We gotta fight, fight, fight, fight, fight the Taliban

Today is Remembrance Sunday, a day when we stop for a moment of silence, or watch veterans’ parades, or wear red poppies on our tops “to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts”.

It was originally named the Earl Haig Appeal after the man who caused tens of thousands of needless deaths in World War I. There is nothing to celebrate about the first World War. It was a completely unjustified war for colonies, wealth and markets.

Today, Remembrance Sunday is basically a state-enforced institution, where criticism and dissent of the principle of celebrating this is not on any level tolerated, and this year it has reached fever pitch. Virtually every UK citizen is subjected to a form of hysterical bullying to participate. No one is allowed to be featured on the BBC unless they are wearing a red poppy, all political leaders wear them -- even if it deeply offends the people that they are visiting -- and children are forced to buy and sell them in schools.

This year, it has arrived in a fanfare of glitz and glamour, with the commercialisation of Poppy Day more noticeable than ever before. The Saturdays opened the ‘celebrations’ in London this year, inexplicably. On The X Factor, that barometer of our society’s values, the judges wore £84.99 diamond encrusted poppies, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘conflict diamonds’. (This is of course unfair, we all know that Cheryl Cole has a deep sympathy and understanding for the sacrifices made at Ypres and the Somme, and is an avid fan of the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen). Obviously you’ve got to spend more to remember more.

At the heart of the “celebrations” this year has been the commodification of wholesale slaughter and the monetization of mass murder. The poppy has become a fashion statement, one that’s supposed to display your commitment to Britain, to ‘our heroes’ and to the continued fetishisation of the ‘glory’ of war. Wearing a poppy for many people is genuinely about remembering those who were forcefully drafted against their will into a horrific world war, but you can now buy t-shirts that proclaim ‘I *poppy* our heroes”. In today’s world, the ‘heroes’ fixation is a direct endorsement of the imperialist and unjust wars Britain is still undertaking in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Earl Haig: how can he be a hero? He doesn't even have any superpowers. Get back to us when you've been bitten by a radioactive spider.

Another reason people buy poppies and the various new related merchandise is because the poppy fund is a charity which provides for veteran soldiers. It’s an indictment of our fucked up priorities that we expend so much energy talking about how much we value the heroism of fighting for Britain in wars, yet it’s left to a charity to provide for those who have survived them. One in eleven prisoners in the UK formerly served in the armed forces. Up to a quarter of homeless people are former servicemen and women. There are countless veterans suffering from mental health issues who aren’t receiving proper support (although at least we no longer execute returned soldiers for suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder like we used to). The politicians that brandish their poppies are directly responsible for this -- they don’t actually care about veterans -- they prefer the idea of veterans to the reality of what life is like for those who have seen the horrors of war. The poppies they wear allow them to justify their inaction. It shouldn’t be left to charity donations to pay to look after veterans.

Here at SSY, we don’t agree with glorifying war and British imperialism. The actions of British troops today in Afghanistan and Iraq are far from heroic. For decades, the memory of the evils of fascism has been used to justify other imperialist conflicts which are in no way comparable, e.g. Kenya (even today, British forces based in Kenya for training continue to rape local women with impunity, which has been going on for three decades; these women are slandered by the British, and rejected by their own communities as well), Malaya, Yemen and Ireland. Remembrance Day, alongside the far more blatant Armed Forces Day, has been hijacked to promote and endorse the militarisation of British life and to encourage young people to sign up, for the “glory” of being remembered as a “hero” after you’ve been blown to bits fighting for the geopolitical and ideological aims of the elite who will never represent you.

We’re not the only ones who don’t appreciate every part of the message of the ideology of Remembrance Day. Legitimate dissent is not tolerated when it comes to Poppy Day -- just look at the recent “ban sick bastards” style headlines when the Green Brigade, a left-wing Celtic fan group had a half time banner display in protest at the club’s decision to impose a poppy on the Celtic shirt, going against the wishes of the majority of fans. In Glasgow, it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of people who don’t appreciate being forced to participate in a celebration of British troops who caused misery in the north of Ireland for so many years. Like SSY, the Green Brigade has no problem with the individual choice to wear a red poppy, but rather to the bullying nature of the political campaign which expects everyone to wear poppies and to support the cause without reservation.

On a state visit to China last week, David Cameron and pals caused offence by wearing the poppy, without thinking of the fact that in the 19th Century British forces went to war with China to force them to accept imports of our opium (which is of course derived from poppies). This is a clear example of why a little bit more historical memory about the role of British forces and the British Empire in the world is necessary. The peoples who were wronged by Britain haven’t forgotten, even if we have.

This is what our generation does to remember the war dead. Not in our name, we don't want it to happen again

An official alternative to the poppy cult is the White Poppy Campaign, advocated by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The idea is to remember the deaths of all who have died in wars, not just soldiers, and to advocate peace, not militarisation. This campaign has not been without controversy. In 1986, Maggie Thatcher (gonny just die already?) expressed her “deep distaste” for the white poppy symbol, and their spread in Canada has proved contentious to the point of being banned from being sold at markets and has drawn public criticism from the Royal Canadian Legion. You’re unlikely to see a white poppy on tv, where red poppies are ubiquitous throughout November.

The above views might seem controversial to some, but this year, veterans (and even the Queen’s composer) have spoken out against the use of the red poppy as a “political tool”. Former SAS soldier Ben Griffin rightly stated that

“Calling our soldiers heroes is an attempt to stifle criticism of the wars we are fighting in.

It leads us to that most subtle piece of propaganda: You might not support the war but you must support our heroes, ergo you support the war.”

Remembrance Day should be about honouring those who died needlessly in needless wars. The best way to honour the dead, and the point of remembering, is to ensure it never happens again. Anti-militarism and dissent against war is the way to honour those people, not diamond encrusted poppies, military parades and the stifling of dissent. As a youth organisation, we are proud of our record of opposing military recruitment and the lies spread to young working class folk to persuade them to become cannon fodder for the imperialist war machine that is the British Army.

Last word goes to the late Harry Patch, the last surviving person to have served in World War I

“Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims.”

Today (and over the next few days) working class people will be celebrating our holiday, May Day.

Throughout the world May Day is recognised by the labour and trade union movement as the day on which we celebrate workers and their struggles for justice. But the story of how socialists fought to make May 1st in to a holiday is one that isn’t well known by most people, because it’s part of the hidden history that you don’t get taught in school

May Day is an ancient festival, known by the Celts as Beltane and by Germanic peoples as Walpurgis. It marked the end of Winter, and the return to life and fertility for crops and for people. People were celebrating the end of the cold, hard months, and they did it by getting spectacularly pissed, dressing up in funny costumes, dancing about and shagging. Unsurprisingly, when Christianity came along, the Church took a dim view of all this, but May Day was the one festival they found it virtually impossible to ban or take over.

During May Day parades there was often a Jack in the Green, a man who would be covered in a costume made of plants and foliage. Jack in the Green was a symbol of nature, of the power of life to overcome death, and the fertility of agriculture that came back after the long winter.

For ancient peoples the fertility of the land and the fertility of people were inseparable. May Day was a time for couples to get together. May sex led to June weddings, and June was historically the most common month for weddings. They often did it while off in the woods to find a tree for the Maypole. The symbolism of dancing round the Maypole itself isn’t hard to work out.

Jack in the Green

Life in a feudal peasant village was hard. Ordinary people had to work hard throughout the year to produce their crops, and the lords and church mercilessly exploited them, taking the products of their labour. Winter was a tough time to live through every year, and there was always the threat of crops failing, which spelled disaster. The success of crops in spring, and new life in the form of babies to carry on the work, really was a miracle for people.

What May Day represented for them was a day where the world got turned upside down. Another figure in May Day parades was the fool, the king for a day. The fool mocked authority, and May Day was one day when people were free from the strict control of the lords and the church, and could laugh at their oppressors, get pissed and enjoy themselves. It was a common festival, where the common people celebrated their use of the common land together.

From the 17th century onwards this traditional order in Europe began to change, as capitalism started to develop. The lords began to enclose the land, building fences and taking common lands that had belonged to the common people and using them for profitable farming. The people, forced from the land, began to move to the cities to work in the new factories.

In the new capitalist workplaces in the city the traditional cycle of life was broken. People worked 12 hour days or more. factory owners regarded their workers as just parts of the machines that produced the profits they lived from. Child labour was common, and conditions of work could often be deadly. If you were injured at your dangerous workplace there was no kind of welfare state to protect you, and you depended on your family and friends or starved.

In the 19th century, when working people came together to form the first trade unions, their key early demand was for shorter working hours, so that they could have more time to themselves. People forget today just how hard our ancestors had to fight to get Saturdays off, or for an 8 hour working day. It was the long, hard battle to win an 8 hour day that led to the modern celebration of May Day.

It might surprise some people to learn that this battle started in the USA, where today socialists and trade unionists are so weak. But it wasn’t always that way. At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions proclaimed that “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” Of course, there was no way that the bosses were going to recognise this proclamation, and so they vowed to back up the demand with strikes and protests.

The International Working Men’s Association, which today we know as the First International, was an international alliance of socialists, communists and trade unionists which counted Karl Marx among its leading members. The International drew the attention of European workers to the demand for an 8 hour day, and vowed to take the fight from the US to a worldwide level.

At this time Socialism and Anarchism were extremely attractive ideas for workers who could see the oppression they faced first hand. The defeats and difficulties for socialism in the 20th century had not started yet, and the bosses were yet to develop the kind of mass media and propaganda control they use today to control the ideas of working people. Socialists were at the forefront of leading the fight for an 8 hour day.

On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the center of the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike. Over the next few days this number swelled to 100,000. On May 3rd, strikers and their supporters at the McCormick steel works were attacked by cops, and at least two were killed as they were beaten with clubs. Enraged, the strikers called for a mass protest meeting in Haymarket Square the next day.

Unfortunately, the next day bad weather and short notice conspired to make sure there weren’t as many demonstrators as there could be, and again the police mounted a brutal attack on the strikers. The cops fired their guns indiscriminately into the crowd, which included many families with children. At least seven people were killed, as well as several cops who died from the wild shooting of their fellow officers.

Eight organisers were arrested on trumped up charges of having provoked the police violence and murder. Only three of them

The Haymarket Martyrs

had even been in Haymarket Square, and they had been clearly visible to the crowd as not having taken part in violence. But they were subjected to a show trial, where the jury were businessmen who were greatly threatened by the rise of radicalism. On November 11th Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel and Adolph Fischer were hung. Another of those convicted, Louis Lingg, took his own life in a final protest. The others, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and Michael Schwab, were imprisoned.

The murder of working people conducted by the cops and the justice system, at the behest of the bosses, gave new power and fury to the fight, and year on year the strikes and protests gathered strength. May 1st came to be the day every year when workers came out out on to the streets on strike, both to remember the Haymarket martyrs and to demand the fulfillment of their demands. Gradually workers around the world won the right to an 8 hour day, and as socialist parties grew stronger and more powerful, the governments of country after country was forced to recognise May Day as a holiday for the celebration of workers and their movement.

Although today many don’t know this history of how May Day came to be a holiday celebrated around the with marches and parties, it’s important that socialists remember that this is our day, dedicated to revolution and a better future. For centuries, May Day was the one day of the year where working people got freedom to party and celebrate, to change the world if only for day. When those same people became industrial workers, they began to fight again for time for ourselves, free from the burdens of work.

What May Day represents is a toehold, a beachhead, in the fight for full freedom. What we celebrate on May Day is the fight to make every day of the year a day of freedom for everyone, once we are free from exploitation by bosses, and we work for ourselves rather than to make someone else rich.

As soon as I’ve posted this I’m heading to Argyle Street in Glasgow for the celebration of May Day. Tomorrow the STUC and trade unions are organising a march at 11 from George Square. It’s ending up in the Old Fruitmarket for stalls and entertainment from 12.

In Edinburgh the SSP has played a key role in keeping May Day celebrations going. Socialists, anti war activists and trade unionists are marching from 11.30 from East Market to a rally at the Ross Bandstand under the slogan Stop the War Stop the Cuts.

If you’re in Newtongrange in Midlothian there’s a May Day social in the Dean Tavern 7.30 til late.

In Irvine marchers are heading to the Woodlands Centre for a rally.

If I’ve missed anything out, say so in the comments and I’ll add it in. For the benefit of anyone reading from outside Scotland, I’ll finish with a clip of a documentary about what May Day is actually like here every year, honest.

Today we’re reviving a regular feature you used to see the in the classic (pre-blog, paper only) version of Leftfield.

“Who the Hell is…” brings you the low down on key folk who’ve tried to make a difference to the world in the past. Previous people we’ve profiled have included Delegate Zero/Subcommandante Marcos, and Che Guevara.

Today, we’re asking: Who the Hell is… Albert Einstein?

That might seem a bit of a redundant question, since he’s one of the most famous scientists to have ever lived. Everyone has heard of him, and his name is like another word for “really really clever.” What’s less well known (but shouldn’t surprise you considering how smart he was) is that he was a lifelong socialist.

In science, Einstein completely revolutionised the study of physics, with his theories of relativity, beginning of quantum mechanics and explanation of the wave-particle duality of light, to name just a few of his massive contributions. His work was so important he was to become a world wide celebrity decades before celebrities became as commonplace as today. He used his international fame tirelessly to fight for social justice and for the rights of people who had been wronged by racism, the capitalist system and right wing politics.

Read the rest of this entry »

Review by Jack Ferguson.

As a filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has spent his career playing with some of the played out staples of conventional cinema, and trying to make them into something fresh and exciting. Previously he’s done it with gangsters and crime, blaxploitation and martial arts movies. His latest, Inglourious Basterds, is his take on the war movie, as well as the spaghetti western.

Basterds is a reminder of all the things Tarantino can do incredibly well-make a visually exciting, brilliantly scripted work of interlocking, exciting plots. It also contains all the things that give me reservations about him as a filmmaker-the casual sadism that actually led feminist groups to picket his last film, Death Proof.

Brad Pitt stars as Aldo Raine, leader of the Basterds

The ads for the film pitched it as an action movie starring Brad Pitt, but this would appear to be more a function of the Hollywood star system and PR industry-Brad Pitt is the most famous so he goes top of the bill. Playing the leader of the eponymous Basterds, a team of Jewish American commandoes dropped into Nazi occupied France to commit atrocities and terrorise the Germans, Pitt is certainly not the star of the film.

In fact, very little of the film depicts actual warfare, which is probably because it takes place in a fantasy, alternate history version of World War 2, where vents in 1944 play out very differently from the way they actually did. The stronger of the plots contained within the film is about the sole survivor of the massacre of a hiding Jewish family, and the eventual opportunity she is given for revenge on the Nazis.

Though not technically a “Basterd”, Melanie Laurent plays the most important role in the film – a Jewish survivor out for revenge against the Nazis

The film is split into a number of acts that introduce the different elements in play that eventually come together in a triumphant climax. The opening chapter is given the title ‘Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France,’ which points out its homage to the westerns of Sergio Leone, which recurs throughout the whole film. In a scene reminiscent of so many spaghetti westerns, right down to the Ennio Morricone music, a farmer outside a remote cottage watches the approach of threatening presences from the horizon. In this case though they aren’t gunslingers on horseback, but Nazis on motorbikes.

The simultaneously terrifying and hilarious SS “Jew Hunter”, Hans Landa

In a 25 minute long scene that is one of the strongest in the whole film, he is then manipulated by the suavely menacing Col. Landa of the SS. The dialogue is brilliantly written, and takes advantage of the fact that the film actually has characters using their own language (Germans speak German, French French etc.) to build the tension. As the stoic farmer attempts to stonewall the ‘Jew Hunter’ as the Colonel freely admits he is called, he is slowly undone by Landa’s sinister genius. The climax of the scene is perhaps the only genuinely shocking bit of violence, as opposed to just unpleasant.

Christoph Waltz, apparently an Austrian TV actor being given his first big cinema break by Tarantino, is one of the real stars of the film, and delivers a brilliant performance as the truly hateful SS man.

It’s only after this that we actually meet the Basterds, as they are recruited by Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine, who gives them a speech about how they are going to scalp and terrorise the Nazis that reminds you of the George C Scott in Patton. As we see their antics behind enemy lines we also get to learn how they are infuriating a slightly cartoonish version of Hitler.

“The Bear Jew” – a particularly sadistic basterd who likes to beat Nazis to death with a baseball bat. Probably the best thing Eli Roth will ever do

One of the elements that left me uneasy in the film was Raine’s second in command, Sergeant Donnie Donnowitz, known to the Germans as ‘the bear Jew’ for battering in the heads of prisoners with a baseball bat. The character is played by Eli Roth, previously most noticed for directing the torture porn horror ‘Hostel’ films. After beating a prisoner to death he is portrayed as a little unhinged, straining to shout a baseball commentary on his own violence. But at nearly all other times in the film this seeming insight into why he behaves this way is lost, and he acts just like any other solid dependable war movie man.

The other thing that is discomforting is the little flashes we get of Tarantino’s misogyny. I do think he’s a great director, but he also undoubtedly has some serious issues with women. Although in this film he never goes as far as he does in some other films, there are scenes of torture and murder in this film that leave you wondering about what is going on in his head.

Melanie Laurent prepares herself for righteous vengeance against the Nazi high command

The two stories come together in two separate plots to assassinate Hitler and the Nazi top brass at a premiere of a Goebbels directed propaganda film. Tarantino takes the chance to express his love of cinema in this, with one character explaining why she puts a German director on the sign despite her hatred of the Germans with “In France we respect directors.” In the films climax the cinema itself is destroyed by igniting highly flammable film, consuming the Nazis who have defiled it with a puerile propaganda piece.

Special mention should be made of another practical newcomer Melanie Laurent, who plays the cinema owner plotting revenge on the Nazis, and Daniel Bruhl, familiar to socialist cinema fans from films like The Edukators and Goodbye, Lenin!. Bruhl plays a German soldier who is the star of the propaganda film, and is a Nazi celebrity for his war exploits. He practically stalks Laurent’s character, but this is in fact what gives her the opportunity for revenge. During the premiere, we appear to see Bruhl’s character troubled by himself on screen, but perhaps disappointingly this is only hinted at and we never understand him in greater depth.

At its best, a war film can really examine the logic and meaning of human violence. This film is not profound in that way. For a long time the Second World War has been the arena where boys can legitimately play out fantasies of violence because no one can deny the Nazi’s evil. Indeed WW2 has been used again and again to try and explain less justifiable wars because it is perhaps one the few wars that you could argue was just. I’ve often wondered if this will continue as it fades from living memory. However, perhaps the fear should be that, as the WW2 generation finally disappears, it will turn into more of a mental playground disjointed from historical reality.

However, that shouldn’t detract that Inglourious Basterds is still a great film despite its flaws. In the same way that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West are great films, it is a brilliantly scripted and shot suspenseful thriller that’s well worth a watch.