Bees love Honey

Pleased to Meet You

Can you guess who this is the back of?

What is his name?

Don't worry, the man on the right here is good, Mahavira is his name he is a great hero. Omm shanti Omm peace peace peace.

These are three of my latest drawings from my sketch book

Marxism 2011 part three (write up of a meeting)

Multi-culturalism is an important subject, the term multi-culturalism and what is implied by it is under attack by the right and needs to be defended, so I was at that meeting at Marxism 2011. I haven't always been a hundred percent happy with the term, don't know why exactly, might be that the liberals and some people on the right have confused the meaning, I remember once being involved in an argument with a rough looking woman in London who was attacking multi-culturalism and so I attempted a defense of it by inserting a 'new' name for what it was I thought we were talking about, I used the word 'mix' as opposed to 'multi - culturalism' thinking that she was probably just confused about the term like I was to an extent, but no, when I dropped the term multi-culturalism in our (heated) discussions, to her that was a victory and one in the eye to multi - culturalism, I think she was heavily influenced at that time by the extreme right, she had a mixed race son with her who showed signs of being mighty embarrassed. Anyway that was not a very nice experience for me and the memory has lingered and so I feel it important to strongly defend 'multi - culturalism' and was glad of a meeting on the subject at this years Marxism.

Michael Rosen was one of the speakers on the platform, he also used semantics to change the term, to make it clearer, as I had attempted to do, but his idea was to use the term ' inter - culturalism', he noted that the whole history of humanity is one of migration, and that we 'share' culture; hence 'inter culturalism'. Due to our history, it is necessary to defend people's rights to practice their culture on the land. He described how the invention of a pure 'englishness' has no foundation, even a tradition like good ol fish and chips was jointly invented by a Jewish and a Belgian cook.

There are pressures put upon us from birth ( and is big in schools ) to harbour an englishness and it is a cruel and cunning ruling class trick. There is in no sense a pure englishness or assimilation, its like begging for the holy grail; it is something that doesn't exist, we will never get there. The ruling class use this idea(l) of 'assimilation to keep us divided. They spread fear among us of one another, that one or other human being is 'the other', not to be trusted, but to be feared, derided, persecuted even, so they can go on happily ruling over us while we fight among ourselves. Its the classic: divide and rule. As human beings we have a right to be secure and we need to fight for that basic right, fight for us as beings that are essentially migratory and ' inter cultural'.

I absolutely love learning new things and new ways of putting and understanding things and so from that perspective this meeting did not disappoint, it already came into good use in a meeting I was at a week or so later, where I was defending the right of women to dress how they wish ( the context was a guy moaning about the hijab and birka, he ended up saying that anyone who comes to this country ought to ... what exactly?) we are who we are and defending peoples right to live culturally in ways that they are familiar with ( food, music, stalls, dress etc) is a matter of defending a basic human right to be secure and to be ourselves.

Marxism 2011 part two

Above pic is the man himself, Tony Benn, guest speaker at Marxism 2011. He has been attending Marxism for many many years.

Although I didn't attend many meetings of Marxism 2011, the ones I did go to were good, interesting and thought provoking. It would be nice to participate in the debates though and that remains a criticism I have of the event this year, its good to debate in meetings but not every one gets a chance at this, therefore in order to make it a really full and appealing event, debating should be a conducive element, encouraged all over the venue(s).

Many good events had taken place in the run up to Marxism this year, like the events in the Middle East and North Africa, and the strikes on the 30th June ( the first day of the five day Marxism event), so a certain amount of euphoria could be expected, although I am uncomfortable with prolonged collective euphoria in any sphere of life. There was actually quite a bit of euphoria at this years event, and people really giving it some welly and cheering things that I really thought they should think better of doing.

A small example was the first meeting I went to which was a meeting about the web, social networking on the net and organising, it was called "Tweeting about a revolution: social media and social movements", and near enough the concluding comment that almost raised the roof was when a comrade said that the young should teach the old how to use new technology !!!! It was an Ernest point being made but a poor idea as a future strategy since so many older people are using the net, and many young people shy away from the political potentialities it creates, or they are unconfident and inexperienced politically.

But for that remark to be applauded and cheered sent alarm bells ringing through my ears. One of the reasons for such euphoria was because of the person who made the comment, not the content - which was, if people thought about it, a weak point. However, it was an interesting talk and debate, despite a level of passivity and confusion. A memorable moment was when one comrade got up to say that although the technology was poor back in the old days, any new innovation in technology was seized upon then for its use in enhancing the struggle, and that is not happening today with the net as much as it should or could be.

Moving on ...

Our Tony Benn was fantastic, just so good that he continues to support us and so many others getting together to fight and struggle for a better world. He didn't speak for very long and he is in his nineties now, still fit mind you but more frail than I have seen him before. He is an inspiration, so kind and encouraging, he said that the same effort that some people put into making war they should put into making peace. He said that no one ever says they can't afford to bomb a place or not to have a battle in war because of cost cuts, so, the same effort and the same finances need to be made to make peace in the world. He also said that we would all benefit and so would society as a whole benefit from looking after the elderly, a point that although may sound obvious and simple is actually far reaching and true.

The above meeting and debate was called "Socialist and the Welfare State" and was really interesting all round. A young man got up to disagree with socialists, he spoke on the side of capitalists, I was glad he spoke and I was interested to hear his defence of this dreadful system ...

Basically he said that things were worse in places like Russia and Eastern Europe where there was communism, and that we scared him ( or something like that). Of course the vast majority of people now accept that the Eastern European countries were not socialist in any way and in Russia the new formed socialist society ( from the 1917 revolution), renamed USSR, was strangled and died in infancy. The old order gradually retook control under Stalin and was socialist only in name. Tony Cliff who founded the SWP wrote an extremely comprehensive book called 'State Capitalism in Russia' in 1947 outlining how it is a myth to say Russia was or is socialist, it is capitalist and was involved, even way back then, 1947 and before, in international competition and trading with the west, its economy being capitalist was run heavily by the state.

I wish I could remember the gist of this young pro capitalist's other arguments, but I have forgotten, sorry, next time I will listen more keenly and take notes ... Or then again maybe there were and are more pressing and sensible debates to be getting involved in.

The only other meeting I went to was called "Why we defend Multiculturalism", a great meeting again, and I look forward to writing up about it in the next post.

Marxism 2011 part one

As with most things in life there is the good, the bad and the ugly and so it is true too of the SWP's annual event 'Marxism'.

It's like our Christmas, we see old friends and comrades and chat to one another like we've never been apart, we meet new people, get fresh ideas, laugh, cry and dance ( usually at the end in the after party). This year's Marxism was held for the first time in about twenty or so years in a different venue and due to the disability I have ( I get disorientated in new places quickly and it's bad, worse in my case than for most people I reckon) I was worried. A local friend and comrade offered to help with the practicalities as much as he could, something I was grateful for; and it did work for a time while I was up there, but not all the time.

Another problem I have is that sitting for long periods of time in meetings causes me quite a bit of discomfort, so this year I had that to contend with too.

I did meet up with some old friends and familiar faces and had a couple of great quality conversations, although the chats seemed to come around to the subject of art, but that was great as art is one of my favourite subjects anyway. I had a great convo about mental health with a very nice and understanding young man who was also a fellow sufferer.

The venue was split over two sites, Friends meeting house and a nearby university. I was fine at Friends meeting house as I already new it, but there weren't many people around to talk to in between meetings and there were no debates, or few, but none that I was able to participate in anyway.

The university to me was a nightmare, which I thought it would be, I could not make head nor tail of where I was going, it was all very strange and I felt very lost there, I saw one person I knew; a man from my Welsh days, he was pushing a pram around with his young son in, and was as equally confused as I was as to what was happening and where everything and everybody was.

Eventually I found the canteen and recognised a few faces although no-one looking particularly friendly, again it was boring as there were no interesting debates, plus the food was appalling and expensive, when a canteen hand cleared my table and asked if the food was alright, I left that question unanswered. I heard of one poor comrade who actually got food poisoning, poor thing.

So I thought I would give up trying to fathom the university and waited for my friend to arrive from Kent, but he was severely delayed, so I sat in the rose garden in front of Friends meeting house. There were comrades milling around, some I knew and recognised and some I didn't, but I felt isolated and excluded, probably on account of the relegated membership I endure which means I am not attached to any branch. It felt even more acute as I had been friends with a local Kent comrade for a while up until a few months ago when ... ( well it's a fairly long story that I won't go into), but I saw her on the train going up and she walked past me and then hurried on ahead.

So, do you get the picture? Marxism changed this year. I went up for only two days, the Saturday and Sunday, and only went to one meeting on the Sunday before returning home feeling all sorts of things, but one feeling I had that Sunday night in my flat was that today's SWP sadly felt no longer like a home.

And its something I intend to explore in this blog over the coming weeks.

Mic Righteous - Wild Boyz

I just had to post this brilliant Mic Righteous song. Just Wow wow and wow. This is real. Love it. I'm addicted to Grime.