It tells the story of a chance meeting on a plane between Ruwe and ‘Walter’, a former IMF official now working in a similar capacity for another organisation.  On realising that Ruwe is from a country with which Walter has had some connection, a conversation is struck up.  Walter starts by boasting of the pleasant time he had in Zambia, when he came as part of an IMF delegation to “rip you guys off”, and that he is about to repeat the scam under the auspices of a different organisation; of the theft of native American land and of the exploitation that the Bwana (masters, often used to denote whites) reap from the spoils of their trickery.   Rowe silently reacts and on noticing his reaction, Walter aknowledges the fundamental similarity of people of differing pigmentations.  Then goes on to assert:

And yet I feel superior…  . The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff.

He goes on to explain why he believes that is.  That while the working class of Africa break their backs, the educated middle class are content to accept cushy jobs and an indolent lifestyle that they now have access to, while Africans in the diaspora use their credentials not for the benefit of their homeland, but to feather their own nests.  He ends by recommending Ruwe reads “The Lords of Poverty” by Graham Hancock, which extends the analysis of Nkrumah, to give a damning indictment of the international aid industry, an industry which exploits the working class through the pretect of “help”, offloading unsalable goods; buying off officials; providing a cushy lifestyle and income for “international development consultants”, paid for by the Western working class, partly through taxation, and partly through guilt-ridden charitable donations.

Whether the above story is an account of a true event, or a fictional tale is neither here nor there.  The story has been well received by middle class Africans, resolving  that they had now seen the error of their ways and that they would now work as though in the early days of a better nation.  Walter’s ideas are not new though; anyone with a passing reference to Fanon will be aware of this criticism of the post-colonial middle-class.

Writing in the early 60s, right at the start of post-colonial Africa, Fanon noted the paucity of the African bourgoise, who called for nationalisation, not as a method of running the continent for the benefit of its people but to secure their own place as the middlemen between the exploited working class and their European exploiters. Schooled by the colonialist and absorbing their values, they seek to appropriate the unfair advantages which they have observed in the hands of the colonialists and appropriate a sliver of it from themselves, using nationalism and racism where required to perpetuate the system gifted.

The native bourgoise which comes to power uses its class aggressiveness to corner the positions formerly kept for foreigners.

Fanon – an Algerian revolutionary, said essentially the same things that Walter said in greater depth and much more eloquently.  Why then has this story told by an ex-pat African (with three university degrees no less), about a white financier’s opinions that he met on a plane travelling between two US cities have more resonance with Africa intellectuals than what is essentiallly the same diagnosis from one of their own, who saw it first hand as the revolutionary rather than the neo-colonialiser?

Perhaps because Fanon went on to explore solutions which went beyond the “work harder; exploit more” favoured by the Bwantu.  The development model of the Asian economies, based on near-slave labour and the development of markets for export benefits the bourgoise of those countries, giving their native enriched respect and even deference on the worldwide stage in a way that no mere-middleman, no matter how great the value of the raw materials to which he is gatekeeper, can command.  If the African bourgoise is to be taken seriously by the Bwantu he needs to become an exploiter in his own right, not just a facilitator for exploitation by others.

Instead Fanon advocated that rather than the intellectual worked harder; the hard-working were intellectualised.  That a process of revolutionary education was instigated – aimed not at indocrinating the masses with imported schemes of Western thought, but of an education rooted in the circumstances in which they found themselves, basing it on their native understanding of their circumstances.  To some extent this is “de-education” – ridding the people of the notions continually taught to them that rich people are rich because they work hard, they deserve it, and land ownership is located in bits of paper – liberating their native intelligence to realise that the fruits of their labour which they do not enjoy is because of theft, that there is nothing virtuous in living off the labour of others, and that land belongs to those who till it.  For university degrees may buy you entry to the club, but true intellect is not measured in pieces of paper.

Field Rowe, B.A. M.A. Ph.D.

Field Rowe, in recanting this tale, demonstrates his ignorance by totally ignoring one of the greatest African intellectuals who 50 years ago said much the same things, but also showed the way forward.  His ignorance is on prominent display at the end of the article where he lists his Western credentials.

Scotland will soon be entering its own post-colonial period.  While the damage done to us is nothing to the atrocities wreaked on Black Africa,  atrocities, in which our countrymen were complicit, our people were burned from their homes and left to die of exposure; our lands have been sold off to disinterested speculators and, most recently, our coastline stolen in a stunning act of legal trickery.  While we are working as tho we were in the early days of a better nation, we must learn the lessons of Fanon and remember to build that better nation to work in.

Related articles

• 50 years later: Fanon’s legacy (moorbey.wordpress.com)
• Revolution Demands a Class Conscious Leadership (moorbey.wordpress.com)

As the waves lap at the shore, generational differences are crashing into one another and creating a lot of white water.  I’m not old enough to remember the start of the second wave, but I am almost certain that there would have been conflict between first wavers who concentrated on the political and legal situation of women, and the next generation who explored the social and sexual.  Not, of course, that these are necessarily in conflict: the legal framework of any group defines its social position, and indeed it was only at the start of the second wave that the Equal Pay act was introduced, and well into it before women got the right of independent taxation.

In the 90s, as the second wave ebbed and the third was not yet in flow, feminism ran aground.   At a time when women were making ever greater strides into the establishment, behaviours such as working while a young mother and having children out of wedlock, which would have been shocking a generation hence were becoming commonplace, feminism with its image of  dungarees and hairy legs was rejected by the majority of young women, the ideological attacks on women’s rights were escalating and the Men’ Rights Activist (MRA) movement emerged.

What Kaitie Rolphe dubbed “victim feminism” had reached its zenith.  A trajectory of the analyses of difference feminism which saw women as a class at the mercy of the class of men, high profile domestic violence campaigns, and the development of “Reclaim the Night” complete with tortuous confessionals, saw women painted as victims of their circumstances to be protected from men and their violence.  At the same time the “power feminism” advocated by Naomi Wolfe emerged in ladette culture with the Spice Girls asserting “Girl Power” and that girls could do anything, while in the media the emergence of strong female characters such as Buffy, Xena and the Powerpuff girls combined youth, a single lifestyle and an individual telios.

Sidestepping or negating the practicalities of womanhood, periods, childbirth, contraception, abortion, childrearing, violence, menopause which had come to the fore in the 70s – initially as issues of note and recognition and later as evidence of female superiority, power feminism sent out the message that women could be just as good as men, so long as they were just like them – staying single and childfree; unburdened with the chains of wifely marriage or motherhood; purpose driven, ambitious and self-driven.

It is into this world that the third wave emerged.  The third wave is an amorphous creature – no one really knows what it is, but they know it when they see it.  The bastard daughter of victim and power feminism, attempts by rad fems to strangle it at birth have failed.  Never the less, some key themes have emerged.

Gender and Sex Fluidity
Many second wavers re-asserted women’s weaknesses as strengths – their pacifism a superior counterweight to mens warmongering; their reproductive ability a capacity to be celebrated rather than be derided; their consensus based style of communication more productive than aggressive debate.  Within this narrative of women as different and better, challenges to the binaries posed by intersex; trans-sexualism and bisexuality pose problems.

A key third wave text, is the very wonderful “Gender Trouble” by Judith Butler.  Discussing biological sex, gender construction and sexual identity, she notes how rigid assumptions do not hold true on closer inspection and that any attempt at gender essentialism is doomed to failure.  Lesbian separatism and woman identified womanhood proved a dead end on a planet half-populated and still ran by men.  In its place is the destruction of womanhood.   The trans-sexuals and their empire are challenging biology as destiny, carving out space for new genders within their corporeality.

Sexual Agency and Consent
Apart from possibly trans-sexualism, nowhere has the clash of ideologies been more in evidence in the arena of sexuality.  Sex work in particular has proven a particular battle-ground. The anti-PIV stance of some radical feminists and a condescending attitude toward women in the sex industry as the paid recipients of male sexual violence has clashed violently with the sexually assertive Slutwalk movement and the acceptance of BDSM, pornography and sex work as legitimate activities.

Yet within the BDSM sub-culture, where the tacit models of assumed consent cannot be held, new models of explicit consent are emerging; the sexual abuse of women in the porn industry has been separated from prudish attitudes to viewing explicit imagery and voices from the sex industry made possible by the anonymity of the internet have allowed an insight into the agency of women in the industry and their conflicted position.

Intersections of power structures
A major criticism of the second wave was its focus on the pre-occupations of the white middle-class women who had the time, resources and education to devote to the cause.  With the exception of homosexuality, which was fetishized within the movement, other systems of power such as class and race became de-prioritised to the point of non-existence.  Narratives of black men as particular predators, resonanated with the racism of the US, where a southern belle had considerably more power than young black men .

In response many women of colour rejected the feminist movement choosing to stand with their brethren, while women of the third world facing death in childbirth and child marriage had little in common with the priorities of privileged white Western women.  A development of thinking on the intersecting power structures which play on and interact in any given situation is the adoption of the term “Kyriarchy” by third-wavers.  A development of the concept of patriarchy, it acknowledges that while women are subject to a discriminatory power structure that this is not a unique position: circumstances of race, nationality; class; sexuality and many others all come to bear on an individual’s agency and autonomy.

Merger of the Silicon and the Organic
The second wave women’s movement had a strong anti-military theme and a strong link with the emerging ecology movement.  Neo-paganism, primitivism and pacifism all found their corner within the womens movement.  The emergence of the Dianic Wicca, a concern with handcrafting and the Greenham Common Peace Camp all stand testimony to the direction of travel towards the Earth, the Goddess and the mother.  Technology was seen as a man’s invention designed to pollute the planet, steal the fire of the Goddess and supplant women’s role of life creator.

The third wave embraces technology and its potential for creating affinity across boundaries, extending the possible and overcoming shortcomings.  Technology enhances possibles blurring the differences and margins, extending capacity to those without and eradicating drudgery which tends to fall on the most marginalised within the community.  The merger of wo/men and machine offers possibilities to overcome corporeal limitations and with it the destiny written on the body.

First published on Village Aunties on 24th January 2012

It would appear that the protests over were quite a success with 4.5 million signing Google’s online petition, 162 million seeing the protest message on Wikipedia and 8 million people looking up their elected representatives address, and indeed both SOPA and PIPA have now been withdrawn – for now at any rate. Yet it is still worth looking carefully at the drivers of the desire for content control .

Most of the sites involved in anti-SOPA/PIPA actions on Wednesday were factual sites, with Wikipedia leading the charge.  Ten years ago, Wikipedia was in its infancy, started just the year before by the following year it had a definitive web-presence of 150, 000 articles and growing exponentially; it now has over 4 million covering all reaches of human knowledge, all sourced from a multitude of mainly unknown and unseen authors, its accuracy regulated not by committee or editorial approval but by community and collective regulation.

Attempts to deliberately insert flattering profiles of politicans, to talk up companies, or do down rivals, have backfired spectacularly.  The transparency of IP address tracking, informing people where edits have come from, allows a level of oversight over the content and the perspectives of the editors, while collectively aggregating edits gives an insight into their agendas.

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.

The quote above from Stewart Brand is an interesting phraseology, attributing desire to information – that it “wants” to be free or expensive.  Information has no consciousness and no will, it is an external representation of the internal schemata of human knowledge in a reified form.  It is valuable because within the information is power; but cost is indeterminate – both quantitatively and in its attribution.

Information is data interpreted: the raw facts and observations obtained through the senses, converted into communicable units and put into a pre-existing context.  Data on labour relations in China, aggregated in a relevant manner becomes the information that Apple abuses its workers.  This information is hetero-topically valuable.  It is valuable for anyone who want to know if workers rights are a business issue China; for other companies seeking a PR move over Apple; for human rights activists mapping labour abuses; for Apple itself when exploring how labour costs can be reduced by re-locating production.  It also has a cost: who knows the information determines the cost of the information and who that cost is borne by.  This information in the hands of other companies seeking to exploit workers may cost workers increased exploitation; in the hands of human rights activists may cost Apple valuable public relations and consequent sales.

The value and cost of information intersect: control over that information then becomes control over the exploitation of value and the minimisation of cost.  Ownership, access and control of data and of information then becomes enormously valuable at the macro level.  Beyond mere information tho, comes narrative – information put within a story, contextualised and structured with a distinctive will to power.  These stories, factual or fictional take information and transmit it to the consumer through an appropriate medium.  Narrative is powerful: not for nothing do they burn books, but fire is a crude technology and there are usually more subtle means of narrative suppression.  When these subtle means break down, more robust methods must be used.

The shutdown of MegaUpload must be seen within this context.  Promoted as a necessary intervention to prevent intellectual property crime, to stop the downloading of copyrighted materials, it has significant support from content producers, who produced a music video defending and promoting the service.  Without so much as a nod to irony, the video was removed from YouTube on copyright grounds.  Yesterday, in what would seem to be part retaliation and part pre-emptive strike over in SOPA, it was shutdown.

This is old media versus new.  The content producers reliant on the essentially physical distribution services of picture houses and television sets, pitted against the distribution producers reliant on essentially ephemeral content production services.  If you can control the distribution channel, you can control what is shown, what is watched, what is talked about and what is made. And therein lies the danger.  Control over data has been lost through Wikileaks; control over information through Wikipedia; narrative is the next to go.

Lyotard talks of the collapse of the Grand Narrative, that universal hegemony was being undermined by the development of “petit recits”, localised and context specific narratives which reflect different theoretical standpoints from different holistic viewpoints.  The net has massively contributed to the provision of these, by the same incident being pictured and filmed from (literally) a variety of viewpoints, information from the incident being relayed in different forms and alternative narratives constructed around it. Such is the power of distributed content production…if we can obtain it.

Suppression of their radical potential has muted technologies in the past, from print to radio – only once neutralised, neutered and safe may they be unleashed, but this time there is an awareness – the narrative of  protecting content has been challenged, and the true content of narrative protection is becoming exposed.

The DRC is one of the richest countries in the world: a land rich in natural resources.  Aside from the gold, diamonds and oil, it also holds approximately 80% of the world’s coltan – a mineral essential in just about any electronic device that you can think of.  Yet the average income of a Congolese citizen is approximately £1.50 per week, and the country ranks last in UN indices of development, health, education and life expectancy.

Much of this is due to the ongoing violence over the control of these resources. Multiple armed groups operate throughout the country, using murder and mass rape as deliberate tactics to secure control of mines, material supply and trading routes.  Millions are made by these groups from the trade of such minerals, financing the purchase of weapons thereby giving them increased influence in a tragic spiral.

Since his election ten years ago, Kabilha, despite tough rhetoric, has shown little appetite for tackling the violence engulfing the country in the ongoing quest for profit.  Congolese women in particular have been the collateral damage.  With nearly half a million rapes estimated each year in a country with a population of approximately 60 million, systematic sexualised violence sustains the conflict and is used as a tool to gain and maintain control over resources.  Breaking marriages, families and kinship ties, it devastates communities rendering them fractured and traumatised, too weak to provide any local leadership or support to resistant efforts to the robber barons who strip their resources with impunity.

In a country with no legal abortion, rape also provides a steady stream of recruits for the militias.  Children born of rape, rejected by their families and communities are abandoned to the streets and left to fend for themselves: easy pickings for the militia recruitment which need a steady supply of cannon fodder.  Brutalised and hungry, the prospect of regular meals provides a strong pull, while death and violence holds no fear for children already accustomed to its proximity.

While the militias and their trading partners strip the country’s resources one load at a time, Kabila has been selling them off wholesale.  Approximately $5.5bn has been lost to the Congolese people through the government selling off state assets at a fraction of their value, including one sale of mining assets independently valued at $800m, sold for little over $100m to a substantial and generous backer of Kabila’s 2006 election campaign.

The international response to the Congo has primarily concentrated on the supply of conflict minerals, particularly targeting technology consumers, but a lack of a transparent supply chain means that there is no ability for consumers to track where the resources used in their technological products are coming from. In response these concerns the US government passed the “Conflict Minerals Law” – part of the Dodds-Frank Act, in July 2010 – yet there are considerable criticisms of this approach.  Evidence is emerging that it is encouraging smuggling of the minerals into Rwanda and other neighbouring countries for certification thereby undermining the spirit of the law, paradoxically increasing the violence as armed militias fight all the more viciously over control of the extended supply chains.

For all the international hand-wringing, there is little appetite for supporting the Congolese people to have the governance and accountability which could provide the necessary oversight of the industry and tackle the ongoing lawlessness it fuels.  The main response of the UN and the US was to “appeal for calm” in the face of the disputed election results, despite obvious electoral manipulation.  The rounding up of opposition figures following the election and threats of a brutal clampdown on any dissent have largely kept people off the streets.  At the same time, international protests from the Congolese diaspora have been stamped down upon, with 143 arrested at a peaceful protest in London and a young woman in a coma after brutal policing of protests in Belgium, the former colonial rulers of the Congo, who first perfected the art of raping the country.

The Congolese are rapidly losing faith in the kind of democracy which only serves to provide Western consumers with a cover of legitimacy for  the asset stripping of the country.  This asset stripping will continue until the Congolese can establish security and respect.  Neither of these are possible when peaceful protests are met with violent repression and the diplomatic community colludes with fraudsters and charlatans to secure the supply of raw materials to meet Western technology industry demands.   The campaign against conflict minerals cannot be effective until there is appropriate control over Congolese mines and transportation and that can only come with accountable and democratic governance.

The conflict, stolen elections and even the international protests are stunningly under-reported in the West, which has a vested interest in telling a story of a democratically elected leader, besieged by brutal savages in a backward country, while the technology industry continues on apace.

A version of this post was first published in the Scottish Socialist Voice

Sophie Buckland wrote a detailed response to some of the controversial statements in the article, to which Kit Withnail, author of the original article has written a further reply.  Buckland is correct when she points out that the argument advanced in the initial article is lacking in nuance, however it does raise good issues – about effective rather then idealistic agency; the labour status of women in the sex industry and what constitutes consent.  I have very little truck with the traditional porn industry, an exploitative and misogynistic creature, but at the same time, there are dangers in overblown condemnations which see women as eternal victims of male sexuality and the purpose of feminism to protect them from it.

Kit Withnail writes

 the producers purchase labour  from the male actors; their labour is to force the commodity, apparent willingness, from the women. The actors’ sexual and hegemonic pleasure at the rape is merely a bonus for them.

The whole concept of men in the sex industry pleasurably labouring to extract the commodity of  ”apparent willingness” from women in the industry, ignoring incidentally same-sex porn, puts these women in the same category of industrial relations as a reluctant cow being milked by an enthusiastic farmhand.  Furthermore as Buckland points out, calling this rape is to deny that women in the sex industry can consent, a postion that Withnail reiterates in his later blogpost.  This is very dodgy territory.  If all commercial sexual exploitation is rape, then can be no rape in that context.  With entry to the industry and payment of the money, women become un-rapable, which is ironically the narrative that the porn industry presents.

In porn, women are always eager and willing to be fucked in whatever manner.  The negotiations and haggling over price are never shown on-screen, yet are a critical part what acts take place.  Similarly discussions of boundaries and limits, discussions which usually form an integral part of any encounter are similarly unseen, pre-agreed with the director and other actors.   Women in the sex industry do have agency, but they are presented on screen as if they have none.  To deny the agency of women in the sex industry is to collude with the pornographic presentation of them.

Withnail moves on to discuss how porn consumption affect real life encounters, particularly among young people who have been exposed to porn.

The tremendous gender imbalance of porn consumption leads to the next problem, which is boys having their first sexual experience with girls, the boys being now very well versed in porn.

Not limited to first sexual experiences, porn does have an unhealthy effect on male sexuality.  Accustomed to observing and identifying with men partnered with women who yield to their every desires, who never say “no”, “slow down” or “stop”, who lead the encounter and for whom the willingness of the woman is a given for what ever acts are shown on screen, this becomes the standard for their perception of what intercourse is and how a sexually desired man behaves.

A man who is desired by women has no need to ask consent; no need to discuss acts, boundaries and limitations, no need to focus on their partner’s desire.  To open such discussions implies that they may not be the studs that they are presented with on-screen; that they may find themselves, rejected, unfulfilled or unable to satisfy their partner, unlike their role models – easier then to follow the porn blueprint.

But then there is a massive jump…

The result is either explicitly or implicitly rape…

As Buckland points out – if consensual sex can “implicitly” be rape, then what is rape?  This is a massive pitfall of second wave anti-PIV feminism, which reframes sexual intercourse in terms of a necessarily violent act done by men to women, undermining rape as a transgressive act, but merely as the norm of sexual relations, which some women object to in some circumstances more than others.  Undermining the validity of women’s consent as many second wavers do, suggesting that a combination of false consciousness and PIV-centric sexuality lies behind any suggestion of women as consenting agents is a dangerous, dangerous route to go down.  It is the flip side of the porn narrative – rather than women as unrapable because they are eternally willing, it is women as unrapable because they are eternally being forced.

Kit goes on to suggest that

Women and girls who watch porn..will understand their place in this economy: they must be willing givers of this commodity. They will return to the boys, and they will be raped without even knowing what’s wrong.

The whole idea of consent or “apparent willingness” as a commodity to be extracted, either by persuasion or force has its resonances in radical feminism, but denies nuance and subtly, implying that consent is one-way; that in sexual encounters men are the consumers and women the producers (or as implied earlier, the raw materials) of an object of value only to men – unknowingly enslaved by the false consciousness engendered by porn viewing.

Rape is fairly horrible, and women go to great lengths to avoid it and one of the measures women take is to consent to sex, where they fear the alternative is to be raped.  For never forget that a woman’s permanent legal state is that of consent to sexual intercourse.  Legally, any lack of consent must be proven.

Holly Pervocracy here describes her first sexual encounter.  She acknowledges that it was both consensual and desired, yet also points out her vulnerability in that situation, and although it is not made explicit, the potential for ending up in a bad situation should she withdraw consent.  She also points out her perception of his failing to obtain explicit consent, that if asked, she may feel obligated to say “no” and he would be obligated to stop.  While this encounter was desired, she points out that had she not desired such acts the events would look no different to her partner.

This is a grey zone where the hard boundaries of rape/not-rape break down, where women’s agency is compromised by vunerability and expectations.  In this grey zone, you have the continuum of rape.  To actively withdraw consent invites the potential for explicit rape, while to stay silent is to stay in the legal state of permanent consent.  This truely horrific case in Wales, where a 15 year old was prosecuted for making a false rape allegation after it was judged that she did not actively communicate her lack of consent sufficiently is a testimony to the dangers of this zone.

The assumption of woman as an autonomous actor, fully in control of their own agency, sexuality and bodily autonomy is to ignore the structural forces at work; conversely to present women as objects for commodity extraction denies their ability to change them.

“It’s very unfair on the Scottish people themselves, who don’t really know when this question is going to be asked, what the question is going to be, who’s responsible for asking it. We owe the Scottish people something that is fair, legal and decisive. So in the coming days we’ll be setting out clearly what the legal situation is…”

The sound of jocular laughter could be heard all the way from Dumfries to Orkney.  It is clear that the Tories haven’t noticed but with the Scottish Parliament and an alternative authority in Scotland we can no longer be treated as a colonial outpost, its governance to be tagged on as an afterthought at the end of a sporting arena walkabout in the Imperial Capital.  What Cameron really owes us is reparations for the oil money that has been snaffled through the past 30 years, the return of the coastline which was stolen from us in 1999 and a full independent investigation into the death of Willie McRae.

They then wheeled out Michael Forsyth to lead the campaign.  A man who presided over Scotland with the contemptuous air of a colonial governor and used the Scots as lab-rats for the Poll Tax – introduced in Scotland a year earlier than England.  A more insensitive choice of spokesperson could barely be found – a tangible example of how the Tories fundamentally don’t understand Scotland and should be let know where near the place.  I mean what next?  Iain Paisley drafted in to thump the table and announce “Scotland says NO“?  Norman Tebbit announcing independence will lead to border guards on the cycling lanes?  A wild-eyed madwoman dragged out to announce that she is not negotiating the sovereignty of Scotland with anyone?

This whole thing has been so badly handled its as if the Unionists know something we don’t.  Have they secretly been burying nuclear waste the length and breadth of  Scotland in anticipation of the schism and are planning to build a lead version of Hadrian’s wall just as soon as they get rid of us?

Eventually a modicum of  coherence was injected into the unionist agenda by Michael Moore, who actually came across as if he knew what he was talking about.  Unfortunately for him, Alex Salmond – a master of the art of statecraft – was busy announcing the timing of the referendum to an assembled awestruck press-pack.

Part of the challenge thrown down by the UK Government was a two option referendum.  Independence or nothing.  Here, for possibly the first time ever, I am entirely in agreement with the Unionists.  Devolution-max  - or unionism-lite – gives us no control over the position of Scotland in relation to the world, and one of the strongest reasons for the breakup of the UK is that internationally the UK is a rogue state.  No matter how devolved, a Scotland which is still part of the Union will always be at the beck and call of Westminster and will lend legitimacy to its international bullying.

It is for the forces for Independence to rise to the challenge, we owe it to ourselves to have confidence in our ability to govern, to hold our place in the world and to build fraternal relations with the post-UK on an equal basis.   A three option referendum leads to all kinds of difficulties – some will vote for unionism-lite on the basis that it is the best we are going to get; some as a compromise position through self-doubt and lack of confidence; some through a desire to hold onto the union in the face of the independence movement’s rapidly gaining pace.

The campaign for independence then becomes fractured, with a pragmatic position being taken by some independence supporters, allowing the unionists to paint the desire for independence as ridiculous extremism and making a fall back position available for the unionists, giving them an opportunity to split the independence movement.    The threat to use the courts to undermine Salmond’s referendum call, may well be a portend of things to come, with UK law used to undermine self-determination in the event that we still find ourselves hitched.

Should we end up with unionism-lite, we may find ourselves tied into the union for generations.   Twice Scotland has been offered Independence, and twice they have rejected it will run the narrative – no need to ask again.   The independence movement must have confidence in itself and in the Scottish people.   A clear choice is required: Scottish Independence or the Union.

First posted on Bella Caledonia on 13th January 2012

The film does a good job of portraying how difficult it must have been for a female politician in the 50s.  Although the first female MP was elected in 1918, Constance Markiecicz, like other Sinn Fein MPs, refused to take up her seat.  A sufferagette she had been imprisoned under the Cat and Mouse Act and had played an active role in the first wave of feminism.   Thatcher had no such history in the women’s movement, her political ambitions were forged not on the streets and of lived experience of struggle, but of a typical male career path of smoke filled rooms and impressing to party chairmen.

As shown in the film, the Houses of Parliament were even more of a boys club then than now, with women excluded from many of the areas where the behind the scenes politicking was done. The House of Commons sported 11 bars, a hostile environment for women of the fifties, and no creche for a mother of young children – just as well Thatcher had a multi-millionaire husband and no worries about getting back in time for the school run.  Despite a twenty year campaign this situation didn’t change until just two years ago, under protest from some MPs and prompting right wing outrage over the cost of converting a bar into a creche, although the cost of refurbishing the bar which had been converted at a similar rate went unremarked at the time.

One of the strangest things about the film is that it is totally bereft of politics. The first film biography of the longest serving and arguably most controversial Prime Minister of the twentieth century, yet aside from photo-ops and soundbites with heads of state, mixed in with old film reels of protesters and striking workers, no exploration was made of the politics of her time in office.  Looking back over that time, it is interesting to note the key themes which have emerged and which have sticking power.

Apart from the miners strike, the thing which Thatcher is probably most notorious for is her decision to remove funding for free school milk for schoolchildren.  This came as part of a raft of changes, including the upping of school meal charges and increases in Further Education fees.  The other two have been forgotten, yet the removal of milk lingers, and Thatcher, Thatcher; Milk Snatcher remains a meme that resonates through the generations.

Free milk had been introduced into schools under the 1944 Education Act for all children up to the age of 18.  It was actually Harold Wilson’s government in 1968, who first sheared back the provision three years before Thatcher withdrew it further to only children under seven.*   Yet it is Thatcher, who is remembered as the milk snatcher – not the unnamed and unknown Education Secretary who served under Wilson.

The narrative of a woman, and a mother no less, snatching milk from mewling children is too strong a narrative to resist.  The provision of milk is the first duty of a mother, and the provision of milk is broader a political issue.  In the mid-70s, formula milk was being marketed as a modern and liberatory method of child feeding.  As women were starting to enter the workplace in greater numbers and demand equal pay and recognition for their labour, formula feeding limited the impact of maternity on women’s role in the workplace.  In this context the withdrawal of free provided milk from a woman, resonated with the withdrawal from breastfeeding and the competition that men were now facing from increasing number of female employees.

Thatcher also presided over the decimation of British Industry – the coal, iron and steel industries all effectively shut down in the 80s, leading communities up and down the country devastated and desolate following their demise.  These were men’s jobs: heavy, industrial, dirty jobs.  As the fight led by Women Against Pit Closures amply demonstrated, those jobs sustained families and communities and there can be no attacks on workers rights which do not negatively affect the working class of both genders, yet the narrative of a woman taking away the self-respect, dignity and identity of the men of hard labour who worked in mines, in steelyards and on the docks at a time when feminism was in the ascendancy and women were gaining status within the world of work had a pull for the left which was hard to resist and sexist slogans resounded.

An interesting bit of the film, and the one time where I actually warmed to the (fictional) woman was at the scene in the doctors, where she is trying to convince the skeptical and patronising medic that she was not mad, although some may argue that talking to her dead husband was one of the least harmful manifestations of her delusions.  In that scene she expouses a very Arendtian philosophy  saying (and I may misquote here…)

One must watch ones thoughts, as thoughts become words; words become actions; actions become habits and habits become character.

Thatcher Character, The Iron Lady

I can find no evidence that Thatcher ever said those words or indeed that she was in any way influenced by Arendt. It seems strange that in a film so bereft of the political philosophy that Thatcher embodied, that a philosophy she has no association with would become one of the most meaty parts of the film. The one aspect of political philosophy that Arendt and Thatcher, both remarkably prominent women in their fields, did share was a rejection of feminism.

[Thatcher] has not feminized politics… but she has offered feminine endorsement to patriarchal power.

Bea Campbell, Iron Ladies: Why women vote Tory

For all her spoutings of “housewifely wisdom”, her instance on femine hairdos, refusal to wear trouser suits and the iconic status of her handbag.  Thatcher was ultimately a patriarch.  She led from the front, treating any disagreements with distain and – as is shown in the film – dominating and humiliating cabinet ministers who deviated from her one true path.

She was a beneficiary of feminism, a demonstration that women could achieve anything, normalising female success, yet at the same time this had a flip side – after all if Thatcher could be Prime Minister, it must be down to individual failings that other women did not make their mark in the same way.  Supporting a narrative that feminism was redundant and that any woman could achieve anything if only they set their minds to it, she injected a premise of ruthlessness and female ambition into the image of late 80s and early 90s feminism, spawning the Spice Girls/ladette version of “feminism”.

Consequently when the film portrays her as a frail old woman, rambling and emotionally dependent on her dead husband, the eternal vision of a ruthless, calculating politician determined to destroy anything which stood in the way of her ambitions is undermined.  Not undermined enough though for you not to want someone to emerge from the hallway in the final scene and give her a good shove down the stairs.

*edited for accuracy, see comments (14/01/12)

Other Feminist Reviews of “The Iron Lady”

The Iron Lady: A Portrait of the Arsehole as an Old Bat, Another Angry Woman

The Lady is Not for Watching, International Socialist Group

Mrs T: Unreliable Narrator, New Statesman

I have problems with the whole “classism”(discrimination on the basis of class) narrative. Class is a relationship to the means of production, discrimination on the basis of class is a given – people who own the means of production *automatically* have more power than those who don’t.  Kyriarchial discrimination on the other hand is based on socially constructed power – power which just floats along through the use of narrative rather than embodied in bits of paper.

“Classism” then fits in more with race than it does with class. Race is a myth, there is no real disctinction between people of differing genetic heritage other than variations in skin pigmentation and relatively minor features, however those skin pigmentations do tend to be associated with different cultures.  That association is not absolute, there are many people with darker pigmentation who have absorbed and fit in well to the dominent white cultural hegemony.

“Classism” is a cultural discrimination. Jade Goody, for example, by the end of her life was firmly ruling class – she owned the means of production and her economic power came from that. Her culture however was still that of the working class, and that culture ultimately works against ruling class interests.  Jade Goody, faithful to her working class backround, retained its culture and was a traitor to the class to which she had entered.

For culture is not neutral, it seeks to transmit values and attitudes.  The culture of the ruling class, and that which the ruling class deigns suitable for consumption by the working class are spread through its power structures.  Its ownership of physical locations, advertising and the media gives it a control over the culture which is transmitted and ultimately consumed, while its tacit control over sites of cultural production, the production of historical narratives and education allows its values to be spread.

Culture is a product of situations, a reflection of the times in which we live.  The “chavs” with their Burberry caps and fake gold chains are subverting the culture of the ruling class who seek to distinguish themselves by consuming cultural products which are off-limits to the working class by virtue of their expense.   They are disliked by the ruling class as it is a form of mockery; at the same time, they are disliked by large sections of the working class as the culture that they are appropriating is one which they see is not a product of their situation and lacks an authenticity present in say hip-hop.

David Starkey rather famously said “…and the whites are becoming Black”.  It was clearly not meant as a compliment and he was jumped on at the time for the implicit racism, yet looking a little more deeply, he was expressing the fears of the ruling class cultural agenda.  That the cultural hegemony that the ruling class seeks to impose on the working class is breaking down and that peoples are developing their own culture based on their objective conditions.  

Culture is produced and reproduced on the basis of socio-economic conditions. Cheap or free accessible culture, until very recently meant television and advertising.  Through these mediums, the culture of the working class could be shaped and moulded, producing values and attitudes which were helpful to ruling class interests.

There is a Black urban culture, based on ongoing poverty, discrimination and police harassment.  Those experiences are not unique to Blacks within the inner-cities, but are more common within Black communities – it is labelled a “Black culture” but really it is a culture of exclusion, and increasing number of whites are finding themselves in the same boat, and the cultural memes transmitted on the streets are rapidly finding their way across racial barriers to those who share the same conditions.

The ruling class is losing its control over culture – no longer able to exercise the same domination over its channels of production, and no longer able to maintain their own distinctions in a world where designer goods can be copied and sold at working class pocket prices.  It fears the chavs who mock them and it fears the urban culture which its socio-economic conditions produce.  The challenge for the working class is to produce a culture without reference to the ruling class, one grounded in the authenticity of working class experience which can develop the values of a new society.

Ever since chancing across his show flicking through channels one night, I thought I had found something fresh and original.  Edgy comedy in the best traditions of Rab C Nesbitt and Still Game in a sketch format.  With characters like Jacqueline McCafferty, embodying working class self-doubt;   Dee Dee, who over-analyses the simplest of situations and Wee Gary, making a profit out of playground exploitation.   Neds, Junkies, schoolkids, dodgy prophets, frustrated suits – all portrayed with a level of sympathy and warmth, a striking contrast to the cruelty of Little Britain.

With similiarly marginalised characters we are invited to laugh at Vicky Pollard, Emily Howard and  Daffyd Thomas in a way that we can’t with Limmy’s creations, for there but for the grace of God go we – embarrassed in a posh restaurant not knowing how to pronounce something we really want; a chain of thought that won’t budge from your head and starts driving you mad; cultural ignorance which is exploited by the less noble of your mates.

A common theme running through the show was the internal narrative of paranoia that runs through all of our heads – the wee guys who controls everything you dae.   In this it harks back to Ben Elton in his glory days (before he started writing shite musicals and performing for George Bush).  In the mid-80s, an audience sick of the sexist, racist spoutings that passed for comedy, embraced the new alternative comedy, with Elton leading the charge.  Based not on – “look at them, look how weird they are, aren’t they funny”; but rather on “look at us, look how weird we all are; aren’t we funny”, it brought a level of innocence back to humour that had been defiled by endless sexism and racism.

Now, humour is an odd beast – one woman’s rape is another man’s hilarilous anecdote (trigger warning) to be told in front of an audience of thousands, so when you find that kindness in comedy – someone who can bring humour out of the marginalised by demonstrating how similar they are you and how ridiculous you are -  its a thing to be treasured.

Yet over the last week, I’ve fallen seriously out of love with Limmy.  It started on Twitter, when I got this retweet which used the hashtag #whitepeopleblues, which contributed to the satirical lampooning the accusations of racism levelled at Dianne Abbott.

#whitepeopleblues Lifelong poverty, heroin and alcohol addiction, then dying of natural causes at 52. #glaswegian

Not only missing the point of the hashtag, but also that black weedgies fare no better in the addiction, poverty and deathrate stakes.  But hey ho, nobody’s perfect.

But then yesterday there was this…

Splish splash, yer maw’s cunt needs a good wash.

…posted to his facebook page.   As one of his defenders pointed out, you need be a weedgie to fully understand the joke “yer maw’s cunt” can either be taken literally, or with “cunt” as a West Coast moniker for person, it could refer to her partner.  Regardless the “humour” still rests on the dirtiness of female genitalia.  Predictably it unleashed a torrent of misogyny from wee guys that thought they were being funny, with no challenge from the big man himself, despite several fans pointing out how unacceptable it was.

None of it seems to have been taken onboard with his latest facebook posting today.

Ask a lady at Gregg’s if she’s got a fresh fanny, and you’ll be brought a French Fancy. No way did she hear what she thought she heard

Now for the sake of brevity, we’ll ignore the benevolent sexism in referring to a female shop-assistant as “lady”, but why the fuck would you be asking the “lady” in Greggs if “she’s got a fresh fanny”?  To embarrass her, to make it clear that her cunt might “need a good wash”, and that you, a random male – for these posts are aimed at squarely at males – see fit to inquire about the state of her intimate hygiene because hey, you’re a bloke and she’s just a woman in public place, employed to serve you.

To anyone living outwith Scotland, Limmy has rapidly become an institution, with many of his catchphrases being repeated at opportune moments – at the eviction of the Hetherington for example, as supporters blocked the street, forcing the police to reverse up University Gardens, chants of “Wrong Way Down a One Way Street” filled the air.  I don’t think its inconceivable that women working in Greggs will face sexual harrassment from daft wee customers who think they are funny; nor do I think its inconceivable that there might be a fair number of daft wee customers tomorrow who get slapped in the coupon.

But its not funny; Limmy’s not funny anymore.  He’s gone from being the freshest comedy talent in Scotland to an parochial obscene Bernard Manning.

Sort it out, Limmy.

With inflation rising and wages stagnating, the difficulties such households face isnt going to get better any time soon.  Added into this mix is the effects of the Housing Benefit changes.  From April this year, caps were put in place on the maximum weekly HB that could be claimed for all new claimants as well as limiting HB claims to that of the 30th decile of rents in an area.  A transitional period of up to nine months was given to those who were living in accommodation above these rates.  This transitional period runs out at the end this month.  Additionally from this month onwards single claimants under 35 can no longer claim for a single bedroom property, only a room in shared accommodation.

The Chartered Institute of Housing has found that there will be a national shortage of 800,000 homes available, which meet the criteria to be funded, giving those dependent on such benefit a stark choice between giving up their home and cutting back on other essentials to make up the shortfall.  This is likely to lead to a number of unforseen consequences.

Firstly, for those who scrimp and save to hang onto their homes, any further sacrifice in their already meagre incomes are going to cut into spending on essential items such as heating and food.  With fuel poverty already at record levels and demand for emergency food parcels provided by charities soaring, such cutbacks would add further strain, impacting on health and wellbeing putting further pressure on an NHS which is being rapidly dismantled.  Those who chose to give up their homes and chase the dwindling supply of “affordable accommodation” for which benefit will be paid, they have little power of negotiation.  With demand for such properties outstripping supply in almost all areas, they are in a remarkably powerless position to negotiate repairs or maintainance from landlords.

Landlords too will feel the effects.  For the last decade property has been promoted as an alternative investment vehicle.  A solid dependable low risk method of saving for retirement.  Demand dropping for properties above the 30% threshold and/or the caps are likely to see such properties either become void for longer than anticipated, possibly encouraging landlords to drop rents to below a mortgage sustainable rate.  Repossessions of such properties are all but inevitable, which could see tenants – both private and housing benefit funded – chucked out on their ears with a barely a moments notice as the banks take possession.

This will have wider consequences across the entire housing market.  Should repossessionsof rental properties rise, house prices will fall, expanding the effect of the changes to the owner-occupier sector.  Those struggling with mortgages will be trapped by negative equity – unable to sell their homes at a value which covers their mortgages in order to downsize to one which they can afford.  Trapped between a rock and a hard place, defaults and repossessions will follow.

These changes have the makings of a perfect storm.  One which makes Cyclone Bampot look like a wee swirl in a teacup.  Families uprooted; communities disempowered and ever larger waves threatening to engulf whole sectors of society.