Daily Archives: June 20, 2023

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June 20, 2023

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Reviews

Paine was fantastical

Ian Parker is an ardent admirer of a new book about Thomas Paine

Early this year I went to Thetford in Norfolk and stayed in the Thomas Paine Hotel which has recently, post-pandemic, put up a little exhibition about our hero. There is also a gold statue in the town of Paine holding a copy of his blazing reasoned defence of the French Revolution ‘Rights of Man’. The book in his hand on the statue is upside down, which has prompted comments online about how serious Paine was. He was deadly serious, and nearly dead as a result of his participation in that Revolution as a matter of fact.

Paine

Paine was part of the Enlightenment tradition that valued human ‘reason’ over religious mystification, and participated in not one but two world-shaping revolutions. First he travelled to the Americas and was a key player and writer in the formation, in 1776, of what become known, from a phrase that Paine himself coined in a pamphlet ‘United States of America’, a liberation struggle from British colonialism. It was there that Paine wrote the pamphlet ‘Common Sense’. Paine was admired by other leading figures in that revolution, some of whom let him down because of his too-radical politics when he was in a sticky situation soon after.

He then travelled to France and was an active participant in 1789 in the French Revolution, and was sent to the assembly as a representative for Calais. It was then that his Quaker principles that he carried with him were still evident, even though by that time he had broken from religion altogether. He objected to the Robespierre obsession with violence as a cleansing force of revolution, and Paine argued that Louis XVI should not be guillotined. As a result, Paine himself was locked up, and had a very lucky escape. He returned to the US.

Detractors

The Thomas Paine Hotel in Thetford sets out the story in rather a strange way in its ‘commemorative edition menu’, offering up an account that will be music to the ears of the US servicemen who come to stay at the hotel – his friendship with Benjamin Franklin and all that kind of stuff – and sidelining involvement in the French Revolution.

The account on the hotel’s menu says that ‘Paine was misled as to its true meaning’, and complains that ‘The controversy that Paine caused in his own day has resulted in this great champion of individual rights being branded as a prototype Communist’. I can tell you that a friendly conversation with the hotel’s owner came to a bad end over air conditioning, which they were installing for their US servicemen guests, and consequences for climate change.

Admirers

The record is set straight in a marvellous book by Manchester historian and cartoonist Paul Fitzgerald, aka ‘Polyp’ published last year, 2022, as PAINE: Being a Fantastical Visual Biography of the Vilified Enlightenment Hero by his Ardent Admirer ‘Polyp’. It would be underselling the book to say it is a ‘graphic novel’. With greatest respect to Rius, who gave us a useful illustrated introduction to Marx years ago, this is not just a pen and ink effort. The Polyp book is a beautifully illustrated and carefully researched compilation of direct quotes from Thomas Paine, which are marked in yellow text boxes, and quotes from friends and enemies.

You will be struck by the nastiness of some of the portrayals of Paine, with the yellow press whipping up mock executions, and a series of lurid tales about his devilish irreligious beliefs and lifestyle. The book does not shirk from some of his shortcomings, while also showing us what a great engineer this man was as well as active social reformer, revolutionist.

There is a lovely illustrated talk by Polyp on YouTube at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. Thanks to Chris for lending me his copy of the Polyp book. I’ll now buy my own, and more as presents, and recommend that you do too.

 

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Manchester, Reviews

Behind the scenes at the Jaffa Cake factory

Ian Parker was given some leaked BBC transcript

In April 2022 the BBC aired an episode of ‘Inside the Factory’ devoted to the production of Jaffa Cakes at the McVitie’s factory in Stockport. You can watch it on BBC iplayer. Gregg Wallace beams at production workers who told him how the factory makes 1.4 billion Jaffa Cakes a year, and footage shot in 2020 was also patched in about marmalade tasting in Cumbria and the picking and squeezing of oranges near sunny seaside Jaffa in Palestine (well, they call it Israel in the programme).

Production

Gregg marvels at the length of the Stockport factory conveyor belts and the amount of flour and chocolate and orange gloop that is dripped and dropped into place, and follows a batch from first mixing to late loading. This and that aspect of the production process is, Gregg declares over and again ‘Fantastic!’. And indeed it is incredible that automation, technological advances under capitalism, has reduced the amount of labour time necessary to come up with such a lovely sweet snack.

However, you will not be surprised to hear that there is another side of the story that Gregg does not talk about on air. Last year nearly a third of the jobs at the factory were under threat, with fears that the Stockport factory, which is the only production site of Jaffa Cakes along with many other biscuit lines, would go the way of other sites around the country. There was a protracted GMB strike in the Cumbria McVitie’s site last year, which was not mentioned in the programme, and in Aintree near Liverpool.

The Stockport factory workers were being defended, if that is the right word, by USDAW, who promised that they would engaged in ‘consultation’ to reduce the impact of redundancies, and local MP Navendu Mishra, Labour, once a Momentum star, appeared in a protest alongside Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.

I spoke to a worker on the production line who did get a chance to talk to Gregg Wallace for the programme, and he gave me the transcript of a scene that was, it was claimed, shot during the programme. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this, but spoke to the worker, who I will here call ‘Sohrab’ to protect his identity, and he gives something of the background of the clip of transcript.

Sohrab told me about his resentment that he is confined to other ‘biscuit’ lines, and not allowed access to the Jaffa Cake facilities. The discussion with Gregg started well, but included material that would not fit with the narrative that the ‘Inside the Factory’ team wanted. The transcript begins with Gregg asking for more detail about life in the factory.

Transcript

Wallace: “Sohrab, all this mixing and baking, it’s a real oven in here isn’t it mate, but lovely smells”.

Sohrab: “Er, yes, when I came to work here I did think I would get to know more about the secret of this tasty commodity.”

Wallace: “Tasty what mate?”

Sohrab: “A commodity is a mysterious thing, produced for sale and exchanged on the market.”

Wallace: “Blimey mate, that is fantastic!”

Sohrab: “But I must say that I was a bit disappointed to discover that I was actually working six hours a day for myself, for my wages, and then another two hours for Murat Ulker”

Wallace: “What, you’ve lost me there, you work for this guy, who is he”

Sohrab: “He owns this place, and I sell my labour power to him so that the two hours of my time that I work for him gives him his surplus value, which he can then realise as profit when the lorry goes out the factory gates and the biscuits are sold”

Wallace: “You’ve been scoffing too much of this lovely chocolate” [scowls and mutters to the producer that they should find someone else to talk to]

Sohrab: “Can we talk about the McVitie factory closures and redundancies here that will enable Murat Ulker to make even more profit?”

Profit

The transcript ends there, but Sohrab told me that McVities is not the cuddly little family firm conjured up in the logo, and neither is it the technological paradise depicted in ‘Inside the Factory’. In fact, it is owned by another company, Pladis, which in turn is owned by Yildiz Holding, which is in turn is owned by lucky Murat Ulker, who is currently the richest man in Turkey.

Sohrab is keen to unionise the workforce, and trying to find alternatives to USDAW, an outfit that, he claims, functions effectively like a company union, and while he told me he found the BBC programme ‘mesmerising’, he wanted it to go a little deeper into the production process. He wanted it to explore how the extraction of surplus value operates on a global scale, including colonial settler regimes like Israel in which you can already see, in the programme itself, imported labour from Asia being used to replace Palestinian workers. And, they still won’t let him inside the Jaffa Cakes production line, which, Sohrab says, really takes the biscuit.

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Manchester, Solidarity

Anti-Deportation activity in Manchester

Ian Parker reports from Saturday’s demonstration

Saturday 17 June saw a concerted effort by Red Roots Collective, a group of Iranian socialists in Manchester, to bring together a range of left and solidarity and support organisations for asylum-seekers and refugees to protest. The Manchester Anti-Deportation campaign now brings together an impressive range of organisations, but we need more, and now the task is to bring in ordinary members and members of different communities in Manchester, reaching out beyond the layer of activists that usually attend demonstrations of this kind.

Rally

At the rally at All Saints park on Oxford Road before the march there were speakers from Patients not Passports, a message from Kurdish comrades, and an intervention from a Greek comrade who spoke as follows:

“I am sure that many of you have already seen and read what happened in Greece and specifically in Pilos off the Greek coast, where a fishing boat with refugees drowned and 78 people lost their lives while more than 500 are missing. This is not the first time that people lose their lives while trying to cross the dead borders of Europe, while the Mediterranean Sea is constantly announced as one of the deadliest borders.

Only between January and March 2023, 441 migrants were found dead. In 2022, it was estimated that 2,062 migrants died while crossings the Mediterranean Sea. Since 2014 when the International Organization for Migration launched its missing migrant project, it is estimated that 27,000 people recorded as dead or disappeared while trying to cross the Mediterranean, a crossing that is very dangerous, far from safe, can take several days and it takes place in overloaded boats. 

And remember that given many sinkings are never recorded, the number is believed to be far higher. 

What happened in Pilos is not an accident; it is a crime! 

Yesterday, the survivors of Pylos revealed that the Greek coast guard tied up their boat, towed it, and then sank! 

EU and the Greek government can pretend to be shocked by this last incident. The Greek government has called for three days of national mourning. How pretentious this is a week before our national elections?! 

We know that this is the outcome of their deadly policies. 

EU policies reiterate the dangerous crossing from Turkey to Greece and other Italian costs. 

I say enough is enough. We need to demand: 

Open the Borders 

Safe passage for refugees 

Close the detention centers, hot spots, and camps in the deadly EU zones. 

Rights, Asylum, and Proper Accommodation for Everyone. 

Say it loud and say it here, refugees are welcome here!” 

March

The march made its way to Piccadilly Gardens (avoiding along the way a demonstration by Iranian Monarchists who were making their way down Oxford Road from the Central Library). The march was not large, and we have been told by comrades that many refugees and asylum-seekers in a vulnerable position do not find such demonstrations to be a safe space, not the best place for them to appear publicly.

The rally following the march heard testimonies from asylum seekers and from a new Stockport group supporting asylum seekers, from a Palestinian speaker from Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Manchester Palestine Action, and from a Red Roots Collective comrade who gave us a rousing version of “Revolution of Peoples”.

Statement

A statement was prepared by Red Roots Collective comrades and, in consultation with other groups in the Anti-Deportation Committee in Manchester, a joint statement was agreed and read out at the demonstration on Saturday that we now urge other groups involved to reproduce. Here it is:

“Join the Anti-Deportation Campaign!

Collective Statement of Organizations that are Supporting Anti-Deportation Campaign

Our earth is in great danger because of imperialist interventions, wars, coups, colonial projects and climate change. Some places are becoming uninhabitable. People cannot live under civil war, famine, and with no water. And it is self-evident for us, that those people who leave their homelands, desperately, in search for a place to live, have absolutely done nothing wrong to be blamed. It is the deadly fault of our governments.

The UK government is trying to conceal its crises, saying that it is not them but the immigrants and asylum seekers that are creating economic crisis. They say that flow of immigrants into Britain is destroying, what they call, “the Nation”. They are still trying to sell their myth that our country is the country of white, non-immigrant people. [And only this nation knows how to work and how to live and immigrants are corrupting the country, because they don’t know how to work and live.]

We don’t buy this non-sense! Our country has always been a multi-ethnic country! The wealth of our society has been created by all communities! Including Irish, Europeans, Africans, Caribbeans, Asians, and many others. Our working class is a multi-ethnic, vibrant working class. In spite of the picture painted by the politicians and media, UK government is under no pressure from asylum seekers and refugees. In comparison with other European countries, like Germany and Italy, the number of applications that UK has received is insignificant . UK is one of the wealthiest societies in the world. Not only refugees and asylum seekers, but all of us, who are suffering from cost-of-living crisis can live in better conditions. However, the owners of capital, are interested in their own profit-making projects at the expense of peoples’ dreams for a decent, normal life.

Blaming the immigrants and asylum seekers is another form of divide and rule that the racist government is using against us. The government tries hard to restrict the rights of immigrants and refugees to stay and work. These efforts include the Rwanda deportation plan, inhumane treatment of asylum seekers in detention centers, and cruel Illegal Migration Bill. They are trying to create an arbitrary rift amongst us! Between all of us who are angry about the cost-of-living crisis and searching for a solution, and those who are under the most inhumane pressures from the racist home office, struggling for basic human conditions of life: food, shelter, right to work, free access to healthcare and public transport.

Enough is Enough! We are not gullible creatures that can be divided and ruled! We fight for all the working class! Let us be the voice of the voiceless people, the asylum seekers, all the economically downtrodden. Let us build our communities and neighborhoods from below and, through solidarity and care, defend ourselves against the vicious attacks of the government on our everyday life. Let’s support immigrant communities and strengthen our society. It is us who work and create the wealth of our society. So, in the future, it is us who should control it.

Solidarity.”

Get involved: antideportationcommittee@gmail.com