Communist Party of Greece Statement on Election Results

The Communist Party of Greece, the KKE, is a party for which I have a great deal of admiration. It is stitched into Greek society in a way that no similar party is – or has ever been – in these islands. Its election results were slightly down – it lost one seat – but it remains the leading force on the Greek hard left, with over 500,000 votes, 7.5% of the vote, and 21 seats in the Greek parliament. The difference between its influence and organisation and that of parties with similar support in these islands is instructive. The increase in its vote since the elections of 2004 – nearly doubling – is a lesson to us all. A great example of what a disciplined and organised revolutionary socialist party can achieve in all areas of life.

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From: Communist Party of Greece, Monday, 05 October 2009

http://inter.kke.gr , mailto:cpg@int.kke.gr

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On the Results of Elections of October 4

With stronger persistence in order to comply to the peoples needs

On Sunday evening as the count of votes was still in progress, Aleka Papariga the General Secretary of the CC of KKE made the following statement:

“In our opinion the electoral result, which is marked by the heavy defeat of ND and the victory of PASOK, does not reflect the positive developments that took place in the people’s consciousness all these years, during the governance of ND and combined with the experience from the governance of PASOK. What we told to the people, namely that a storm, a wave of anti-popular measures is coming, will soon come true. KKE declares that it is all-ready to take more initiatives, to assume more responsibilities in order to create a current of unity among the people, that is the united front of workers, peasants, self-employed; a current of unity that will embrace those employees and those poor popular strata who voted for ND and those who gave the victory to PASOK.

Of course, the electoral result of KKE is not in accordance with the confirmed influence it exerts on the people as well as with its role and its stance towards the development of struggles. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the people’s indignation and discontent, even the positive developments in the people’s consciousness cannot reach the ballot-box and be dynamically expressed as long as the labor movement and the people’s movement in general is not in a state of regroupment and counterattack. Responsible for this are the leaderships in the local trade union organizations as well as in the great majority of Labour federations and Labour centers.

In our opinion, there is a change in the government but not in the policy of the government. The ship has changed its “captain” but not its route. As it stressed in the pre-electoral period, KKE will seek to abolish the demarcation lines among the people that divide employees, peasantry and self-employed between voters of ND, PASOK and other parties; it will work in order to strengthen and stress the real demarcation line which is: on the side of monopolies and plutocracy or on the side of people? This is especially important because we are in conditions of a crisis. The consequences of the crisis are under way, they have not been completed yet. At the same time, there is a European plan – also PASOK and ND plan- for the recovery of the economy, which means that reactionary measures for harder class exploitation are under way. Social security will be the first target of these measures. Nowadays, there is a need for the people to realize their power. People have not shown their power in the ballot-box. It will be proven that the main issue is not a strong, government but the readiness of the people to repel its aggressiveness that will intensify in the next few years.

We would like to thank the friends, the supporters of the Party, those who voted for KKE for the first time and there are many of them who managed to reach the ballot-box despite the intimidating dilemmas. We will get in contact with those who had decided to vote for KKE and at the last moment did not manage to take this courageous and essential step under the influence of the propaganda for a self-sufficient government.

KKE is stronger after this battle. Along with KNE it will be more self-demanding in order to respond to what the people expect from it: to be at the front line for the struggle for the rallying of forces, for the unity in the struggle, for the prevention of the worse that is coming and the struggle for some solutions that relief the people”.

Workers’ Party Northern Ireland Regional Conference – October 10th 2009

Below are the details of the Northern Ireland Regional Conference of The Workers’ Party. The Conference is not a policy making body, so there are no motions or the like. Instead the aim of the conference is to encourage debate among as broad a segment of left and progressive opinion as possible. All are welcome to attend and contribute.

The Workers’ Party
Northern Ireland Regional Conference

Saturday 10th October 2009

Wellington Park Hotel

Belfast

10.45am Registration

11.00am Opening Address

John Lowry, General Secretary

11.30am Opportunities for the Left in Northern Ireland

Workers Party Speaker

Chris McGimpsey: Former Ulster Unionist Party Councillor

Michael Robinson: Irish Labour Group in Northern Ireland

Incorporating Question and Answer Session

1.0pm Lunch

2.00pm Stop the Extradition of Sean Garland

Reverend Chris Hudson

2.20pm Unionism in 1969

Dr. Marc Mulholland, St Catherine’s College, Oxford

Response: Roy Garland, Member of the U.U.P. 1969

Incorporating Question and Answer Session

3.45pm Close of Conference

4.00pm Music in the Upstairs Bar

Search of the Century

For a good while, Splintered Sunrise used to do an entertaining regular feature called Search of the Week (a good example can be found here). I would like to have done it myself, but I never had anything approaching the number of entertaining or weird searches to do so. However, I feel that the following search more than makes up for it:

“can muslims produce cum”

How can you respond to that? Except marvel that someone with such a low IQ can actually work a computer.

Class, Community and Starbucks

The Telegraph reports the work of Professor Bryan Simon which argues that Starbucks has had an extremely detrimental effect on community life. The report comes ahead of the launch of Simon’s book on Starbucks, Everything But the Coffee. Based on research in nine countries, Simon argues that although Starbucks supposedly offers a communal experience, in reality most of its shops represent a conglomeration of individuals.

“People immediately create their own little private, gated communities. You come in, set up your laptop and put on your headphones,” he said yesterday. “You couldn’t be more alone in public if you wanted to be.”

Simon compares the coffee shops of today to the coffeeshops of the past, and their role in providing a forum for debating issues of political importance.

He said the rise of Starbucks and its rivals was a far cry from the British coffee houses of the 18th and 19th centuries “which were the cornerstone of democracy with a small ‘d’”.

The most interesting part of the article though is that which discusses the class aspect of Starbucks, and its relationship to the aspirational consumerist lifestyle. By opening up in expensive areas, and charging high prices, Starbucks creates a feeling among its clientele that they are successful, sophisticated, and fashionable. This is a reflection of how modern consumer capitalism seeks to provide atomised consumers with the illusion that they are part of a broader community. Whether it is the self-congratulatory recognition of a fellow owner or an iPhone or whatever the gadget du jour is, or online fora to discuss ownership of a pricey item, it provides people with a sense of being part of something bigger and yet exclusive, while in reality hindering the development of genuine community feeling. As Simon points out, sitting in a room with like-minded people is not the same as engaging with them.

In this sense, Starbucks is representative of a broader issue within society. Capitalism has succeeded as never before in driving out a sense of the collective, and the organisations capable of collective action. Whether it is non-union workplaces or the fetishisation of the small business by Maggie Thatcher, the impulse is the same. To wage an ideological war against the solidarity necessary for class politics. Starbucks stands for many things. But it is perhaps as a representative of the fall in solidarity that it is most significant.

Worth a Thousand Words

Trickle Down Economics No Answer

The Irish Left Review has a short article by the Research Section of The Workers’ Party analysing the failure of trickle down economics in Northern Ireland, in light of Peter Robinson’s declared faith in trickle down economics. Here is its conclusion, pointing to the twin failures of the current set up:

Just as the current Stormont regime has sectarianism built into its DNA, it seems as if any social democratic policy urges will be severely constrained by the privatising agenda of the UK Treasury. And nothing will trickle down to the working class.

Muslim Scare Story Spreads to Africa

I can just imagine the joy at the Daily Telegraph when they saw the recent statements from the new head of the Anglican church in Nigeria. He claims that Muslims are applying industrial techniques to procreation to vanquish Anglicanism.

That is the type of evangelism they are doing: mass-production, so if you have four wives, four children, sixteen children, very soon you will be a village.

This man should be embarassed. Especially when one of the criticisms of his church from pro-gay Anglicans was that they allowed polygamy. Oops.

The Poor will always be with you. Just not in your schools

Yesterday’s Irish News has details of the transfer test that will be used by the Catholic grammar schools in the north. A link to the story is here, although it will work only for a week without subscription. The Post-Primary Transfer Consortium, 34 overwhelmingly Catholic schools, is organising this test. There is of course a separate test for the state grammar schools, which are attended overwhelmingly by protestants. This “catholic” test unlike the previous test is completely multiple choice, and does not include science. So we are seeing a return to something along the lines of the old Eleven Plus that the likes of me sat, based on maths and English. The introduction of science reflected a desire to broaden the curriculum and prepare children better for secondary education, and give them a greater appreciation of the world around them. So this represents a narrowing of things tested.

That’s not the only narrrowing that will happen as a result of this private transfer test.

Parents have been provided sample mathematics and English papers and encouraged to help their children prepare.

Now, how do parents help their children prepare? Well they can do it themselves, by sitting and helping them. The new-old type of test will prove more parent-friendly than that being replaced. Or, more likely, they can hire someone to do it for £20 an hour or more. Around a third of a single person’s weekly job seeker’s allowance, to put that in perspective. So again we return to the importance of class in the transfer system. Those who can afford private tuition will pay for it, and their children are as a result much more likely to do well. This is on top of the unquantifiable educational and cultural advantages that middle-class children tend to have over their working class counterparts.

I’ve been following the debacle over academic selection since I started this blog about a year ago. Each post seems to anger me more than the last. The naked aggression of bourgeois parents seeking to protect their own dominance at the expense of working-class children doesn’t surprise me. The abject failure of those responsible to stop this happening infuriates me. Only political representatives dedicated unambiguously to the interests of the working class can offer any real alternative to the injustice of capitalist society in education or anywhere else.

US abandons Bush’s missile shield: real change in US foreign policy?

Good news announced by the Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer that the US is dropping its provocative Bush-era plans for a European missile shield. The plans had caused a great deal of anger and tension in Russia, and fear among populations in central Europe. The BBC report, citing the Wall Street Journal, says that the logic being given by the US regime is an acceptance that Iran might not actually be planning to build a nuclear weapon at all. I suspect that the cost factor may also have been an important one. The US is talking about moving more towards regional anti-missile technology using existing technology such as ship-based interceptor missiles. Added to the fact that the US seems to be set for direct talks with the DPRK, and the easing of sanctions on Cuba, it could just be that President Obama is delivering the real change he promised. It does certainly look like Obama is radically altering the direction of US foreign policy in some areas.

However, we must bear in mind the expansion of the US military presence in Colombia, a move clearly aimed at intimidation of the populations electing progressive governments in the region. And also perhaps to force states like Venezuela to spend money that could be better spent elsewhere on weapons, with the lessons of the collapse of the USSR in mind. A great deal of the restrictions on Cuba remain, and in fact Obama signed the embargo into effect for another year, to justified Cuban criticism. Proof of a real change in US intentions could be given by Hilary Clinton striking down Condaleeza Rice’s extradition warrant for Seán Garland which was done primarily to frustrate moves towards better understanding on the Korean peninsula. Justice demands that the extradition request be dropped. Let’s hope that the Obama regime does so.

New Scare Story: Daily Telegraph Delighted

Just came across the headline “Mohammed now top name for boys” under editor’s choice on the Telegraph website. Except of course, it isn’t. Mohammed – in its variant spellings – is in fact the number one name for baby boys in four parts of England: London, West Midlands, North West and Yorkshire/Humberside. So is Britain set for a Muslim majority in these areas? Of course not. This statistic simply reflects the massive dominance that Mohammed has as a name for boys among those from a Muslim background. This is also why it is the third most popular name in England as a whole. Muslims as a whole remain a very very small minority in the UK. But you know, the Home Counties don’t want to hear that – they need something to be shocked and appalled by. Their own bigotry and prejudice might be a good place to start.