The East Glasgow Question

Does Geoff Hoon (left) know what he is doing? A new matter arises following the fiasco of his letter to Keith Vaz - never mind his earlier role as Minister of Defence during the invasion of Iraq.



As explained here, why will Glasgow East be without an MP for over 10 weeks after its bye-election? It is now confirmed that the vote will take place on 24 July, following the issuing of the parliamentary writ (moved by Geoff Hoon as the Government Chief Whip) on 1st July and shown here from that day's Hansard -

"NEW WRIT
Ordered,

That the Speaker do issue his Warrant for the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough Constituency of Glasgow, East in the room of David Marshall, who since his election for the said Borough Constituency has accepted the Office of Steward or Bailiff of Her Majesty’s Manor of Northstead in the County of York .—[Mr. Hoon.]"

As Parliament goes into recess on 22 July which is two days before the Bye-election, the newly elected member for Glasgow East will not then be able to officially be sworn in as MP (and will be restrained as acting as such) until Parliament finally re-assembles on 6th October. Did Geoff Hoon know this when discussing the technicalities of the situation with David Marshall in the run up to the latter's resignation?

The way round this is for Harriet Harmen to make a Business Statement delaying the start of the recess for a week or so. If this would prove to be unpopular amongst MPs, then the alternative is to recall Parliament soon for a short session. Yet acting in such a way for no serious political purpose (outside of the needs of Glasgow East) could upset the Speaker and disrupt the normal summer-time programme of cleaning and re-building directed at stopping the building from dropping to bits.

I was always one of those who argued that Parliament should not have lengthy recesses, as it means that all MPs are placed at a disadvantage in being unable to use Parliamentary Procedures for the pursuit of their constituents interests. The cleaning and re-building argument was always used against this argument.

Perhaps the East Glasgow Question will came to shadow the West Lothian Question and help sort this nonsense out. But I doubt whether Geoff Hoon had this mind when he moved the writ. If David Marshall's resignation and the issuing of the writ had taken place a week earlier, then this would have resolved matters as the Bye-election could have taken place on 17 July, five days before Parliament goes into recess. Given David's reasons for resigning, he can't be blamed for the situation. But a Chief Whip is supposed to know what a Chief Whip is supposed to know.

Was Milosevic A Democrat?

In December 1992 I was one of the international observers at the Presidential Elections in Serbia, which Slobodan Milosevic (left) won against six other candidates. His main opponent was Milan Panic who received 32.1% of the votes to Milosevic's 53.2%. The turnout was only 64.1%, partly due to the fact that the bulk of the Albanian's in Kosovo abstained. If they had voted against Milosevic this would probably have led to a key run-off between Panic and Milosevic, with the latter having lost his aura of invincibility.

On 26 June, Neil Clark had an article published in the "Morning Star" in which he claimed that the system under Milosevic was a "vibrant multiparty democracy". This is, however, a wild exaggeration of the situation. The 1992 election had many pros and cons and could at the time have been viewed as a possible move towards democracy which was suffering from some major teething troubles. But once it confirmed Milosevic's authority, matters continued to deteriorate.

Yesterday, the "Morning Star" published a letter of mine in response to an article by Neil Clark. The letter appears below, using the newspaper's heading-

Yugoslavia was hardly a model democracy

Even if matters were not as blatantly undemocratic as is currently the case with Mugabe in Zimbabwe, it is still a wild exaggeration for Neil Clark (M Star June 26) to claim that "a vibrant multiparty democracy was in operation" in Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic.

Milosevic's practices included strict controls over state TV which was the dominant media outlet especially outside of urban centres, the use of the ethnic card to galvanise support in the face of a growing economic crisis and placing party officials into key roles in the electoral system to help influence outcomes.

As time went on, the democratic shortcomings in Yugoslavia could not just be dismissed as teething troubles.

It is revealing that Neil should stress that, after 2000, many members of the so-called Socialist Party of Serbia moved over to join the Serbian Radical Party with its neofascist ethnic stance.

This is hardly the response of a set of comrades who have been members of an organisation which Neil believes subscribed to democratic socialist values and practices.

Harry Barnes, Dronfield.

Iraq Today And Tomorrow

Here is an interesting and well research item on the way forward in Iraq taken from the other "Harry's Place". It also supplies valuable links to over 20 serious bloggers concerned about Iraq.

Crudely put his thesis is that action has to be directed to protecting and aiding the Iraqi public, whilst kicking terrorist activity up the bum and providing openings for those of its leaders who aren't brain dead to enter the political nation as the only feasible way of continuing to try and pursue their ends. It sounds familiar and could get us to a (perhaps unwritten) Baghdad or Basra equivalent of the Belfast Agreement. See, for instance, my "Iraq's Gerry Adams?" - i.e. Muqtada Al-Sadr (above).

The Struggle For Basic Rights In Iran

After 40 days over 3,000 workers at the Hafttapeh Sugar Cane Company in Iran (on the left) have suspended their strike for 15 days to see what the management will now deliver following promises that they will address the workers' demands. These include the need to pay wages, which are now three months overdue. For details of the dispute see here.

Then there is Mashad which is the second largest city in Iran and is a centre for protests against the Iranian regime's economic, financial and political corruption. Railway workers and students have led recent protests against the lack of basic rights. See this video and Azarmehr's coverage here and here. He provides much more on this key issue.

My Life As A Stalinist

MY UNCLE JOE

Charles Elwell died in January. He worked for MI5 prior to his retirement in 1979, but he continued his work against those he saw as being subversives. He came to edit "British Briefing" a clandestine document which ceased publication in 1990. This newsletter was printed by the anti-Communist Industrial Research and Information Service (IRIS). It claimed that copies were circulated to certain "political leaders, MPs, journalists and others", who were requested to treat it as confidential. It is said that "British Briefing" was funded to the tune of £270,000 over a three year period by Rupert Murdoch (see here and trawl down to the item entitled "The Campaign Against Labour").

I was first elected to parliament in 1987 and the above source states that in Charles Elwell's publication "Derbyshire MP Harry Barnes was labelled as 'quite a vigorous Stalinist underminer of British parliamentary democracy'." I operated my Constituency Office from our home and came to believe that over this period my phone was tapped, following a need to have it repaired after I dropped it on the floor. I always felt sorry for those who listened in as the case load must have sounded very boring.

I was in good company alongside other exposed "subversives" who included Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman as well as organisations such as Shelter and the World Council of Churches.

My letter written to the "Northern Echo" planted back in October, 1957 entitled "Russia, with its privileged class, isn't Socialist" in reply to the Secretary of the Durham Area Committee of the Communist Party, obviously didn't fool British Briefing. They knew an anti-Stalinist Stalinist when they saw one!

Odd Bye-election Arrangements

There is widespread speculation that upon the resignation of Labour's David Marshall (left) from his seat at Glasgow East for health reasons that the Bye-election will be held there on 24 July.

This would be an odd date on which to hold a Bye-election because Parliament is due to go into recess on 22 July. David's replacement would not then be able to be sworn in to the Commons as a new MP until the Commons' reassembles on 6 October. This would mean that the newly elected person could not be paid until he or she was sworn in, nor claim expenses for this period of 11 weeks or so. This would make it difficult for the newly elected person to pack up their old job, set up a local office and act officially on behalf of the Constituents of Glasgow Shettleston.

To get around these problems there would seem to be a need either to delay the Commons moving into recess, or to later recall the Commons for a brief spell to allow the newly elected member to take the oath. None of this is impossible and the former option could be done via the Leader of the House's Business Statement on Thursday. But it is just a bit odd. Perhaps the latter option of recalling the Commons, will depend upon who wins the seat!

Labouring On

My membership card tells me the "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party." So as Labour is not running a candidate in the coming Haltemprice and Howden Bye-election should my comrades not make the most of a bad job and vote for Christopher John Talbot who represents the Socialist Equality Party? This could not, of course, be a line pursued by Bennites for their guru is backing David Davis of the Tory Capitalist Class.

As Labour only obtained 3.07% of the votes in the Bye-election at Henley, then the Trotskyist Talbot might only need a few hundred votes in a low turnout to do better than that and thus claim a major break-through in moving the working class towards permanent revolution!

On the other hand, fellow Labourites at Haltemprice and Howden could always vote for the Greens who (unlike Labour) managed to keep ahead of the BNP in Henley.

The trouble is that none of this is remotely funny. I am part of campaigns at the moment in local elections for Labour, to join in efforts to stem the tide. There is no other option.

Ward's Words

As shown in his latest book "Hugh Bell School 1937 And Other Short Stories and Poems" Bert Ward (above) knows the importance of opening words.

Here are the leads into six of his stories-

"The steel bongie was driving me mad."

"I've been talking to the wall and it's been answering me."

"I first saw it at Argos. The rake, I mean."

"Elsie had got religion. Now that is not a bad thing in itself."

"I've been drinking Lepui"

"I was walking along the promenade at Redcar looking out at sea when I saw the boot."

In each case, the reader just then has to find out what follows.

From Sheffield To Singapore

I enjoy reading when travelling or in, say, a corner of a pub when I turn up early and I am waiting for family or friends. Bert's small book, totals 30 stories and poems. It turned out to be ideal for my habit, which included a bus journey into Sheffield when turning up early at a pub where the Fabians were holding a meeting.

Bert's own explicit politics only emerge fully on the surface in a stanza of one of his poems entitled "The Sailmaker" which is about the HMS Revenge where he undertook his war-time service. Yet it has a sad contemporary ring. It reads -

If you have tears
And those to spare
Shed them for those
Who in despair
Fall into the fascist snare
Of national this
And national that
The evil creed in classless hat
Preaches
"For the common good
Workers must think with their blood",
Then to shed it in great spate
When they have fully learned to hate
Each other.

His stories range widely, from fact to fiction and from humour to pathos. Often mixing together these characteristics. I will only mention one of these for fear of giving his plots away.

The essay which gives the book its title had a special appeal to me. It is about his classmates at a school in Middlesbrough before the 2nd World War. Four were subsequently killed in the conflict,including Bert's special friend John (Jackie) Anderson who is buried in the Kanji War Cemetery.

I have myself laid a wreath at the cemetery, which is in Singapore. This was in 2004 when I was part of a Parliamentary delegation. Having read Bert's book, I just wish that he have been with us.

The story he tells has a lifetime's experiences built into it. His schooldays when only 14 are seen through the prism of his own wartime experiences including the shocks of hearing about his former classmates' deaths and the maturity of experience which comes to someone of a questioning disposition. As Soren Kierkegaard (quoted in the legend at the top this blog) said - "Life can only be understood backwards; but must be lived forwards." Bert's work shows that he has come to understand a great deal which enables him to look back in a telling ways on his own earlier experiences. He also developed the skills to communicate these to us.

For "Hugh Bell School 1937 And Other Short Stories and Poems" by Bert Ward send £5.70 (covering package and postage) to GH Ward, 22 Westwood Ave., Linthorpe, Middlesbrough TS5 5PY.