Friday 24 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)

*THE SPGB AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR*

*Guest Speaker: Keith Scholey*

To join the meeting click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

Water’s Utility

‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any

Drop to drink.’ Rain falls freely to earth,

Yet water is not free; so what is it worth?

A fortune to a water company,

Feeling free to pollute rivers and lakes

With sewage in all its variety,

Product of our effluent society.

Consumers pay the bill, while capital takes

The dividends. So, what nature provides

Becomes a commodity by and by,

To profit those who’ll control the supply

As long as capitalism abides.

‘Nor any drop to drink’ safe to say

Unless the drinker can afford to pay.

D. A.

Don’t retired British army Generals get paid enough by the capitalist system after they have spent their lives working to carry out the orders of said system in its support that they have to supplement teir pensions by ramping up the scare factor with interviews to The Sun?

How long before the two minute Putin/Russia hate is introduced across the land?

The Sun has an interview with an ex-General -republished by the MailOnline too – where he states: ‘Vladimir Putin could pound Britain with dozens of the same missiles he’s using to blitz Ukraine – and there’s nothing the UK could do to stop them, an ex-general has warned. The weapons would have the capacity to reach Britain in just 90 minutes, travelling at speeds of 600mph, according to General Sir Richard Barrons. The retired British Army officer estimated that an attack would involve Russia firing over the missiles in waves of 60 to 90 at a time. Speaking to The Sun, General Barrons warned that the UK would currently be unable to fend off such an onslaught.’

This military ‘expert’ posits that Russia would attack the UK using the type of missiles Russia is using against Ukaine. Apparently, they would tale ninety minutes to arrive here and would comes in waves of ‘sixty to ninety at a time.’

SOYMB is not a military ‘expert’ but in the case of the Russians being seriously peeved wouldn’t they send fewer and more effective ICBM’s?

The article says that, ‘Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told The Sun’s World At War that Britain was in talks to join Europe’s Sky Shield air defence system. He said the MoD was in early stage talks “on what a European sky shield might look like”. The scheme was proposed by Berlin in response to Moscow’s strikes on Ukraine. If Britain joins it would likely mean US Patriot missiles, Israeli Arrow-3s and German IRIS-T missiles deployed on British soil.’

Shades of the eighties and Greenham Common and American cruise missiles based here.

Is this the point of this drip drip scaremongering? Is the point to frighten the population so much that any repressive measures enacted by the government for the ‘sake of national security’ will be unquestionably accepted?

They’ll be telling us next that the Russians are re-enacting communism -it never was, the Soviet Union was state capitalist, and that it’s a threat to the wonderful capitalist system that we all enjoy.

We might know know the precise point of such cock-and-bull stories but we do know that the need for a majority to realise that the need for the transition to a socialist society is more pressing than ever

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/28024070/putin-missiles-britain-russia-warning/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13440473/Putin-Britain-missiles-Ukraine-general.html

All those politicians and ‘leaders’ who are so blithely talking of nuclear war might believe that they will be ‘safe’ in their bunkers from the devastation that it would bring to the world.

Are Hiroshima and Nagasaki so easily forgotten?

Socialism is even more of an imperative to not only bring an end to exploitation but to bring an end to a system which would literally see the end of us all.

The following is from the Socialist Standard, October 1980.

‘This BBC documentary film made in 1965, shows the possible effects of nuclear attack, and was banned from television screening. It is currently being used quite widely by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as a recruiting film. The effects of the winds and heat of fire-storms, of the displacement of oxygen by carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and of radiation itself are portrayed to horrific effect. Mass neurosis and widespread mental debilitation are evident, and those who survive are driven to violent rioting over meagre food supplies. Evacuation and other civil defence provisions are shown as tragically futile, and it is suggested that Britain, with its NATO bases, would be the worst hit area in the world in the event of war. Armed police are shown prowling the streets and supervising the burning of bodies and there is a pervasive chaos of devastation.

The film was based on the supposition of a “minimal” attack; today the effects of nuclear weaponry would be many times more destructive. (Sigvard Eklund, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency estimates the number of warheads in the world today to be 50,000, with the power of 1,000,000 Hiroshimas.) All the same, the film is essential viewing for anyone who is concerned to get even a vague idea of what the threat of war really amounts to. The War Game also ridicules the attitudes of the clergy, quoting one minister who has said that he trusts nuclear bombs will be used “with wisdom”, and another who defends their use provided that the war they are to be used in is a “just war”.

One important irony in the film’s use as propaganda by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, is that it is based in part on the effects suffered at the bombing of Dresden in 1945, when no nuclear weapons were used. The fact is that it is not just nuclear weapons which can be responsible for unspeakable human suffering and universal devastation; “conventional” arms are quite sufficient for the purpose, to say nothing of the horrors of chemical and biological warfare. So that if CND were in some miraculous way able to persuade governments to start dismantling some of their immense nuclear stock, there would still remain all manner of other terrible weaponry. The problem is that these people, however genuinely concerned they may be about the threat of war, have responded by considering the tools with which war is waged, instead of the cause of war itself (of whatever kind) and removing that once and for all.

The cause of war was stated by Joseph Chamberlain nearly a century ago when he said that

‘All the great offices of state are occupied with commercial affairs. The Foreign Office and the Colonial Office are chiefly engaged in finding new markets and in defending old ones’ and by W M Hughes, ex-Prime Minister of Australia: ‘The increasing intensity of competition for economic markets must lead to armed conflict unless an economic settlement is found. This, however, is hardly to be hoped for. Talk about peace in a world armed to the teeth is utterly futile.’

So what are these “markets” over which so much blood is spilt? They are simply the areas in which capitalist enterprises, including that monster enterprise, the USSR, try to sell commodities in order to realise a profit. The markets, materials, territories and trade routes fought over in wars all represent profit, which belongs to the property-owning, capital-controlling class in society. The working class have no reason to fight over the property and profit of the various sections of the world’s ruling class.

The cause of war is world capitalism, the profit system, and it is that which will have to be removed. If it is not acceptable to see welfare services cut back while a minor nation like Britain spends more than a million pounds an hour on arms, then we must withdraw our support not just from Conservative politicians, but from all of the representatives of the profit system. And that applies equally to the Labour Party and the USSR patriots of the Communist Party who want nuclear bombs to defend state capitalist Russia.

It should not be forgotten, though, that war is just one particularly destructive aspect of the capitalist system. Capitalism’s converse of “peace” in some ways holds in store just as many horrors.

The expressive faces of despair which feature in The War Game are by no means uncommon in the world today. The problems of starvation or malnourishment are rife in capitalism, and sometimes unemployment is all that the working class can hope for from this system of wage-labour and capital, whether the state of affairs is officially described as “peace” or as “war”.’

Clifford Slapper

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-war-game-1980.html

 Have Australia and New Zealand come up with a new strategy to encourage migration to their countries? Slogan, we are te safest places to be in the aftermath of a nuclear war?

There have been several recent MSM pieces about a possible nuclear war. The latest comes from The MailOnline, 16 May, which carries an article titled, ‘Nuclear war expert reveals what would really happen after an atomic blast – and the safest part of the world to live.’ Although featured on the front online web page the article is listed under the Femail section which is presumable aimed specifically at women readers.

‘A nuclear war expert who claims we are getting closer to atomic warfare says it would take 72 minutes to wipe out five billion people if the worst comes to pass.

Annie Jacobsen said: ‘If a nuclear exchange happens – and we’re talking strategic ballistic missiles – it will not stop until the world ends and we are talking about in seconds and minutes not in days and weeks and months.’

‘An ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) travels from one continent to the next in roughly 30 minutes carrying a nuclear warhead to strike a target.

She said: ‘On top of the initial flash of thermonuclear light which is 180 million degrees, which catches everything on fire in a nine mile diameter radius; on top of the bulldozing effect of the wind and all the buildings coming down and more fires igniting on top of the radiation poisoning people to death in minutes and hours and days and weeks, if they happen to have survived, on top of all of that, each one of these fires creates a mega fire that is 100 or more square miles and so.’

The author said if the world went into nuclear war you would ‘want to die instantly’ because ‘there is no more law and order.’

She said: ‘There’s a quote from Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he said: ‘”After nuclear war the survivors would envy the dead”.

‘Who’s left? It’s man returning to the most primal, most violent state as people fight over the tiny resources that remain, and by the way they’re all malnourished, everybody’s sick and most people have lost everything and everyone they know. How’s that going to feel?’

If nuclear war did break out Annie said the safest place to be would be in Australia or New Zealand because of the agricultural resources.

She said: ‘Agriculture would fail and when agriculture fails people just die and on top of that you have the radiation poisoning because the ozone layer will be so damaged and destroyed that you can’t be outside in the sunlight and so people will be forced to live underground – fighting for food everywhere except in New Zealand and Australia.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13420801/Nuclear-war-expert-wipe-billions.html

Nevil Shute in his 1957 novel On the Beach has the population of those countries eventually succumbing to the spread of radiation southwards.

‘Ukraine can use any weapons supplied by the UK to launch strikes on Russia’s Crimean Peninsula, British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed to journalists. London considers the region, which joined Russia in 2014 following a referendum, to be an “integral part of Ukraine,” he said.

Russia has already warned that it could retaliate to any strikes by attacking British military targets in Ukraine and beyond.

Speaking at a Royal Navy conference in the British capital, Shapps maintained that a victory for Russia would be “unimaginable and unacceptable” for the UK, and called for intensified arms deliveries to Kiev.

When asked specifically about the weapons the UK has supplied to Ukraine, the defence secretary replied that “we have provided munitions for weapons to be used in the territory of Ukraine, including Crimea.” He refused to reveal further details about the exact agreements reached by London and Kiev, saying he would “not go beyond that in talking about tactics.”

Earlier in May, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron told Reuters that Ukraine had the right to use long-range missiles sent by the UK to strike deep inside Russia. Moscow condemned the remarks, summoning London’s ambassador to warn him about possible retaliation, should British weapons be used in Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory.

A potential response could involve strikes against “any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Cameron’s words de-facto “recognized his country as a party to the conflict,” it added.

The ministry also said British weapons are being actively used by Kiev in “terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure and the civilian population of Donbass and other Russian regions.” Russian diplomats further accused London of using arms supplies to Ukraine to gain a more prominent position within NATO.

The UK remains one of the largest donors of weaponry to Kiev, providing £7.1 billion ($8.9 billion) in assistance since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, according to Sergey Belyaev, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second European Department.’

‘Moscow will retaliate against British targets in Ukraine or elsewhere if Kiev uses UK-provided missiles to strike Russian territory, the Foreign Ministry told London’s ambassador.

Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the ministry following remarks by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron to Reuters that Ukraine has the right to use long-range missiles sent by the UK to strike deep inside Russia.

”Casey was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.

The US and its allies had previously qualified their deliveries of long-range weapons to Kiev by saying they could only be used on territories that Ukraine claims as its own – Crimea, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Cameron’s statements to the contrary “de facto recognized his country as a party to the conflict.”

Russia understands Cameron’s comments as “evidence of a serious escalation and confirmation of London’s increasing involvement in military operations on the side of Kiev,” the ministry added.

Casey was urged to “think about the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps from London and to immediately refute in the most decisive and unequivocal manner the bellicose provocative statements of the head of the Foreign Office.”

Earlier the Russian Defence Ministry announced an exercise to test the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. President Vladimir Putin ordered the drills after “provocative statements and threats” by Western officials, the military said.

Moscow hopes the drills will “cool down the ‘hot heads’ in Western capitals and help them understand the possible catastrophic consequences of the strategic risks they generate,” as well as “keep them from both assisting the Kiev regime in its terrorist actions and being drawn into a direct armed confrontation with Russia,” the Foreign Ministry said in a follow-up statement.’

‘On 17 May 1649, three soldiers were executed on Oliver Cromwell’s orders in Burford churchyard, Oxfordshire. They belonged to a movement popularly known as the Levellers, with beliefs in civil rights and religious tolerance.

During the Civil War, the Levellers fought on Parliament’s side, they had at first seen Cromwell as a liberator, but now saw him as a dictator. They were prepared to fight against him for their ideals and he was determined to crush them. Over 300 of them were captured by Cromwell’s troops and locked up in Burford church. Three were led out into the churchyard to be shot as ringleaders.’

https://levellersday.wordpress.com/

The following is from the Socialist Standard, December 1961

The word “Leveller” was first heard in 1606 when a band of men roamed the Warwickshire countryside, uprooting or levelling fences and hedges enclosing the once-common lands. These detested barriers had been going up all over England for eighty years.

Enclosing the “waste-land” that from time immemorial had been common property brought increasing misery to the poor and greater .wealth to the rich. Large areas were turned into sheep walks to satisfy the growing demand abroad for superior English wool. In Thomas More’s Utopia we read, “ The sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame and so small eaters now as I heare say be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves.” Fresh ideas on farming and improved methods of stock-breeding made squires land-greedy. Enclosing was the polite name for stealing; people were driven from their homes to give pasture to sheep. Their only hope of survival lay in the towns, where they were fleeced even more closely than their woolly competitors.

Inventions and the necessity for larger ships meant bigger outlay and brought a demand for more money in the form of capital. A rich, powerful merchant class came into being. The first bank—the Bank of England, 1694—came with it.

The land lost much of its aristocratic value; the traditional obligations to tenant and labourer tended to disappear. The old tyrant with titles was often superseded by a new tyrant with money. Farmworkers were tricked out of rights of tenure. Though freed from the old bondage they were enslaved in a new and often terrifying system.

Throughout these tremendous changes Charles I remained obstinately feudal in outlook. Something was bound to happen. By 1628 the House of Commons was three times richer than the House of Lords. This gave its members confidence to resist the king’s demands for money. So in 1629 he closed Parliament for eleven years, hoping to show his recalcitrant M.Ps. that he alone held power. But in 1639 a rebellion broke out in Scotland, and by 1640 he had been forced to recall Parliament to vote the necessary money to quell the rising. Here was the opportunity the Members had dreamed of. They knew that archaic notions of kingship must give way to a governmental system favourable to the merchants.

As a warm-up for their startling policy they executed the king’s chief minister, the Earl of Strafford, who had been raising an army in Ireland to crush Parliament. At the same time John Lilburne leader of a “left-wing” group—the Levellers—was released from prison, where he had resided two years for issuing anti-State Church pamphlets. Now free, he got an Army command.

With this widespread opposition came a taste for democratic expression. The popularity of Cromwell’s rising faction gave the Levellers a chance to speak out. How and where did they fit into the political ferment?

Parliament was divided. On the right were the Anglican Royalists, conservative and pro-Charles. On the left were the Independents, radical but not united. They were divided into a right-wing called Gentlemen Independents headed by Cromwell, Ireton, and Fairfax, and a left-wing known as the Levellers. The latter reflected the aspirations of small farmers, humbler-tradtsmen, work people and soldiers. They advocated greater political equality than the Independents and had a widespread popular support.

In addition to political demands the civilian arm of the movement (the Diggers) urged greater economic equality; and in recognising that all political organisations and freedoms spring from or are crushed by the particular mode of land-ownership, they earned for themselves the undying hatred of Cromwell.

At this stage the Levellers were welcomed by the Radicals. All through the struggle the Levellers did best in the army, perhaps because there they were better organised than the Diggers. Both issued a considerable mass of literature, the Levellers maintaining that economic freedom followed from political freedom, and the Diggers seeing it rather the other way.

Common-ownership of the land was the bed-rock of their philosophy. Stripped of its Biblical overtones it stated a view that is still a staggering novelty to millions today. “. . . the time will be when all men shall willingly come in and give up their lands and estates and submit to the community.” They added, “and of that for money there was no need of it” (if men led communal lives). In the letter to Lord Halifax, Winstanley asked, “I demand whether all wars, bloodshed and misery came not upon creation when one man endeavoured to be a lord over another.”

In an article in the Leveller paper, The Moderate in 1649, after some men were executed for cattle-stealing, a writer suggested private property was the cause of a great deal of crime committed by the poor, “ We find,” he wrote, “some of these felons to be very civil men, and say, that if. they could have had any reasonable subsistence by friends, or otherwise they should never have taken such necessitous courses for the support of their wives and families.” The paper was suppressed after September, 1649, by “democratic” Cromwell.

The Levellers just as clearly saw that religion with its mirage of a happy future life was the carrot that encouraged the poor donkey of a labourer to stagger on. Winstanley wrote, “. . . to know God beyond the creation or to know what he will do to a man after the man is dead, in any other wise than to scatter him into his essences of fire, water, earth and air of which he is compounded (a belief handed down by the ancient Greeks) is a knowledge beyond the line or capacity of man to attain to while he lives in his compounded body.” Richard Overton, too, wrote in Man’s Mortality that the idea of the soul was ridiculous.

The New Model Army (Roundheads) was Parliament’s striking force, its job to overthrow the king. But because its ranks were filled with many pro-Leveller men the Levellers saw in it a means of getting better conditions for the poor. On May 20th, 1647, “a great petition” was sent to the Commons demanding political reforms and the re-organisation of the Constitution. When the re-imprisoned Lilburne (he was in and out of gaol between 1646-1648 for various attacks on authority) heard that the common hangman had been instructed to burn it, he looked to the army for support. He declared the power of the land vested in the army, and at this point Cromwell agreed. Next, a manifesto, The Case of the Army Truly Stated, was presented to General Fairfax on October 15th, 1647, and later An Agreement of the People, which dealt more with civil matters.

Fearing the support gained by the Levellers, the Presbyterians compromised with Charles. Enraged, the Independents with the Levellers marched to London, entered the House and passed a measure to thwart any attempt to corrupt the army; the Presbyterians were crushed. Though Cromwell had been aided by the Levellers, he refused to free Lilburne. When we see what the Levellers were after, we can understand why! The Case of the Army Truly Stated listed thirteen points:

1.  New election for new parliament.

        2. House of Commons to be cleared of royalist sympathisers.

        3.Army’s supremacy to be made known officially.

4.Excise tax to be lifted from the poor, Better tax-laws.

5.Trials to be speeded up and improved conditions for prisoners.

6.Greater religious tolerance.

7.Abolition of tithes.

8.Oath of Supremacy to be abolished.

        9.No oaths from those with conscience scruples.

10.Law reform to enable laymen to understand legal matters.

11. Removal of privileges. All to be subject to same laws.

12.Enclosed land to be returned to common use.

13. Pensions for disabled soldiers, widows and children.

The stir that these programmes made, forced Fairfax, Cromwell and the others Grandees (as they were somewhat derisively called) to allow their discussion in a series of debates held in Putney. Cromwell reasoned that if these fiery demands could be proved too extreme or impractical. Leveller influence would diminish and the threat to his supremacy would disappear. The main point was that the vote was the birthright of all men, and to this Ireton replied, “…voting was a property right. Only those who owned a house worth 40s a year in rent or who had a freehold interest in land should vote. The protection of private property was of the utmost importance, now that freedom had been won. Everyone was free to make money, and to own property, and the law was there to protect them while they did it.” Rainbotough for the Levellers retorted that what was required in voting was reason not property. And Sexby added, “… as things are today unless a man has fixed property, he has no rights in England at all.”

Cromwell had the Case of the Army condemned in Parliament. Next, he set out to quell his army and persuade the least influenced to sign a pledge of loyalty at Corkbush Field, Ware, in Hertfordshire. There the Agreement of the People was presented to Fairfax. He accepted it, but told the men to go on signing and they did. But then up rode two dissenting regiments singing and wearing the Leveller colours. Immediately Cromwell drew his sword and rode angrily among them, tearing away their colours. His sudden action quietened them. The ringleaders were arrested; three were found guilty and one of these was shot.

It was a serious defeat for the Levellers. They tried resistance again, but were imprisoned and Lilburne remained in the Tower. At Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, Charles in 1648 launched another attack (the Second Civil War). All the contesting elements of Parliament sank their differences again in preparation for the fray. The artful Presbyterians released Lilburne, hoping he would stir the army to mutiny. But he supported Cromwell, presumably regarding him as the lesser of two evils.

After the royalist defeat more discussion on the Agreement of the People followed and it actually reached Parliament, but lay in abeyance while the king’s fate was decided. On January 30th, 1649, Charles, king by the grace of God, died by the grace of the merchants.

M. Brown.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-levellers-1640-1649-1961.html

SINN FEIN: WILL BEING IN GOVERNMENT ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER UNITE IRELAND (ZOOM)

SINN FEIN: WILL BEING IN GOVERNMENT ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER UNITE IRELAND (ZOOM)