Tuesday 21 May 2024
Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, What Is Happening In China? - Part 4 of 4
Monday 20 May 2024
Wage-Labour and Capital, Section IV - Part 2 of 8
Sunday 19 May 2024
Keeled Over
Last night, as noted yesterday, we went to the Northern Soul Allnighter at Keele. We'd been to one last year, which was good, but missed the last one in January. So, we were looking forward to it. Unfortunately, it was pretty naff, especially given the £12 entry price, compared to an average £5 for the events we, normally go to each week.
I have listened to Northern Soul for more than 50 years, and, in the 70's, even did some DJ'ing; I listen to a lot, still, online, as well as going dancing pretty much every week. Yet, I can honestly say that about 90% of what was played was stuff I've never heard before, which is not, in itself, a bad thing, though its difficult to dance when record after record is stuff your not familiar with, but, what is bad, is that, of this 90%, 90% of it was so non-descript that I wouldn't know if I ever heard it again, or, to be honest, care! That's not the emotion I associate with Northern Soul, from the first time I heard it.
I didn't seem to be alone. Never have I been to a Northern Soul event where the dance floor was so empty for so much of the night. Even when something decent was played, it was difficult to raise the enthusiasm to get up. I had the impression that some of the people who did get up to dance did so out of some sense of sympathy, a sort of pity dance. It was due to last until 6.00 a.m., but at 1.30, we gave up on it, and many others seemed to have done the same. perhaps the DJ's weren't actually looking at what was going on on the dance floor.
Some months ago, John Murphy said to me that, back in the 70's, when he was a Northern Soul DJ at Tiffany's and other major venues, if they played something that cleared the dancefloor, they had one more record to get them back, or the management would have replaced them. A DJ has a number of tasks. At a club, its necessary to know the regulars, and what they dance to, which isn't possible at one off events, but, secondly, the DJ should observe the dancefloor, and see what works and what doesn't. That doesn't mean playing crap just because some people dance to it, but requires balance. The DJ, also, as part of that function, should try to educate, by introducing some new sounds, but, again, it requires balance, one new record in an hour is plenty, and it should be good, not just something no one has heard before.
Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 17 of 19
Saturday 18 May 2024
Keele All-Nighter, Unleashing The Back Drop
We are just off to the Northern Soul All-Nighter at Keele University, having missed the one in January. I will be thinking of my best mate Keith. We spent many happy hours, in the 90's, every month at the Keele nighters, as well as at the Kings Hall in Stoke.
Back then, I was still famous for my backdrops - jumping backdrops, backdrops with double and triple hand claps, backdrops with side twists, sliding backdrops, backdrops into forward presses, and back again, in fact any possible variation of backdrop. But, in 1999, I tore my ACL, doing martial arts, which meant occasionally my knee gave way, and so decided to stop doing backdrops until it was repaired. I didn't get the operation until early 2004. I was still able to do lots of other stuff, in the intervening period, like side splits and box splits. In fact, on one occasion at the gym, I undertook a test to determine biological as opposed to chronological age, in which it came out as 27, more than 20 years less than my chronological age!
So, after the operation, I was shocked, when I came to do a backdrop, and couldn't. I could get into it, but couldn't get up from it. I was so shocked that I ended up thinking, well, perhaps in your fifties, its time to abandon it, whereas, what I should have done is redouble my efforts to get it back. All the components were still there. I still had the suppleness, the back and abdominal strength, the leg strength. I had always been able to do the floor sit to stand test with ease, which I still can.
I could still go from sitting on my feet to jumping straight into a standing position. I have always been able to do the suitcase position of lying prostrate on your back, with your legs bent beneath you. So, for a long time, although I made infrequent attempts to practice doing backdrops, I settled for just doing other aspects of Northern Soul dancing, spinning, splits and so on.
But, some months ago, I started watching the videos of the kneesovertoesguy, on Youtube.
It struck me how much of his stuff fitted with things I already did as part of my exercises, and how they could be used for me to get back to doing the backdrops. I'd come across him from happening across him on a Bryan Johnson video, the rich American guy who has invested a lot into reversing ageing. Again, that was something I'd been doing via calorie restriction for a long-time (I'd first heard about it in the early 90's, but only started doing it in earnest around 2012), and having also added intermittent fasting to the regime. I now eat just once a day, around 1400 calories, high in protein, which isn't easy as a vegetarian. But, having once suffered with hiatus hernia and acid reflux, that is all gone, as mostly has the asthma I suffered from, badly, from the age of 3. I now have a blood pressure reading of 110/67, and resting pulse of 58. A couple of months ago, I went to the doctor's for a test of heart rhythm, which showed that I had a perfect sine wave. Obviously, years of dancing to Richard Temple.
I have always been able to continue doing side splits and box splits, as well as the full lotus, and so on. Doing the ATG split squat, therefore, came fairly easily, which within a matter of weeks I could do even using weights, as I could doing the deep squats. In fact, I am more supple, today, and with greater strength over the full range of movement than ever. So, I was quickly able to go from the suitcase position to an upright seated position, and I was able to go into a knees over toes, back drop position, and even to be able to do some hand claps in it, before rising out of it, I even managed a backdrop to side splits, manoeuvre though it needs work. None of it is the kind of fluency of movement I had in 1999, but, hey, that's a quarter century ago. So, tonight, back out on the floor, at Keele, I'm, now, ready to again unleash the backdrop, after 25 years. It won't, yet, be the same, but, not bad for a septuagenarian. In the meantime, while I'm out dancing 100 mph, and backdropping, here's a video from almost back in the 1970's days of the golden age of Northern Soul, featuring a youthful Dave Evison and Keb Darge amongst others.
Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, What Is Happening In China? - Part 3 of 4
Friday 17 May 2024
Wage-Labour and Capital - Section IV - Part 1 of 8
Thursday 16 May 2024
Starmer's Six Promises
The only potential counter to that is that these six promises are so vapid, so meaningless, and lacking in ambition that even Starmer would be hard pressed not to be able to stick with them, but even that can't be relied on, such is the lack of credibility of the man, and his Blue Labour Party. After all, he won the leadership by committing to stick with the programme of Jeremy Corbyn, all of the elements of which were very popular with voters, according to every poll undertaken. Yet, within weeks of becoming Leader, Starmer started dropping them one by one, and went from being the champion of liberal Remainers, to being the arch Brexiter, distinguishable only from Boris Johnson by his desire to outflank him to the Right!
The six promises are:
Deliver Economic Stability
Cut NHS Waiting Times
Launch a new Border Security Command
Set Up Great British Energy
Crack Down On Anti-Social Behaviour
Recruit 6,500 Teachers
What a pathetic list. Where is the ambition in that, even compared with the pledges offered by Blair in 1997? The Blairites used to talk about “aspiration”, but there is no sense of aspiration in this list whatsoever. It basically expects workers to settle for a continuation of their lot of the last 15 years since the global financial crisis, let alone anything more aspirational. In terms of encouraging workers to vote for Labour it is hardly inspirational, is it? The Corbynite agenda that Starmer originally committed to, was itself, only the kind of routine social-democratic programme of a 1960's Wilson government, but even that was too much for Starmer, as he has collapsed into petty-bourgeois reactionary nationalism, as witnessed by his welcoming into the party of far-right Tory MP's, like Elphicke.
Let's take this flaccid list, and see just how limp it is. What does promise 1 even mean? It doesn't even commit to economic growth, which would require, the opposite of stability. Stability means accepting the current low level of economic activity, in other words, it is the stability of the graveyard. Let's be kind and assume that Starmer and Reeves do not actually mean stability, but mean economic growth without the drama, and wild swings, associated with the last few years of Tory government, as seen with Truss. But, then, this is meaningless too. They might as well say that they are promising that the weather will be stable and slightly better under a Labour government.
For it to mean anything, they would have to set out how they were going to ensure such stability and improvement, but they fail to do that. It is an “aspiration”, but a pretty timid one, and yet, still one they cannot guarantee. They can't guarantee it, because the growth of capitalist economies, and their stability, is largely outside the control of governments, particularly national governments, and even more so the governments of small, and declining nation states like that of Britain. Those national governments can certainly damage the growth of their economies, as for example, has occurred with Brexit, or as occurred with the Truss government's attempt to apply the petty-bourgeois ideology that lies behind Brexit, and brought down the wrath of the global ruling class, and its control of the financial markets upon it, but they cannot, conversely, aid the growth of those economies.
Moreover, what does such stability or economic growth itself mean? Stability and growth for the benefit of whom? If it means that the economy is “stable”, and “grows”, on the back of workers having to accept a continuation of their current condition, whilst, on the other side, profits continue to grow, and an increasing proportion of them is paid out as interest/dividends to shareholders, how is that of any benefit to workers, as against the interests of those speculators and other parasites, and so why would workers have any reason to vote for it?
The same is true of the second promise. Its pathetic, compared to Blair's promise to treble spending on the NHS, which he did, but which mostly went to benefit all those companies that built hospitals, supplied expensive equipment, as well as all of those highly paid NHS bureaucrats, whose empires expanded significantly, whilst the newly built hospitals couldn't function, because there was no funds to employ nurses! But, given that Starmer has adopted the programme of reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism, and Brexit, how is this to be physically achieved, given that the NHS relies on foreign workers, doctors and nurses, coming to work in it, and since Brexit that supply of workers has been slashed?
Moreover, to achieve it would require much greater spending on the NHS, and yet, Starmer's first promise, and the refusal by him and Reeves to countenance any increase in either taxes or borrowing to finance additional spending, means that Blue Labour cannot increase spending to achieve any of these promises. The only other answer, apart from it being just another lie, is that they intend to impose even more on NHS workers, to work longer hours, for even less money! Again, why would workers vote for that?
The third promise is one that is, of course, fully consistent with Blue Labour's reactionary nationalist, Brexitory agenda. But, that agenda conflicts with both the first and second promises. If Blue Labour wants to promote economic growth and stability, the most effective means of that is to re-join the EU, and, at the very least, to re-join the Single Market and Customs Union at the earliest opportunity, including accepting all of the requirements for free movement and so on. But, Starmer's jingoistic, sovereigntist agenda, reflected in this promise, as he continues to appease the racists and bigots, stands four-square in opposition to a rapprochement with the EU. It is a thoroughly racist promise that seeks to place the blame for the problems of British capitalism, problems made worse by Brexit, on to foreigners and immigrants.
The promise to set up Great British Energy is likely to go the way of other such promises by Starmer. The name itself, is, again, a sop to the jingoists and petty-bourgeois nationalists. The only reason for thinking that Blue Labour might actually carry it out, as with the renationalisation of the railways, is that these industries are in such a dire and chaotic state, and there is widespread public support for such policies. Its likely that large sections of capital would be at best indifferent to such state ownership too.
In the EU, state ownership of utilities and railways is commonplace, and acts in the interests of capital in general. In fact, the shares of many of these companies, in Britain, are already owned by foreign state owned enterprises! But, as workers in the state sector are currently seeing, and as was seen in the state owned coal mines, in the 1980's, in Britain, this is no benefit to workers themselves. They do not exercise any control over them, the bosses who lord it over them, are the same bosses who yesterday, and tomorrow, will be running large, non-state businesses, and the state can mobilise far more power than any private business against its workers when it comes to negotiating pay and conditions.
The fifth promise is again vapid, but is really a promise to find scapegoats, and to put more resources into the police and other bodies of armed men, required to put down the revolts of workers, as they resist attempts to make them pay for the actions of the state in bailing out the gambling losses of the ruling class. Starmer has shown himself to be a Bonapartist and totalitarian in the way he runs Blue Labour, and that tendency will be heightened if he gets his hands on government office and ability to use the state.
Finally, he promises to recruit 6,500 teachers, which is again simply an aspiration, without telling us how he will fund it, given the commitment not to raise taxes or borrowing, given the commitment to Brexit, and opposition to free movement and so on. Even so, even compared to the promises made by Blair, in 1997, it is thoroughly lacking in any kind of ambition or aspiration. In the end, it comes down to a belief by Blue Labour that the Tories are, now, so hated, that voters will vote against them, or at least stay home, enabling Blue Labour to win by default.
That belief is almost certainly correct, though, in certain seats, the hostility or just indifference to Starmer, may see Liberals or Greens sneak in, or take enough votes to deny Labour the seat, and Blue Labour will win a large majority in the election. But, that is very short-sighted, and dangerous. A Blue Labour government is likely to quickly disappoint those that voted for it, even with this flaccid agenda, and it will quickly turn on a working-class that is finding its feet once more. The economy is likely to grow, but it will have nothing to do with Blue Labour's policies, but is down simply to the resumption of the long-wave cycle, and the uptrend commenced in 1999, and constrained after 2010. Blue Labour will not face a working-class and labour movement like that of the 1980's, and 1990's, or even early 2000's.
Nor will that working-class, as it rises from its knees, be alone, as the same process unfolds across the EU and North America. But, the workers must be clear in their objectives, of what they are for, rather than just what they are against. Otherwise, as seen in the last decade or so, the beneficiaries will be the populist Right that offer simplistic solutions, but solutions that ultimately are no solutions at all. The most pressing need is to rebuild the organisations of the working-class, from the ground up, to build international workers' solidarity, to recognise that “The Main Enemy Is At Home”, and to replace the current leaderships with a new generation of internationalist, socialist, revolutionary leaders.
Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 16 of 19
Wednesday 15 May 2024
Good Luck To My Best Mate Keith
My best mate, Keith Beardmore, has gone into hospital, today, for major surgery. All our best wishes are with him, his wife, Jayne, and their son Tom.
I first met Keith, in 1975 when we were both doing a Day Release, Business Studies course, at Cauldon College. It was a year after the Miners had defeated Heath's Tory government, and Keith was working for the NCB, while I was already a shop steward, at Royal Doulton. He was sitting with his mates during a break, while I was sitting on my own, reading a revolutionary journal. It was that which was the opener for conversation, but it soon transpired that we had a shared interest in Northern Soul, and the Golden Torch.
Within just a few years from that, I was best man at his first wedding. Not long after, his wife's grandmother, who lived on The Gower died, leaving a house that we went on holiday to. As Keith remarked some time later, "its a wonder we don't all come down with Yellow Jack", given that it was even colder and damper than the old terraced house I grew up in.
In the 1970's, and early 80's, Keith supplied me with dozens of cassette tapes, he'd recorded of Northern Soul, and Funk, from the 20,000 or so records he had as singles or LP tracks. After my kids were born, I missed out on going dancing for some time, other than in the house, doing dives forward rolls over the furniture. But, when Dave Evison, started his Sunday Northern Soul show on Signal Radio, I was a regular listener, whilst Keith with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Northern Soul, was winning the weekly competitions with incessant regularity.
It wasn't long before, we were out on the floor again, going to Keith Minshull's birthday party at the Clough Hall Inn, just down the road from where I lived, where we met up with a number of other people from our past, and some from the present, like Andy Myatt, whose son was in the same class as my son at school. Soon, we were going regularly to the Keele All-Nighters, which we did for most of the 1990's.
In the last ten years, although Keith lives half the year in Spain, we have continued to see each other most months at Moorville Hall, and kept in touch via e-mail. So, after half a century of friendship, I know that Keith will face his current challenge head on, and come out on top. See you soon, mate, and we'll be back "Out On The Floor".