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Fra Socialist Review nr. 276

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Alt. url: Socialist Review Index

Inside front cover: Artwork appealing for French solidarity with the Spanish Republic by Joan Miró.

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In 1936 Spanish workers rose up against Franco. George Orwell went to Spain to support the revolution. This year marks the 100th anniversary of orwell's birth. See special feature.

Editorial: Street Talk

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There is a strange sense of déjà vu with the current government. A prime minister increasingly isolated and at odds with the rest of his party and public opinion; ministers scurrying off to spend more time with their family; protests about the media portrayal of government policies; and outspoken sacked ministers jockeying for position in anticipation of a leadership challenge. There is much about Tony Blair today that reminds you of the last days of both the Thatcher and Major governments.

Elaheh Rostami Povey: News Review: Iran: Next in Line for Regime Change?

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The student protests in Iran in June were part of the pro- democracy movement, involving secular and religious women, workers, student and the youth, which has been evolving since the early 1990s.

News Review: Between the Lines (Coke Sacks Worker – Coke Attempts to Fiddle Market Testing – Paul Boateng Praises PFI in South Africa)

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Anne Ashford: News Review: Palestine: No Sign of Justice Yet

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Has US victory in Iraq set the scene for a revival of the misnamed Middle East 'peace process'? Although both Israeli and Palestinian governments have agreed to abide by the 'road map' peace plan, the chances of this latest round of negotiations producing lasting peace are very slim.

Tom Wall: News Review: Prisons: Locked in a Crazy System

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The rooftop protests at Wealstun and Maghaberry prisons in June – although relatively minor and isolated – are expressions of a deeper, more general malaise gripping Britain's jails.

Martin Empson: Martin's Web: Enough to Make You Sick

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In a recent online discussion, a 'pro-soldier' campaigner was ridiculing the US peace movement's protests. He claimed that in his city of Fort Wayne (population 250,000) a 'pro- soldier' campaign had gathered the support of one in ten of the population.

The Walrus: Thirsty for Profit

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How water turns to gold for the city corporations.

Andrew Stone: Orwell Centenary: From 2003 to 1984

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George Orwell was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. On the hundredth anniversary of his birth we examine the controversy around his work and his legacy for today. Andrew Stone assesses the relevance of Orwell's most famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Paul Foot: Orwell Centenary: The Cold War Controversy

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Paul Foot examines why much of the left rejects Orwell.

Orwell Centenary: George Orwell, 1903-1950

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The facts of Orwell's life.

Andy Durgan: Orwell Centenary: No Pasaran

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Andy Durgan describes the impact of revolutionary Spain on Orwell.

John Newsinger: Orwell Centenary: The Biographies

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John Newsinger reviews recent biographies of Orwell.

Gareth Jenkins: Orwell Centenary: Culture, Class and Communism

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Gareth Jenkins assesses Orwell's writing on culture.

Chris Harman: Thinking it through: A Blast from the Past (Tony Cliff: "Marxist Theory after Trotsky")

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Correct revolutionary theory requires correct revolutionary practice.

Mike Gonzalez: Iraq: 'Let's Call This Occupation' (Interview with Robert Fisk)

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Award winning Independent journalist Robert Fisk reported from Baghdad during the recent war in Iraq. In a rare interview he speaks to Amy Goodman about the growing resistance to US and British forces.
This is an edited interview from Znet. See the full version on www.zmag.org.

Sabby Sagall: Iraq: The Lost Tradition

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There is a rich history of workers' struggles in Iraq.

Mike Gonzalez: Arts Review: Cultural currents: A Right Royal Con Trick

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Whether it's the monarchy or the new celebrity aristocrats, we should sharpen our guillotines.

Nick Grant: Arts Review: Film: The Sound of Young America (Paul Justman: "Standing in the Shadows of Motown")

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The Funk Brothers produced 'the sound of young America', the soundtrack to many millions of dates, parties and car journeys, the sonic inspiration to a multicoloured, post- Kennedy, pre-Vietnam world.

Dan Mayer: Arts Review: Film: Little Gain and Plenty of Pain (Jia Zhang-Ke: "Unknown Pleasures")

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'Unknown Pleasures' centres on two unemployed 19 year olds from Datong, Shanxi province. Datong's state-run factories are bankrupt, and their parents are also unemployed. Bin Bin (Zhao Wei Wei) roams the city on his motorbike, while Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong) lusts after one of the dancers on a promotion team for Mongolian King Liquor.

Muhammad Salleh: Arts Review: Film: Shining the Light on Racism (Ron Shelton: "Dark Blue")

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'Dark Blue', a film about the life of a Los Angeles police detective, is set during the days leading up to the infamous rioting that followed the Rodney King verdict. The film is based on a story by James Ellroy, author of LA Confidential, and reanimates many aspects of that celebrated film noir, this time amid the rage of the early 1990s.

Simon Basketter: Arts Review: Film: Spiralling Out of Control (Gregor Jordan: "Buffalo Soldiers")

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'Buffalo Soldiers' is a depiction of an out of control US military base in West Germany where the soldiers drive the tanks doped-up, and joined up to avoid prison – having been ordered to 'serve time or your country'. It is about bureaucracy, crime and the dehumanising nature of the military.

Stephen Philip: Arts Review: DVD: Picture Perfect (Orson Welles: "Citizen Kane")

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Bob Light: Arts Review: DVD: Not Just Historical Curiosity (Ken Loach: "Cathy Come Home")

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'Cathy Come Home' tells the almost impossibly moving story of a young couple, Cathy and Reg, who fall in love, get married, start a family and make plans. But the romance sours into tragedy when Reg loses his job and the couple become victims of what Sandford called 'the housing famine'. Steadily they descend into homelessness and the forcible break-up of their family. Anyone who is not moved by the final scene of Cathy Come Home really should consult a psychiatrist.

Andy Jones: Arts Review: Exhibition: In Praise of Famous Men ("Cruel and Tender", Tate Modern, London)

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'Cruel and Tender' focuses on photographers who take up the challenge of representing the complex relationships of modern life. The show takes as its point of reference two photographers of the interwar period, August Sander and Walker Evans.

Margot Bannerman + Alison Jones: Arts Review: Exhibition: The Language of Art ("Dreams and Conflicts, the Dictatorship of the Viewer", Venice Biennale)

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The 50th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale is an immense event which runs until the beginning of November. It consists of the work of hundreds of artists in exhibitions spread over 64 national pavilions, themed shows in the Arsenale and Museo Correr, and numerous additional exhibitions and events at venues around the city.

Tom Whittaker: Arts Review: Music: No Pipe Dream (The Unpeople: "The Unpeople")

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Music and politics are frequently fused. What is striking about the Unpeople is the sheer extent to which this is the case, their debut album marking a welcome return of agitprop – the open use of music as a medium for agitation and through which to deliver both a complex analysis and inspiring message.

Chanie Rosenberg: Books Review: Stand Up and Be Counted (Mark Steel: "Vive la Revolution: A Stand-Up History of the French Revolution")

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Mark Steel is a stand-up comic, and this book's title says it is a stand-up history of the French Revolution. It could indeed easily be transferred lock, stock and barrel to the stage, and the audience would enjoy themselves hugely, and get a good, thorough history of this great revolution to boot – from the sans-culottes' (or rank and filers') point of view.

Sam Ashman: Books Review: The Columnist's Manifesto (George Monbiot: "The Age of Consent")

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George Monbiot's new book is an interesting development from his bestselling Captive State, which attacked the 'corporate takeover' of Britain – the branding of every area of life by corporations and their infiltration of government. Now Monbiot, responding to debates within the movement, has put forward his own programme for political change. It is quite similar to Waldon Bello's ideas in that it advocates radical Keynesian measures to alter the distribution of world power.

Megan Trudell: Books Review: Of Mouse and Men (Walter Mosley: "Six Easy Pieces")

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It is 1964, and Easy Rawlins is working as a janitor at Sojourner Truth school in Los Angeles. When someone sets fire to his school, Mosley's enduring character begins to move back into the semi-criminal circles of his youth to find the culprit.

Keith Flett: Books Review: Saville's Rows (John Saville: "Memoirs From the Left")

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John Saville will be familiar to many readers of Socialist Review as one of the post-1945 generation who put British Marxist history on the map. His memoirs deal with this aspect of his life but it also shows him to be a lifelong political activist, first from his time at the LSE in the 1930s with the Communist Party and then, after 1956, as founding figure, along with EP Thompson, of the New Left. As an afterword to the book makes clear, Saville, now in his late eighties, remains politically active today.

Sue Jones: Books Review: Dams, Lives and State Terror (Arundhati Roy: "War Talk")

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'War Talk' is a collection of six short essays written by Roy between May 2002 and January 2003. Roy is based in Delhi and, while she writes against the background of threatened nuclear war with Pakistan and the rise of the fascism in India, the spectre looming large in the foreground is that of Bush, the imminent war with Iraq and the never-ending 'war on terror'.

John Newsinger: Books Review: Covert Powers (Thomas Powers: "Intelligence Wars")

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The CIA was and is a terrorist organisation, the most dangerous of modern times. It has overthrown governments, carried out assassinations, used torture and summary execution, practised bribery and corruption on a global scale and waged bloody covert wars. According to Thomas Powers, in his new collection of review articles, it is the US's unconscious.

Roger Smith: Books Review: The Laughter of Our Children (Tony Benn: "Free Radical")

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Tony Benn's latest book is a collection of essays from 2001-02 written for the Morning Star. There are several excellent pieces on Palestine, US foreign policy and privatisation which make this a worthwhile read. However, there is also the central conundrum with much of Benn's political trajectory – 'spending more time with my politics' since he left the House of Commons – that are difficult for revolutionary socialists, namely his insistence that the task of the left is to reclaim the Labour Party.

Muhammad Salleh: Books Review: The Lie of Benevolence (Mark Curtis: "Web of Deceit")

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Mark Curtis's brilliant and yet disturbing book Web of Deceit is an in-depth analysis of Britain's historical and contemporary role as a 'rogue state' – a violator of international law, a condoner of human rights abuses, and a key ally of many repressive regimes.

Hussain Ismail: Books Review: Street Life (Monica Ali: "Brick Lane")

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'Brick Lane' delves into one of London's most neglected and abandoned communities: the Tower Hamlets Bangladeshi community. In the current climate of anti-Muslim sentiment and the supposed civilisational superiority of western 'liberal' countries, Monica Ali gives a compassionate and sympathetic rendering of the life of this Muslim community through the principal character of Nazneen.

Michael Eaude: Books Review: No Sun-Lit Rooms (Javier Cercas: "Soldiers of Salamis")

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In January 1939, just before the end of the Spanish Civil War, 50 top-level prisoners, among them priests, fifth columnists and Falangists, are marched in the rain to a clearing in the forest near the French border and machine- gunned. In the chaos one of them escapes.

John Parrington: Books Review: Unnatural Selection (Anne Kerr and Tom Shakespeare: "Genetic Politics")

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Eugenics is the idea that it is possible, as well as desirable, to 'improve' the genetic make-up of the human race. Eugenics could mean encouraging people with 'good' genes to reproduce, or preventing those with 'undesirable' characteristics from doing so. Not that long ago it seemed such ideas had been discredited once and for all by the experience of Nazi Germany. But according to this stimulating and thought-provoking book, eugenics is being given a new lease of life by new scientific developments.

Rachel Aldred: Books Review: That was Then, This is Now (Peter Linebaugh: "The London Hanged")

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As governments step up internal repression under the guise of the 'war on terror', it is appropriate that Peter Linebaugh's The London Hanged has been reprinted. Hanging in 18th century London, like lethal injection in 21st century Texas, was never only punishment. State terror was and is an active part of a dynamic system of antagonistic social relations.

Martin Wicks: Letters: Getting the Balance Right

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Martin Smith ('Proud to be awkward', June SR) says that 'rebuilding grassroots networks' is the key to revitalising the unions.

Ged Peck: Letters: Getting the Balance Right

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The article about how prospective trade union leaders need to distance themselves from New Labour was informative, although not altogether surprising in today's political climate (The Walrus, June SR).

Paul Kingsnorth: Letters: Setting the Record Straight

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I wouldn't expect Chris Nineham to agree with my politics, but I would expect him to properly read and assimilate the books he reviews.

Nick Grant: Letters: Not a Force for Good ("Matrix Reloaded")

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I fear for the sanity of Joseph Choonara when he sees 'sheer beauty' in an 'extremely violent film' like Matrix Reloaded (June SR).

Tom Orsag: Letters: Invasion was Not an Option

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In his article on the Second World War (May SR), Chris Bambery makes the argument that Churchill's policy of defending the empire meant countries like Australia were 'exposed' to a 'Japanese attack'.

Paul Thatcher: Letters: The Domino Effect

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Graeme Kemp and Alan Woodward (letters, May SR) rightly want a society in which workers' councils represent the workers, not act as transmission belts for a party dictatorship.

Dave Renton: Letters: A Lesson from Up North (BNP)

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In response to Jim Wolfreys' article (June SR) there was one area where the BNP expected to make 'multiple gains' in this year's local elections and that was Sunderland.

Pat Stack: Stack on the back: Hit Them David One More Time (David Aaronovitch)

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David Aaronovitch spends much time attacking the left. So it's time we fought back.