Stalin and why much of the left needs to grow up

It seems to me that the various “socialist” parties spend more time talking about Stalin than anyone else.

I've never written about Stalin or “Stalinism” before – I've never seen the point. Why would I? His “terrors” happened eighty-odd years ago and the man himself died over half a century ago. But despite that, you'll find people on the left casually throwing around the phrase “Stalinist” at just about anyone they disagree with.

It's a strange thing. Members of the public you talk to rarely bring up Stalin, and if they do they'll raise perfectly justified concerns. There's nothing wrong with that, I tend to agree with them. The public at large certainly don't think of “Stalinism” as an ideology, or as something anyone is advocating we should try and build in this country.

But much of the left seem utterly obsessed by the man. The “anti-Stalinists”, the various “socialist” parties, spend more time talking about Stalin than anyone else. These are, generally, the same parties who say things like “the USSR wasn't really communist”. The Soviet Union may not have been a communist utopia, but it was a damn site better than what replaced it (you only need to look at average life expectancy to see the effects).

These same parties are quite happy to call themselves Marxist, but never communist. They generally call themselves “Trotskyist” but not necessarily from any in-depth following of his work. To me it seems these parties are so scared, obsessed and paranoid about the past that they are desperate to distance themselves from the word communist. That way, rather than having to analyse anything that went on in the USSR eighty years ago, they can just say “oh no not us, that's the other lot, we don't even think the Soviet Union was communist”.

And what do they even mean by “Stalinist”? I simply can't work it out. You should try it. Next time someone calls you a Stalinist, challenge them. Ask them what they mean by it, then ask them for any evidence whatsoever that you are a supporter of Stalin. Do they think that communists want to set up gulags? Do they think we want secret police? Show trials? That we go home at night and read Stalin's writings underneath a portrait of him that hangs on our living room walls?

Perhaps the greatest irony of all that many of these people who accuse the Communist Party, its members and even the Morning Star of being “Stalinist”, also call the People's Charter “reformist”. The Communist Party is a leading force behind the People's Charter and champions its six points as an alternative economic strategy that would lay the grounds for building socialism in this country. So in the same breath the Communist Party is some hard-line, bureaucratic, authoritarian dictatorship, and also a reformist, apologist, pro-capitalist, anti-revolutionary party that panders to the “trade union bureaucracy” and Labour Party.

So in short, the left needs to grow up. The only people who give a toss about Stalin are the people who are scared of being called Stalinist themselves. The Communist Party has moved on, everyone else should too.

North South Divide?

Last week I ended up in a discussion with a comrade from "up north" or, if I'm honest, had some truly bizarre views on the "south".

His first statement was a massive generalisation, "the Tories only win general elections because people in the south vote for them". Really?

Secondly he insisted, with some force, "it's a fact, absolutely indisputable, that the cuts are affecting the north more than the south, because the Tories want to punish the north". As if all of us in the south are practising some sort of internal colonialism.

His third preposterous claim was that "the cuts in the north are driving people into poverty, in the south they are only cutting cultural funds".

I may not be quoting exactly word for word, but you get the idea.

I didn't know where to start, I was well and truly shocked that someone who claims to be a communist could fall for the old divide and rule lies perpetuated by the Tories themselves. That's why it's taken me a week to get round to writing this blog, even now I still can't quite believe what was coming out of his mouth.

So here goes:

• Over 4000 people in Plymouth relied on a single food-bank in Plymouth last year.
• Cornwall still receives EU Convergence support (which yes, mainly gets swallowed up by private companies, but I'm not going into that here). To quote from their website Cornwall is in the same league as "The Convergence programme is mostly funding the new member states of the EU, East Germany, Southern Italy, most regions of Spain, Portugal and Greece".
• Pay in the region is nothing to shout about. Figures from the SW TUC which reveal that pay in the region is already amongst the lowest in the country. Devon and Cornwall in particular, with pay rates in Cornwall £3.59 an hour below the national average.
• The south is not a bastion of private enterprise. The public sector makes up around 27% of the workforce in the South West.
• The South West has the highest median house prices in the country. This is 13 times the average income. House prices have increased 3 times faster than wages over the last decade.

The "evidence" for my comrade's claims can probably be traced to this BBC report. It is a shocking report. But if you look at it closely you'll notice that rather than a north south divide, it's actually an urban rural divide. That big light coloured blob in the south is mainly countryside and the London commuter belt - if you look at the south coast, it is ringed by areas just as badly affected, and in some cases hit even harder, than places in the north.

And never forget, when it comes to the NHS, schools, legal aid, welfare cuts. . . the list goes on, these are all NATIONAL issues, affecting all of us, no matter where we live.

So, to sum up. Lets stop talking about north south divides and playing the "we've got it harder than you" game, and how about we just kick out the Tories.

How about we abolish the monarchy, and don't replace it with anything?

I said I was going to start blogging again, so here goes.
I also promised myself I wasn't going to write about the jubilee. Because while an anachronistic, unelected, hereditary head of state who provides no meanigful constitutional role or any function outside of the ceremonial is ripe for slagging off - it's just too easy to do.

What really got my goat about the whole jubilee thing was the way republican protesters were treated by the flag waving masses. People actually booed them. I mean, what? People were criticising people who think democracy is a good idea.

To be honest, I'm not actually for an elected head of state either. We should abolish the monarchy and not replace them with anything. Or maybe replace them with one of us, chosen at random. It could be like the lottery. "Trip to meet the new French president next week, get you tickets now and you could represent the country! Free meal and a night in Paris included"

And the biggest farce I've heard coming from the royalists so far. It was something like this - "If you hate the queen so much, why don't you go and live in North Korea". Yes, that makes sense. I think you'll find the flag waving, hysterical personality cult, crying in the streets, mass outpourings of grief when one of them dies, jubilation when another one gets married and the seeming immortality of the dear leader Elizabeth makes the Kim dynasty and the House of Windsor rather alike.

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