harry Truman said that the dropping of the Bomb on Japan was *the greatest thing in history' Since 1945 the same country has used awesome conventional firepower to destroy Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq among others, and has threatened the use of atomic weapons no fewer Whose threat? North Korea has been on the receiving end of American and Allied firepower itself, during the Korean War: by 1953 all of its major cities had been levelled. President • Truman threatened to use the Bomb on North Korea in 1950, and president Eisenhower threatened the same when he was head of the army in 1951.

'Nuke the Gooks' has been a frequent refrain of American politicians ever since. Those concerned about the threat of war today should turn their attention to the military arsenals of the Western world, and let the North Korean people deal with Kim Il-Sung.

Thanks to Vanessa Adams and Daniel Lowe for material and ideas LIVING MARXISM January 1994 27

The non-proliferation debate Green patsies John Gibson on how leading environmental groups are helping the Western powers police the third world

SENTEACE

n the debate about nuclear non-proliferation, it is not just the US and other Western governments that are targeting North Korea and other third world countries as the problem.

Western environmental and peace groups have added their condemnations as well. Take Greenpeace. A recent major Greenpeace publication, The Plutonium Trade: A Troubling New Era of Proliferation, focuses almost exclusively on proliferation in north-east Asia. After a casual mention of the fact that America threatened to nuke North Korea in the carly 1950s, North Korea itself is quickly isolated as the major problem today. Adopting the tone of the concerned world citizen, Greenpeace sides with the USA and its allies in pointing the finger at the North Koreans: * Identified as being of most concern to the international community, in particular to the US, Japanese and South Koreans, is a partially completed reprocessing plant, also near Yongbyon.* Does Greenpeace have any criticisms of the USA, the one military power which definitely has introduced nuclear weapons to north-cast Asia? Oh, yes; the Americans should and be consistent about non-proliferation stop selling plutonium to the Japanese. Not a mention of those 5000 warheads under Bill Clinton's finger. The fact that the Greenpeace pamphlet criticises America for selling plutonium to Japan 28 January 1994

LIVING MARXISM

GREENPEACE

is typical of the way Greenpeace tackles the nuclear powers' own vast arsenals: it doesn't mention them. Only the sale of plutonium to other countries is condemned. And the other countries which Greenpeace is most concerned to stop getting plutonium are third world states.

In another Greenpeace publication, The United Kingdom: The World's Worst Proliferator?, Britain is condemned for producing plutonium, but not because it leads to a British Bomb.

because it might fall into the wrong (read: third world) hands. The sale of plutonium to Japan is also condemned.. because the development of Japanese nuclear weapons will give North Korea an excuse to build its own.

Greenpeace's attitude is entirely consistent with that adopted by the existing nuclear powers and enshrined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Greenpeace upholds that treaty, but would like to see the regime for the control of nuclear material modified. Greenpcace argues that it is inconsistent of the International Atomic Energy Agency to ban free traffic in nuclear weapons, but allow it in nuclear material for civil programmes. It wants a tighter regime on both.

In other words, Greenpeace is demanding that the US world policeman should crack down still harder on the third world.

As shown elsewhere in this issue of Living Marxism, US president Clinton is considering tightening the regime on plutonium in just the way Greenpeace suggests. But Clinton will want something in return from Greenpeace and other radical lobbyists. The American idea is that if third world states disobey the new tighter plutonium regime, then military action can be taken against them. Greenpeace wanted him to toughen up the policy, but will it balk at the consequences? The way in which Greenpeace's approach to the issue of non-proliferation dovetails with that of the major Western powers seems to clash with its radical image. Greenpeace is famous for its acts of derring-do on the high seas, and is usually as being critical of Western thought of governments. And at a formal level, Greenpeace is challenging the West's agenda on nuclear proliferation. It is against all nuclear weapons.

In practice, however, Greenpeace is swimming with the tide of Western opinion, and focusing on the spread of nuclear weapons to the third world as the major problem. Greenpeace is faithfully following the agenda set by the existing nuclear powers on all the key points. It has appointed itself as an adviser to the nuclear club. Its suggestions for changes would, if implemented, only increase that club's power.

The willingness of a group like Greenpeace to go governments' line along with the Western expresses the strength of the anti-third world consensus in the West. Greenpeace's stand can only lend moral legitimacy to the actions of the Western powers against third world states like North Korea. It is a great boon for the Western powers to have what is seen as a radical campaigning group arguing their line for them. Greenpeace even want a part in the policing set-up itself. In its 1992 submission to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Greenpeace boasts that it and other Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have acted as "watch-dogs' and whistle-blowers to prevent nuclear proliferation, so it would therefore be appropriate for the Agency to recognise their value. Like snitches in school, it seems, they want teacher to give them prefects' badges. The mechanisms exist to involve groups such as Greenpeace as observers at the 1995 Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) renewal conference.

At present the links between governments and NGOs like Greenpeace on the weapons issue are less than on other matters, because of the sensitivity of military questions. Nevertheless, the foreign office in Britain and the Clinton administration do hold regular discussions with Greenpeace and others on the non-proliferation issue, and the degree of NGO participation in the 1995 conference is up for discussion at a preparatory committee meeting in January 1994. The Clinton administration has a special incentive to promote groups like Greenpeace The NGOs can criticise the Japanese in terms the US government agrees with, but cannot use in public because Japan, unlike North Korea, is too powerful to bully so casily.

Greenpeace is becoming a patsy for the Western military elite. Even if the existing don't formally involve nuclear powers Greenpeace in the NPT renewal conference, they have got the environmental group on side.

Greenpeace is playing a valuable role for the nuclear powers by providing a green and peaceful cover for their imperial authority over • the third world.

AND

WAR DRUMS

THE NEW AGE OF MILITARISM

Saturday 5-Sunday 6 March 1994 Wembley Conference Centre, London International Conference

CAMPAIGN AGAINST MILITARISM

WEMBLEY

GRAND HALL

For further information and tickets contact Amanda Macintosh on (071) 278 9908—international code (44.71) or write to BM CAM, London WCIN 3XX. Make cheques payable to Gampaign Against Militarism.

Tickets: £30 waged /£15 unwaged and students/£10 FE and schoof students.

Registration 10am

The pits Cap in hand gets kick in teeth Whatever happened to the national campaign in support of the miners? As the government prepares to complete its pit closure programme, Mike Freeman highlights some hard lessons of the failed attempts to stop it so long proclaimed dead by and right, is still a force.

John Rees, Socialist Review, November 1992 30 January 1994 olitics will not be the same again. Twice in one week in October demonstrations bigger and more working class in composition than any since the early 1970s have shown that the working class movement.

Coal's books. commentators on both the left *The last parliamentary obstacle to a fresh wave of pit closures disappeared yesterday when a Conservative rebellion melted away at the end of a Labour-led debate condemning

LIVING MARXISM

the government's coal policy.* Guardian, 28 October 1993 The October 1992 announcement by industry secretary Michael Heseltine of plans to close 31 of Britain's 50 remaining pits, shedding 30 000 of the industry's 40 000 jobs, provoked an upsurge of protest. A weekday lobby of parliament was attended by thousands of angry miners and tens of thousands of their supporters.

On Sunday 25 October more than 200 000 people turned out in torrential rain for the biggest demonstration against the government for years. Balance the books Twelve months later the government announced plans to accelerate the closure of a dozen pits which had been reprieved earlier in the year. It hecame clear that the government intends to complete the programme outlined in October 1992 by April 1994.

It further emerged that as many as five of the 19 'core pits not included in the October 1992 package may also now face closure. The latest round of closures provoked scarcely a murmur of protest, and miners in pit after pit had little alternative but to opt for meagre redundancy deals. The contrast between the euphoria of October 1992 and the bathos of October 1993 indicates the failure of a particular style of opposition politics. It confirms the exhaustion, not only of the official labour movement, but of the sort of strategy and tactics that are still favoured by many radical and left-wing opponents of the government. The strategy of the campaign against pit closures was to demonstrate to the government that its policy was irrational in terms of capitalist economics, and to present it with an alternative that maintained pits and saved jobs. Supporters of the miners did not seek to point out to the government that, whatever the state of British Coal's accounts, miners needed jobs and wages as the only means of guarantecing their survival. Instead, they attempted to show how saving jobs could be reconciled with the objective of balancing British The miners' union, Labour MPs and radical academics marshalled a range of arguments to show how British Coal could be made profitable without drastic closures.

They insisted that the fall in domestic demand for coal was a result of the government-sponsored 'dash for gas' in the privatised electricity supply industry, as well as the government's subsidies to nuclear power and encouragement of cheap imports.

Further, they pointed out that closing pits caused wider job losses in associated industries and services, and that the government had to pay the cost of these mass redundancies in unemployment benefits and lost tax revenues. Profit and loss In response to the furore over Heseltine's announcement, the government commissioned four inquiries into the coal industry, to consider the proposed alternatives.

Analysing the industry in purely cconomic terms (capitalist accounting knows no other criteria than profit and loss), their conclusions broadly vindicated the closure plans and indeed suggested that further closures might be necessary (Guardian, 23 January 1993).

There can be little doubt that elements of political prejudice and irrationality (and probably corruption too) can be found in the government's hostility to coal and its support for energy privatisation. But the bottom line is profit, and there is little to be gained from entering the debate with capitalist entrepreneurs and their accountants about how this can be best maximised.

Indeed there are considerable dangers in alternative accountancy.

One of the reports cited above emphasised that British Coal would need to make sweeping changes in working practices, management and structure if it was to compete successfully for a shrinking market, Having accepted the goals of corporate profitability, radical accountants are ill-equipped to resist the consequences: the recent relaxation of safety controls in mines is one example. Special pleading Trying to calculate the wider cost of redundancy to the government does not work either. It simply obscures the tension between a capitalist enterprise, which employs workers only if they can make profits, and the capitalist state, which is obliged to maintain those who cannot be profitably employed in the wider interests of the system as a whole. From a capitalist point of view, the only logical response to pointing out the burden of maintaining unemployed miners would be not to save pits, but to cut benefits. Apart from being unconvincing.

attempts to justify British coal as a superior source of energy to foreig coal or gas, oil or nuclear power an simply special pleading on beha the coal industry. Such angu coal as a special case are i divisive, pitting British co against Australian or Sou miners, and miners agai

MARX IS M January 1994 31

The pits in the gas and other power-generating industries. The strategy of trying to defend miners jobs by advancing an alternative policy for British Coal echoed the central strategic error of the 1984-85 miners" strike. Then, miners' leader Arthur Scargill tried to persuade the government to return to the A stage army, cheering on the efforts of their upper class patrons 'Plan for Coal' drawn up between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Labour government in the 1970s. But what if the profitability of British coal mining demanded closing pits, shedding jobs and squeezing wages? The commitment to the British coal industry proved to be the Achilles heel of the miners' union during the year-long strike, leading to division and defeat.

Though the 1992 campaign followed a similar strategy to that of the 1984-85 strike, the defeat of that historic struggle produced a significant shift in tactics. The methods of industrial militancy strike, picket, demonstration—now gave way to the techniques of parliamentary lobbying and attempts to manipulate public opinion through the media.

While in the 1980s the key figures were union activists, or at least union leaders, in the 1990s the main players were backbench Tory rebels and sympathetic journalists and celebrities.

Right from the announcement of Heseltine's closure plans, a group of Tory dissidents made the running.

These included MPs like Elizabeth Peacock and Richard Alexander, from constituencies in mining areas, and other right wingers, such as Winston Churchill and Bill Cash.

with wider grievances against the government. Instead of trying to mobilise industrial action against the closures, Scargill and the other union leaders sought to cultivate the Tory rebels and the sympathetic all-party trade and industry select committee, in the hope that these respectable parliamentary forces would sway the government. The rally in Hyde Park at the end of the mass demonstration against the closures was addressed by Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, a representative from the Confederation of British Industry and a bishop.

The tactics of *winning friends and influencing people' were supplemented by court actions seeking to demonstrate the illegality of the government's plans.

32 January 1994/

LIVING MARXISM

The miners and their working class supporters were reduced to the role of a stage army, cheering on the efforts of their upper class patrons.

Some early successes for the "cap-in-hand' approach appeared to vindicate the methods of deterence.

Taken aback by the scale of the uproar over its plans and concerned about further rifts within the Conservative Party, the government announced a delay in closure plans pending further inquiries. Tory newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Sun expressed sympathy for the miners.

In December Lord Justice Glidewell upheld the union view that the government's closure plans were 'unlawful and irrational'.

A government white paper in March offered subsidies worth ₺500m to keep open 12 pits pending further market testing'.

Thatcher's support It was only when the final outcome of the establishment revolt became apparent in the recent collapse of opposition to the completion extension-of the closure programme the campaign became apparent. When ahead in Nottinghamshire, local union leader Neil Greatrex revealed how he had earlier had a meeting with "Lady" Thatcher, *to try to get her on our side' (Guardian, 2 October 1993).

As a representative of the scab Union of Democratic Mineworkers which enthusiastic backing in the course of the 1984-85 miners' strike, Greatrex had reason to expect a sympathetic response from the scourge of the NUM. He got it. for the Notts miners. Her intervention was warmly welcomed by Richard Caborn, the Sheffield Labour MP who chairs the trade and industry committee: "This is the first time that part of our report, he proclaimed.

reveal the relish and the ruthlessness ahead with the closures. The central problem with the tactic of relying on establishment critics of the pit closure campaign was that none of them opposed closures in principle. All they wanted was a more sympathetic approach, more consultation and the horizons of the miners' struggle were lowered to what was acceptable and that the true extent of the grovelling of it was revealed that closures were to go to London. was formed with Margaret Thatcher's Mrs Thatcher wrote to Heseltine's deputy. Tim Eggar, pleading for mercy Lady [sic] Thatcher is prepared to back While the union leaders and the Labour politicians grovelled before the former prime minister, whose current memoirs with which she set about crushing the miners* union, the government pressed delay, a sympathetic stay of execution.

But the result of this approach was that to the leading critics of the government-the Tory back benchers. The union leaders satisfied themselves with aiming for delays and consultations.

Miner's prayer Nobody set out the goals of no pit closures, no redundancies, goals which are not only part of a long-established union policy, but also clearly necessary to defend miners' jobs. Nobody suggested any form of collective initiative or direct action of the sort that might be expected to alienate the likes of Winston Churchill, Paddy Ashdown or the Archbishop of Canterbury middle class approval through the media, the union leaders ransacked the traditions of the labour bureaucracy and the left to come up with the most abject forms of protest activity. So we had the grotesque "Miners' Prayer' (a spine-tingling anthem' played by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band), the ludicrous 'Switch off at eight" campaign (a TUC-backed plan to bring the government to its senses as a result of everybody simultaneously turning and the pathetic tramp by a handful of union officials from Scotland We even had the re-establishment of women's peace camps (on the Greenham Common model) at threatened Yorkshire pits. The nearest the miners' union came to industrial action was Scargill's call for a stayaway' to coincide with a TUC day of action last February. Once the media tired of depicting miners as custodians of the sort of national heritage made familiar in Hovis adverts, or patronising them as worthy recipients of charity, they lost interest in the whole issue.

Symbolic coal The image of outgoing TUC leader Norman Willis standing alongside a group of Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, holding aloft a 'four-foot symbolic lump of coal" and presenting a 300 000-signature petition against the pit closures to parliament sums up the official labour movement campaign. The most profound comment on the campaign came from former Notts union leader Roy Lynk, who received an OBE for his strike-breaking services in 1984-85. Surveying the decimation of the Notts coalfield he observed that it 'just shows' that if you behave like a moderate, 'they treat you like a soft touch". Or to put it another way, if you go cap in hand to the government and the capitalists, you're likely to get a kick in the tech.

Constitutional climbdown announcement of South Africa's he new interim constitution, under which the country's first non-racial elections are due to be contested on 27 April 1994, was grected with relief and joy by the British media.

The Guardian called it a new stage of hope'.

The Financial Times welcomed it as a 'negotiated revolution which effectively strips the white minority of almost all entrenched powers?

(18 November 1993). The euphoria was based upon what the media regards as a last-minute climbdown by president FW De Klerk on the rules for decision-making in the post-apartheid cabinet. Having insisted for months that a two-thirds majority vote would be required to pass certain decisions in the new multi-party cabinet (which would have given the National Party and its allies blocking powers), De Klerk agreed instead to simple majority decisions, in return for a commitment from Nelson Mandela that the cabinet would opcrate in a 'consensus-seeking spirit". This, apparently, heralds a big step towards South Africa's first government of national unity'.

De Klerk's concession has been presented as a major compromise by the ruling National Party b the African National Congress. However.

set the new constitution in the context of the hree-year long negotiations process, and a very different picture emerges. Whatever concession De Klerk may have made in the fine details of the constitution, the ANC's acceptance of the document expresses how far it, rather than the partheid regime, has compromised every principle it ever stood for.

Take the central of the component stitution-power-sharing. At every level of vernment, power-sharing is built in. The new Charles Longford on the true meaning of the deal which the ANC celebrated as a victory cabinet will be made up of a president, deputy presidents (one from every party with 80 seats in the national assembly) and up to 27 ministers.

Any party with 20 seats (five per cent of the vote) in the national assembly will be entitled to a proportional number of cabinet portfolios and deputy ministerial posts. A similar system of proportionality is planned for the national assembly and especially the senate, where 90 senators will be elected on a regional basis by Finally. the the nine provincial legislatures.

constitutional assembly, to be made up of a joint sitting of the national assembly and senate, will require a two-thirds majority to pass the final constitution for the new South Africa.

The power-sharing set-up might appear sensible in a multi-racial country like South Africa. But in reality, it represents the entrenchment of minority power against the liberation movement's historic goal of black majority rule.

In South Africa today there is no longer a politically constituted black majority. This reflects the government's success in transforming the black liberation struggle into a black civil war, in which most violence takes place between conservative

ANC

and supporters the Inkatha movement. Black South Africa has fragmented; and the new constitution's in-built power-sharing stipulations will ensure that these | South Africa.

The new South Africa divisions are institutionalised, while also entrenching the power of the white minority elite. The interim constitution, which president De Klerk was supposed to have conceded to the ANC, in fact represents De Klerk's victory over the ANC and the struggle for black liberation.

The process of negotiations has transformed the ANC into a moderate political party. Today, the ANC are rampant free marketeers who see the need for firmer policing of the black population in order to attract foreign investment to South Africa. As black aspirations assert themselves after 27 April, expect to see the ANC using the 'consensus-seeking spirit built into cabinet government to demand that its supporters restrain their disaffection with the new South African capitalism. And should there be any tendency not to act in this way, the new ANC-led government will have to contend with the fact that, despite having a new constitution, the institutions of the old apartheid state will still be there, ready to enforce 'consensus' at gunpoint.

As part of the deal on the interim constitution it has been agreed to leave the institutions of the apartheid state-from the civil service to the army and police-almost intact, with the addition of some black faces in top posts.

And while the constitution includes a Bill of Rights to be strengthened by a national ombudsman-called the 'public protector' in deference to feminist sentiment—it also allows the suspension of political rights through the imposition of old-fashioned states of emergency and detention without trial. Add to this the devolution of power to provincial governments in areas like education, health, welfare and policing-devolution which may even be strengthened in order to ensure that the white far right and the Zulu-based Inkatha participate in the April elections and it becomes clear that the interim constitution has built-in guarantees that there will be no fundamental threat to the powers that be in South Africa. So what is the point of the interim constitution? It is designed primarily to allow a new political class to emerge in South Africa. From now until 1999, when another round of constitutional change is due to begin, the government intends to integrate moderate black politicians into the state machinery. The plans to institutionalise power-sharing and devolve power away from central government, while keeping the repressive institutions of the state intact, give De Klerk and the South African establishment cause to celebrate. If the government negotiators had the sleepless nights which the media claims.

it must have been due to their concern that the ANC might recognise this compromise as a defeat and end the process altogether.

But the ANC did nothing of the sort.

Instead it celebrated the new constitution as a victory for black South Africans, a fact which attests to the success of the De Klerk regime in instilling the black liberation movement with the spirit of compromise. Welcome to the new LIVING MARXISM Janua 1984

The North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) does not mean that the USA is withdrawing into a protectionist shell; it means that Bill Clinton is using trade as a political Much ado about Nafta n its furious efforts to get congress to back the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) in November, the Clinton administration emphasised the importance of the treaty to the future of the US economy.

The USA was at a crossroads, said the White House, between extending free trade or turning inwards and becoming protectionist, and Nafta would be the lest. Most of the administration's claims overstated the importance of the measures in Nafta. In narrow economic terms, the North American treaty alters little. But Bill Clinton's linking of Nafta with wider US trade policy was relevant. Nafta's real significance is as a political weapon in Washington's more aggressive trade stance towards the rival economic powers of Europe and Japan.

Like Ohio The stated aims of Nafia are to eliminate tariffs on goods and lessen restrictions on foreign investment between Canada, the USA and Mexico over the next 15 years. As the USA and Canada Nancy Morton thinks the confusing debate about Nafta is a sign of the times in Clinton's America America's Maastricht 34 January 1994 Affer listening to the debate over Natta in the USA, anyone could he forgiven Repablicans, yet right-wing Republican Jesse Jackson were both against it created. Ross Perot warned of the giant sucking sound of six million US jobs With one third woil country:

LIVING MARXISM

weapon around the world, argues James Malone for heing a title confised Patty loyalties no longer seemed relevant. Democrat president Bill Clinton's weaty was backed by most Pat Buchanan and radical black Democrar Both sides made extravagant claims about Natha The Clinton administration proclaimed that the world's biggest market was being crossing die Mexican border. The inlegrity of the Clinton presidency itself was said 10 be at stake li was easy to forger that the issue at the heart of Natta was LiS trade relations The signilicance of Nafta for LiS forcign and economic policy cannot explain the extraordinary vehemence of the debate, In many ways die congressional furoto around Nafta was similar to the recent British parlamentary preoccupation with the Maastricht treaty, Nafta hechme a symbol of the political crisis at the heart of the American system of government, just as the Maustricht row temporarily symbolised the malaise in the British body politic Like Maastricht, Natla was an issue of limited practical impurtance that became elevated into an apparent matter of life and death. Members of the ruling party felt little need in toe the party line in the ferocious political ros. Meanwhile the public remained on the sidelines in cynical bewilderment, watching the politicians slug it out

NAFTA

Pollutes Hell no, we won't go! We won't go to Mexico.

What might have been a debate on trade details became a row about the standing of the USA in the world. This might have heen understandable if Natta involved Japan: or fiermany hat Mexico? Altbough more of a lame armadille than a voracious predator, the Mexican menace became the focus of fears and anxiety in Us society The Natta debate showed that the old rules of political eriquette no longer apply. Each of the main parties in the USA has long heen a decentralised coalition, encompassing both liberals and conservatives, But of bite they have become even more fragmented The Nafta debate threw the fragile halance of party politics into total disarray. With no party abile to armentate a coherent view, there was nothing compelling politicians to follow Don't Sen My Job To Mexico -SE

NOT THI

NAFT

their party line They voted individually, according to shit was in it for them refusing to make even the usual token displays of loyalty to the party hierarchies While the political debate roated on in congress, most Americans couldh't care less ahout Natta. The polls showed most favoured the agreement bur tow were enthusiastic Some people, ready insecure because of the slump, feared that Natta would mean mone joh losses Thats why strongest opposition to the agreement was in the old industrial "Rustbelt of the north-cast and mid-west, Where factory closures have had devastating impact homically these sectors are the least at risk from Mexican competition As with Maastricht i Barope, mos anti-Nafta sentiment expressed ernicism Shout the powers that be rather than the treaty

LIVING

US trade war had already agreed similar provisions in 1989, the focus of the Nafta debate was on the US-Mexican relationship.

The economic impact of Nafta, which comes into force on 1 January 1994, will be fairly modest. Duties between the USA and Mexico are already relatively low, and trade and investment between the two countries is barely restricted. And the economic significance of Mexico to the USA is pretty limited; the $30 billion Mexican market is barely equivalent to the US state of Ohio. Wild predictions Excluding Ross Perot's wild predictions, forecasts of Nafta's net impact on US employment range from 200 000 jobs created to 550 000 lost over 10 years. Even taking these unreliable figures at face value, they are not that significant. The USA creates and destroys about 500 000 jobs every three months. More than two million jobs were destroyed during the recent recession, and the sluggish recovery has created about six million fewer jobs than a typical postwar upturn in the USA. In economic terms, Nafta simply codifies existing practice.

It is the creation of established economic trends, not the creator of new ones. The USA is already the end market for three quarters of all exports from Canada and Mexico. US-Mexican trade has doubled since 1988, mostly due to a boom in US exports. Between 1986 and 1992, US direct investment in Mexico (excluding the finance sector) grew by over twice as much as US direct investment worldwide.

Confrontational Nafta's real significance lies elsewhere, as part of the USA's more confrontational approach to global trade policy. It is more important as a bargaining lever in •

PHOTO: AFP/PRESS ASSOCIATION

itself. This was one reason why the pro-Nafta fonces had trouble raising support, As one business lobbyist complained to Rusiness Weel, Too many Americans see us as greedy "suits, and it we te selling something, it must be bad for the average guy The new political crisis revealed by the Natta debate reflects the impact of the end of the Cold War in the USA. The end of the Cold War politics which defined American attitudes for more than 40 vears has thrown everything into disarray Old political allegiances have little meaning any more, so that debates like the Nafia row are lar less regulated. Add to this loss of direction the lack of dynamism in the conomy and its easy to see why the Clinton presidency is suffering a profound sense of drift

MARXIS M

35

more than half a century. It is not about to withdraw US trade war affecting trade and investment in North America. increasingly interconnected with national borders less relevant.

It is a response to the USA's into its Mexican backyard economic crisis and the failure of national solutions. The USA on international markets because of economic stagnation at home.

beggar thy neighbour'-style protectionism. The treaty does A sign of how confused things have become was that at times the Nafta debate scemed to divide along most un American lines, as a hartle between the trade unions (ams-) and big business (pro-). Although most opponents of Nafta hased their position on the delence of jobs.

and Chiston attacked organised labour'S musclebcond" lactics, it wasn't really a chiss struggle. For a start, the most vocal opposition to Nalla came from right wingers like Ross Perol and Pat Buchanan, and many of their arguments relied on anti-Mexican racism. Peansylvania Democrat Ron Klink of the Congressional Anti-Natta Caucas raised the spectre of maid 18-year old Mexican truck drivers speeding down (S highways, and drug lords rinning free trade in narcotics.

LIVING MARXISM

January 1994 36 international negotiations on economic and political matters than as a measure The US economy is becoming the rest of the world. This is due not to technical improvements making The USA has been the premier world power for puts greater emphasis and reliance Some commentators have argued that Nafta represents a retreat into a protectionist block. But the USA's growing overseas orientation ensures that there can be no real retreat into signify a step away from multilateral negotiations in preference to bilateral ties. And it does portend the redivision of the world into three major regions— Europe, North America and Asia.

But it is wrong to say that the USA is turning inward: Nafta is a defensive block which Clinton hopes will help the USA get its way in other markets.

be a threat is a joke. Clinton exaggerated its strength in order to appear the victim of special interests. The ARL CIO bas few remaining links with workers in the OSA only 12 per cent of privile sector employees are unionised today The wealths boreaucrats who nin America s corporate unions fuve more in common with emplovers opposed to the treaty than with their own membership: Their concern over Natta was not primarily with saving jobs, but with safeguarding the markets and profits of their respective industries (which also explains why a few anions did not oppose the treaty 1. The same union bosses who have cooperated in the massacre of jobs by US capitalisis, have suddenly decided they want to figbi for jobs against impovcrished Mexicans: The USA cannot survive on North American markets alone. It now relies on non-Nafta markets for 75 per cent of its exports. Nor can America's role in Nafta be compared to the position of Germany and Japan within the respective conomic blocs that they dominate. Mexico is a poor third world country, not an industrialised continent like Western Europe or a rising cconomic region like East Asia. The USA has been the premier world power for more than half a century. It is not about to withdraw into its Mexican backyard, or accept a lower international profile. Instead, Nafta indicates the trend towards more politicised global trade relations. Despite its cconomic problems, the USA is still big and strong cnough to assert its world leadership and wrest concessions from its rivals in the sphere of trade.

The USA has already, for example, sidestepped Gatt rules and imposed 'voluntary' export restraint arrangements on competitors like Japan. It has also imposed extensive anti-dumping duties, to the dismay of its major economic rivals.

The main thrust of US trade policy The unions did oppose Nafta. But the ilea that the AFL-CIO (the American FL.C) could is to open up other countries' markets, especially Japan's. To get its way, the USA holds out the threat that it will restrict its rivals access to the huge and lucrative American market. The USA is in effect arguing that it is not good enough for Japan to be open to US merchandise, it must guarantee that American goods are bought.

The threat of limiting access to the US market is an important bargaining chip. The USA is the largest homogeneous market in the world. It is also the country that receives the most overscas investment. At a time when its competitors are suffering from recession or poor growth at home, the US market becomes even more vital. Natta gives the USA added political leverage in these kinds of deliberations. Clinton can now argue that it is not just the USA against closed markets, it's all of North America. He can threaten to reduce other countries" access to the whole North American market. In particular, Nafta can be used as a wedge in a bid to undermine the creation of a Japanese-dominated trading bloc in Asia, and a German-dominated market in Europe. The USA's rivals sense that Nafta is not just about North America. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference held soon after congress ratified Nafta, fears were raised of the USA using strong-arm tactics to get its way in Asia. European nations, too, voiced worries about becoming isolated. None of the major countries wants a trade war. But the pressure of the worldwide slump is pushing them into antagonistic stances, and making it more difficult to paper over their real differences. Nafta is just one of the opening shots in a dangerous international conflict. In fact no matter how the vote wet, ordinary Americans slood to lose out. The Natta debate was really a discussion withio the LiS business and political chie about a particular survival stritegy for American capitalism.

Nafia s erities implied that without the treats, the US economy would be providing jobs. But American capitalism is stuck in a slump. and millions of jobs are on the chopping black with or without Natla.

The racist consensus that the problem facing Americans is competition from foreign workers is a real barrier to building opposition to job cuis. It ensures that the soice of working people in the USA is drowned out by reactionaries like Perot and Buchanan, and the self serving bosses of corporate unions

Would you let your servants wear this perfume? nortunarely last month's end-of-year survey went to press too early to announce Mr Peter Norman, Managing Director Givenchy UK as snob of the year So 1 hereby nominate him for 1994 with a fair amount of confidence that he will still be up there at the top come December Peter Norman is the sort of man that ordinary people rarely get to see.

rather like those characters you glimpse in news flashes, standing around outside the Carlton Club, or dashing past reporters into meetings of the great and the good. But we saw him recenily because he was obliged to appear on a consumer programme to defend his company from accusations of short-changing customers.

The background to the case is fairly straightforward. Superdrug the high street cut price chemists, decided to undercur the upmarker department stores and sell top-brand petfumes at knockdown prices. This is a long overdue challenge to the notorious The thrill of phoney racket of the perfume trade, where the perfume companies collude with a few approved outlets" to make huge profits.

exclusiveness The mark-up of a typical perfume is at least 10 times the cost of producing the was being denied stuff, and the packaging usually costs more than the liquid itself to thousands Perfumes are obviously associated with luxury, and the image is more of customers important than the scent Hence the companies spend huge amounts on advertising in carefully selecied magazines and jealously guard their right to restriet franchises to certain shops. The impression of specialness is maintained at all costs.

Since the fiftics, even the makers of luxury goods have adopted a democratie approach to advertising Exclusive products are within the price range of most people-_Jor special occasions, at least. In the carly days of TV advertising. luxury for an ordinary woman was a modest affair Sixpence worth of heaven with a Flake, a taste of the high life with a bottle of Babcham enough to fill a champagne glass (or a teacup if you didn't bave a champagne glass handy); or simply a bar of soap that didn't amell like toilet cleaner.

Camay distinctive pink tablet was accompanied by opulent visions of rich ladies soaking themselves in huge marble bathrooms, but deir target was ordinary housewives, many of whom would have only recenily moved to a house with a bath. The message was pamper your body you work hard for little reward, so spoil yourself for once The message has remained essentially the same ever since, even if the crude displays of wealth have made way for more sophisticated versions: by 19%0, Camay was for women who choose to please themselves Like most people, I had alwavs taken the exotic fantasy advertisements to be an invitation to enjoy a little luxury, to let a little colour into a grey world, rather than a realistic representation of the life of a typical

TOBY BANKS

consumer. And I had also assumed that to a good capitalist one person's money was as good as another's I hadn t counted on Peter Norman For Mr Norman, keeping his perlumes out of Superdrug is not mercly a marketing strategy, it is a matter of honour In a strangulated voice somewhere between Prince Charles and Brian Sewell on the ridiculousness scale, he spoke of his horror at discovering that enterprising retailers were circumventing Givenchy's well-policed distribution network and importing supplies from abroad, selling at market stall prices. Yet this was not merely the fury of an ourwitted businessman, this was the trauma of a man who had just discovered that the working classes smell —of Ysatis, Amarige and all his other boiled babies, It's quite despicable, I have heard they were displaying them next to rights, he recalled in a horrified whisper. and in places where people draw their dole money?

At this point 1 was still expecting him to offer a sound business argument about how Givenchy's image was being under.

mined hy the cowboys, and how the thrill of phoney exclusiveness was being denied to thousands of customers who would lose interest if they could buy the stuff in any old shop. This would be the kind of tack taken by Peter York and all the other deconstructers of advertising and markeling The truth was somewhat blunter. Take a woman whose husband works hard, suggested Norman, and who maybe has a job herself, and spends hardcared money on perfume She doesn't wish to come down the stairs in the morning and see her au pair or cleaner walking in wearing the same perfume.

There were more ruffled feathers at the glossy magazines, where advertising managers enjoy a close relationship with the perfume people. Superdrug mischievously submitted an announcement of its price reductions, and received indignant replies. Fearful of losing valu able clients, the glossies turned them down flat, and Vogue remarked that the ad would suggest that the magazine had an impoverished middle class readership That's right, an impoverished middle class readership Presumably they are the ones who don't even have a cleaner. The Monopolies and Mergers Commission has now ruled that the perfume cartel is entitled to refuse to supply shops that offer discounts on the grounds that it is necessary to preserve brand integrity. This will undoubtedly be a comfort to the Peter Normans of this world. But it doesn't solve the fundamental problem that anvone from cleaners and fishwives to members of the impoverished middle classes can still get their hands on the stuff if they've got the money in their pockets.

Clearly, what's needed next is an economic policy that can restore a bit of sanity to a world where Jack's as good as his master, and Jill's as good as her Mastercard LIVING MARXISM January 1994 37

Died and gone to

LIVING

here is a typically funny passage in Nick Hornby's award-winning homage to football fanaticism.

Fever Pitch, in which he describes his unease at the thought of departing this earth mid-season.

He would be cast into etemal darkness not knowing where his beloved Arsenal are going to finish in the League. He consoles himself with the thought that he might well be able to lurk around Highbury, Arsenal's ground, as a benevolent soirit. Given Arsenal's reputation as the most boring team in the world, the desire to spend eternity waiting for the Arsenal midfield to do something creative is enough to make the most seasoned observer of human behaviour Fever Pitch goes eyebrow. raise an a long way to explain the twisted psyche that would want such a fate.

Hornby's Fever Pitch traces obsession with Arsenal from his childhood through to his later life.

Horby describes vividly the passion.

the humour, and the excitement generated within a football stadium, which can make such places a mecca for bored teenagers from the suburbs Being obsessive about football, argues Hornby, is different from any other obsession in life. "It's not as if I'm playing with train sets or messing around with Action Man', he says. 'It is a unique experience being in a match.

That sense of being in a unique place is very unusual today. And it's great to constantly have that thread running through your whole life from your I find childhood onwards. permanence of supporting a football team highly attractive, given all the other things changing in my life!

But the very success of a book like Fever Pitch suggests that football is beginning to attract a new kind of fanmiddle-aged, middle class voyeurs, for whom a seat in an executive box is another accoutrement, the kind of people who call football soccer. Yes, says Horby, the success of the book is that it lapped into football fans who are middle class and have arty jobs.

Then again. † 90 000 Arsenal fans can buy that vile away kit at E32 a go, then there's obviously a market for anything.'

Hornby is contemptuous of this new breed of middle class supporters who look upon traditional football fans as animals. He is scornful too of the middle class condescension of TV commentators, and their trite moralistic comments an issues like violence on the pitch. 'It does piss me off, he says, 38 January 1994 way through". the and the that

LIVING MARXISM

when you have Barry Davies or Jimmy things being Hil talking about a disgrace. And you think, "God it's only two bickes having a swing at each other on a football pitch". And if you've seen something like that, it does get the crowd going, And even if it's nil-nil, you think, "At least they had a punch-up half * think in the greater scheme of things events like that are immensely entertaining. Things like professiona fouls-even though they make you angry at the time, they make the game memorable and lift the spirits remember, you're talking to a man whose team has drawn nil-nil every Saturday for a month!" But while Hornby is dismissive of people like Hill and the executive box men. he seems to have imbibed some of their prejudices, particularly about foolbail hooliganism. I'm extremely dubious about England fans', he says.

• do think they're completely a race apart.' Talking about the Engiand- Holland world cup match in Rotterdam, when the Dutch police rounded up England fans and set about them.

Hornby broadly goes along with the press panic about the fans' behaviour.

I'm sure there were miscarriages of justice. And I'm sure violence was perpetrated against the fans. But what were those people doing travelling to another country en masse without a ticket? it's all a bit fishy to me. Most people who follow England abroad are not the people that I watch football with and I cant really identify with them. And the fascist involvement 1 worry about, because it's not something that I see in big London grounds.' Hornby does concede that the chauvinism of England supporters reflects the political climate at home It's extraordinary with this government and this cultural climate that the flog em and birch lem brigade really can't see the connection between the way that we're encouraged to behave at home and the way that these people behave abroad. You listen to Peter Lilley sounding off at the Tory Party conference about foreign scroungers next week you have an interationa where people misbehave: He is critical too about the way club chairmen and League administrators have forced fans to watch games in squalid, dangerous crumoling grounds. But he also blames fans like him for tolerating such conditions. 'If it was a cinema or people would have theatre', he says, said years ago, "Fuck you, I'm not going there any more". But we al keep going

MICHAEL

back. You think, "God, this is a shit hole this place, but I've got to see the game, it's a Cup semi-final". In the end people don't care enough to do anything about it. What they should do is things like boycott games, but boycotts never last.

Arsenal fans were going to boycott the band scheme but nobody wanted to do it. So in the end they said, "We wil all sit down on the terraces". What's [Arsenal chairman] David Dein going to think about that? There's no way a real football fan is ever going to do anything that will ever prevent him from seeing a game.

And that has undermined tans' initiatives. It has created a situation where we are kept in squalor and dangerous situations. What did Homby think of England's debacle in the World Cup? 'Our national team is probably the worst one there's ever been in my lifetime. On the other hand. I don't think there's ever been a golden age of English football. The morning after the Holland game, the back page of the Guardian was fall of old footballers giving their opinions on what had gone wrong. They were all 1970s foctballers. And you think, these are the people who failed to qualify for two world cups, never mind one worid cup. Mike bloody Channon! He was in a terrible England team and now he's telling us how to get back to the golden age! If you look at the national team, t's not been a long slow decline. It's a straight line at the bottom, with a little blip around '66. England were dire before that and they've been dire since. If you take the five best teams in the word Argentina, Brazil, Germany. Holland and Italy—we've only won once against any of these team in a serious match since 1966. So who coes he think should take charge of England now? It's got to the stage, says Homby, Where you can't see anybody with common sense taking the job. What about George Graham?

'He'd get the results'. he says diplomatically. But then honesty gets the better of him. I wouldn't really like to see George Graham as England • manager.' Amen to that. Fever Pitch is published by Gollancz, £4.99 pbk My Favourite Year, edited by Nick Homby is published by HF&G Witherby, £9.99 pbk

« LIVING

Highbury? Writer and Arsenal fanatic Nick Hornby talked to Steve Banks about nil-nil draws, England defeats and why he likes a good punch-up AJVGant ARSENAL

Kenan Malik on a novel that has become the Lady Chatterley's Lover of the nineties The Lord Horror show

LIVING

hat have James Anderton, Michael Winner, Julie Burchill Compendium, north and London's alternative backshop, got in common? All have found Mke Butterworth offensive. It's enough to you warm to the make man instantly. Butterworth is a tall, gaunt, silverhaired Mancunian who looks more like a retired headmaster than a member of mac brigade. Yet his the dirty bookshops have been raided by the vice squad more times than ne can remember, his partner, Dave Brtton has twice been imprisoned under obscenity laws; and in 1991 a book he published became the first novel to be banned by an English court since Last Exit to The trouble is', said Brooklyn. Butterworth with a wry smile, 'I've never been politically correct Butterworth and Britton are founders of Savoy Books. a small Manchester imprint that specialises in science fiction, horror and fantasy. In 1989 Savoy published Lord Horror, a surreal fantasy written by Brtton. The novel tells the tale of Lord Horror (a mythic recreation of Lord Haw Haw) and his search for Adolf Hitler, both men having survived the war and being adrift in a surrea, postmodem world. Written in a heavy, ornate style, Lord Horror has been compared to, among others, the works of George Battaile and William Burroughs. The aim of the book, says Butterworth, was to explore the whole question of the Holocaust and its wanted to relevance today. We explore the dark corners of the twentieth century The book caused an mmediate uproar, and was condemned as racist and anti-Semitic. Michael Winner called for it to be banned. Juie Burchill said she was up for a riot in Golders Green or Stamfore Hill, Manchester police chief James Anderton ordered all 350 copies of the book to be seized.

And magistrate Derick Fairclough banned the book under Section Three of the Obscene Publications Act, together with a comic, Meck & Ecker, based on characters from Lord Horror.

It was difficult to see what was obscene about Lord Horror', says Butterworth. 'It contains no graphic sex scenes. It has scenes of violence, but not nearly as graphic as other novels, American Psycho. The such as characters are bigoted and antithat's because it's Semitic but

LIVING MARXISM

40 January 1994 ES

MALACH!

BE WITH

You A bigoted vice squad from Meng & Eckerof course it couldn't happen in real life a fictionalised exploration of those themes. Those were views held by the characters, not by us. How do you write about anti-Semitism if you can't mention it?' The appeal against the banning order, which took place a year later.

was as surreal as the novel. George Robertson, the defence barrister, The quoted Kafka to the court.

presicing judge, Gerard Humphries.

complained that Robertson was 'blinding us with science fiction. One character in the novel is Shatterhand Hitler's gigantic penis which acquires a life of its own. The prosecution claimed this was obscene. Science fiction author Michael Moorcock, appearing for the defence, claimed that it was a symbol of the beast wthin us.

In one passage in the book, the phallic beast ejaculates precious over manuscripts by Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein. What is the purpose of this?, asked judge Humphries. It is a statement about Hitler's shallow attempt to weave together an ideology: replied Robertson with a straight face.

In the end Humphries found the novel not obscene, but declared that the comic was, because it was more luridly bound and is of far less literary nature'. This, as Butterworth points out, is rather like the Lady Chatfeney trial.

where the prosecution holds up the book and says, "How would you like this to be read by your wife or your | repressive to get a better foothold'.

YOU ARE SURE WE'RE NOT DEALING WITH

EFFEMINATE, LEFT-WING MILITANTS HERE

RIGHT. ILL GET THE VICE SQUAD

DOWN TO PATEL'S WAREHOUSE

IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS QUITE THE

WORSE CASE OF DISGRIMINATION

I'VE COME ACROSS THIS WEEK

servant?. Novels are acceptable because they are read by intelligen people. Because comics are visual and supposed to be read only be people of subnormal mentality, they shou be banned'. Lord Horror was banned unde of the Obscer Section Three Publications Act, which requires a nod from a magistrate. Since more Savoy publications have be seized. Butterworth and Britton are no trying to force the DPP to prosec under Section Two of the act which allows for a jury trial. "We are willing to risk imprisonment, says Butterworth but we want to put our case to a jury. The trouble is, the DPP Is reluctant because she realises that a jury is unlikely to be as bigoted as a magistrate'. What particularly concerns Butterworth is the lack of support Savoy has had from liberals. We have had this unholy alliance of the authoritarian censorship of the state on the one side and, on the other, the politically correct lobby- People who we thought were our friends turned out not to be so. Compendium Books, the 'alternative' bookshop in north London suddenly refused to stock Savoy books or comics. Others followed suit. The left tencs to be even more moral than the right, says Butterworth, 'and It allows the authorities who are

FRANK COTTRELL-BOYCE

Panto politics T here is a greal moment in Robin Hood, Prince of Thiever in which the Sheriff's men burst into Maid Marian's house and take her prisoner. They do it easily because she is on her own Now Ton not an expert on medieval living conditions, but 1 do know that the Lady of the Manor did not stay in on her own. There would be pigs.

cattle, serfs, the odd mendicant perhaps. The bourgeoisie however.

have a marvellous capacity to imagine that everyone is just like them (or ought to be, or would like lo be). This is at the root of the allacks on the current royal family It must he baffling for Charles to find himself being reviled and hated for heing cxactly the sort of husband his father and his father's father bad been all the way back to Odin (the House of Urquhart topped Windsor claims descent from the Norse gods). Bur this is the age of John Major's invulnerable a Tory journalistsuburbs, and being descended from a one-cyed Viking deity with an eight-legged flying horse will not barely a crime at cut any ice with Peter Lilley The confrontation beiween a reace all to right-thinking tionary government and a blokeishly liberal single-parent monarch provides people the setting for to Play The King the BBC series which continues the story of Francis Urguhart, the wicked whip who murdered his way to Number 10 in House of Cards. Like anyone else I love an evil genius. The trouble with this one is that compared to our present PM. Ungubart is Pollyanna.

Urquhart topped a Tory journalist -harely a crime at all to rightthinking people and now he is haunted by the memory Faced with a vote of confidence in the Commons Major stitched up a deal with the Unionists that plunged Northern Ireland into an orgy of violence He didn't do it for England, didn't do it for the Conservative Party He did it just for himself, a little treat, to save moving his woollies out of Number 10. Somehow 1 don't think he wakes up screaming "Greysteel! I don't think he even wakes up screaming Shankill!

Think he probably sleeps rather well. Where Urguhart skitfully covers the traces and hides the evidence. Major did all this in public, on TV Real evil is shameless and hanal.

Part of the fun of to Play The King is Urguhart's trick of making asides to the camera. li's cribbed from Olivier's Richard Ill hut it plays more like panto, with lan Richardson as a kind of George Sanders Uncle Abenazar. Like all pantos ir has a good king and a princess (Urguhart is the scheming grand vizier who wants to bring down the dim but decent king by using the selfish princess) li has the nanghti ness of panto, 1o0. Part of the pleasure of watching it is the cheeky way

ON TV

it plays with the fact that we all know who we are talking about. The Tat princess" is a bit of a goer who happily sells her story to the papers.

We all know who it is supposed to be, so when we see her inviting the editor of a national newspaper to soap her down in the bath we lister knowingly. I can't comment further as I might get sued.

The story also has a childish simplicity. Where the previous series showed Urquhart pulling the strings of the Old Boys club like a virtuoso, here it's just a case of blackmail and counter-blackmail.

Unguhart's victim called him daddy and his arch references to putting the whip about smack loudly of the nursery. The blackmail plots themselves have an Oooh Ahh! Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers quality. And this is the real source of the series power.

It has put its finger precisely on the raging infantilism of British political culture. If Thatcher was a nanty, then Major is a sneaky, ingratiating prefect, the first important political figure you could easily picture in a pair of grey shorts, a man who looks like be has just wet himself And his great debating weapon? Shouting "Oh yes, Of yes, Oh yes till the heckling stops Just like panto. In fact panter is probably the only dramatic fonm in which you could talk about modern party politics Francis Unquhart has glamour and the aura of intelligence. My only complaint about the series is that I cannot imagine anyone so obviously impressive going into politics any more. I can see him as the head of a publishing conglomerate or the World Bank. But it seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to run Great Britain The characier was helievable as an eminence grise lixing the Westminster Boys Club. bat once he is prime minister what does he do? What are his policies?

The series is silent on the subject. It is taken up instead with a person ality clash with the Prince This is exactly what happened at the last clection of course. Given the opportunity to make a political decision, the Great British public lost its battle Then as soon as the election was over, it flung all its energy into bad-mouthing the royal family, It was a kind of displaced political discourse, a way of making angry noises without haying to take the consequences, of booing the villain, safe in the knowledge that he was just a bloke in a daft costume What would it be like to have Urquhart as leader? I don't know.

Maiustream politics has atrophied to such a degree that it has become impossible to imagine what a clever politician even a wicked oneworld do. Like John Major, we all know how to get power but do we really know what to do with it?

LIVING MARXISM January 1994 41

LIVING

Life is cheap Emmanuel Oliver welcomes a new film about 'black-on-black' violence in the American ghetto it is becoming increasingly difficult for film-makers to continue to tell the tale of the ghetto with any degree of originality. Following the success of John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood and Matty Rich's lesser-known Streight out of Brookiyn in 1991, the ghetto/hood has become the terrain for all sorts of films and the subject has become decidedly overcooked One film which stands out is the directorial debut of 21-year old twins Albert and Allen Hughes. Sel in the Watts district of Los Angeles, Menace I/ Society is a generational story about the decreasing life expectancy of black America. It tells the story of Caine, the son of a drug dealing father and drug-acidicted mother. The early death of both gives a sense of what's in store for him. Caine and his close friend O'Dog begin the film by shooting a Korean shopkeeper and live the rest of the film close to the line. The violence is honest in the way that Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas was an honest portrayal of Mafia violence.

As a resuit Menace I! Sociely manages to avoid the glamour of films like New Jack City or Trespass, and still hold the attention. The film's violence has created a backlash in America, Critics were incensed by the scene in which O'Dog's shooting of the Korean shopkeeper is captured on the in-store video and provides entertainment for some of the local youth. But the Hughes brothers use the violence to draw attention to the cheapness of life in the ghetto. All the way through, the directors force you to think of ways of 42 January 1994 breaking the cycle of violence What is disturbing about Menace Society is not the violence, but the fact that it is committed by ordinary.

articulate young people. The film shows that the behaviour of blacks in the ghetto is far from imational. The poorest of the USA are the most areas brutalised. Black ghettos have been created through a process of systematic discrimination. Because blacks are denied equal access to resources, the only way to gain anything is to take it from someone else in the ghetto.

Hermetically sealed off from the rest of America, life in black districts has a logic of its own which is a direct consecuence of racism. This is why recent efforts by Bill Cosby and Jesse Jackson to stop the bloodletting amang African Americans' miss the point about the source of ghetto violence just as much as the calls to send the National Guard into the ghellos. Cosby and Jackson point the finger at the Bad Black Brother as the threat to the black community. Not only does this give credibility to racist campaigns about blood-crazed blacks.

it also ensures that the problem of racism is not adoressed. The solution to the ghetto lies not in the ghetto itself, but more broadly within a society unable to exist without large islands of social deprivation. Tris is a point that Menace / Society understands. The film makes clear that the problem for blacks is America.

Invited to flee Watts to the supposed safety of Atlanta, Caine makes clear that there is no escaping oppression. I'm still going to be black, he says.

LIVING MARXISM

... organised jointly with Invited Speakers: Ken Tarbuck, Hillel Ticktin.

Plenaries on: relations, plus numerous workshops.

ALBER AND ALLEN HUGHES. PHOTO: FIRST INDEPENDENT FIUMS DU

MENACE

SATURDAY 22 JANUARY

Conway Hall, Red Lion Sq. (Holborn tube), London 10am - 7pm

CRITIQUE

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the decline of capitalism and the new world disorder radical chains Bob Arnot, Chris Arthur, Peter Burnham, John Callaghan, Alex Callinicos, Simon Clarke, Michael Cox, William Dixon, Frank Füredi, David Hillel-Ruben, John Holloway, Selma James, Geoff Kay, Joe Kearney, Moshe Machover, Peter McMylor, Scott Meikle, Istan Meszaros, Geoff Pilling, Sandy Smith, Is capitalism in decline?, Russia & international Unwaged £4, waged £8. For further details please contact 081 348 5399 or 041 339 8855 ext.4377

MARXIST

REVIEW OF BOOKS

Manjit Singh explains why top scientists are more interested in the quest for beauty Superstrings: A theory of everything, PCW Davies and J Brown (eds), Cambridge University Press. £5.95 pbk

THE

than reality Beautiful dreamers Dreams of a Final Theory, Steven Weinberg, Hutchinson Radius, £16.99 hbk The Edge of Science, Richard Morris, Fourth Estate, £8.99 pbk The God Particle, Leon Lederman with Dick Teresi, Bantam Press, £17.99 hbk Last October, particle physicists everywhere went into mourning when the world's largest and most expensive piece of scientific hardware, the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), was finally killed off by the $11 billion particle United States Congress. The accelerator, plagued by arguments over funding since its inception, was abandoned in a bid to reduce the US budget deficit. American Nobel laureates Leon Lederman and Steven Weinberg were particularly devastated. Both were closely involved in developing the SSC and lobbied congress to secure its funding. Both argue cloquently for the SSC in their new books.

of the SSC, like the preceding The purpose generation of particle accelerators, is to smash subatomic particles, by firing them at each other down ever-longer tunnels. By breaking these particles eversmaller, physicists learn more about the building blocks that make up matter. It is hoped that the current generation of particle accelerators will provide clues as to the basic structure of the universe.

The construction of the SSC began in 1989 in Ellis County, Texas. It was to have been a precisely engineered oval tunnel with a circumference of 53 miles. Instead, congress has carmarked S640m to shut it down and fill in the 14 miles of tunnel already completed. This is nearly half the amount that scientists from the European Centre for Particle Physics (CERN) are seeking from their respective governments for CERN's latest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.

the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1991, he wrote a report entitled: Science: The End of the Frontier?, It summed up the contemporary mood The title was an ironic reference to the more optimistic report written in 1945 on the future of US science, Science: The Endless Frontier.

Not every scientist will be mourning the death of the SSC. One highly respected British theoretical physicist told me recently, 'personally, it wouldn't worry me if the whole of CERN disappeared tomorrow or the SSC was never built'. This is a fairly remarkable thought, given the extent to which governments, on the advice of scientists, have invested in these projects so far.

He explained: "I tend to be driven by the need for internal mathematical consistency, there are enough problems in attempting to achieve this when developing a theory? The idea that physicists can dispense with the kind of empirical data generated by the SSC and CERN, in favour of a more speculative approach is not an isolated view among theoretical physicists.

As Richard Morris correctly points out in The Edge of Science: 'In some fields theoretical speculation has advanced so far that...new concepts will not be subjected to experimental scrutiny until sometime in the next century. As a result, he notes, 'some scientific speculation has recently had a tendency to take a metaphysical character" (pxi). When one ventures into previously unexplored regions, it is necessary to retain ties to the known world', argues Morris, a trained physicist: "At times, however, these ties become tenuous. They are especially tenuous right now.'(pxi) Nothing is more tenuous than superstrings, the latest candidate for a "theory of everything'-a theory that would unite all the known forces and particles in nature into a coherent whole. Superstring theory is so far removed from experimental testing, though, that it has been called a theory of the twenty-first century accidentally discovered in the twentieth century.

Paul Davies and Julian Brown in Superstrings: • LIVING MARXISM January 1994 43

THE MARXIST REVIEW OF BOOKS

A Theory of Everything? present a collection of interviews with the adherents and opponents of the theory. Although these include some of the most distinguished theoretical physicists of the century, several of them would still benefit by reading Morris. He unrelentpoints out the speculative and metaphysical character of much modern physics from superstrings to quantum cosmology. Superstrings are entertaining.

The interviews Especially if you like to get your head around the possibility that everyday reality is the result of hyperfine corrections to a 10-dimensional spacetime.

The theory of superstrings assumes that all observed particles are different manifestations of the same fundamental entity. According to the superstring idea, all particles which were previously thought of as little points are in fact not points at all but basically little oscillating loops of string which move through space. Superstrings are conceived as objects that vibrate in 10 dimensions.

The different levels of vibration correspond to the different observed particles.

One of the major attractions of the theory is that it combines the two theories which shape scientific knowledge of the physical universe: general relativity quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics deals with the atomic and sub-atomic domain, while general relativity is Einstein's theory of gravity and describes the large-scale structure of the universe. The problem is that the two theories are mutually incompatible. Yet the impulse for unity and simplicity is so strong that theorists have pursued a quantum theory of gravity, without success, for decades. Superstring theory faces immense problems. It is highly abstract and difficult to comprehend. The predictions it has made have been contradicted by the available experimental evidence. The masses of particles predicted by the theory do not correspond to the known masses.

However, superstring theorists argue that as the theory is developed it will produce the corrections that are Existing particle required to give the right masses.

accelerators cannot produce particles at the high energies suggested by superstrings. The theory has not made contact with the real world of the experimental physicist.

but it is still occupying most of the best theorists in The overriding problem is that much of contemporary theory is untestable. The sensible conclusion to draw from the current state of physics is to recognise that much of what is called theoretical physics is in fact interesting and highly sophisticated mathematics, not really physics The problems begin to mount when speculation is not even acknowledged as speculation.

rightly believes that when scientists speculate ideas that have not been tested, which may not even be testable, they should be willing to admit that the activity in which they are engaging is not quite as "scientific" as some of them would have us think' (p70).

In our speculative times, achieving mathematical beauty is widely taken to be the guiding spirit behind physical research. In the twentieth century, the quest for beauty has increasingly become the goal of the leading branches of theoretical physics.

44 January 1994

LIVING MARXISM

The appeal to aesthetic criteria is part of the physicists' unshakeable belief in the underlying simplicity and beauty of nature. It is one of their most powerful guiding principles. Nature should not be more complicated than it has to be, they tell themselves. It is this belief that motivates the search for a 'theory of everything'.

The proponents of superstrings justify their creation by pointing to its clegance, coherence and beauty.

because as Michacl Green says, 'at the moment there are no firm predictions that we know about' (Superstrings, p134). Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, a supporter of superstrings, nevertheless believes that no theory should be believed in beyond what one can test' (Superstrings, p170). Despite this, Salam thinks that the theory is exciting because of its intrinsic merits' (p171).

Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel laureate remains unconvinced: 'Some of them are convinced in the uniqueness and beauty, and therefore truth, of their theory, and since it is unique and true it obviously includes a description of the entire physical world. It does not seem to them to be necessary to do any experiments to prove such a self-evident truth, so they begin to attack the value of experiments from this end a highly theoretical, abstract, mathematical end. (Superstrings, p182) Glashow's view was supported by Richard Feynman, who before his death made his feclings known: 'I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, "Well, it still might be true". (p194) The quest for beauty in science has a long history. But back in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment periods, this tendency was kept in check by the prevailing strength of experimental philosophy. It is this check that has been removed today. For example, in the 1600s the astronomer Johannes Kepler developed a model of the solar system as the most beautiful geometric construction he could envisage. But he abandoned his aesthetically delightful model in favour of his famous if rather prosaic laws which accurately reflect the elliptical orbits of the planets around the sun. In the age of the scientific revolution, empirical study and experimentation, not metaphysical speculation, were the key to theoretical advance.

In the twentieth century the quest for beauty is back with us, and threatening to take precedence over empirical and experimental study. Theoretical physics has massively outstripped technology, as the pace of progress has slowed since the turn of the century. The stagnant capitalism of the twentieth century puts physical limits upon scientific development, by slowing the rate of investment in new technologies. The decision not to proceed with the Superconducting Super Collider is an example. Consequently a gap has opened up between scientific theory and practice in the twentieth century which was unimaginable in Kepler's time.

The less confident times in which we live have also given greater force to mystical ideas, as even the idea of experimentation is in abeyance. It was bound to be the case that there would be a growth of speculation as the gap berween theoretical physics and technology grew. But it was by no means certain that this gap would be filled by the quest for beauty. It is the wider idcological appeal of metaphysics in modern capitalist society that has

THE MARXIST REVIEW OF BOOKS

consolidated speculation as a positive virtue. In this context beauty in framing theory becomes more than an heuristic device, and assumes the character of a guiding principle. The similarity between the religious impulse and the thinking behind much of theoretical physics today has led some to suggest that science and religion do competebut only as alternative religions. Is this fair comment?

One man who thinks not is Steven Weinberg. avowed atheist who believes that the quest for beauty is a perfectly rational enterprise.

At a meeting of the Royal Society a few years ago, Weinberg focused on the impasse between theory and experiment: physics in general is moving into an era where the fundamental questions can no longer be illuminated by conceivable experiments. It's a very disquieting position to be in."

Never one to shirk a challenge, Weinberg has struck out in two directions: to push for the SSC, and to narrow down the search for the ultimate theory of nature using the quest for beauty as guide. His book, Dreams of a Final Theory, secks to get supporl for the SSC by explaining the attractions of an ultimate theory of nature.

Weinberg's assumption is that there are a finite number of fundamental laws of nature, and that these must in some sense fit together. In other words, he believes natural law has simplicity, and an inevitability: a simplicity in that the number of laws is finite; an inevitability in that the nature of one law must relate to the whole, and be constrained by the nature of other laws.

These two criteria are then taken to define beauty: *The kind of beauty that we find in physical theories is of a very limited sort. It is, as far as I have been able to capture it in words, the beauty of simplicity and inevitability—the beauty of perfect structure, the beauty everything fitting together, of nothing being changeable, of logical rigidity." (p119) Both simplicity and inevitability can be captured by principles of symmetry, which is why such a principle is popular with particle physicists. Weinberg's assumption then is that if we find that our theories of nature possess this beauty, we must be on the right track to finding the ultimate theories of nature: 'It seems that we are learning how to anticipate the beauty of nature at its most fundamental level. Nothing could be more encouraging that we are actually moving towards the discovery of nature's final laws.' (p71) What makes Weinberg a pleasure to read is that at Icast he expresses some optimism about the possibility of There are some important expanding our knowledge. weaknesses in his argument though, and some dangers for science as a rational exercise.

The rather circular nature of his basic thesis—nature is simple and interconnected, beauty is simplicity and inevitability, therefore beauty is a guide to nature's rational as he might like to claim. It is based on nothing more than a belief that nature is ordered in a particular way. The consequence of this is that while Weinberg may be a materialist, his approach smacks of the idealism of the ancient philosopher Plato, who took beauty as the guide to understand the world.

Weinberg chases beauty with the best of them: 'Plato and the neo-Platonists taught that the beauty we see in nature is a reflection of the beauty of the ultimate, the nous. For us, too, the beauty of present theories is an anticipation, a premonition, of the beauty of the final theory. And in any case, we would not accept any theory as final unless it were beautiful? (p131) If this is not a substitute religion, what is it?

Weinberg's approach might make sense if there was significant evidence that the mathematical laws he is using capture something fundamental about the nature of physical reality. But there is precious little evidence of this. In fact he admits to fiddling things to get the desired 'beauty": Our principles are often invented as we go along, sometimes precisely because they lead to the kind of rigidity we hope for.' (p120) The elevation of aesthetic criteria over experimental is possible because the theories are so flexible, so far removed from experimental verification, that a wide range of them could fit the data. Which one you choose then becomes a matter of taste, informed by whatever your sense of "beauty' happens to be. In this context taking any sense of aesthetics as a guide is a hazardous business—if we want to defend the idea that science is a rational process. In the past, experiments played a vital role in developing theory. Today, experiments in some fields are barely managing to test out theories developed a decade or more ago. Wherever experimental evidence can be coaxed out of nature, it suffices to corroborate or refute a theory and serves as the sole arbiter of validity. But evidence is sparse or absent, other criteria, including aesthetic ones, have been allowed to come into play—both in formulating a theory and evaluating it.

One arca where experiments could have filled in some of the gaps in our knowledge is the notional Higgs particle. The discovery of the Higgs particle would confirm the theory of how particles acquire the masses that they do. The SSC was to have led the hunt for the Higgs particle or as Lederman calls it "The God Particle' Last summer, government minister William Waldegrave issued a challenge to physicists to explain the importance of the Higgs particle on a single sheet of paper. He wanted to understand its significance before deciding whether or not to allocate funds to CERN for its search. Simply, the standard model of particle physics does not work without it. The Higgs particle is needed to make the standard model mathematically consistent.

Investment in the new generation of particle accelerators is needed if physicists are even to know if they are heading in the right direction.

In the absence of the investment and technological advances, such as CERN and SSC, that could go some way to giving theoretical physics a material content, speculation abounds. Speculation is a necessary part of any science, as a first step. The danger of the quest for beauty in science is that it makes a virtue of necessity and arrests our thinking at the level of only metaphysics. As Morris warns. confusion will result if metaphysics is allowed to masquerade as science' (p70). LIVING MARXISM January 1994 45

READ ON

Martyr's Day: A Chronicle of a Small War, Michael Kelly, Macmillan, £ 16.99 hbk On the Jordanian border at the close of the Gulf War a truck load of Indians, Sudanese, Iranians, Filipinos and Egyptians were trying to get out of Irag and go home.

Four Sudanese had died on the way of exposure.

A woman was crying in the van. The Western journalists who came across them wrote up her story-she was crying for joy at leaving Iraq.

Michael Kelly, one journalist who looked closer, explains their mistake: "She was crying because the baby in her lap was dead. Kelly's personal record of covering the Gulf War describes how journalists reported what they expected to see rather than what was there.

Most war journalists got their information through the Joint Information Bureau (JIB) which controlled the CENTCOM media pool system from the International Hotel in Dhahran. The pool system on the second floor of the hotel comprised TV sets receiving the US Forces Television Services Network together with binders of reports from journalists on the ground-filed in the presence of US troops. The system was set up by the US Central Command after six months of meetings with 'Coordinators' chose journalists for assignment to various military units. The pool journalists were accompanied by Public Affairs Escort Officers and subject to Department of Defence Rules and orders. Their reports were sent back to Dhahran by military carrier, censored by the JIB and then became the common material of all members of the pool. Michael Kelly's Chronicle of a Small War is the outcome of his attempts to get round the system of on-the-spot censorship that hamstrung his colleagues.

Kelly travelled through Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait before going on to Iragi Kurdistan to get his story, Acting outside of the official stranglehold on the media, his record of the Gulf War tells the stories that his colleagues were blind to.

Reporting from Iraq. Kelly sees things that do not fit the official Western view of the war as arising out of Iraqi might. He describes how in January 1991 Iraqi troops recalled to their units on the front line were forced to commandeer any transport available. Kelly asks 'what happens in a war in which one side has the power to move half a million troops halfway across the world and the other has to steal buses and taxi-cabs to move a few thousand soldiers a couple of hundred miles?.

On the way to Kuwait City, Kelly sees a group of Iraqi soldiers waving a surrender flag (made of a white I-shirt on a bamboo stick): "They had no rifles. It occurred to me as I noticed this that I hadn't seen a single Iraqi soldier carrying a rifle since the war began.' Kelly's suspicions about Iraq's readiness to fight were confirmed by Captain Mike Ettore of the US marines. *You want to know the truth about the Tragis? They were an inferior enemy.

Pathetic. ' Ettore's regiment had just killed 'in a modest estimate' 300 pathetic Iraqis.

On the Basra Road, site of the most sustained slaughter of Iraqi troops as they retreated from Kuwait, Kelly comes across Major Bob Nugent investigating the debris.

Nugent has found a slide-rule used by Iraqi gunners to 46 January 1994

LIVING MARXISM

calculate their trajectories. 'Imagine an army using slide-rules up against an army using computers and AWACS. Incredible*, says Nugent.

Kelly's record is impressionistic and does not pretend to explain what was behind the Gulf War. But he does prise open the stranglehold the US forces had over reporting of the war. In doing that he illustrates a simple truth. The real menace to the region came from the half a million troops organised in Operation Desert Storm, not from a country that sent its troops into battle by taxi, unarmed and with little more than a slide-rule for information technology. Jude Edwards Morality, Bernard Williams, Canto £4.95 pbk Go to any upmarket bookshop, look at the section on ethics and you can almost see it expand before your eyes.

Morality is in. Bernard Williams' little book, republished here by Canto, was for many years one of the few works on the subject. Williams indicates why in this wellargued outline of moral theory. Until recently morality was something that was assumed, not argued about. What views there were on the subject were either hostile, such as amoralism—Williams' first target—or non-committal, what Williams calls subjectivism, the idea that one set of morals is as valid as any other.

In so far as there has been an agreed Williams says that it has been that of utilitarianism, the idea that whatever leads to the greatest good of the greatest number is moral. Morality makes a good case that utilitarianism is too empty to provide a real basis for agreement over right and wrong, Marx ridiculed it as the mental arithmetic of the businessman, balancing right and wrong against profit and loss.

quest for an alternative, however, is no more substantial than utilitarianism. He cites Martin Luther's rejection of the idea that the quest for happiness should be the basis of what is good. Not happiness, says Luther, the founder of Protestantism, but 'suffering and the cross' is the basis of what is good. Sensing that a modern readership would balk at crucifixion, Williams recommends a formula from the novelist DH Lawrence: *Find your deepest impulse and follow that.' This Lawrentian argument is a celebration of intuition, that says that it is better not to think about morality, but do what you feel to be right.

In Lawrence's morality we are still to be driven by forces beyond our understanding, and, as with Luther, these forces come from within. An intuitive personal morality can work as long as individuals spontancously adopt goals that can be reconciled with the status quo.

The deepest impulse of the mountaineer is easier to applaud than the deepest impulse of the bank robber.

But the current interest in ethics is precisely that moral intuition no longer appears to be a sufficient guarantor of social order. In simple terms, the bank-robbers outnumber the mountaineers. In these circumstances we can expect to see more attempts to impose moral probity from the outside-from debt-counselling to job-scekers contracts-and less respect for individual conscience.

James Heartfield

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