Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

HAND OVER FIST PRESS 

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

The Magazine: volume 2 

Issues 10 to 17


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

The Magazine: volume 2 

Issues 10 to 17 

May 2016 - November 2016

This Volume’s 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Edit & Design: 

Alan Rutherford 

Published online by 

www.handoverfistpress.com 

Photographs, words and 

artwork sourced from ‘found 

in the scrapbook of life’, no 

intentional copyright 

infringement intended, 

credited whenever possible, 

so, for treading on any toes 

... apologies all round! 

Sheep ... 

from no. 10 

(May 2016) 

to no. 17 

(November 2016) 

1 

Articles to: 

alanrutherford1@mac.com 

May 2016 – November 2016

2 

Without contributors this project has 

failed to live up to its original ideal! 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : The Magazine, issues 10 to 17

ANOTHER 

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Blah-blahblah-blahde-blah- 

Hello, 

Welcome to a 20 months worth of Sheep, 

from magazine number 3 to 24, in 3 

volumes. This is volume 2 and contains 

issues 10 to 17 and covers a time period 

from May 2016 to November 2016. 

All articles and artwork contained in 

these flashes were supplied, or found in 

newspapers lining the bottom of the canary 

cage, and all were gratefully received 

and developed with love, enthusiasm and 

sympathy here at Hand Over Fist Press. 

3 

Nobody got paid. Perhaps that is the 

problem? Anyway, ‘Sheep in the Road’ will 

now appear sporadically! 

Without contributors this project is 

failing to live up to its original ideal! 

a luta continua! 

May 2016 – November 2016

20 months’ worth of the magazine (in 3 volumes), started in October 2015 

and continued until May 2017 – playful layouts, socialist politics, many 

borrowed (most times credited) pieces of interest, social commentary – coupled 

with some wonderful original pieces by contributors, twitchy and inventive 

artwork ... and probably not enough craziness to really reflect the editor’s 

surrealist pillow. 

Here is volume 2, issues 10 to 17, covering a period from 

May 2016 to November 2016, what a mad time! 

Alan Rutherford, editor.


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

The Magazine volume 2 

Issues 10 to 17

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

TEN 

MAYDAY

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER TEN

The 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 





Cover: Mayday: Dmitry Moor 

Photographs, words and artwork 

sourced from ‘found in the scrapbook 

of life’, no intentional copyright 

infringement intended, credited 

whenever possible, so, for treading 

on any toes ... 

apologies all round! 

Opening 03 

Dmitry Moor 04 

The Crime of War 11 

US Elections 21 

Chuggers 29 

Chaos 37 

Quarry Hill 41 

An American Tale 46 

Chinese ... 55 

1 

Photograph: Alan Rutherford 

Deadline for submitting articles 

to be included in the next issue, 

will be the 15th day of the 

next month, in your dreams! 

Articles and all correspondence to: 


Malick Sidibé 62 

Wall Painting 65 

Letters 69 

MAY DAY 2016

2 


OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Blah-blahblah-blahblah- 

Hello, 

Welcome to magazine number 10. 

A magazine produced freely to be read 

freely. Nobody got paid. 

May Day greetings! 

3 

Photograph: Alan Rutherford 

MAY DAY 2016

DMITRY- 

MOOR 

DMITRY MOOR 

BOLSHEVIK

Dmitry Stakhiyevich Moor (real surname was Orlov) was born 

on October 22 (on November 3), 1883 into the family of a mining 

engineer in Novocherkassk. In 1898 he moved with his parents to 

Moscow. 

5 

Dmitry Moor did not get systematic art education; in 1910 

he attended P.I. Kelin’s school studio. Originally he worked at 

Mamontov’s Printing House. From 1907 he had his caricatures 

published in print media, in particular in the liberal satirical 

magazine Budilnik. 

During his work in the Moscow magazine Budilnik the young artist 

took the pseudonym Moor, since Karl Moor – the main character 

of The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller – was akin to the creative 

temperament of the artist, so passionate and consecutive in his 

vehement aspirations for politically topical art that would extensively 

influence the viewers. 

MAY DAY 2016

The black-and-white ink drawing, which was often accentuated 

with sharp (usually red) colors, became his favourite technique. In 

his venomous satires Dmitry Moor conveyed the surrounding social 

disintegration and struggle against censorship: mini-comic book 

Humorist and Finger (that is Censorship finger), 1911; drawing 

the Russian Resorts – treatment by water and iron, – about Lensk 

execution, 1912. 

6 

His posters of the revolution and Civil war period turned to be 

milestones of the epoch. The modernist style with its flexible and 

strong-willed “power lines” reached the peak of propaganda heat, 

which was effective in directing public emotions (in fact the satire itself 

here became a part of repressive political censorship). Such was, for 

example, the image of an emaciated old peasant appealing for help 

(see opposite) in the poster Help! Stuck near church entrances, it 

was dramatically convincing people about the justice of taking church 

finances under the slogan “help those starving in the Volga Region”. 

An essential element of Moor’s creativity was antireligious satire as 

such (the drawings created while being the art director of the Atheist 

at the Machine magazine, 1923-1928; a series of illustrations to G. 

Heine’s poem Debate, 1929). He also contributed for the central 

Pravda newspaper and (1920), and the popular satirical Crocodile 

magazine (from 1922) and other periodicals, as well as created 

film posters. 


7 

MAY DAY 2016

In 1928-1932 he was a member of the October association. 

During the Great Patriotic War the artist drew posters revealing the 

cruelty of Nazi invaders. 

By the end of World War II Dmitry Moor created a cycle of epic 

illustrations (1944) to the Tale of Igor’s Campaign. They express the 

spirit of national romanticism in the “style of triumph”. 

From 1922 he was actively engaged in teaching - in the Higher Art 

and Technical Studios (aka VKhUTEMAS), Printing Institute and the 

Surikov Art Institute. 

Dmitry Moor died on October 24, 1946 in Moscow. His 

autobiographical report “I am a Bolshevik!” was posthumously 

published in 1967. 

9 

The artist’s works are displayed in the Tretyakov Gallery, and V. V. 

Mayakovsky Museum. 

Opposite: 

May Day 1920 

Dmitry Moor 

MAY DAY 2016

ook ExcERpt

THE CRIME OF WAR 

An excerpt – Wilfred Owen’s poem, Dulce et Decorum Est 

adapted by Jason Cobley, John Blake, Michael Brent and Greg Powell 

from The Graphic Canon, Volume 3, published by Seven Stories Press. 

11 

September 2013 | coldtype 21 

Wildred Owen fought in the field and in the 

trenches during World War I, and the poetry he 

wrote is widely regarded as the finest to have 

sprung from that maelstrom. 

MAY DAY 2016

THE POEM 

While recuperating from shell-shock (and from having his best friend blown 

to pieces right beside him, the young British poet turned-soldier began writing 

unflinching, unromantic verse about the realities of war. No visions of grand heroics 

here – just brutal reportage of young men sent into a slaughterhouse. (“I have 

suffered seventh hell,” he wrote to his mother.) After recovering for a year, during 

which he wrote most of his mature poems – including “Dulce et Decorum Est” and 

“Anthem For Doomed Youth” – Owen was sent back to the front. While taking part 

in an assault on German lines, he was killed exactly one week before the Armistice 

that ended the war. He was twenty-five. 

12 

Only five of his poems were published during his lifetime, the vast majority arriving 

posthumously, including “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” written in 1917 but not published 

until 1920. Collections of his poems (and several biographies and studies) remain 

in print to this day, testifying to the unfortunate timelessness of the subject of war’s 

horrors. 

Adapter Jason Cobley, artist John Blake, colourist Michael Brent, and letterer Greg 

Powell put forth a team effort to provide this gruesome adaptation of Owen’s 

unsparing account of watching a comrade die horribly from an asphyxiating gas 

(most likely chlorine, which forms hydrochloric acid when coming into contact with 

moisture in the lungs and eyes. 

Source: Hibberdi, Dominick. 

Wilfred Owen: A New Biography. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003 


ook ExcERpt 

13 

MAY DAY 2016

ook ExcERpt 

14 

22 coldtype | September 2013 


15 

MAY DAY 2016

ook ExcERpt 

16 


ook ExcERpt 


17 

MAY DAY 2016

18 

book ExcERpt 

26 coldtype | September 2013 


19 


MAY DAY 2016

DMITRY 

Eugene Debs speaking to trade unionists as a socialist candidate in 1912 (Pic: Socialist Worker archive) 

20 

EUGENE DEBS 

BOLSHEVIK 


US ELECTIONS: 

BEFORE BERNIE SANDERS 

CAME EUGENE DEBS 

Bernie Sanders is not the first person to define themselves as a 

socialist and make a big electoral impact in the US. 

Charlie Kimber looks at Eugene Debs and Upton Sinclair 

Eugene Debs, was jailed twice – once for leading a strike, once for speaking 

out against imperialist war. He was the most successful socialist to stand for 

US president, winning 6 percent of the national vote in 1912 and nearly a 

million votes in 1920 when he was in prison. 

21 

Debs was a revolutionary who used elections to develop a political movement 

based on the struggles of working people. After the 1917 Russian Revolution 

he declared, “From the top of my head to the soles of my shoes, I am a 

Bolshevik.” 

Born in 1855 to migrant parents, he left school at 14 and worked on the railways. He 

was active in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen union and became an 

official. In 1885 he was elected to the Indiana state assembly as a Democrat. Debs’ 

experience in 1888 of a bitter strike broken by scabbing and repression convinced 

him of the need for a union that reached out to “unskilled” workers. 

MAY DAY 2016

22 

In 1893 he founded the American 

Railway Union that was soon involved 

in the great Pullman strike against the 

company that operated most of the 

country’s railroads. It soon became the 

biggest strike in US history at the time. 

The bosses used hired gunmen to 

intimidate strikers (13 were shot dead) 

and the government won an injunction 

to halt the strike. Debs was convicted of 

defying the injunction and jailed for six 

months. While inside he avidly consumed 

socialist literature, including Karl Marx’s 

Capital. Debs said Capital “set the wires 

humming in my system”. 

He emerged from prison at the age of 

40 as a revolutionary, and had broken 

forever from the Democrats. He helped to 

bring together groups of socialists and in 

1900 ran for president, gaining less than 

1 percent of the vote. 

He didn’t believe that elections would 

bring socialism, and later denounced 

the “sewer socialists” who compromised 

to win local office and bring in minor 

reforms. He was also suspicious of 

leaders, saying, “I do not want you to 

follow me or anyone else. If you are 

looking for a Moses to lead you out of 

this capitalist wilderness, you will stay 

right where you are. 

“I would not lead you into the promised 

land if I could, because if I led you in, 

someone else would lead you out.” 

His vision was that, “When I rise it will be 

with the ranks, and not from the ranks.” 

Debs spent most of his time organising 

and supporting struggle. He was one of 

the instigators of the militant Industrial 

Workers of the World (IWW) union. 

But he did think elections, and political 

struggle more generally, could boost the 

battles in workplaces and localities. 

Against those who wanted to just build 

unions, Debs argued, “Some say politics 

means destruction to labour organisation 

but the reverse is the fact.” 

Debs refused to make concessions to 

racism in order to win votes. He said, 

“The man who seeks to arouse prejudice 

among workingmen is not their friend. 

He who advises the white wage worker to 

look down upon the black wage-worker 

is the enemy of both.” He would not 

speak to segregated audiences. 


He ran again in 1904 (gaining 3 percent 

of the vote) and 1908 (3 percent again). 

Then came a great upsurge in struggle as 

major strikes swept the US from 1909 to 

1913. The IWW led local general strikes 

in Lawrence and Patterson. 

Debs’ 1912 campaign was part of this 

movement. He campaigned across the 

country, drawing in huge crowds who 

would gladly listen to him speak for two 

hours. He won 6 percent of the vote, the 

highest figure ever for a socialist. 

His Socialist Party of America (SPA) had 

real roots. US labour historian Melvyn 

Dubofsky writes, “By 1914 the party had 

elected two members of Congress, and 

counted a membership of over 100,000. 

At various times between 1910 and 

1916 the SPA controlled municipal 

governments in Schenectady, New York; 

Reading, Pennsylvania; Milwaukee, 

Wisconsin; Dayton and Toledo, Ohio; 

Granite City, Illinois; Butte, Montana; 

Berkeley, California, and numerous other 

cities.” 

As in every other part of the world, the 

First World War divided socialists. Debs 

was utterly against the slaughter and 

agitated against it. In 1918 he made 

a speech against the call-up for the 

military and was arrested on ten counts of 

sedition. He was sentenced to ten years in 

jail. 

After conviction he spoke from the 

dock. “I am opposing a social order 

in which it is possible for one man 

who does absolutely nothing that is 

useful to amass a fortune of hundreds 

of millions of dollars, while millions 

of men and women who work all the 

days of their lives secure barely enough 

for a wretched existence. Years ago I 

recognised my kinship with all living 

beings, and I made up my mind that I 

was not one bit better than the meanest 

on earth. I said then, and I say now, that 

while there is a lower class, I am in it, 

and while there is a criminal element, 

I am of it, and while there is a soul in 

prison, I am not free.” 

From prison he secured nearly a 

million votes in the 1920 election, an 

extraordinary tribute to his popularity. But 

prison broke his health and he died in 

1926. 

23 

MAY DAY 2016

24 

The challenge again is to build a 

movement and a party that are separate 

from what Debs denounced as “the 

Republican-Democratic party” which 

represents the capitalist class in the class 

struggle. As Debs said, “They are the 

political wings of the capitalist system and 

such differences as arise between them 

relate to spoils and not to principles.” 

How Upton Sinclair connected with a 

radicalising US in 1934 

Upton Sinclair was already a famous 

socialist writer when he ran to be 

California governor in 1934. 

His novel, The Jungle, exposed the 

appalling and dangerous conditions in the 

Chicago meat industry. Later books tore 

into Wall Street financiers, the oil industry 

and the idle rich. 

He supported Debs’ Socialist Party for a 

while and was hurled further into activity 

by the mass unemployment of the 1930s 

depression. 

“To me the remedy was obvious,” he 

wrote. “The factories were idle and the 

workers had no money. Let them be put 

to work on the state’s credit and produce 

goods for their own use, and set up a 

system of exchange by which the goods 

could be distributed.” 

Sinclair had run for governor of California 

as a socialist, and won small votes. His 

friends convinced him to run again – as a 

Democrat. He launched the End Poverty 

in California (EPIC) plan. It called on the 

state to put unemployed people to work in 

co-operatives dedicated to “production for 

use, not for profit”. 

It was not an openly socialist campaign 

but it was rooted in wide scale 

mobilisation and threatened to encroach 

on the wealth of the elite. 

The year 1934 saw three great strikes in 

Minneapolis, San Francisco and Toledo 

which electrified the working class. The 

US was radicalising. The establishment 

was terrified that someone who at least 

partially reflected the gathering anticapitalist 

fury could be elected. But 

Sinclair’s most dangerous opponents were 

the Democratic establishment. Fearful of 

being labelled as “reds”, they turned on 

him. Some did a deal with his opponent 

and some funded a liberal Progressive 

party to channel votes away from Sinclair. 


Women garment workers on strike in New York in 1910 

25 

Despite all this Sinclair nearly won, 

gaining 37 percent of the vote. Reeling 

from the attacks on him, Sinclair learned 

the wrong lessons. “The American people 

will take socialism, but they won’t take 

the label. Our enemies have succeeded 

in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use 

attacking it by a front attack, it is much 

better to out-flank them.” 

In fact his campaign had shown the 

support for radical ideas, but that the 

Democratic party was a dead-end. 

Read more 

• Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs. 

Available from Bookmarks 

www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk 

Article from Socialist Worker 

MAY DAY 2016

26 

In collaboration with José Parlá, Leda Antonia Machado, Havana, Cuba, 2012 

Photograph & Artwork: JR 


27 

MAY DAY 2016

4 September 2011 

28 

‘I could see he was trying to hide,’ explained Geoff. ‘As soon as I made eye 

contact he looked around wildly before pretending to be on the phone.’ 

Geoff then used the tactic of pretending to be approaching someone 

else, and switched to the fallen dictator at the last second. ‘Despite all 

the atrocities committed by his regime, not even Colonel Gaddafi could 

be so rude as to completely ignore me’ reported Geoff. ‘And the script 

is carefully scripted to keep you talking even if you are really keen to get 

away as he seemed to be.’ Gaddafi tried the classic move of offering a 

one-off donation, but this was rebutted by Geoff who explained that he 

wasn’t allowed to take cash. Before Gaddafi could escape he was signing 

up for monthly payments, which immediately alerted rebel security forces. 

Gaddafi had successfully evaded the Libyan rebels, as well as the air 

attacks of NATO forces, but it turned out that trying to avoid a charity 

canvasser with a clipboard was too much to expect. 


ARSEHOLES 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

The secret life 

of a CHUGGER 

is motivated by 

MONEY 

not charity 

Anonymous 

Fundraising is no different from sales, and 

the financial rewards can be huge. No 

wonder there’s a tacit acceptance of bad 

practice if we sign up enough donors 

I work for an organisation that specialises in 

running door-to-door fundraising campaigns 

on behalf of a number of major charities. 

My job is to sign up members of the public 

to a regular donation, less than the price 

of a cup of coffee each week, that could go 

towards finding a cure for cancer, stopping 

child abuse, or providing clean water for 

developing countries. 

That’s right. I’m a “chugger”, and I’m 

despicable. I’m the one who comes round 

late at night and wakes up the baby. I leave 

the gate open and let the dog out. I’m pushy, 

deceitful and I won’t leave you alone. 

I defended chuggers, until one turned up on 

my doorstep 

29 

MAY DAY 2016

30 

Fundraising has been widely criticised since 

the death of Olive Cooke, who was hounded 

by charities. Yet despite the moral backlash, 

people on the doorstep are broadly 

sympathetic. On the rare occasion that I’m 

greeted with hostility or verbal abuse, I try 

not to take it personally. You don’t know 

what’s going on behind that person’s door. 

On the whole, the people I meet are friendly. 

Sometimes a bit too friendly. Over the years, 

I’ve had hot meals, been given books and 

had all the Jaffa Cakes I can eat. I was even 

flashed at once and – more than a few times 

– propositioned. 

The interesting thing about my job is being 

allowed, however briefly, into people’s lives. 

For a moment, I’m a friend and confidante. 

I spoke to a lady recently who was in the 

middle of recovering from an operation on 

her stomach. She came to the door holding 

a carrier bag with a tube that disappeared 

up her jumper. Before I knew what was 

happening, she lifted it up and showed me 

her stomach which was being held in by a 

plastic sheet. She was scared of visiting her 

friends, she said, because she leaked and she 

had to sit on a plastic bag wherever she went. 

What’s more, the financial rewards are there 

to be had. I have known fundraisers to make 

£1,500 a week in bonuses. It’s obscene. But 

to put it in perspective, they will have raised 

over £15,000 that week (projected over three 

years, which is the average amount of time 

someone donates). This is one of the most 

effective ways there is for charities to raise 

the money they need. 

However, the job isn’t always easy, and 

the £7 hourly basic is scarcely enough to 

live on if I’m not earning any bonuses, 

especially when I get paid for only five hours 

of what can be a nine- or 10-hour day. 

The problem is being able to impress your 

positivity on people in a job that naturally 

elicits rejection. Essentially, fundraising is 

no different from sales. It’s all about being 

able to build relationships – people sign 

up not because they like the charity, but 

because they like you. Most fundraising 

organisations outwardly disassociate 

themselves from sales strategies, but they 

operate in the same way as any company 

selling something. The business model relies 

on acquiring a specific quantity of donors 

on behalf of the client, and so fundraising 

is necessarily results-focused. And in most 

cases, fundraisers are not motivated by the 

cause, but by their commission. The main 

reason I continue fundraising is because of 

the earning potential. These underlying truths 

often undermine the ethical integrity of the 

clients, the fundraising companies and the 

fundraisers themselves. 


I’ve seen aggressive and deceitful fundraisers 

at work. I’ve heard every gimmick; it’s OK 

to cancel after the first month; this won’t 

start for six to eight weeks; this is a one-off 

donation; all your donations go to people 

in the local area. However, fundraising isn’t 

intrinsically aggressive, just as the majority 

of fundraisers aren’t intrinsically deceitful 

people. There are ways to get people excited 

about supporting a cause without deceit. 

Unfortunately, we sometimes get lazy, or 

desperate, and I understand how easy it is, 

in those circumstances, to cross the moral 

boundary. We are constantly presented with 

moral dilemmas. Can this person afford it? 

Does this person understand what they are 

signing up to? It’s easy to make the wrong call 

or be forceful, especially when we’re having a 

bad day. It’s a thin ethical line we tread. 

So what are the consequences for deviating 

from codes of best practice? It all depends 

on the values of the fundraiser. There is 

an underlying sense that, if my number of 

sign-ups is high enough, bad practice will 

be overlooked, not only by the fundraising 

bosses, but also by the charities themselves. 

This tacit acceptance only reinforces a culture 

of unethical fundraising. 

As for oversaturation, a lady recently 

remarked: “We have people knocking two or 

three times a week! Is it because we live on a 

council estate?” It is universally acknowledged 

that there are areas which are better to work 

in than others. It seems counterintuitive to 

mine the poorest for donations, but it is from 

the most deprived communities that we see 

the best response. Fundraisers rub their hands 

when they see a council estate. They don’t see 

scarcity. They see sign-ups. 

We are constantly presented with moral 

dilemmas. Can this person afford it? Do they 

understand what they're agreeing to? 

People here tend to be easier to talk to and 

act with readier impulse. And so we go back 

to the same areas over and over again. We 

even avoid more affluent districts, where 

people don’t mind giving but hate being 

approached and the responses are, if not 

hostile, condescending. Here, we’re never far 

off being reported to the police (these areas 

aren’t used to seeing fundraisers), which is 

time-consuming if we’re stopped and sends 

the wrong impression to the neighbours. 

City centre apartments are the only exception 

to that rule. They’re filled with impressionable 

twenty-somethings with plenty of disposable 

income. But knocking apartments is a risky 

strategy. It’s a race against time before I’m 

forcibly removed by the concierge. 

31 

MAY DAY 2016

There are other occupational hazards 

which are more tangible, like sub-zero 

temperatures, heatwaves, persistent rain, 

blistered feet and hungry dogs. I may not 

always be welcome and I have to make 

questionable judgments when the pressure 

is on, but there’s a shred of vindication I can 

cherish in moments of crisis – it’s all for a 

good cause (my arse!). 

Excuse me mate, 

can you spare a minute 

or two to help save an 

austere government from 

ever having to 

care? 

32 

Although I do admire 

the efforts of some 

individuals who step in to help 

others ... thats a human response! 

I am most offended by the 

greedy nature of corporate 

CHARITIES 

Tap-tap 

tappety-tap 


I think the State in any civilised society should 

be for a provision to the whole population, so that 

all are nurtured, supported and cared for, however 

a capitalist state shrinks from this obligation. 

It fails miserably by negating its responsibility 

for those it sees as lame ducks, leaving it to 

opportunist ‘charities’ to squabble over this 

provision. This leaves us with ‘charities’ taking on 

the role of the State, where truly natural human 

instincts, that is, caring and sharing, has hardpressed 

working people duplicitously exploited 

into ‘donating’ away chunks of their earnings 

because they do care passionately about the plight 

of those less fortunate than themselves ... while 

the comfortably wealthy are allowed to sit on 

their hands, the fuckers! 

33 

MAY DAY 2016

34 

Broken Promises, 1980, South Bronx, New York 

Artwork: John Fekner 


35 

MAY DAY 2016

WHAT IF? 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

CHAOS 

THEORY 

Chaos theory is an area of mathematics 

that studies how small differences in initial 

conditions within comples dynamic systems 

can result in widely different outcomes. 

Chaos theory has been applied to systems 

in a ranges of fields, including meteorology, 

biology and physics. Although such systems 

are deterministic, with no random elements, 

the apparently chaotic way that they behave 

makes prediction very difficult. 

An early pioneer of chaos theory was the 

American mathematician and meteorologist 

Edward Lorenz. In 1961 Lorenz was using 

a computer model to predict the weather. 

He started inputting data relating to such 

interdependent variables as temperature, 

humidity, air pressure and the strength and 

direction of the wind. The first time he ran 

the programme, he typed in a figure of 

.506127 for one of the variables. Then, 

when he ran the programme again, he took 

a short cut, typing in the rounded down 

figure of .506. The weather scenario that 

resulted the second time was completely 

different from the first. The tiny disparity of 

.000127 had had a huge effect. 

37 

MAY DAY 2016

In 1963 one of Lorenz’s colleagues 

remarked that if he was right, ‘one flap of 

a seagull’s wings would be enough to alter 

the weather forever’. In 1972, in the title of 

a paper, Lorenz asked ‘Does the flap of a 

butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado 

in Texas?’ Thus chaos theory found its 

popular name: the butterfly effect. Of 

course, the flap of a single butterfly’s wings 

does not cause the tornado on its own – 

numerous other factors play their part. 

But that one flap can be (to change the 

metaphor) the straw that breaks the camel’s 

back. 

Chaos theory can also usefully explain 

mood, effect and actions in societies, 

possibly even one day correctly predicting 

revolutinary situations. So far any 

investigation in this area seems only to 

provide cause/effect reasons for change 

in hindsight, however already history is 

able to suggest favourable conditions for 

positive or negative change, and once 

crucial variables are properly identified, 

who knows? 

In the meantime ... the struggle 

continues! 

38 

Despite its name, chaos theory is rigorously 

mathematical and has helped to elucidate 

the hidden order that underlies a host of 

apparently random systems – from the 

factors precipitating epileptic fits to the 

air turbulence that causes drag in moving 

vehicles, and from fluctuations in wild 

animal populations to the flow of traffic on 

congested city streets. 


40 


SOCIAL 

EXPERIMENT 

IN LEEDS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

QUARRY 

HILL FLATS 

Leeds was infamous for the squalor of 

it’s slum housing after World War1. 

The insincerity of Homes Fit For Heroes 

from local Tory politicians led the Rev 

Charles Jenkinson, a friend of the ‘Red 

Vicar’ Conrad Noel, to stand as a labour 

candidate and produce a paper on slum 

clearance. 

Things began to change when Jenkinson, 

the Vicar of Holbeck, was elected as a 

labour member of the council in 1930. 

He became chairman of the Housing 

Committee in 1933, and by 1935, 14,000 

slum dwellings had been demolished, and 

by 1937 over 15,000 council houses had 

been built, and there were 24 new council 

estates. 

41 

Photograph: Peter Mitchell 

Jenkinson introduced a new differential 

system of paying rents. Tenants with 

sufficient income paid the full rate. Those 

who could not afford to pay were given rent 

MAY DAY 2016

42 

relief; some paid nothing. Over 34,000 

people were re-housed between 1933 and 

1940. ‘Garden suburbs’ were created on 

the outskirts of the town. These were lowdensity 

housing estates, where each house 

had a garden with hedges and one tree. 

The first one was built at Gipton in 1934, 

followed by Seacroft, Sandford, Halton 

Moor, and Belle Isle. Jenkinson was keen 

that houses should match the individual 

needs of the tenants. Each estate had a 

mixture of 2, 3 4 and 5 bedroom houses, 

flats for the elderly and ‘sunshine houses’ 

for those with special medical needs. 

The means test brought in by Labour in 

1934 ruthlessly exposed the pressures 

on the council tenants. It tore apart 

their pretence at a shared sense of 

identity and class. Their resistance in the 

1934 Leeds rent strike can be seen as 

a last ditch attempt to create a shared 

class consciousness among a rapidly 

disintegrating working class. 

Despite the improvement in housing and 

living conditions, the residents of the new 

estates missed the close-knit communities 

of the slums. They missed being near the 

pubs, clubs, cinemas, and shops of the 

city centre, and resented having to pay for 

transport to their place of work 

To bring working class housing back to 

the city centre the Housing Department 

built Quarry Hill Flats. Quarry Hill Flats 

were perceived to be one answer and 

the Director of Housing R A Livett and C 

Jenkinson visited France and Vienna to 

inspect workers flats including the massive 

Karl Marx Hof a massive block of flats 

in Vienna. These flats contained facilities 

for tenants, such as laundries, shops, 

kindergartens, courtyards, playgrounds 

and gardens. 

Another delegation including Livett was 

sent to look at an estate in Drancy in 

France to look at a revolutionary new 

construction technique designed by Eugene 

Mopin, who was commissioned to come 

up with a plan for a structural design for 

Quarry Hill flats. The technique comprised 

of a steel frame encased in pre-cast 

concrete units and were then filled with 

concrete. All this was to be made at the 

Quarry Hill site in a purpose built factory. 

Originally the plan was to have eight 

hundred dwellings, but the flats were 

increased in height and the dwellings to 

nine hundred and thirty eight consisting 

of between one and five bedrooms. The 

original design included a community 

hall able to accommodate five hundred 

and twenty people and included a stage. 


Other inclusions were to have been two 

swimming pools, one indoors and one 

outdoors and also a wading pool. There 

were to have been playgrounds and lawns. 

The original plan was changed slightly 

and the pools were replaced by a bowling 

green and tennis courts, but never built. 

There was of course a communal laundry 

including driers. 

Waste disposal also had to be considered 

and after Livett had visited France it was 

decided to employ the ‘Garchey’ system 

of disposal. The waste was stored in a 

receptacle under the kitchen sink and 

when there was a convenient amount it 

was flushed with the water from the sink 

and into the waste stack and then onto 

a central processing plant where it was 

dried and then burnt in an incinerator. The 

idea was to use this to heat the swimming 

pools but this was never put in place. 

The system also had its negative side, 

there was fracturing in the stacks and this 

caused bad smells and also difficulty in 

cleaning problems under sinks. However, 

on a positive note, the Karl Marx Hof flats 

in Vienna did not have lifts, but Quarry 

Hill flats would have eighty-eight lifts each 

capable of carrying two passengers and 

obviously an improvement on Vienna’s 

flats. 

At last, in 1938 people started to move 

into the flats. Life was so different and 

better now for those who had been living 

in unsanitary and unacceptable conditions. 

These brand new homes had the benefit of 

spacious living with areas for the children 

to play in. Other benefits were shops, and 

also nearby was ‘Tommy’ Tomasso’s shop. 

People might also remember Emmet’s fish 

and chip shop too. 

There was a heavy blow about to be 

announced to the tenants in the 1970s. It 

was discovered that the steel frame within 

the flats was decaying and the decision was 

made to demolish them. This happened 

in 1978 despite campaigns from tenants 

for them to be renovated, but due to social 

problems and poor maintenance, the 

Quarry Hill Flats were demolished in 1978. 

A book by the photographer Peter Mitchell 

captures the demolition of this great social 

experiment, and by inclusion also tells the 

story of the Quarry Hill Flats development, 

the book is available from RRB Publishing, 

which is a division of RRB Photobooks Ltd. 

Bristol, UK 

www.rrbphotobooks.com 

www.rrbpublishing.com 

43 

MAY DAY 2016

‘What is so interesting about this book is that it catches the pathos, 

almost tragedy, of a failed or crumbled utopian vision’. 

Preface by Bernard Crick 

44 

Quarry Hill Flats was a large housing estate, built on continental lines and 

peculiar to Leeds. The largest and most modern of their kind in Europe, 

housing around 3,000 people, the Flats were constructed during the 1930s 

as part of a ‘great social experiment’ to accommodate an entire urban 

community. But soon the daring vision for the future began to crumble – 

literally – and by the 1950s the Flats were infamous. During the 1970s 

the decision was made to demolish the ‘stone jungle’, and Peter Mitchell 

arrived in Leeds in time to record the passing of this great estate. 

This is not merely a record of demolition but a tribute to the power of 

photography, to those who engineered and built the Flats, to the people 

who lived and died in the Flats and to the city of Leeds itself. Using 

archive material – much of it private and unpublished – Memento Mori 

details the ideas behind the Flats, their construction, and their eventual 

demise. Why did it fall? Was it some flaw in the grand design, or a 

combination of factors? And what did the inhabitants themselves actually 

feel about their surroundings? Memento Mori offers answers to some of 

these questions, but poses many more. Peter Mitchell says: 

‘I photograph dying buildings and Quarry Hill was terminal by the time I 

got to it. Times change and I know there was no point in keeping Quarry 

Hill Flats. But what it stood for might have been worth remembering’. 

MEMENTO MORI 

first published 1990 

new edition by RRB Publishers, May 2016 


MEMENTO MORI P e t e r M i t c h e l l 

MEMENTO MORI 

THE FLATS AT QUARRY HILL, LEEDS 

RRB 

P e t e r M i t c h e l l

46 

IRONICALLY 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

A TRULY 

AMERICAN 

TALE 

The Brief Origins 

of May Day 

Edited from 

article by Eric Chase 

Most people living in the United States know 

little about the International Workers’ Day 

of May Day. In other countries there is an 

assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in 

state communist countries like Cuba or the 

former Soviet Union. Most Americans don’t 

realize that May Day has its origins there 

and that it is as “American” as baseball and 

apple pie, and stemmed from the pre- 

Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration 

of rebirth and fertility. 

In the late nineteenth century, in industrial 

nations the working class was in constant 

struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. 

Working conditions were severe and it was 

quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days 

in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were 

commonplace at many work places and 

inspired such books as Upton Sinclair’s The 

Jungle and Jack London’s The Iron Heel. 

As early as the 1860’s, working people 

agitated to shorten the workday without a 

cut in pay, but it wasn’t until the late 1880’s 

that organized labour was able to garner 

enough strength to declare the 8-hour 

workday. This proclamation was without 

consent of employers, yet demanded by 

many of the working class. 


47 

MAY DAY 2016

48 

At this time, socialism was a new and 

attractive idea to working people, many 

of whom were drawn to its ideology of 

working class control over the production 

and distribution of all goods and 

services. Workers had seen first-hand that 

Capitalism benefited only their bosses, 

trading workers’ lives for profit. Thousands 

of men, women and children were dying 

needlessly every year in the workplace, 

with life expectancy as low as their early 

twenties in some industries, and little hope 

but death of rising out of their destitution. 

Socialism offered another option. 

A variety of socialist organizations sprung 

up throughout the later half of the 19th 

century and, in the USA, both anarchist 

and socialist ideas flourished with 

organised labour ... but it is inaccurate 

to say that labour unions were “taken 

over” by anarchists and socialists, rather 

anarchists and socialist made up the 

labour unions. 

In the USA, at its national convention in 

Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation 

of Organized Trades and Labor Unions 

(which later became the American 

Federation of Labor), proclaimed that 

“eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s 

labor from and after 1 May 1886.” 

An estimated quarter million workers in the 

Chicago area became directly involved in 

the crusade to implement the eight hour 

work day, including the Trades and Labor 

Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and 

local Knights of Labor. There grew a sense 

of a greater social revolution beyond the 

more immediate gains of shortened hours, 

but a drastic change in the economic 

structure of capitalism. 

In a proclamation printed just before 1 May 

1886, one publisher appealed to working 

people with this plea: 

Workingmen to Arms! 

War to the Palace, 

Peace to the Cottage, 

and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS. 

The wage system is the only 

cause of the World’s misery. It is 

supported by the rich classes, and to 

destroy it, they must be either made 

to work or DIE. 

One pound of DYNAMITE is better 

than a bushel of BALLOTS! 

MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT 

HOURS with weapons in your hands 

to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, 

police, and militia in proper manner. 


Not surprisingly the entire city was prepared 

for mass bloodshed, reminiscent of the 

railroad strike a decade earlier when police 

and soldiers gunned down hundreds of 

striking workers. On 1 May 1886, more 

than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses 

across the United States walked off their 

jobs in the first May Day celebration in 

history. In Chicago, the epicenter for the 

8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on 

strike with the anarchists in the forefront of 

the public’s eye. With their fiery speeches 

and revolutionary ideology of direct 

action, anarchists and anarchism became 

respected and embraced by the working 

people and despised by the capitalists. 

The names of many – Albert Parsons, 

Johann Most, August Spies and Louis Lingg 

– became household words in Chicago and 

throughout the country. Parades, bands and 

tens of thousands of demonstrators in the 

streets exemplified the workers’ strength 

and unity, yet didn’t become violent as the 

newspapers and authorities predicted. 

More and more workers continued to walk 

off their jobs until the numbers swelled to 

nearly 100,000, yet peace prevailed. It was 

not until two days later, on 3 May 1886, 

that violence broke out at the McCormick 

Reaper Works between police and strikers. 

For six months, armed Pinkerton agents 

and the police harassed and beat lockedout 

steelworkers as they picketed. Most of 

these workers belonged to the “anarchistdominated” 

Metal Workers’ Union. During 

a speech near the McCormick plant, some 

two hundred demonstrators joined the 

steelworkers on the picket line. Beatings with 

police clubs escalated into rock throwing by 

the strikers which the police responded to 

with gunfire. At least two strikers were killed 

and an unknown number were wounded. 

Full of rage, a public meeting was called 

by some of the anarchists for the following 

day in Haymarket Square to discuss the 

police brutality. Due to bad weather and 

short notice, only about 3,000 of the tens 

of thousands of people showed up from the 

day before. This affair included families with 

children and the mayor of Chicago himself. 

Later, the mayor would testify that the 

crowd remained calm and orderly and that 

speaker August Spies made “no suggestion 

... for immediate use of force or violence 

toward any person ...” 

As the speech wound down, two detectives 

rushed to the main body of police, reporting 

that a speaker was using inflammatory 

language, inciting the police to march on 

the speakers’ wagon. As the police began 

to disperse the already thinning crowd, a 

49 

MAY DAY 2016

50 

bomb was thrown into the police ranks. 

No one knows who threw the bomb, but 

speculations varied from blaming any one 

of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur 

working for the police. 

Enraged, the police fired into the crowd. 

The exact number of civilians killed or 

wounded was never determined, but an 

estimated seven or eight civilians died, and 

up to forty were wounded. One officer died 

immediately and another seven died in the 

following weeks. Later evidence indicated 

that only one of the police deaths could 

be attributed to the bomb and that all the 

other police fatalities had or could have had 

been due to their own indiscriminate gun 

fire. Aside from the bomb thrower, who was 

never identified, it was the police, not the 

anarchists, who perpetrated the violence. 

Eight anarchists – Albert Parsons, August 

Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, 

Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph 

Fischer and Louis Lingg – were arrested 

and convicted of murder, though only 

three were even present at Haymarket and 

those three were in full view of all when 

the bombing occurred. The jury in their 

trial was comprised of business leaders in 

a gross mockery of justice similar to the 

Sacco-Vanzetti case thirty years later, or the 

trials of AIM and Black Panther members 

in the seventies. The entire world watched 

as these eight organizers were convicted, 

not for their actions, of which all of were 

innocent, but for their political and social 

beliefs. On 11 November 1887, after many 

failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and 

Fisher were hung to death. Louis Lingg, 

in his final protest of the state’s claim of 

authority and punishment, took his own life 

the night before with an explosive device in 

his mouth. 

The remaining organizers, Fielden, Neebe 

and Schwab, were pardoned six years 

later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly 

lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice. 

Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, 

big business and government conducted 

what some say was the very first “Red 

Scare” in this country. Spun by mainstream 

media, anarchism became synonymous 

with bomb throwing and socialism became 

un-American. The common image of an 

anarchist became a bearded, eastern 

European immigrant with a bomb in one 

hand and a dagger in the other. 


Today we see tens of thousands of activists 

embracing the ideals of the Haymarket 

Martyrs and those who established May 

Day as an International Workers’ Day. 

Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 

66 countries and unofficially celebrated in 

many more, but rarely is it recognized in the 

country where it began, the USA. 

One hundred and thirty years have passed 

since that first May Day. In the earlier part of 

the 20th century, the US government tried to 

curb the celebration and further wipe it from 

the public’s memory by establishing “Law 

and Order Day” on May 1. We can draw 

many parallels between the events of 1886 

and today. The struggle continues! 

Words stronger than any I could write are 

engraved on the Haymarket Monument: 

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR 

SILENCE WILL BE MORE POWERFUL 

THAN THE VOICES YOU ARE 

THROTTLING TODAY. 

Truly, history has a lot to teach us 

about the roots of our radicalism. 

When we remember that people were 

shot so we could have the 8-hour day; 

if we acknowledge that homes with 

families in them were burned to the 

ground so we could have Saturday 

as part of the weekend; when we 

recall 8-year old victims of industrial 

accidents who marched in the streets 

protesting working conditions and 

child labor only to be beat down by 

the police and company thugs, we 

understand that our current condition 

cannot be taken for granted – people 

fought for the rights and dignities we 

enjoy today, and there is still a lot 

more to fight for. The sacrifices of so 

many people can not be forgotten or 

we’ll end up fighting for those same 

gains all over again. This is why we 

celebrate May Day. 

51 

MAY DAY 2016

52 

Artwork: Vhils 

Moscow, Russia 


53 

MAY DAY 2016

54 


‘It is Right to Rebel’ song and dance Photograph: Li Zhensheng 

REVIEW 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

CHINESE 

RESOLUTION 

RED-COLOR NEWS SOLDIER 

a photobook by 

Li Zhensheng 

Published by 

Phaidon Press : 2003 

As an introduction 

and review to this book 

I have re-keyed The Preface 

& an exerpt 

‘Red-Color New Soldier’ is the literal 

translation of the four Chineses characters 

printed on the armband first given to Li 

Zhensheng and his rebel group in Beijing 

at the end of 1966, eight months after the 

launch of the Great Proleterian Cultural 

Revolution. There are other, more fluent 

translations, but none retains the musicality 

of the four character words brought together. 

For a long time in the Western world, Mao 

Zedong and the Cultural Revolution were 

perceived with amazement and fascination; 

only very rarely with horror. In the late 1960s 

and early 1970s, rioting students around the 

world were inspired by the fingure-pointing, 

slogan-shouting style of the Red Guards, and 

andy Warhol in New York was producing 

his renowned silk-screen paintings of Mao, 

the ‘Great Helmsman’. Even today, all the 

chaos of that period can seem somewhat 

romantic and idealistic in comparison with 

the contemporary Chinese society we see 

and hear about. 

55 

MAY DAY 2016

56 

With this in mind, it was necessary to 

produce a clearer and more truthful image 

of the turmoil that turned China upsidedown 

during the Cultural Revolution. Li Zhensheng 

was the one person who, through his 

exceptional photographic legacy, could 

convey this truth on the printed page. A few 

guidelines were established up-front with 

Li’s agreement: none of the photographs 

would be cropped; the images would be 

presented in the most accurate chronological 

order possible so as to best depict the 

historical process; and precise captions 

would accompany the images, with facts 

verified through additional research and 

double-checked against the archives of the 

Heilongjiang Daily, where Li worked for 

eighteen years. 

Over a period of several years, Li delivered 

to the offices of Contact Press Images in New 

York approximately thirty-thousand small 

brown paper envelopes bound together 

with rubber bands in groups according 

to chronology, location, type of film, or 

other criteria that changed over time. Each 

envelope contained a single negative inside 

a glassine pouch. Some of these had not 

been removed since Li had cut them from 

their original negative strips and hidden 

them away thirty-five years earlier. On each 

envelope Li had written detailed captions in 

delicate Chinese calligraphy. Communes 

and counties, people’s names, official 

titles, and specific events were all carefully 

noted. Yet as Li’s written account clearly 

demonstrates, his memory of the period is 

still clear and detailed. 

For three years, from 2000 to 2003, a small 

group including Li, translator Rong Jiang, 

writer Jacques Menasche, and I met nearly 

every Sunday to collectively piece together 

this history of a largely unknown era. In these 

exhausting and, at times, animated sessions, 

we pored over a variety of archival and 

scholarly documents, conducted interviews, 

reviewed images, and even listened to Li sing 

revolutionary songs of the time. 

During the period of the Cultural Revolution 

the whole of China became a theatre in which 

the audience was increasingly part of the 

play – from the poorest peasant attending a 

‘struggle session’ to the ‘class enemy’ forced 

to bow at the waist in humiliation; from the 

rarely seen leader waving from a jeep to the 

denounced and the denouncers; from the 

rebels to the counter-revolutionaries, the Red 

Guards and the old guard all played their 

roles. With armbands and flags, banners and 

big character posters, and Little Red Books 

turned into props, the stage was dominated 

by the inaccessible star, surrounded by 

millions of extras, some shouting, some 

silenced. 


Photograph: Li Zhensheng 

A particularly infamous case in Harbin at 

the end of 1968 involved the son of the 

former first Party secretary of Heilongjiang. 

Preceding the outbreak of the Cultural 

Revolution, Ouyang Qin was the most 

powerful man in the province and therefore 

the number-one target of the Red Guards. 

Denounced, he was spared the full wrath of 

the guards when Premier Zhou Enlai, with 

whom he had been friendly since the 1920s 

when they both studied in France, had him 

transferred to a military hospital in Beijing 

for his protection in the summer of 1966. 

His son, however, would be less fortunate. 

Ouyang Xiang’s crime was writing an anonymous 

letter to the provincial revolutionary 

committee professing his father’s total 

support of Mao. Deemed by Pan Fusheng a 

serious counter-reolutionary case needing 

to be cracked, within days Ouyang’s handwriting 

was identified, and he was arrested. 

On 30 November 1968, a public rally was 

held in front of Harbin’s North Plaza Hotel. 

Labeled a counter-revolutionary, Ouyang 

Xiang was made to wear a placard around 

his neck detailing his crime and the date 

of his letter. When he tried to shout, ‘Long 

live Chairman Mao,’ his mouth was stuffed 

with a dirty glove. Several days later he was 

pushed out of a third-story window of the 

office building where he was being held. 

The official report called his death a suicide. 

57 

MAY DAY 2016

58 

Thanks to Li, seemingly anonymous faces and 

places take on names and identities. Li shows 

the surreal events to be all too real. Through 

his lens, these people and occurrences from 

so far away are made at once personal and 

universal, and all too familiar, reminding us of 

events in Chile, Rwanda, Bosnia, Afghanistan, 

and Iraq. The Cultural Revolution unleashed 

the frustration and anger of a new generation 

eager to change the world, but the force was 

harnessed and used by those in power for a 

decidedly different purpose: its own complete 

domination. In the late 1960s, student riots 

erupted in other cities on other continents, but 

they never resulted in the same premeditated 

violence initiated by those at the helm of the 

Chinese state. 

We will be forever grateful to Li for having 

risked so much to doggedly preserve the 

images in this book at a time when most of his 

colleagues agreed to allow their negatives to 

be destroyed. Li was a young man in search of 

himself, as seen in his many self-portraits in this 

volume, who wished to leave behind a trace 

of his own existance as well as his dreams of 

individuality and a better world. History is indeed 

Li Zhensheng’s paramount concern and this 

book’s main purpose: to remember and revisit 

those haunting and tragic events that were the 

Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. 

Robert Pledge 

An exerpt ... Li writes: 

Three months after our wedding, on 5 

April 1968, I photographed an execution 

of seven men and one woman. Six – 

including the woman and her lover, 

who had murdered her husband – were 

‘ordinary’ criminals. The other two men 

were technicians at the Harbin Electric Meter 

Factory who had published a flyer entitled 

‘Looking North,’ which the authorities 

interpreted as ‘looking northward toward 

Soviet revisionism.’ They were condemned 

as counter-revolutionaries. One was 

named Wu Bingyuan, and when he heard 

the sentence, he looked into the sky and 

murmured, ‘This world is too dark’; then 

he closed his eyes and never in this life 

reopened them. All eight were put on the 

backs of trucks in pairs, driven through 

town, then out to the countryside northwest 

of Harbin. There, on the barren grounds of 

the Huang Shan Cemetry, they were lined 

up, hands tied behind their backs, and 

forced to kneel. They were all shot in the 

back of the head. 

No one asked me to take close-ups of the 

bodies, but that’s waht I did, and because 

I had only a 35mm wide-angle lens, I had 

to get very close, so close I could smell the 

fishy smell of blood and brains. 


Wu Bingyuan (eyes closed) with Wang Yongzeng 

Photograph: Li Zhensheng 

59 

For the next six months, I couldn’t get their 

faces out of my mind. At that time, Yingxia 

and I still hadn’t been provided with an 

apartment and lived separately in the dorm. 

The toilet was at the end of a long corridor, 

and whenever I woke up at night needing 

to go to the bathroom, I would walk with 

my eyes closed, trying not to bump into the 

shoes and small stoves left outside the doors 

on both sides of the hallway and trying 

not to think of the dead. When I ate in the 

cafeteria and they served a local dish like 

blood tofu, which was red and gelatinous, I 

felt like vomiting. 

As I enlarged the photographs of these 

executed people in the dim red light of the 

darkroom, I quietly spoke to them. I told 

them, ‘If your souls are haunted, please 

don’t haunt me, too. I’m only tring to help. 

I’m making your pictures because I want 

to record history. I want people to know 

that you were wronged.’ And until this day 

– even when I printed the images for this 

book in New York – I always say that. 

MAY DAY 2016

60 

28 Millimétres, Women Are Heroes, 

Action dans la Flavela Morro Da Providência, 

Linda Marinho De Oliveira, 

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2008 

Paper on speakers: Artwork: JR 


61 

MAY DAY 2016

62 

MALICK SIDIBÉ 

1936-2016 

The Malian photographer’s pictures captured 

a nation on the move 

Toute la famille en moto, 1962. 

Photograph: © Malick Sidibé 

Courtesy Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris. 


63 

MAY DAY 2016

64 


WRITING 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

WALL 

PAINTING 

Ivan Vladislavić 

On the pavement outside No. 10 Blenheim: 

a tall man whose splattered overall and 

abstracted demeanour spoke of long 

experience in house-painting. He had 

spread a strip of plastic at the foot of the 

garden wall, beneath our Ndebele mural, 

and was stirring a tin of painwith a stick. 

The mural must have been two or three 

years old by then. He’s touching up the 

cracks, I told myself hopefully, although it 

was obvious what he was really doing. As I 

drew near, he laid the stick across the top of 

the tin and went to stand on the other side 

of the street. Like a woodsman sizing up a 

tree, just before he chopped it down. 

65 

Artwork: Esther Mahlangu, 2002 

I couldn’t watch. I went on to the Gem to 

fetch the paper. Coming home, I nearly 

made a detour along Albemarle Street to 

avoid the scene entirely, but it had to be 

faced. 

MAY DAY 2016

66 

He had started on the left. He was hacking 

into the pattern, obliterating it with 

extravagent swipes of the roller. Standing 

back, from time to time, to admire his 

handiwork. As if there was anything to 

be seen but an act of vandalism. The 

man must be a brute, I thought. It would 

be a man, too, the very antithesis of the 

woman who had painted the mural. I tried 

to remember her, but she had faded in 

my memory. I saw a middle-aged woman 

with a blanket knotted about her, wearing 

neck rings and a beaded headdress – but 

this was Esther Mahlangu, the painter of 

the BMW, whose photograph had been in 

the newspapers many times! In any event, 

they were not opposites. She was not an 

artist and he was not a vandal. They were 

simply people employed by the owners of 

a suburban house to perform a task. What 

the one had been employed to do, the other 

had now been employed to undo. 

I was unthinkable that the same person 

could have commanded both tasks. The 

house had been on the market for some 

time, and my theory was that it had 

finally changed hands. The new owner 

was remaking the place in his own style. 

Ndebele murals are an acquired taste, 

after all. 

Branko had a less charitable interpretation. 

They haven’t found a buyer, he said, and its 

no bloody wonder. they’re finally taking the 

estate agent’s advice: paint it white. It’s a 

dictum. Matches every lounge suite. 

However, they did not paint it white. They 

painted it a lemony yellow with green 

trim, a petrol-station colour scheme. It 

took a couple of coats: after the first one, 

you could still see the African geometry 

developing, like a Polaroid image, as the 

paint dried. 

Having missed the opportunity to document 

the birth of the mural through a lack of 

foresight, I now lacked the inclination to 

document its demise. This would make a 

wonderful film, I said to myself. But I did 

not call my friends the film-makers. I did 

not rush home to fetch a camera. I did not 

even take out a pad and pencil like a cub 

reporter. I just stood on the other side of 

the street and watched for a while, as the 

design vanished stroke by stroke, and then I 

went home with a heavy heart. 


67 

MAY DAY 2016

68 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 

Dear Editor ... 

Absolutely damaged but still awake, I say again, 

well yes, again, because the letters page is so 

much of a hopeless failure ... Words fail me, 

what is the use of words when the person you 

are saying them to is unable to grasp your, and 

their, meaning? 

Worryingly, we are still heading down that 

irrational road, the one where stupidity reigns, 

and where basic facts and knowledge acquired 

over time are being replaced by entrenched 

banal myths, hearsay and superstition. 

The probability that this shit-faced fudge 

of complacency and mad spouters will be 

defended to the death before reason can be 

accepted again (if ever) is utterly terrifying. 

For evidence of this I direct your (giggling still) 

attention to Donald Trump and his campaign to 

become US President. As Britain’s government is 

a happy satellite of US mischief in the world ... 

and a blindly loyal follower of US foreign policy, 

what will our Cameron/Osborne/Johnson 

government do if Trump suceeds and begins his 

Term of Ignorance? 

69 

Whilst I remain optimistic about the future I 

am absolute in my scepticism about whether 

the Euro (pro and sceptic)-business-arses and 

their sycophantic political stooges – or the US 

presidential circus and their flunkies – will come 

up with anything remotely of benefit to anyone 

other than the rampantly corrupt ruling class 

wankers intent on fucking us all. 

MAY DAY 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

ELEVEN 

the european union vote: 

borarse delivers more 

myth-information

Panela (unrefined sugarcane), 

1918, cotton label from a series 

commissioned for the South 

American market. The labels, 

each measuring around 6 inches 

in height resemble minature 

posters, strongly influenced 

by the ‘Munich realist school’ 

designer Ludwig Hohlwein. 

Artwork: E. McKnight Kauffer 

b 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER ELEVEN

The 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Opening 03 





Cover: re-worked comic. 






on any toes ... apologies all round! 

There is no deadline for submitting 

articles to be included in the next 

issue, it will appear whenever, or 

in your dreams! 



Damn & Borderation 05 

Hillsborough 13 

Illusions 17 

Tewkesbury 22 

Abahlali Basemjondolo 43 

Rags to Riches 53 

Letter to Socialist Worker 57 

Exhibition 58 

Letters 63 

1 

June 2016

some sort of 

cock-a-doodledo! 

2 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER ELEVEN 

looks more like the 

formalisation of an 

eggs-a-stentialist 

impressionism to me? 

Tweaked by: Alan Rutherford

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 

Welcome to magazine number 11. 


freely. All articles and artwork supplied, or 

found in newspapers lining the bottom of 

the canary cage, were gratefully received 





now appear sporadically and occasionally 

rather than monthly. 


3 

June 2016

4 

Sykes & Picot border mischief! 


DAMN & BORDERATION! 

How Isis thrives in a borderless world as it erases lines in the sand drawn 

by the west 100 years ago by France and Britain (Sykes-Picot) 

ROBERT FISK 12 MAY 2016: The Independent 

The peoples of the Middle East have suffered this past century from the 

theatre of dictatorships and cardboard institutions created by the west 

Early in 2014, Isis released one of its first videos. Largely unseen in 

Europe, it had neither the slick, cutting-edge professionalism of its later 

execution tapes nor the haunting “nasheed” music that accompanies 

most of its propaganda. Instead, a hand-held camera showed a 

bulldozer pushing down a rampart of sand that had marked the border 

between Iraq and Syria. As the machine destroyed the dirt revetment, the 

camera panned down to a handwritten poster lying in the sand. “End of 

Sykes-Picot”, it said. 

5 

Like many hundreds of thousands of Arabs in the Middle East, for whom 

Sykes-Picot was an almost cancerous expression, I watched this early Isis 

video in Beirut. The bloody repercussions of the borders that the British 

and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, drew in 

secret during the First World War – originally giving Syria, Mount Lebanon 

and northern Iraq to the French, and Palestine, Transjordan and the rest 

June 2016

6 

of Iraq to the British – are known to every 

Arab, Christian and Muslim and, indeed, 

every Jew in the region. They eviscerated 

the governorates of the old dying Ottoman 

empire and created artificial nations in 

which borders, watchtowers and hills of 

sand separated tribes, families and peoples. 

They were an Anglo-French colonial 

production. 

The same night that I saw the early Isis 

video, I happened to be visiting the 

Lebanese Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt. 

“The end of Sykes-Picot!” he roared at 

me. “Rubbish,” I snorted. But of course, 

I was wrong and Jumblatt was right. He 

had spotted at once how Isis captured 

symbolically – but with almost breathtaking 

speed – what so many Arabs had sought for 

almost exactly 100 years: the unravelling 

of the fake borders with which the victors of 

the First World War – largely the British and 

the French – had divided the Arab people. It 

was our colonial construction – not just the 

frontiers we imposed upon them, but the 

administrations and the false democracies 

that we fraudulently thrust upon them, the 

mandates and trusteeships which allowed 

us to rule them – that poisoned their lives. 

Colin Powell claimed just such a trusteeship 

for Iraq’s oil prior to the illegal Anglo- 

American invasion of 2003. 

We foisted kings upon the Arabs – we 

engineered a 96 per cent referendum in 

favour of the Hashemite King Faisal in Iraq 

in 1922 – and then provided them with 

generals and dictators. The people of Libya, 

Syria, Iraq, and Egypt – which had been 

invaded by the British in the 19th century – 

were subsequently blessed with mendacious 

governments, brutal policemen, lying 

newspapers and fake elections. Mubarak 

even scored Faisal’s epic 96 per cent 

election victory all over again. For the 

Arabs, “democracy” did not mean freedom 

of speech and freedom to elect their own 

leaders; it referred to the “democratic” 

Western nations that continued to support 

the cruel dictators who oppressed them. 

Thus the Arab revolutions that consumed 

the Middle East in 2011 – forget the “Arab 

Spring”, a creature of Hollywood origin – 

did not demand democracy. The posters 

on the streets of Cairo and Tunis and 

Damascus and Yemen called for dignity 

and justice, two commodities that we had 

definitely not sought for the Arabs. Justice 

for the Palestinians – or for the Kurds, or for 

that matter for the destroyed Armenians of 

1915, or for all the suffering Arab peoples 

– was not something that commended itself 

to us. But I think we should have gone much 

further in our investigation of the titanic 

changes of 2011. 


In my own reporting of the uprisings, I attributed 

them to increased education and travel by 

the Arab communities throughout the Middle 

East. While acknowledging the power of social 

media and the internet, something deeper was 

at work. The Arabs had woken from a deep 

sleep. They had refused any longer to be the 

“children” of the patriarchal father figure – the 

Nassers and the Sadats and the Mubaraks 

and the Assads and the Gaddafis and, in 

earlier years, the Saddams. They awoke to find 

that it was their own governments that were 

composed of children, one of whom – Mubarak 

– was 83 years old. The Arabs wanted to own 

their towns and cities. They wanted to own the 

place in which they lived, which comprised 

much of the Middle East. 

But I think now that I was wrong. In 

retrospect, I woefully misunderstood what 

these revolutions represented. One clue, 

perhaps, lay in the importance of trade union 

movements. Where trade unions, with their 

transnational socialism and anti-colonial 

credentials, were strong – in Egypt and 

Tunisia – the revolutionary bloodshed was 

far less than in the nations that had either 

banned trade unionism altogether – Libya, 

for example – or concretised the trade union 

movement into the regime, which had long 

ago happened in Syria and Yemen. Socialism 

crossed borders. Yet even this does not 

account for the events of 2011. 

What really manifested itself that year, I now 

believe, was a much more deeply held Arab 

conviction; that the very institutions that we 

in the West had built for these people 100 

years ago were worthless, that the statehood 

which we had later awarded to artificial 

nations within equally artificial borders was 

meaningless. They were rejecting the whole 

construct that we had foisted upon them. 

That Egypt regressed back into military 

patriarchy – and the subsequent and utterly 

predictable Western acqiescence in this 

– after a brief period of elected Muslim 

Brotherhood government, does not change 

this equation. While the revolutions largely 

stayed within national boundaries – at least 

at the start – the borders began to lose their 

meaning. 

Hamas in Gaza and the Brotherhood 

became one, the Sinai-Gaza frontier 

began to crumble. Then the collapse of 

Libya rendered Gaddafi’s former borders 

open – and thus non-existent. His weapons 

– including chemical shells – were sold 

to rebels in Egypt and Syria. Tunisia, 

which is now supposed to be the darling 

of our Western hearts for its adhesion to 

“democracy”, is now in danger of implosion 

because its own borders with Libya and 

Algeria are open to arms transhipments 

to Islamist groups. Isis’s grasp of these 

frontierless entities means that its own 

7 

June 2016

8 

transnational existence is assured, from 

Fallujah in Iraq to the edge of Syrian 

Aleppo, from Nigeria to Niger and Chad. 

It can thus degrade the economy of each 

country it moves through, blowing up a 

Russian airliner leaving Sharm el-Sheikh, 

attacking the Bardo museum in Tunis 

or the beaches of Sousse. There was a 

time – when Islamists attacked the Jewish 

synagogue on Djerba island in Tunisia in 

2002, for example, killing 19 people – 

when tourism could continue. But that was 

when Libya still existed. In those days, Ben 

Ali’s security police were able to control the 

internal security of Tunisia; the army was left 

weak so that it could not stage a coup. So 

today, of course, the near-impotent army of 

Tunisia cannot defend its frontiers. 

Isis’s understanding of this new 

phenomenon preceded our own. But Isis’s 

realisation that frontiers were essentially 

defenceless in the modern age coincided 

with the popular Arab disillusion with their 

own invented nations. Most of the millions 

of Syrian and Afghan refugees who have 

flooded into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan 

and then north into Europe do not intend 

to return – ever – to states that have failed 

them as surely as they no longer – in the 

minds of the refugees – exist. These are 

not “failed states” so much as imaginary 

nations that no longer have any purpose. 

I only began to understand this when, 

back in July, covering the Greek economic 

crisis, I travelled to the Greek-Macedonian 

border with Médecins Sans Frontières. This 

was long before the story of Arab refugees 

entering Europe had seized the attention 

of the EU or the media, although the 

Mediterranean drownings had long been a 

regular tragedy on television screens. Aylan 

Kurdi, the little boy who would be washed 

up on a Turkish beach, still had another 

two months to live. But in the fields along 

the Macedonian border were thousands of 

Syrians and Afghans. They were coming 

in their hundreds through the cornfields, 

an army of tramping paupers who might 

have been fleeing the Hundred Years War, 

women with their feet burned by exploded 

gas cookers, men with bruises over their 

bodies from the blows of frontier guards. 

Two of them I even knew, brothers from 

Aleppo whom I had met two years earlier 

in Syria. And when they spoke, I suddenly 

realised they were talking of Syria in the 

past tense. They talked about “back there” 

and “what was home”. They didn’t believe 

in Syria any more. They didn’t believe in 

frontiers. 

Our support for an Israel that has not told 

us the location of its eastern border runs 

logically alongside our own refusal to 

recognise – unless it suits us – the frontiers 


of the Arab world. It is, after all, we who are 

allowed to draw “lines in the sand” or “red 

lines”. It is we Europeans who decide where 

civilisations begin and end. It is the Prime 

Minister of Hungary who decides exactly 

where he will draw up his forces to defend 

“Christian civilisation”. It is we Westerners 

who have the moral probity to decide 

whether national sovereignty in the Middle 

East should be obeyed or abused. 

But when the Arabs themselves decide to 

dispense with the whole fandango and seek 

their future in “our” lands rather than “their” 

lands, this policy breaks down. Indeed, it 

is extraordinary how easily we forget that 

the greatest frontier-breaker of modern 

times was himself a European, who wanted 

to destroy the Jews of Europe but who 

might well – given his racist remark about 

Muslims in Mein Kampf – have continued 

his holocaust to include the Arabs. We even 

have the nerve to call the murderers of Paris 

“fascislamists”, as the great French pseudophilosopher 

Bernard-Henri Levy has just 

written in the press. Nazis Isis undoubtedly 

are – but the moment we utilise the word 

“Islam” in this context, we are painting 

the swastika across the Middle East. Levy 

demands more assistance to “our Kurdish 

allies” because the alternative is that “no 

boots on their ground means more blood 

on ours”. 

But that’s what George W Bush and Tony 

Blair told us before marching into the 

graveyard of Iraq in 2003. We are always 

declaring ourselves “at war”. We are told 

to be merciless. We must invade “their” 

territory to stop them invading ours. But 

the days are long gone when we can have 

foreign adventures and expect to be safe 

at home. New York, Washington, Madrid, 

London, Paris all tell us that. Perhaps 

if we spoke more of “justice” – courts, 

legal process for killers, however morally 

repugnant they may be, sentences, prisons, 

redemption for those who may retrieve their 

lost souls from the Isis midden – we would 

be a little safer in our sceptered continent. 

There should be justice not just for ourselves 

or our enemies, but for the peoples of the 

Middle East who have suffered this past 

century from the theatre of dictatorships and 

cardboard institutions we created for them – 

and which have helped Isis to thrive. 

9 

June 2016

eprise ffs! 

Jez 

for 

Prez 

shit... looks like tony 

is going to get away 

with it ... so much 

for justice! 

Say no 

to a 

monarchy 



IRAQ 

2003 


THAT 

CHILCOT 

MOMENT 

11 

June 2016

THE TOPICAL TIMES 

FOR THESE TIMES 

BOOK OF LIVERPOOL 

FOOTBALL 

12 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER ELEVEN 

KEN GRANT 

Unused cover Alan Rutherford

Taken from STUMBLING AND MUMBLING: April 27, 2016 

HILLSBOROUGH 

THE CLASS CONTEXT 

The truth about Hillsborough has of course always been known. What 

happened yesterday was that it finally became incontrovertible. I fear, 

though, that the context of Hillsborough is in danger of being forgotten 

– that context being that the 1980s was an era of moral panic about the 

working class. 

Back then, football fans were mostly working people. It cost only £2 to 

get into a first division game in the mid-80s, and the influx of fashionable 

middle-class men talking about “the footie” was a post-Gazza, post-Hornby 

phenomenon. Such fans were the object of fear and contempt by the police 

and Tory party: Thatcher tried to impose ID cards onto them. Here’s how 

When Saturday Comes described the attitude towards fans then: 

The police see us as a mass entity, fuelled by drink and a singleminded 

resolve to wreak havoc by destroying property and attacking 

one another with murderous intent. Containment and damage 

limitation is the core of the police strategy. Fans are treated with the 

utmost disrespect. We are herded, cajoled, pushed and corralled 

into cramped spaces, and expected to submit passively to every new 

indignity. 

13 

However, football fans were not the only object of class-based moral 

panic. Thatcher famously described miners as “the enemy within”: 

not, note, people with mistaken ideas but an enemy, comparable to 

warmongering fascists. And there were panics about “new age travellers” 

and “acid house”. 

June 2016

14 

Now, there is – sad to say – an ugly truth here. 

These panics were not wholly unfounded. 

Crime was high in the 80s, and football 

hooliganism was a genuine problem; Heysel 

happened just four years before Hillsborough. 

However, a pound of fact became a ton of 

moral panic and class hatred. 

It’s in this context that we should interpret 

the slanders against the Hillsborough 

victims by Tories such as Irvine Patnick, 

Bernard Ingham and Kelvin Mackenzie. 

Their fear and hatred of working people 

had reached such feverish heights that they 

were prepared to believe them capable of 

robbing the dead. 

In all these cases, the police were brutal 

enforcers of this class-based hatred – and 

unlawfully so. After the battle of Stonehenge 

in 1985 Wiltshire Police were found guilty of 

ABH, false imprisonment and wrongful arrest. 

And after Orgreave South Yorkshire Police – 

them again – paid £500,000 compensation 

for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious 

prosecution. As James Doran says: 

The British state is not a neutral body 

which enforces the rule of law - it is a set 

of social relations which uphold the rule 

of the capital. Law is a matter of struggle 

- ordinary people are automatically 

subject to the discipline of the repressive 

apparatus of the state. 

All this poses a question. Have things really 

changed? Of course, the police and Tories 

have much better PR than they did then. 

But is it really a coincidence that the police 

still turn up mob-handed to demos whilst 

giving a free ride to corporate crime and 

asset stripping? When the cameras are off 

and they are behind closed doors, do the 

police and Tories retain a vestige of their 

1980s attitudes? When Alan Duncan spoke 

of those who aren’t rich as “low achievers”, 

was that a minority view, or a reminder that 

the Tories haven’t really abandoned their 

class hatred? 

Many younger lefties might have 

abandoned class in favour of the politics 

of micro-identities. For those of us shaped 

by the 80s, however, class matters. And I 

suspect this is as true for the Tories as it is 

for me. 

From the excellent blog: 

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad. 

com/stumbling_and_mumbling/ 


15 

June 2016

16 


ILLUSIONS 

of Democracy 

23 JUNE 

It would seem the UK, still whistling in the 

dark ages with a debateably unjust ‘first 

past the post’ election system coupled with 

an unelected House of Lords with veto 

powers ... and a current tory government 

elected using fraudulent expenses – are 

hardly the standard anyone would use to 

measure ‘democracy’? 

I cut a long article planned, not wishing to 

add to the nonsense, the ridiculous hot air 

parading as fact, the coleection of myths 

and blatant scaremongering repeated until 

we are all blind, in this, the European Union 

referendum. 


Why has parliament relinquished its right 

to govern us, its a distraction from real life 

surely, for since when have our government 

and their paymasters, big business, ever 

allowed the citizenry to decide on anything 

supposedly this important? It can only be 

that either way they don’t give a shit, they 

know that whatever ‘we’ decide, they will 

still be in the saddle! 

June 2016

18 

From acres of newsprint here is a balanced 

argument to stay... 

The daily scare tactics 

beggar belief – 

they’re not working 

Delia Smith in The Guardian 

Friday 27 May 2016 

One of the best expressions of sheer 

frustration that’s stuck with me over the 

years came from the comedian Tony 

Hancock, who in moments of extreme 

disquiet repeated the words oh dear, oh 

dear, oh dear. Now the mere mention of the 

dreaded referendum and those words are 

what spring to mind. Oh dear indeed. 

The Guardian view on the Leave campaign: 

show some respect for truth 

First, why is the entire nation being put 

under this unnecessary pressure? We 

already get to vote for a democratic system, 

where all the big decisions are meant to be 

made on our behalf. Instead, faced with this 

very grave decision which has such serious 

implications, we find ourselves pawns in a 

game of dubious political manoeuvring. 

The prime minister, seeking to outwit the 

troublemakers on the right of his party, has 

instead managed to add massive fuel to 

their fire. And, in doing so, he has simply 

cleared the way for one of their own to seize 

the moment. So a leave vote could give you 

the prospect of a brand new prime minister 

and a remain vote gives you the same old, 

same old, and off we go, back to square 

one. 

Meanwhile we, the long-suffering British 

voters, are subjected to what Jon Snow 

on Channel 4 News rightly described as 

a “positively poisonous” campaign. The 

much-maligned European Union, which in 

essence is a group of democratic countries 

attempting to work alongside each other, 

has now become a fierce battleground 

in the direct line of fire of some vicious 

rhetoric. The most abhorrent and offensive 

of all was the EU being compared to, 

of all things, Hitler and nazism. Hang 

on a minute, isn’t there a crossed wire 

here somewhere? Was it not within that 

horrendous regime that the very idea of 

egotistical, xenophobic and isolationist 

sovereignty was originally conceived? 

The now daily dose of scare tactics simply 

beggars belief, and do you know what? It 

so isn’t working. Because at this stage, I’m 

sure you agree, we voters are just reduced 

to having a laugh. What else can you do 


when you are told there are 70 million Turks 

lining up, like the Zulus in the Stanley Baker 

film, coming over the hill, set on seizing our 

jobs, our homes, our lives. 

But hats off to the TV coverage that 

accompanied the story, showing us 

what that ancient and wondrous Turkish 

civilisation was all about. They found shots 

of the most amazing kebabs, laden with 

spices and dripping with juices over flaming 

charcoal, just so we could understand what 

the Turkish threat might mean. What it 

achieved in our house was a resounding: 

“Bring it on” 

Frankly, the current state of politics is pants 

in this debate. Politics are there to serve the 

people and not the other way round. So, 

why don’t we simply short-circuit the daily 

threats and angry squabbles, and from 

now on engage in some proper grownup, 

joined-up thinking, about the real issues? 

What each of us is being asked to do is cast 

a vote that will affect not just our lives, but 

the future of generations to come. Each of 

us must reflect quietly and independently 

about this vote. What shapes my own vision 

of things is this: almost imperceptibly (but 

then again, perhaps also staring us in the 

face) is that the world, whether we like it or 

not, is slowly beginning to become a global 

community. And this, while it may or may 

not take centuries to achieve, simply has to 

be the future. 

With the advent of high-speed travel, 

communications technology, satellites and 

the rest, we are already living in much 

closer proximity to one another than we 

could previously have imagined. Young 

people hop from country to country 

exploring, experiencing other cultures, 

forming friendships across the globe, and 

this gives them a far greater sense than 

previous generations of being comfortable 

belonging to the much wider human family, 

a completely diverse but nonetheless 

enriching collection of democratic nations. 

The results are plain as day for all to see. 

Why have we now achieved so much 

in science or in say, space exploration? 

Because scientists from groups of nations 

work closely together. The same with 

advances in medicine and practically any 

other field of invention and progress. The 

global village is not some romantic dream, 

it’s a reality. 

No, I’m not a naive optimist and yes, I 

know only too well about the bureaucratic 

challenges of different nations attempting 

to work alongside each other. I may well 

be mocked for my views but again, bring 

it on! I believe passionately in the human 

19 

June 2016

20 

adventure, and that individual people as 

well as individual nations will in time, in 

spite of how long it might take, embrace 

-solidarity and the global society. 

It is our responsibility to help to prepare 

the way to a united humanity in the belief 

that it can make the world a better place. 

Evolution, as history has shown, will not 

be knocked off course by a small group of 

islands claiming they want “sovereignty”. 

So there it is. As you may well have guessed 

by now. I am quite definitely in. And I want 

to do everything in my power to encourage 

you to add your support to our membership 

in a group of nations who, for all their 

imperfections, are learning how to coexist in 

a converging world. 

‘I still don't understand 

why panamapapers 

isn’t in the news still. 

This was a picture of 

some russianoligarch 

who had moleslikeslugs 

from my sketchbook on 

taxdodgingdouchebags' 

NYE WRIGHT 

author of ‘Things to do in a Retirement 

Home Trailer Park’ 


21 

Artwork from Nye Wright’s sketchbook 

June 2016

22 


23 

June 2016

24 


25 

Photographs: Alan Rutherford 

TEWKESBURY 

MAY 2016 

June 2016

26 


27 

June 2016

28 


29 

June 2016

30 


31 

June 2016

32 

teatime in 

tewkesbury 


33 

June 2016

34 


35 

June 2016

36 


37 

June 2016

ET 

38 


CETC 

ETC 

ETC 

39 

June 2016

40 


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

41 

INTENDED AS 

A BLOW TO 

THE SYSTEM 

... SHAKE 

& STIR! 

June 2016

42 


Abahlali baseMjondolo 

is a movement largely based in shantytowns 

built on land occupations in and around the 

South African city of Durban. Since 2005 it 

has sought to build popular counter-power 

through the construction of self-managed 

and democratically organized communities 

engaged in a collective struggle. 

While the movement has not used the 

term “commune”, it has, on occasion, 

been described by left theorists as seeking 

to constitute itself as a set of linked 

communes. This assessment has been 

based on the movement’s organizational 

form. But this struggle, while often 

strikingly similar to Raúl Zibechi’s account 

of territories in resistance in Latin America, 

is very different from how Marx and 

Bakunin imagined the struggles of the 

future in their reflections on the Paris 

Commune. It is primarily framed in terms 

of dignity, fundamentally grounded in 

the bonds within families and between 

neighbors, and often largely waged by 

women from and for bits of land in the 

interstices of the city. 

If Abahlali baseMjondolo (the term 

means “residents of the shacks”) is to be 

productively connected to the idea of the 

commune in terms of a set of political 

commitments, it would require – as George 

Ciccariello-Maher has argued with regard 

to Venezuela – a detachment of the concept 

from “a narrow sectarianism” with the 

intention to “craft a communism on local 

conditions that looks critically, in parallax, 

back at the European tradition.” 

THE LAND OCCUPATION 

In Durban, as in much of the world, 

one starting point for this work is that 

the passage from the rural to the urban 

seldom takes the form of passage, via 

expropriation, from the commons to the 

factory, from the life of a peasant to the 

life of a proletarian. And for many people 

born into working-class families long 

resident in the city, work – as their parents 

and grandparents knew it – is no longer 

available. 

When urban life is wageless, or when access 

to the wage occurs outside of the official 

rules governing the wage relation, the land 

occupation can enable popular access to 

land outside of the state and capital. And 

land, even a sliver of land on a steep hill, 

between two roads, along a river bank, or 

adjacent to a dump, can – along with the 

mud, fire and men with guns that come 

with shack life – enable spatial proximity to 

possibilities for livelihood, education, health 

care, recreation and so on. 

43 

June 2016

44 

Across South Africa, urban land has 

become a key site of popular contestation 

with the state and the liberal property 

regime. In Durban the steep terrain also 

enables opportunities for new occupations 

within the zones of privilege, nodes of 

spatially concentrated, racialized power. 

But, again as in much of the world, 

dissident elites have often been skeptical 

about the political capacities of the 

urban poor. The worker or peasant has 

often been imagined as the subject of a 

“proper” politics, a politics to come in which 

industrial production or rural land would be 

the key site of struggle. 

Abahlali baseMjondolo has, affirming 

what it has called “a politics of the poor”, 

disobeyed the various custodians of a 

“proper politics”, affirmed the value of 

an “out of order” politics and taken the 

situation, the strivings and the struggles of 

its members seriously. It has affirmed the 

city as a site of struggle and impoverished 

people seeking to occupy, hold and develop 

land in the city as subjects of struggle. It has 

constructed a political imagination in which 

the neighborhood is seen as the primary 

site for both organization, through direct 

face-to-face deliberation and democratic 

decision-making, and the broader practices 

that sustain resilience. 

A conception of political identity rooted in 

residence in a land occupation, whether 

established or new, has enabled the 

affirmation of a form of politics that 

exceeds the central categories through 

which impoverished people are more 

usually divided. This includes an ethnic 

conception of belonging that, in Durban, 

has increasingly been asserted by the 

ruling party, the African National Congress 

(ANC), as well as a national conception of 

belonging, undergirded by a paranoid and 

vicious xenophobia, asserted by the ruling 

party, the state and much of wider society. 

The movement has been able to successfully 

resist these forms of division and has 

consistently taken a multi-ethnic form. 

People more ordinarily described as 

foreigners rather than comrades have often 

held important leadership positions, while 

the movement has been able to occupy and 

hold land and to sustain impressive popular 

support. But there are significant limits to 

its reach, it has been subject to serious 

repression, and it has not been able to 

sustain the political autonomy of its larger 

occupations over the long-term. 


A HOMEMADE POLITICS 

Abahlali baseMjondolo was formed in 2005 

in a group of nearby shack settlements, 

all on well-established land occupations, 

some reaching back to the 1980s or even 

the late 1970s. The people who formed 

the movement drew on a rich repertoire 

of political experience that included 

participation in the ANC, trade unions and 

the popular struggles of the 1980s. There 

were also familial connections reaching 

back to key moments in the history of 

popular struggle like the Durban strikes 

in 1973, the Mpondo Revolt in 1961, 

resistance to evictions in Durban in 1959 

and the Bambatha Rebellion in 1906. 

The movement was also shaped by practices 

and ideas developed in African-initiated 

churches and adapted from rural life. From 

the beginning ideas about a pre-colonial 

world in which personhood was respected 

and understood to be attained in relation 

to others were significant. But elements 

of the new liberal order, like rights-based 

conceptions of gender equality, as well as 

political traditions that claim descent from 

Marx, were also present. These were largely 

derived from trade unions and the alliance 

between the South African Communist Party 

and the ANC. 

This new politics was often described as 

a “homemade politics” and as a “living 

politics”. The idea of a “homemade 

politics” carried some sense of bricolage, a 

general feature of life in a shack settlement, 

and both of these phrases marked a 

commitment to a mode of politics that 

emerges from everyday life, is fully within 

reach of the oppressed, and is fully owned 

by the oppressed. 

The settlements where the movement was 

formed had all been dominated by the 

ANC. At the time the ANC, as Idea, was still 

entwined with the nation and the struggle 

that had bought it into being. As a result the 

break from the authority of the party, which 

resulted in autonomous elected structures 

being set up in each affiliated settlement, 

was often understood as a challenge to 

local party structures, rather than a rejection 

of the party altogether. 

It was frequently assumed that the 

fundamental problem was that 

impoverished people living in shack 

settlements had somehow been forgotten 

in the new order. It was often thought that 

if they, like the industrial working class, 

could develop an organizational form to 

successfully assert themselves as a particular 

category of people, with a particular set of 

interests – as the poor – the sympathetic 

attention of leading figures in the party, and 

elsewhere in society, could be won, and that 

45 

June 2016

46 

recognition and inclusion could be attained. 

But there was, from the beginning, also 

an evident commitment to attain inclusion 

in a manner that altered the nature of 

the system in various respects. One was 

with regard to how decisions are made. 

Reflecting on that moment, S’bu Zikode, a 

participant in the early discussions, recalls: 

“There was a realization, at the onset, that 

it was a mistake to give away our power.” 

There was a clear resolve that the right of 

people to fully participate in all decisionmaking 

relating to themselves and their 

communities, a right understood to have 

been expropriated by colonialism, needed 

to be restored. 

The implication of this is that there was a 

commitment to dispersing power and to 

changing the nature of the relationship 

between the state and society. Another 

commitment that was present at the outset 

was a rejection of the commodification of 

land. Again this was often framed in terms 

of restoration. 

AN AUTONOMOUS POLITICS 

The political form of the movement was 

constituted around elected structures in each 

settlement affiliated to an elected central 

structure. Meetings were required to be 

open to all and held in the settlements at set 

times. They took the form of inclusive and 

slow deliberative processes that continued 

until consensus was attained. It was a politics 

consistently constituted around an open and 

face-to-face democracy. The role of elected 

leaders was understood to be to facilitate 

this kind of decision-making and to adhere 

to it. There were also frequent assemblies, 

often attended by hundreds of people, and 

the smaller meetings would refer important 

decisions to these assemblies. 

The slow politics that results from the need 

to attain consensus before acting sometimes 

meant that political opportunities were 

missed. But because people – wary of the 

frequently crass instrumentalization of 

impoverished people by parties, the state 

and later NGOs too – knew that they fully 

owned this movement, popular support was 

sustained. 

The early decision to refuse any 

participation in party politics or elections 

was vital to sustaining unity, and deflecting 

constant allegations of external conspiracy. 

For some people it was purely a tactical 

measure while for others it was a point of 

principle. But a clear distinction was drawn 

between “party politics” and “people’s 

politics”. For Zikode, “we realized that to 

be in a political party was to be confined, 

as in a coffin.” Despite extraordinary 

inducements and pressures the movement 


sustained its autonomy from political parties 

and, later on, NGOs. In both cases the 

response from constituted authority was to 

resort to colonial tropes and present the 

movement as criminals under the control of 

malicious external white authority. 

While the movement always understood that 

its original and fundamental power lay in 

self-organized communities, the capacity 

to occupy and hold land and the use of 

disruption via road blockades, it was never 

solely concerned with this sphere of action. 

Alliances were also sought with actors 

outside the settlements, like journalists, 

lawyers, academics and religious leaders. 

There were regular interventions in the 

wider public sphere, via lawful forms of 

mass protest as well as the media, and an 

often very effective use of the courts to, in 

particular, take contestation over land off 

the terrain of violence. 

Autonomy was taken seriously within the 

movement, but it wasn’t imagined as an 

exodus from sites of constituted power. It 

was imagined more like Antonio Gramsci’s 

idea of the neighborhood council as a 

political commitment that would enable 

effective collective engagement on other 

terrains. People spoke, by way of analogy, 

of occupying space in sites of constituted 

power, like the media or the university. 

THE LONG SHADOW OF THE STATE 

The organizational form developed by 

Abahlali baseMjondolo enabled a political 

space in which the oppressed, albeit it in 

this case self-identified as the poor rather 

than the working class, could, as Marx said 

of the Paris Commune, work out their own 

emancipation. 

Although this process has, at points, had 

to grapple with internal difficulties and 

frustrations – such as new entrants bringing 

in contradictory projects, families seeking 

to turn the risk and commitment of a child 

or sibling into a reward, or distortions 

consequent to repression – it has often been 

undertaken with a strong sense of collective 

excitement. 

But any affirmation of the commune as a 

political strategy rather than a description of 

an organizational form has to take careful 

account of the fact that, since 1871 and 

continuing with more recent experiences in, 

say, Oaxaca and Oakland, the declaration 

of a commune has seldom resulted in a 

sustainable political project. States rarely 

tolerate the emergence of even modest 

instances of dual power. In Durban the 

intersection of the ruling party, which 

employs technocratic, Stalinist and ethnic 

language to legitimate the centralization of 

authority, has used two primary strategies 

47 

June 2016

48 

to regain control over territories in which 

a degree of political autonomy has been 

asserted. 

One of these strategies is the simple 

exercise of violence – whether carried out 

by the police, private security, local party 

structures or assassins. Violence has been 

a constant presence during a decade of 

struggle. But there have been two periods 

of particularly intense repression that have 

both, in different ways, had a profound 

impact on the movement. 

The first was the expulsion of the 

movement’s leading members from the 

Kennedy Road settlement in 2009, via the 

destruction of their homes by armed men 

acting under the direction of local party 

structures, and with the support of the 

police. This was a process that continued 

for some months. The second was two 

assassinations, and a police murder, in 

the Marikana Land Occupation, in 2013, 

followed by another assassination in 

KwaNdengezi in 2014. 

Both periods of intense repression placed 

some people under severe stress resulting 

in anxiety and paranoia, as well as familial 

pressure, and resulted in real strains 

in the movement. In 2014, in an act of 

desperation when it seemed that murder 

was being carried out with impunity, a 

collective decision was taken to make a 

tactical vote against the ANC, with a view to 

raising the costs of repression for the ruling 

party, while remaining independent from 

any party political affiliation. 

The second primary strategy of 

containment, frequently related to the 

exercise of violence, is the often very 

effective attempt to make independent 

development on occupied land very 

difficult while mediating access to state 

development through local party structures. 

For as long as the state has the capacity to 

demolish homes, an investment in building 

a brick and mortar house is not rational. 

Shacks, particularly in acutely contested 

land occupations, are often designed to be 

cheap, perhaps built from pallets salvaged 

from a warehouse. They are sometimes 

designed to be able to be collapsed when 

the demolition squad comes and rebuilt 

when they have departed. 

When the state concedes the legitimacy of 

a land occupation and offers a housing 

development there will be significant 

opportunities for accumulation via local 

party structures, often enmeshed with 

local criminal networks, and access to the 

housing will be allocated through party 

structures. These two factors combine 


to make it almost impossible to benefit 

from development while being outside 

the party. In a context in which the party 

machinery offers the only viable route 

out of impoverishment for many people, 

responsibilities to family can begin to 

conflict with responsibilities to neighbors 

and comrades. This can result in a situation 

where some members of the movement go 

over to these structures. It can also result in 

a situation in which party structures return, 

from outside, at gunpoint. 

For these reasons it is very difficult to sustain 

the political autonomy of a territory once 

the state has conceded its legitimacy and 

brought it into the ambit of its development 

program. Material success – winning 

land and housing – becomes political 

defeat. This has meant that while Abahlali 

baseMjondolo has endured, and grown, 

during a decade of struggle in which the 

movement has always remained vibrant, the 

sites where the struggle is waged with most 

intensity have been dynamic. 

A MOMENT OF POLITICAL 

OPPORTUNITY 

If the political form of the commune is 

understood as the self-management of 

a spatially delimited community under 

popular democratic authority, then – 

although the term commune has not 

been used within the movement – it 

could certainly be argued that Abahlali 

baseMjondolo has been and, despite the 

trauma of serious repression, remains 

committed to the construction of a set of 

linked communes. 

However, if the commune is understood as 

a form of politics with explicit commitments 

to the radical traditions developed in 19th 

century Europe, then things are more 

complex. Although the movement’s politics 

has evolved over the years it has always 

been committed to some principles that 

had a productive resonance with standard 

European conceptions of socialism and 

communism. This is true with regard to 

what, using Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar’s 

terms, can be described as both its interior 

emancipatory horizon and the practical 

scope of its day-to-day actions. 

But dignity has consistently been a far 

more central concept than socialism. The 

practical scope of the movement’s work has 

overwhelmingly focused on the sphere of 

social reproduction rather than the sphere 

of industrial production. 

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER 

In 2005 many people had thought that, via 

a powerful movement, they would secure 

land and housing, on their own terms, in a 

couple of years. Now there is a strong sense 

of the ANC as an outrightly oppressive 

49 

June 2016

50 

force that is understood to have betrayed 

the national struggle by entering into a 

self-serving set of alliances to sustain the 

enduringly colonial structure of society. The 

horizon of struggle is much longer, and 

often more modest. Progress is understood 

to be a matter of resilience and resolve over 

the long haul, with most gains taking an 

incremental form. 

But with a widening split within the ANC, 

and trade unions and organized students 

breaking from the ANC, there are new 

prospects for building alliances and 

solidarities outside of the ANC – alliances 

that could potentially enable a greater 

political reach on the part of what Abahlali 

baseMjondolo have termed, with reference 

to the self-organization of the oppressed, 

“the strong poor”. The splits in the ruling 

party have already offered some respite to 

the movement and, in one neighborhood, 

a tactical local alliance with Communist 

Party structures has helped to secure the 

– previously unimaginable – arrest of two 

ANC councilors for the assassination of an 

Abahlali baseMjondolo leader. 

If the idea of the commune has a future 

here it will have to be appropriated by the 

oppressed and rethought from within their 

actually existing strivings and struggles. This 

would have to include the work of making 

sense of a moment of political opportunity 

as the collapse of the moral authority of the 

ANC spreads from the shantytowns, to the 

mines, factories, parliament and university 

campuses. 

Richard Pithouse 

Richard Pithouse teaches politics at the 

university currently known as Rhodes 

University in Grahamstown, South Africa. 

His new book is Writing the Decline: 

On the Struggle for South Africa’s 

Democracy (Jacana). 

From 2003, about Durban’s Cato Manor 

township ColdType Modern Classics 

present, 

‘White Man Walking’ by Denis Beckett 

Free to download at www.coldtype.net 


DENIS BECKETT 

WHITE MAN 

WALKING 

51 

June 2016

52 


RAGS TO RICHES 

BY FEEDING THE 

KILLING MACHINE 

adapted from Martin MITCHELL 

https://martinmitchellsmicrophones.wordpress.com 

T45 Noise-Cancelling Microphone (1944) 

In 1942 after America entered World War 2, the US military estimated 

that only 20% of radio communications in combat were successful. 

Failure in the other 80% was mainly due to the voice of the radio 

operator being drowned out by the surrounding cacophony of war. 

Like no other conflict before, success on the battlefield relied on 

communications. Spotting a gap in the market Al Khan and Ed Burrows, 

the owners of Electro-Voice, came up with a brilliantly simple, ingenious 

and cost effective solution to this problem. 

53 

Even in 1942 the single button carbon microphone was a piece of old 

fashioned tried and tested technology, having been in use in telephones 

since the tail end of the previous century. Although the audio quality of 

the T45 is little better than it’s telephonic predecessors it is extremely 

reliable and very robust. It also has a high output making it ideal for long 

distance communication. Even if the microphone gets wet you can simply 

dry it out (as per the instructions above) and it will carry on working! 

However, the really clever part of this design utilises 2 small holes of 

equal size on the front and back of the mic. These allow the surrounding 

June 2016

noise to enter the microphone on both sides of the diaphragm. The sound 

striking the back of the diaphragm is 180 degrees out of phase with the sound 

at the front. This causes a very impressive cancellation of the unwanted noise 

whilst the speaker’s voice, which is less than a 1/4 of an inch from the front 

opening, dominates the transmission. 

In terms of manufacturing costs it would be hard to produce a cheaper 

microphone. A carbon button is a very small tin of glorified coal dust 

(carbon granules) with a simple diaphragm attached. A bit of wire and 

some lightweight plastic fittings and that is it! Pure genius! 

54 

After some initial military skepticism the product was thoroughly tested 

and a first order came through to Khan and Burrows for 100,000 units! 

The T45 was soon taken up by all branches of America’s armed forces 

and the success rate of combat communications rose to 90%. 

Rags to RICHES 

Prior to World War 2 Electro-Voice was a small struggling company, 

with 20 employees, manufacturing a handful of dynamic and velocity 

microphones per week. By the latter part of the war Electro-Voice had 

500 employees working in 3 shifts producing more than 2,000 T45 

microphones a day! After WW2 it was also adopted by commercial 

aviation and remained in service for several decades. The T45 was also 

used on the Mercury, Gemini and Skylab space missions. 

Over the entire production run more than a million were produced placing 

the T45 among the highest selling microphones ever made. 

During the war many small firms went out of business due to a shortage 

of manpower and materials, but for those involved in the war effort 

fortunes were to be made. In 1946 Electro-Voice moved into an 

impressive new factory at Buchanan Michigan where they continued to 

manufacture innovative and exciting audio products for the next 60 years. 


55 

The Electro Voice T45 

Noise-cancelling 

Microphone 

1944 

June 2016

capitalism just 

does not work, i’ve 

just spent all my 

wages and i’m not 

pissed ... 

56 


Socialist Worker 

Letters Page 

Dear comrade editor 

As a once active member and now long time supporter I note with some 

dismay Socialist Worker trotting out the same old ‘EU is a bosses club and 

cannot be reformed’ with mention of unelected bureaucrats to ram home your 

partisan LEAVE message and ... to all intents and purposes for everyone to see 

… share that flatulent argument and a putrid-smelling platform with UKIP and 

other assorted bigots. 

The EU is a bosses club, this we know, I have no illusions about the EU, but 

also have absolutely no illusions in the uk parliament, its voting system, or its 

unelected second chamber - the exclusive, up-your-arse house of lords (no 

capitals required!). This referendum is a distraction, since when have our government, 

and their paymasters (big business) allowed the citizenry to decide on 

anything supposedly this important? Either way the vote goes - they don’t give 

a shit - they believe ‘they’ will still be in the saddle! 

As internationalists we should be promoting joint cross-border worker action 

to break down big companies ability to play worker against worker by shifting 

work and money about the EU (and the world) for their profit-margins, arguing 

for active support of French strikers … this we can do better within the EU. To 

break the stranglehold the EU rightwing have on the rights and movement of 

migrants/refugees/immigrants, and deliver on Socialist Workers’ ‘They are all 

welcome’ message, we should be appealing to cross-border action, not proposing 

we side with those who want to skulk in an off-shore walled-up island 

patrolled by peak-capped border guards. We need to be in Europe arguing for 

no borders. 

We should be (and are) for the overthrow of ALL ‘bosses clubs’! 

57 


ex-Cheltenham SWP 

June 2016

EXHIBITION 

A NEW CHILDHOOD 

PICTURE BOOKS 

FROM SOVIET RUSSIA 

House of Illustration 

London N1C 4BH 

Until 11 September 

houseofillustration.org 

58 

Avant garde design, 

childrens books from 

1920s and 1930s. 

The exhibiton takes us from Tsarist 

Russia through the revolution and then 

wallows in Stalin’s counter-revolution. 

Those interested in this period of 

illustration can follow it up by 

visiting a free archive at 

pudl.princeton.edu/collections/ 

pudl0127 

Poster by Galina and Olga 

Chichagova 


59 

June 2016

60 

Writing 

worth reading 

Photos 

worth seeing 

http://www.coldtype.net 


Jailed in las vegas | Brian terrell 

when nuclear power came of age | Brian Parkin 

gimme shelter (from the tax man) | nomi Prins 

ColdType 

Writing Worth reading | photos Worth seeing issue 118 

61 

DonalD 

Trump 

Breaking 

the bottom 

of the barrel 

June 2016

62 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 

























63 









June 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

TWELVE 

IN OR OUT ... THE SUITS 

WILL STILL BE TRYING 

TO EAT US ALIVE 

EU JUNERENDUM

Artwork: Jack Hurley 

https://loudribs.wordpress.com 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER TWELVE

The 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Opening 03 





Cover: re-worked comic. 













We Already Own It 05 

DRUM 09 

Tsotsi Zuma 19 

No Ideas ... 23 

Futura 25 

Letter to Socialist Worker 29 

Letters 33 

1 

mid-June 2016

2 


OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 



freely. All articles and artwork supplied, or 

found in newspapers lining the bottom of 

the canary cage, were gratefully received 








3 

Artwork: William Morris 

mid-June 2016

NHS 

The collective principle 

asserts that no society 

can legitimately call itself 

civilised if a sick person 

is denied medical aid 

because of lack of means. 

4 

Illness is neither an 

indulgence for which 

people have to pay, nor 

an offence for which they 

should be penalised, but 

a misfortune. the cost of 

which should be shared by 

the community. 

Nye Bevan 


WE ALREADY OWN IT 

I recently applied for a job at ‘We Own It’, my position plainly made in 

my application letter … 

‘I would be very interested in being involved in ‘We Own It’, 

as a socialist I agree with the aims of highlighting and possibly 

stopping this short-term fix for governments with private 

enterprise agendas who are in financial trouble – finding the 

continued selling off of public services to the hyenas of the 

entrepreneurial cesspit an abhorrence! 

5 

Please consider me for the ‘communications assistant’ position 

…’ 

Public authorities can offer a very good quality service but, currently that 

is at a higher rate than private companies. The reason for this is that 

public authorities pay workers the going rate for the job, have to pay 

overtime rates and properly abide with employment regulations … and 

then, as part of the bureaucratic bodge-nonsense that exists in the public 

sector, some officer’s wages are inflated to be comparative with private 

sector high-flyers ... 

mid-June 2016

Then, the only option that blinkered, narrow-minded public sector 

grandees and local authority decision-makers can see in times of budget 

cuts is tendering out, or selling off, services to cheap private providers. 

Those private services are impersonal, profit driven, fat cats in the driving 

seat, using workers who are low paid, intimidated, often forced to be 

complicit in rule-bending for the sake of keeping their job, and generally 

being denied trade union representation. 

6 

We Own It should be arguing for public authorities to clip the wings 

of their high flyers and to honestly explain to the public the true costs 

of services, which in many cases we already own, before considering 

anything else. Whatever a service actually costs – paying a proper living 

wage, with job security, safety considered, reasonable hours – tell us, the 

public, we can take it … Like all social/community costs, if they need to 

be paid and are demonstrably fair and open, we have to pay them! 

The truth is, up until the second world war, for most of us, the UK’s history 

was one of serfdom, wage slave, slums, long hours, children workers, 

dangerous conditions, misery and wasted lives … and all that fucking 

upstairs downstairs nonsense. After the war a progressive Labour Party 

introduced the Welfare State, nationalised things like the mines, the 

railways, waterworks, gas and electricity suppliers … all brought into 

public ownership … We Owned It! 

Since then successive governments, criminally accelerated by Thatcher’s 

anti-working class zeal, have, at the bequest of pillagers, privateers and 

pirates, chipped away at that magnificent egalitarian statement of ‘for the 

good of all’, allowing and encouraging dodgy characters to sow seeds of 


discontent, dissatisfaction and greed. Their aim to return to the good old 

days of cut-throat competition, small boys up chimneys, where the main 

beneficiary of any service to the community is the owner/shareholder/ 

slug … and, most definitely not the user, recipient or the worker … is on 

the statute books, it is entrenched as government policy ... unless we can 

change it! 

‘… as a socialist I agree with the aims of highlighting and possibly 

stopping this short-term fix for governments with private enterprise 

agendas who are in financial trouble – finding the continued selling 

off of public services to the hyenas of the entrepreneurial cesspit an 

abhorrence!’ 

7 

THE SUITS ARE WAITING TO EAT US ALIVE! 

mid-June 2016

8 


DRUM 

A photo-magazine that had editions all over the African continent, East, 

West and South – and whilst perhaps the original management intention 

of all Drum publications may have been to exploit the vast black African 

reading/viewing market, it soon became apparent that the staff working 

on these publications had other ideas – it is the South African Drum that 

is especially talked about here. 

9 

The photographers of the South African Drum have become famous 

for their many images of South Africa during the apartheid era, some 

were published in Drum, some in the world press and others in books 

published abroad to great critical aclaim. They often showed up white 

South African society as offensively racist and inhuman by capturing 

black peoples lives on film ... their images were a catalyst to the fight for 

a more democratic country. 

The staff, editors, journalists and photographers, at Drum ran the risk of 

imprisonment and worse, their commitment deserves remembering. 

Man and Child, Sharpeville, 1959 

Photograph: Peter Magubane 

mid-June 2016

Writing about his involvement on Drum in Creative Camera, 1984, 

Kerry Swift wrote: 


It is probably fair to say that the lack of recognition for the later Drum 

reflects its steady slide to mediocrity after the tumultuous years of 

the 1950s and early 1960s when the forces of nationalism in South 

Africa were flexing their muscles and testing their ground. The quality 

of picture magazines depends heavily on the social milieu they reflect 

at given times. Just as Picture Post and Signal found ample subject 

during the 1939-45 conflict, so Drum’s ‘golden years’ coincided with 

the steady entrenchment of apartheid in South Africa and the black 

response to it. It would be a deaf, dumb and blind editor who could not 

capture at least some highlights of that primordial conflict in a black 

magazine. Anthony Sampson and Tom Hopkinson produced some fine 

journalism in the early Drum, being men of quite exceptional talent. 

There appears to be a seminal flow to black response in South Africa. 

Where one generation of black resisters encountered police bullets at 

Sharpeville in 1960, a second generation felt the wrath of the State 

after a banzai charge into the cannon’s mouth during the nationwide 

riots sparked off in Soweto in June 1976. The first tide of black protest 

in the 1950s and the early 1960s provided Drum journalists with 

fertile ground for photo-reportage which they exploited with skill and 

considerable flair. But when this tide abated, Drum seemed to slip into 

a state of creative torpor which accurately reflected the socio-political 

fortunes of its readers. 


Drum’s fortunes might have continued to slide had not a second 

generation of black South Africans taken to the streets after June 1976. 

With this second tide of resistance Drum took on new significance and 

the ground was laid for a renaissance in Drum-style journalism. The 

incumbent editor at the time was Tony Sutton, a former Daily Express man 

whom Drum owner Jim Bailey had recruited in London to service his east 

and west African magazines before bringing him south. When Sutton 

took over Drum in early 1976, circulation hovered below 50,000 and 

Drum was about to go monthly instead of its usual fortnightly frequency. 

In short, the magazine was not exactly burning up the tracks. 

I first met Tony Sutton when I was drafted in to edit Drum’s sister 

magazine with the unlikely title of True Love. Volatile by nature, brash 

and pugnacious, Sutton was not a great respecter of management, nor 

proprietorial interference. But he had a passionate love for journalism 

in general and Drum in particular and possessed an uncanny gift for 

design, a gift he put to good use, visually transforming Drum and 

stretching its staff and inadequate facilities to their limits. 

11 

When I crossed over to Drum as news editor, the staff consisted of Sutton 

as executive editor, Stan Motjuwadi as editor, Chester Maharaja as staff 

photographer and Sipho Jacobs, a clerk seconded from picture filing 

to become crime reporter. Occasional input from Jacky Heyns in Cape 

Town, the late G R Naidoo in Durban and a motley crew of freelancers 

completed the editorial picture. Slowly we began to develop a robust and 

aggressive style which, backed by Bailey’s considerable input, began to 

show circulation results. Our market was once again on the boil and we 

went out to capture it as best we could. 

mid-June 2016

Much had changed since the early days of Drum. For one thing, dictates 

of modern publishing forced up advertising content beyond the 60% 

mark, greatly inhibiting our editorial canvas and leading to running 

battles with management. Relationships within the organisation were 

often strained and when Sutton was pushed through a glass window 

by the advertising manager during one particularly heated exchange in 

the passage we all took it as a minor victory – at least we were getting 

through to them! But the restriction of editorial pages meant that very few 

stories could run for more than three pages. 

12 

Publishing conditions had also changed substantially. A vast amount of 

legislation inhibiting the Press had found its way into the statute books. 

Blindfold in a legislative minefield is an accurate description of publishing 

conditions and Drum, not having the muscle of the corporate publishing 

giants behind it, was particularly vulnerable. The edition of Drum 

published after the outbreak of the June 1976 riots, for example, was 

banned, possession of the magazine being an offence. 

exerpt from Creative Camera, nos. 235/236 July/August 1984 


Tony Sutton, editor of South Africa’s Drum magazine during the 1976 

schoolkids’rebellion, tells how Drum’s coverage of one of the most 

momentous events in South Africa’s history earned it a 25-year ban: 

Glancing through the pages of Drum magazine 40 years after the events 

of June 16, 1976, I’m surprised by how little space we devoted to the 

riots in the issue that followed the initial violence. Then I remember that 

the magazine had just switched from fortnightly to monthly publishing, 

and we were trapped by brutal print deadlines – six weeks from delivery 

of pages to the printer to printed magazines – that were geared for 

timeless features rather than fast-breaking news. So that month’s 

coverage of one of the most momentous events in South Africa’s history 

was limited to just four hasty pages, with a front page teaser – “THE 

RIOTS: Why They Happened” – pasted across the top-right corner of a 

cover image of an unnamed local beauty. 

13 

Inside that July ’76 issue are reports by co-editor Stan Motjuwadi and 

chief reporter Joe Thloloe, accompanied by photographs by Mike 

Mzileni, who was soon to be detained without charge as part of a state 

crackdown on journalists. Another un-bylined piece, also written by 

Motjuwadi, affirms that, “For 25 years Drum has been saying that if 

South Africa were to have a revolution of social conscience and recognise 

the brotherhood of Man under the fatherhood of God, there could be no 

violence and no threat from foreign powers. For our variety of races and 

colours is perhaps our greatest asset.” 

mid-June 2016

That issue was ignored by the government, which had hammered much 

of the black media in the days after the riots. So we – and our lawyers – 

were extra careful how we handled the following issue. Our vigilance was 

in vain. The state reaction stunned us all: the August 1976, issue of Drum 

was considered so inflammatory that the government didn’t just follow 

its usual practice of simply banning the issue from sale, but they decreed 

that possession of it was a criminal offence – an action usually reserved 

for the most extreme political journals (that ban remained in place for 

almost 25 years, until Mandela’s release in February, 1990). 

14 

Yes, Drum’s rhetoric was angry, but it was reasoned, carefully-articulated, 

anger, not a wild scream for revenge or bloody insurrection. Motjuwadi 

had written, “Every adult South African, black and white should hang 

their heads in shame. The whole blood-curdling affair of Hector Peterson, 

only 13, riddled with bullets, stinks to high heaven. Every white South 

African finger drips with the blood of Hector for ramming Afrikaans down 

his throat.” 

That paragraph was cited by the censors as one of a plethora of nitpicking 

reasons for the banning, as was a photograph of a dead body, 

shattered rib-caged exposed, which was declared “offensive to public 

morals.” So it was confirmed: under apartheid, mowing down schoolkids 

was okay, but publishing photographs of their corpses was a sin! 

Ironically, the banning order made no mention of another quote in 

the magazine, from a speech by the Afrikaner Chief Justice Rump at a 

graduation of white students 56 days before the first shot had been fired 

in Soweto on June 16, “… social equality will have to be accepted and 


mechanisms for self-expression will have to be created. If there are whites 

who don’t like this, they had better go and find what they want elsewhere. 

In the long run, South Africa has a great future for all of us provided 

whites are willing to educate, qualify and recognise the non-whites … 

so that they may walk side by side into the dawn that has broken over 

Africa, a dawn which in South Africa will not turn again to darkness.” 

The vicious state reaction had an immediate, chilling, impact. Freelance 

photographer Alf Kumalo had handed me a stunning, but politicallyprovocative, 

photograph that no other publication had dared print as 

the townships blazed during the fragile days after June 16. I had already 

placed this image – showing the bodies of two dead Africans lying in 

front of a ‘hippo,’ an armoured combat vehicle extensively used by the 

security forces in black townships – as a double-page spread in the early 

pages of the September issue. 

15 

After the banning, I killed the feature, but held on to the photo for several 

months, before splashing it across two pages to open Drum’s January, 

1977 photographic round-up of the year, under the heading, Year of 

The Hippo. Then we held our breath, hoping it would slide past the 

government’s unpredictably censorious gaze. Fortunately, it did … 

from ColdType, June 2016 

Read more, see more photographs … some of this article is an edited 

The South African state’s reaction to the next, August, issue amazed 

us all: it was judged to be so inflammatory that the government didn’t 

just follow its usual practice and ban the issue from sale, but made 

possession of it a criminal offence. 

mid-June 2016

Read more, see more photographs 

… some of this article is an 

edited excerpt from an essay in 

the catalogue for a photographic 

exhibition, Drum 1976-1980: An 

Exhibition From the Pages of 

Drum Magazine, held at Rhodes 

University in 2006 to celebrate the 

30th anniversary of the Soweto riots 

of 1976. 

16 

A pdf of the booklet may be 

downloaded from: http://coldtype. 

net/Assets.06/Essays.06/0606. 

DrumBook.pdf 

Tony Sutton is editor of ColdType. 

He was editor of the South African 

magazine Drum from 1976 to 

1981. 

From Drum, January 1977 

Photograph: Alf Kumalo 



mid-June 2016

Of cabbages and kings 

18 

And whether pigs have wings 


TSOTSI ZUMA 

The employment of cunning and duplicity 

in statecraft or in general conduct. 

Niccolò Machiavelli 

Artwork: Alan Rutherford ... with a nod to Lewis Carroll 

Sadly, some uncharitably even say inevitably, the ANC, that bright beacon 

of hope for a better South Africa, have failed the electorate by allowing 

their president to build up a nest of cronies around him ... but ultimately 

now for closing ranks to deviously protect president Zuma against the 

charges of corruption and fraud. 

Falling into every racist’s dream Zuma, by his actions to ride roughshod 

over any legislative attempt to contain his excesses, shows that he does 

not give a damn – his behaviour would just seem to vindicate every 

racists’ gloating ‘they are not ready to govern’! All of Mandela’s sainted 

charm cannot undo this! To survive, if it can, the ANC must come clean, 

reorganise ... amandla ngawethu (power to the people!) 

The truth here is, power corrupts ... anyone given unchallenged power is 

likely to entertain ideas of grandiose pompous idolatory importance ... 

ZUMA must go! 

19 

mid-June 2016

A SQUARE PEGIN THE ROUND 

20 


21 

Artwork: Alan Rutherford 

mid-June 2016

22 

Spinoza and Hume met up in the 

vestibule of St Verity the Cheesemaker’s 

Blouse, a cuddly priest shouted, ‘Owze 

it hanging ... you cheeky monkey?’ – 

forced to check each others garb by the 

remark, they fell out big time and both 

were arrested by the Osophy Police for 

flashing their egos. 


There are no ideas in Bristol 

only IDEALS 

The word ‘idea’ can have a variety of meanings. It can refer to any content 

of the mind, or the thought or mental representation of a particular 

thing, or a plan or intention to do something, or the characterisation of 

something in general terms, that is, a concept or category. 

For Plato, reality consisted of immaterial universals that he called forms or 

ideas. These were external to the mind, whereas for idealist philosophers, 

there is no external reality separate from the ideas that occur within the 

mind. Rationalists hold that we are born with certain innate ideas from 

which all knowledge can be deduced, whereas empiricists reject innate 

ideas, prefering that the mind only acquires ideas through experience of 

the external world. Instrumentalists hold that ideas are no more than tools 

for dealing with practical problems. from Big Ideas In Brief: Ian Crofton 

23 


‘A cabbage is truthful or not truthful (or both at once). 

Therefore by infallible demonstration a cabbage is a liar. For 

otherwise it will be both at once, which we know it cannot be, 

or else it must be truthful, which we know it is not. QED’ 

F. H. Bradley disappearing up his own arsehole, 

taken from volume 2 of Collected Works of F. H. Bradley, 

published by Thoemmes Press, Bristol 1999. 

THERE ARE NO IDEAS IN BRISTOL BECAUSE OLD BRISTOLIANS ADD AN ‘L’ TO SOME WORDS 

mid-June 2016

24 


Paul RENNER 

1876-1956 

Typeface 

FUTURA 

Paul Renner, like Jan Tschichold, wanted types that suited the modern 

age instead of being revivals from an earlier one. In this, his views were 

similar to those of the Bauhaus movement, whose ideals he shared and 

influenced without ever being a member. 

He established the Meisterschule für Deutschlands Buchdrucher 

(Advanced School of German Book-printing) in Munich and recruited 

fellow type designers Georg Trump and Jan Tschichold to teach there. 

Tschichold was removed from his post and interned by the Nazis for 

‘subversive typography’ in 1933. Renner himself was dismissed under 

similar circumstances that same year. 

25 

His best known typeface, Futura, is the archetypal geometric sans serif. 

The original design had a lower-case of experimental characters but 

these were all abandoned before its release by Bauer in 1927. It has 

proved the most popular of its type, eclipsing the earlier Erbar, and still 

retains its popularity today. 

Futura is the main font used in Sheep in the Road 

mid-June 2016

26 

ANGLO-MYTHOLOGY 

of forage proportions 

art: Nick Dyer script: Richard Clements lettering: Jim Campbell 


WORDS AS TURDS 

REFERENDUM 

INNUENDUM 

ONOMATOPOEIA 

27 

CONSTIPATION 

MYTHINFORMATION 

DIARRHOEA 

mid-June 2016




wages and i’m not 

pissed ... 

28 



Socialist Worker 

Letters Page 

Dear comrade editor 

As a once active member and now long time supporter I note with some 

dismay Socialist Worker trotting out the same old ‘EU is a bosses club and 

cannot be reformed’ with mention of unelected bureaucrats to ram home your 

partisan LEAVE message and ... to all intents and purposes for everyone to see 

… share that flatulent argument and a putrid-smelling platform with UKIP and 

other assorted bigots. 

The EU is a bosses club, this we know, I have no illusions about the EU, but 

also have absolutely no illusions in the uk parliament, its voting system, or its 

unelected second chamber - the exclusive, up-your-arse house of lords (no 

capitals required!). This referendum is a distraction, since when have our government, 

and their paymasters (big business) allowed the citizenry to decide on 

anything supposedly this important? Either way the vote goes - they don’t give 

a shit - they believe ‘they’ will still be in the saddle! 

As internationalists we should be promoting joint cross-border worker action 

to break down big companies ability to play worker against worker by shifting 

work and money about the EU (and the world) for their profit-margins, arguing 

for active support of French strikers … this we can do better within the EU. To 

break the stranglehold the EU rightwing have on the rights and movement of 

migrants/refugees/immigrants, and deliver on Socialist Workers’ ‘They are all 

welcome’ message, we should be appealing to cross-border action, not proposing 

we side with those who want to skulk in an off-shore walled-up island 

patrolled by peak-capped border guards. We need to be in Europe arguing for 

no borders. 

We should be (and are) for the overthrow of ALL ‘bosses clubs’! 


ex-Cheltenham SWP 

29 

mid-June 2016

30 

Writing 

worth reading 

Photos 

worth seeing 



31 

mid-June 2016

32 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 

























33 









mid-June 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

13 

JULY-AUGUST 

2016

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 13

The 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Opening 03 





Cover: re-worked cartoon. 







Private Finance Iniatives 05 

Junior Doctor speaks ... 09 

Humber Super Snipe 15 

The key ... 23 

Negative Credit 25 

Letters 37 

1 

Artwork: Fifth Column 







JULY & AUGUST 2016

2 


OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 


Trying to ignore the media circus, lies 

and bullshit that parades as news ... misdirecting 

our attention, here is a magazine 

produced freely to be read freely. 

All articles and artwork supplied, or found 

in newspapers lining the bottom of the 

canary cage, were gratefully received 







3 

Artwork: Meridith Stern 


JULY & AUGUST 2016

4 


Artwork: John Phillips 

PFI 

If you think there is no money for NHS 

funding you’d be right – Private Finance 

Initiatives (PFI) has sucked it dry 

The total UK Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) 

debt is over £300bn. To put it more simply: 

this debt would cover the entire NHS budget 

for approximately two and a half years 

From the Independent 

by Yousef El-Gingihy, 

who is the author of 

How to Dismantle the NHS 

in 10 Easy Steps 

published by Zero books 

Up and down the UK, Private Finance 

Initiatives (PFI) are destroying public 

services. Introduced by John Major’s 

government and expanded by New Labour, 

the Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) policy 

was designed to use private financing to 

build and run public sector infrastructure 

projects. Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) 

consortia consist of bankers, construction 

companies and facilities management firms. 

The projects work like a mortgage, with 

repayments on the work completed made 

over decades. There is just one snag: the 

interest rates for Private Finance Initiatives 

(PFI) agreements are scandalously high. 

The NHS has more than 100 Private 

Finance Initiatives (PFI) hospitals. The 

original cost of these 100 institutions was 

around £11.5bn. In the end, they will cost 

the public purse nearly £80bn. The total 

UK Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) debt is 

over £300bn for projects worth only £55bn. 

This means that nearly £250bn will be 

spent swelling the coffers of Private Finance 

Initiatives (PFI) groups. 

5 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

6 

Just imagine what could buy for that in a time 

of supposed austerity. My rough calculations 

suggest it would cover the salaries for all the 

nurses, all the consultants and all the GPs 

needed to serve the NHS for 10 years – and 

you would still have billions left over to train 

the next generation or two of surgeons, build 

80 state of the art hospitals, and treat tens of 

thousands of cancer patients for a year. 

To put it more simply: it would cover the 

entire NHS budget for approximately two 

and a half years. 

We are constantly told that there is no 

money left; that we cannot afford the NHS 

as it is currently run, or to fund high quality 

public services. Yet there is plenty of money 

for the banks and for Private Finance 

Initiatives (PFI). And the UK Private Finance 

Initiatives (PFI) debt is four times the size of 

the budget deficit used to justify austerity. In 

other words, austerity is a political choice 

rather than a necessity. 

Innisfree, a small finance company based 

in the City of London, is one of the biggest 

players in the Private Finance Initiatives 

(PFI) market. One of Innisfree’s flagship 

projects is the largest NHS Private Finance 

Initiatives (PFI) scheme at St Bartholomew’s 

and the Royal London hospitals in London. 

This could have been publicly financed for 

around £1bn; instead, it will end up costing 

£7bn by the time repayments are complete 

in 2049. The difference of £6bn will go 

to PFI consortium Skanska Innisfree and 

partners. To put these figures into a more 

digestible format, Barts is paying over £2m 

a week in interest, which adds up to over 

£120m a year, before they see a single 

patient. 

Innisfree chief executive David Metter was 

paid £8.6m in 2010. It’s no surprise that 

a majority of NHS hospitals are now in 

deficit with Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) 

as a major factor. And you thought your 

mortgage was bad. Just imagine if they 

could spend that money on patient care. 

The majority shareholder in Innisfree is 

Coutts, the Queen’s bank. Coutts UK, in 

turn, is owned by RBS. RBS thus effectively 

has a controlling stake in hospitals, 

boosting its profits whilst simultaneously 

running public services into the ground. 

It is worth recalling that the combined 

bail-out and losses of RBS since the crash 

amount to £95 billion. This is almost 

equivalent to the NHS budget for a whole 

year, yet it is still extracting profit out of the 

NHS. 


£ 

HSBC also has a controlling stake in many 

Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) schemes, 

and even owns PFI hospitals outright. HSBC 

was caught red-handed laundering money 

for Mexican drug cartels, organisations 

linked to Al-Qaeda, Russian gangsters and 

sanctions busting. Yet HSBC is also profiting 

from the dismantling of healthcare. 

The Treasury building upgrade is a Private 

Finance Initiatives (PFI) scheme, and HMRC 

is renting offices from a company registered 

in an offshore tax haven thanks to a Private 

Finance Initiatives (PFI) scheme. You really 

couldn’t make this stuff up. In fact, publicprivate 

partnerships have even been 

exported globally including to Iraq and 

Libya. Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) has 

been such a roaring success that George 

Osborne was rolling out Private Finance 

Initiatives 2, the blockbuster sequel, before 

he got the chop. 

7 

Artwork: Thomas Nast 

Some smaller hospitals have already been 

able to buy their way out of Private Finance 

Initiatives (PFI), and there are multiple 

precedents for taking services back into 

public hands when the private sector fails. 

So it’s time for the Private Finance 

Initiatives (PFI) debt to be cancelled 

and the introduction of a future policy 

of financing public infrastructure 

directly. 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

8 

NHS Solidarity – supported 

by doctors, nurses, teachers, 

Disabled People Against 

Cuts (DPAC) and several 

unions – is calling for the 

renationalisation of the 

NHS. Wake up Britain! 


As a junior doctor, it mystifies me why 

Theresa May didn’t take the opportunity to 

sack the incompetent Jeremy Hunt 

Junior doctors are traditionally loath to 

take strike action and on the centre-right 

of politics. Hunt managed to unite them all 

against the government. That is no mean 

feat 

There is no denying the volatility and 

unpredictability of British politics over the 

past month. It feels like every man and his 

dog has resigned, with no one accepting 

the challenge of the difficult passage ahead. 

For many of us working in the NHS the 

silver lining in this very dark and dismal 

cloud was the anticipation of removal of 

Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary. 

9 

From the Independent 

Never has a Health Secretary been so 

incompetent, disliked and uncompromising. 

For many, it has felt like he singlehandedly 

impaired contract negotiations by his 

relentless opposition to any concession. I 

am incredibly tired and frustrated with the 

government and its inability to listen to its 

electorate after trying to deal with him over 

the last few months. 

JULY & AUGUST 2016


Hunt has succeeded in uniting doctors in a 

front against the government, a move few 

could have predicted considering doctors’ 

usual reluctance to strike and historical 

support for centre-right politics. He has 

allowed services to be stretched beyond 

breaking point. He has triggered the biggest 

exodus of doctors, many of which are 

from struggling specialties, and has acted 

as a walking advertisement for Australia. 

Contributing to a brain drain wasn’t 

supposed to be part of his job description. 

Even in terms of speaking to patients, our 

Health Secretary has been left wanting. In 

February of this year, he was criticised by a 

meningitis charity for making a “serious error 

of judgment” after he seemed to recommend 

that parents worried about a rash their 

child have should look on the internet and 

compare pictures rather than visit a doctor. 

It is about time politicians were held 

properly accountable for their actions. As 

medical professionals, if we are found to 

be dangerous or personally difficult, we have 

to answer to the General Medical Council, 

who will review our registration. Hunt has 

been dangerous and difficult. Policies that 

harm patients and the medical staff who 

treat them have been introduced under his 

watch. He has been obstinate during contract 

negotiations and is reluctant to listen to or 

accept any criticism of his imposed plans. 

This is a minister who has been previously 

been implemented in the BskyB scandal, he 

has demonstrated previous arrogance and 

dishonesty. In 2012, he was caught up in 

the BSkyB scandal, where many called for 

him to resign and the Guardian stated that 

“he appears to have blotted his copybook 

beyond repair.” It took him just three years to 

involve himself in a scandal of even bigger 

proportions. 

Hunt will go down in history as a person 

with astounding abilities to cling onto 

power despite reaching record levels of 

unpopularity. It was an unprecedented move 

when 98 per cent of junior doctors voted 

to go on strike last year, one followed by 

marches in support that were attended by 

record numbers of the general public. The 

fact that Theresa May kept him in power 

beggars belief. I can only think that she 

wants him to sort out the mess he created. 

Hunt is working on his legacy; he wants to 

be known as the man who changed the NHS 

for the better. But if he wants to succeed, 

he needs to open his eyes and he is ears 

because currently, he is failing. I fear we 

needed new blood in the cabinet to achieve 

this, and that nothing can save the NHS if 

Hunt is allowed to continue. I hope that he 

can prove me wrong. 


11 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

12 


A bag of bones, blood, 

shit and piss, ever weary 

muscles giving it motion at 

the whim of a calculating 

brain. Criminally wasteful 

energy and money 

spent in maintenance, 

image definition and self 

importance. Ever thought 

that maybe the actual ‘you’ 

was elsewhere using some 

sort of glorified bluetooth 

to control that robotic body 

of yours … 

13 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

14 


HUMBER SUPER SNIPE: 

Did it really happen? 

When I was a boy, living down Manor View Road in Hillary I 

remember an occasion when all logic and sense left for one day. 

This may seem a strange thing to say about 1950s South Africa 

where all logic and sense had already abandoned the country long 

ago … but, well, I am speaking here of an incident witnessed by a 

boy of 8 so, in my memory, it was a crazy day. 

Mr Van der Beer, often left his car half way up his drive, doors open 

and keys in the ignition when he had been out drinking. It was a 

1952 Humber Super Snipe, black and shiny with a running board 

that some of the older kids climbed on when Mr Van was not about. 

There were not many cars down Manor View Road and Mr Van’s 

was the best, seemingly admired by all. 

15 

Anyway, one Saturday morning a group of us kids found Mr Van’s 

car in the road, up on bricks and all four wheels missing. Seemed 

to us that Mr Van had not even made it to his driveway and 

someone had stolen his wheels … we wondered why whoever had 

taken the wheels had not just stolen the car which was open to the 

world with keys in ignition. 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

16 

Over an hour of deliberations we kids had come up with a theory 

that the wheels had been taken by some of the black people who 

lived in Cato Manor. Cato Manor could be seen from the end of our 

road, it was a black township in theory but in reality was a ghettoshacksville 

for the black workers of Durban … and all ills in the 

white community bordering it could be blamed on them without the 

slightest whiff of evidence. A group of us were still hanging around 

the car when Mr Van came wandering up the road, his face all red 

and looking shocked, his car, all black and shiny but no wheels. He 

stomped about a bit, we watched … he was inconsolable. 

There must have been about twenty kids now following Mr Van as 

he knocked on doors up and down Manor View Road. ‘My wheels 

have been stolen by the bleks, get your gun and lets go down to 

Cato Manor and get them back’, repeated Mr Van to each man 

who answered the door. Eventually there were around 30 armed 

men bumping bellies with manly enthusiasm, Mr Van now seemed 

concerned at the hornet’s nest he had disturbed and was trying to 

calm them down. We kids stood by and watched as an agitated 

group of our fathers and neighbours got pumped up by Mr Van’s 

new suggestion. 


‘If you guys will help me, maybe we could carry the car to the garage 

to get new wheels?’ A lot of muttering followed. The local garage was 

about a mile away on Essenwood Road, it wouldn’t be impossible 

to do this … and by now the wives had arrived on the scene. The 

women made it known they did not want people going down to Cato 

Manor with guns, their domestic servants may take umbrage and 

leave their employ … so they agreed to the absurd logic of their men 

carrying Mr Van’s car to the garage. It all happened quite quickly I 

suppose, but even I could see it would be easier to buy the wheels 

and bring them to the car, but I was only a kid and the men were all 

well into oiling up their muscles, flexing biceps and winking at each 

other … and the admiring women. 


This was going to be a day to remember. The men, now stripped 

to the waist, gathered around the car, each taking a position and 

looking for a hold on the car’s chassis … Mr Du Plessis, who was 

by far the strongest looking, took command with ‘Lift!’ and the car 

rose from the blocks. 

As they moved off up the road, Mr Van kicked over the blocks, we 

noticed he wasn’t part of the carrying team, and could only look on 

in open mouthed surprise as he rushed between the rear carrier’s 

legs and crawled under the car. Could this day get any weirder? 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

18 

Us kids ran alongside shouting and pointing at Mr Van as he 

crawled, staying under the car. As the men realised there was a 

problem they looked to Mr Du Plessis for guidance. Annoyed at 

this strange twist, several ploys were enacted to rid the car of its 

crawling ‘passenger’, Mr Du nodded his head back down the road 

and the men quickly did a back step. Unfortunately Mr Van had 

been watching their legs and whichever way Mr Du sent the men 

he managed to stay under the car. We kids, and now it seemed 

the whole roads’ residents, watched the choreographed moves 

in amazement, deceptively the car looked light as a feather as it 

floated about 2 feet off the road … we could see Mr Van darting 

this way and that, his knees red with blood, his face even redder. 

How would this end, the men had become enraged at Mr Van’s 

actions and were frustratedly wasting time and their energy in trying 

to expel him from his position beneath his car when, after all, they 

were trying to do him a favour … the situation just could not go 

on. We could only think Mr Van had convinced himself that his 

neighbours would soon tire and drop his car, so he was trying to 

make it impossible for the men to put it down (with him underneath 

and all). 


Increasingly the car was being danced about the road by the frantic 

and wild-eyed sweating men, the troupe being led by Mr Du and 

his nodding head swished this way and that, Mr Van now leaving a 

bloody trail as he ground his knees into the road. The large group 

of onlookers looked on in silence, none volunteered to take over, to 

build new blocks to rest the car on … or help drag Mr Van out. A 

scene of absolute madness, the only sound being 30 pairs of shoes 

soft-shoe-shuffling, the weighty car sailing this way and that. This 

went on for what seemed like forever. 

To us kids it was the funniest thing we had ever seen, rivalling 

any short reel of black and white twenties slapstick comedy that 

preceded the main feature at Saturday Morning Kiddies Club at the 

Odeon … and then the pop as they dropped the car on Mr Van. 

19 

Shit, that ‘pop’ man … 

Nala Drofrehtur 

not afraid to appear backward 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

20 


TRUMP- 

CLINTON 

& MAY 

FACE THE 

WORLD 

IN FANCY 

DRESS 

LUNACY 

21 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

22 


So .... just when you 

thought you may have 

found the key to life 

on earth; to unlock 

the power of the 

inner mind; to give 

you control of your 

destiny ... it turns out 

to be a key to more 

spam ... schizen! 

23 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

24 


NEGATIVE CREDIT, 

CULTURALLY … 

A while ago I was happy and fortunate to be asked to prepare artwork 

for the reprint of an acknowledged photo/art book (a classic some would 

say). The reprint of the classic 1990 photobook turned out fine. It was an 

interesting project and I did get ‘paid’ for my services, but, as usual when I 

like a project (and also when I heard the photographer/author is ‘precious’ 

about his work), I did push all buttons to overload on my input to ensure 

everyone would be happy with the resulting book. Hopefully they are? 

25 

Here is something I wrote at the start of the process: 

“This book deserves to be reprinted. Apart from the photographs, it is 

the historical commentary, that makes it a document worthy of greater 

dissemination … it is a valuable resource. 


The publisher wants quality (to please author and publisher’s reputation) 

but also wants cheap (to please unit price and make book price a 

reasonable £25 or so) … In ideal terms it should be a prestige 4 colour 

print job which should have a posh specification of papers to make up for 

the fact that it is a facsimile … and it should be priced around £40. 

Facsimile … How to achieve a good quality reprint today from a book printed 

to so-so quality in 1990, while being constricted by unit cost and being steered 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

towards a printer offering a very cheap price. Obvious to me that, if left to 

market concerns only, materials and print quality will be suffering in this choice. 

26 

Compromise: To reprint a photobook printed in 1990, using that book 

as a source, is a compromise. In this instance the offset Litho printing in 

1990 used a coarser screen of dots to print than today’s offset litho printing 

process. Page scans will need some fiddling with to descreen the the book’s 

photographs and then to try to keep some of their integrity. For an artist or 

photographer to be ‘precious’ about their work, is possibly understandable 

in other circumstances (maybe), but when being reprinted using an old book 

as source material is ‘foot-stomping’ crazy! To add pressure to this process by 

also wanting to keep costs down while wanting quality is one of those ugly and 

purely capitalist vices. Compromise is needed from all to achieve a reasonable 

product at a price that will be feasible in today’s ‘Amazon’ marketplace. 

Compromise: Reprinting a book of colour and black and white photographs 

using a book printed in 1990 as source may, with some great effort, fiddling, 

magic …, give a reasonable end result, but it is a compromise. To also be 

pressuring the manager of the project to use a ‘cheap’ but good printer … 

and get the end results to please a ‘precious’ photographer is a nonsense. 

Compromise: Its a fucking compromise, I’ll do my best, the printer will do his 

best … a compromise will have to be accepted for this project, in its present 

constricted configuration, to see the light of day.” 

Interestingly, since its publication, the reprint has received some healthy 

praise in that it has boosted (and revived) the reputation and standing 

of its photographer/author. And well, that’s probably how it should be, 


ut also the publisher has been applauded … for his visionary role in 

being clearsighted enough to believe in (t)his product and this particular 

photographer (who he has championed). And also, again, thats probably 

how it should be. All healthy stuff, I think. 

In the upside-down-world we live in, in any mention of ‘their’ product (in this 

case, a book), it is the owners of the means of production (and in this case that 

is the ‘publisher’) who are the beneficiaries, getting all the back-slapping and 

(maybe) financial rewards. Whereas it is the invisible workers behind the scenes 

(artworker, typesetter, proofer, screenmaker, printer, guillotine, finisher, packer 

… apologies to all I have missed on this brief list), whose time and sometimes 

beyond expected efforts are what have created that fucking gloriously crafted 

item in your hands, a beautiful, beautiful book, albeit a reprint. 

27 

I suppose you could argue ‘well, they have been paid!’ … but even then, 

in order to make any profit out of this product/book the ‘behind the scenes 

workers’ cannot be paid their true worth (its called capitalism!). It cannot be 

denied that without the critical and necessary participation of these slaves 

to the rhythm this project would have failed, so it is quite a sleight for them 

to be so evenly and haughtily ignored by all in the cultural/arts media … 

almost like a ‘fuck-them’ … Those involved in the production of this book 

can scour any review of this book vainly looking for any mention of their 

skills, their inconsiderable and laboured effort (‘vainly’ used here without 

apology, and pointedly adopting its double meaning). 

A book is so much more than its contents or the brand stamped on its 

spine, get off your perch you arty-farty playthings … credit where credit is 

due, and some! 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

THE 

28 

EVOLUTION 

CODE 


29 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

30 


31 

JULY & AUGUST 2016




wages and i’m still 

not pissed ... 

32 


33 


JULY & AUGUST 2016

34 

Writing 

worth reading 

Photos 

worth seeing 



35 

JULY & AUGUST 2016

36 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


Absolutely damaged by the swiftly decaying 

state of the nation ... Words fail me, what is the 

use of words when the person you are saying 

them to is unable to grasp your, and their, 

meaning? 

Worryingly, we have left even that irrational 

road, the one where stupidity reigns, and where 

basic facts and knowledge acquired over time 

are being replaced by entrenched banal myths, 

hearsay and superstition. The shit-faced fudge 

of complacency and mad spouters will now be 

defended to the death by a renewed Trident. 

Reason cannot be relied on in the present or 

near future (if ever?) and its utterly terrifying. 

Just who are the terrorists? For evidence of 

this I direct your (still giggling but increasingly 

alarmed) attention to Donald Trump and his 

campaign to become US President. As Britain’s 

government is a happy lapdog of US mischief in 

the world ... and a blindly loyal follower of US 

foreign policy, what will our May/TweedleDum/ 

TweedleDee/Johnson government do if Trump 

suceeds and begins his Term of Ignorance? 

37 

Whilst I remain optimistic about the future I am 

absolute in my scepticism about whether the 

business-arses and their sycophantic political 

stooges, Blairites and Tories – or the US 





JULY & AUGUST 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

14 

digital


Syria: Aleppo 

A horrific situation, bombs, shelling and chlorine 

gas ... a human slaughter that is never supposed 

to happen these days. Joining in, or helplessly 

observing from an armchair, its hard to say which 

is more criminal. Truly, by targetting civilians and 

hospitals, our representatives in the whole ghastly 

affair are terrorists! The United Nations Peace 

Keeping attempts are ignored, the international 

umpire cannot even get a brief ceasefire ... blooded 

and aroused warmongers masking the size of their 

pathetic erections stomp on children in their frenzy, its 

the harm that [some] men do. 

c 

Asad must go! 

An anti-Franco cartoon strip, possibly more 

accessible and propagandist than the painting 

‘Guernica’ (1937), with which it shares its indignation 

and some images. 

Pablo Picasso 

Sueño y mentira de Franco (Paris, 1937) 

MID-AUGUST 2016

d 


The 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 














There is no deadline for 

submitting articles to be 

included in the next issue, it 

will appear whenever, or in 

your dreams! 

Articles to: 


Opening 03 

Cultural Thievery 05 

Stealing Peace 09 

Gutenberg 13 

Happy Birthday 14 

Blairites still ... 17 

Mark Steel article 19 

Pirate Party 25 

Kiss-kiss 28 

Chopsticks 35 

Letters 45 

1 

MID-AUGUST 2016

2 


OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 

Welcome to magazine number 14, and 

welcome Peter Lewis from over the road. 

Trying to ignore the media circus, lies 









3 

Artwork: Turgenev by David Johnson 

‘we all sit in the mud 

.... and reach for 

the stars’ 

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev 

[1818-1883] 





Without contributors this project will 

fail! 


MID-AUGUST 2016

4 


Cultural THIEVERY 

Whilst plagiarism is widely discussed amongst graphic designers and 

musicians, cultural appropriation is hardly mentioned. The term is 

commonly used to describe the appropriation of cultural elements 

without permission, usually elements from a marginalised culture that are 

appropriated by a dominant culture. 

A well-known example in the USA is the American brand Urban Outfitters 

which in 2009 designed a ‘Navajo’ range of items, using patterns 

‘inspired’ by Navajo textiles. The Navajo are a Native American tribe in 

the USA, and the company did not consult with the tribe beforehand, ask 

their permission, or share the profits that were made from the products. 

5 

Photograph: unknown 

Jaclyn Roessel, who grew up learning to weave on a Navajo reservation, 

said, ‘I wonder whether they understand that Navajo is even ... a living 

culture ... and that there are women today who wear outfits with these 

designs on them because they mean something.’ 

Initially the brand refused to change the name or its products, but after 

increased pressure from social media in 2011, Urban Outfitters pulled its 

‘Navajo’ products from the shelves. 

The appropriation of ‘black’ music stylings like blues and reggae by 

mainstream popular white musicians for financial gain is well-known. The 

difference between ethno-musicologists like Ry Cooder, Bob Brozman, Taj 

MID-AUGUST 2016

Mahal, Damon Albarn and Paul Simon is that Cooder, Brozman, Mahal 

and Albarn credit and promote the collaboration ... whereas Simon is a 

cultural appropriator with a large ego, he may share songwriting credits 

but he is the ‘brand name’ that receives the acclaim and wealth. 

This magazine occasionally exploits cultural artwork, it sometimes 

plagiarises and steals (sometimes without credit, gulp) ... it does so with 

the honest intention to promote and makes no financial gain. Admittedly 

Sheep in the Road does sometimes glory in the fact that it has brought 

to your notice a talent ... and tries very hard to give that talent credit ... 

sometimes we fail, sorry. 

6 

This piece has been appropriated, sucked, broadened and spat out from 

an original piece in ‘The Politics of Design’ by Ruben Pater (it could be 

him?) 


7 

MID-AUGUST 2016

8 


Appropriating PEACE 

Why are some symbols popular and others not? Type designer Adrian 

Frutiger argued this had more to do with strong graphic effect than its 

historic references. A famous example is the swastika, a symbol whose 

meaning has changed significantly since the 1930s. 

The CND peace symbol was designed by British textile designer Gerald 

Holtom in 1958 for the British anti-nuclear movement. Its design 

was based on the flag signals for the letters N and D (from nuclear 

disarmament), and it also symbolised a person in despair. Through its 

use in the anti-Vietnam war and ‘ban the bomb’ protests in the 1960s 

and 1970s it grew to be one of the most popular symbols ever created. 

9 

The downward fork shape has a striking simplicity, and Holtom was not 

the first one to use it. In the Runic alphabet the symbol means death. 

During World War II the Runes were revived by Nazi Germany and used 

to, among other things, signify army units. This is how decades before 

the peace symbol was designed, it was found on tanks in German tank 

devisions for anything but peaceful purposes. 

MID-AUGUST 2016

In the 1960s when the CND peace symbol became popular in Europe, 

its history came back to bite its bum. Some people objected to its use 

because of its Nazi history, but by then it had become too popular. Again 

in 1973 the CND peace symbol caused controversy in South Africa when 

it was used during anti-Apartheid demonstrations, and was subsequently 

banned as a symbol of defiance by the racist Apartheid regime. 


More recently in 2006 in the USA, two inhabitants of Denver were 

forced to remove a CND peace symbol because neighbours found it 

anti-Christian. Bizarrely, despite its popular and accepted status, in their 

ignorance, or just plain intransigence, they interpreted the downward fork 

as a downward cross, a symbol of satanism. No matter how simple and 

strong a symbol, its adaption, resemblance, or appropriation can change 

its meaning. 

Which brings us back to the swastika, an ancient religious symbol, 

considered to be an auspicious symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and 

Jainism that dates back to before the 2nd century BC ... but, because it 

was appropriated by the Nazis, it is now stigmatised forever. Despite its 

lengthy peaceful use as a symbol of good luck, its association with Nazi 

Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust has changed its meaning ... 

it was, in a twisted irony, anything but a good luck symbol to six million 

Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals ... 

This piece has also been appropriated, tricked, added to and trumped 

from an original piece in ‘The Politics of Design’ researched by Asja 

Keeman (thank you). 


11 

Artwork: Stephen Alcorn 

MID-AUGUST 2016

12 


THANK GOODNESS FOR 

GUTENBERG! 

When Johannes Gutenberg introduced 

moveable type in 1439, a lot of people 

got upset. The scribes union, the 

church, and even the mayor, his nephew 

... called him an eccentric, a lunatic, 

even a heretic. He was shunned by his 

contemporaries, but eventually, his 

dream came true. 

13 

If it had not, you would not be reading 

this ... in fact you might not be reading 

at all. 

MID-AUGUST 2016

¿Dónde están 

los baños? 

14 

‘Errrr ... can you tell me where the 

toilets are?’ 

Fidel Castro 

Happy 90th birthday! 

13 August 


15 

MID-AUGUST 2016

16 

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME 

ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS 

–ITS OFFICIAL: NEW LABOUR– 


Blairites still fuck with the machine 

The debacle over who leads the Labour Party, with its rebellious MPs 

(mostly Blairites) looking for an ‘establishment’ Tony-look-alike leader 

of dubious ‘electable’ quality, really exposes the whole parliamentary 

democracy lark for the farce it is. Political parties say they want members 

and supporters, but they don’t want active members, they really want 

quiet, docile citizens who pay their fees and leave it to their MPs to bicker 

and float about on a fat salary with their exquisitely inflated ‘expenses’ 

cushions that keeps their feet off the ground and stops their arses being 

kicked to hell and back. Once elected, MPs then vote as they please. 

Please consider the ‘electable’ aspect. The concern is that, for the Labour Party 

to do anything for its supporters, it must win an election to run the country. We 

know, and have known for years, that a Labour government elected with some 

tantalising radical lefty chit-chat, but which then bit-by-bit becomes essentially 

an ‘establishment’ manifesto when in office, is a disappointing anti-climax to 

those who voted for them to do something of benefit for the working class ... 

Once elected, a Labour goverment’s face to the public is barely distinguishable 

from a Tory government ... and their weak feeble excuse that their hands are 

tied by financial constraints is a criminal cop-out. 


Last year, along comes a stalwart labourite, long serving and true to his 

socialist ideals, and all hell breaks loose ... he wins a mandate from 

members to lead the Labour Party, but fellow Labour MPs refuse to accept 

his leadership because he doesn’t look like George Clooney or act like 

some sharp suit in the City. 

MID-AUGUST 2016

From someone with left leanings, and not a member of the Labour Party, 

I can see the value for Britain in supporting Jeremy Corbyn, his ideas are 

that breath of fresh air that Parliament tries to stiffle. But one of the latest 

slurs aimed at Corbyn is laughable ... to accuse ‘bogeymen’ Trotsky-ist 

infiltrators of seeking to influence Labour members, shit, the numbers 

of Trotsky followers in this country is miniscule, their influence is barely 

a ripple, they honourably carry a banner for revolutionary socialism ... 

but for fuck sake, you only have to ask ‘are we on the brink of a socialist 

revolution?’ to be faced with the sad truth ... well, shit, no! 

18 

It is all just another elaborate ‘ruling class’ distraction to misdirect. For 

those in power the real concern is obvious, that Corbyn may not be so 

easily manipulated by big money interests, that his ideas are contrary to 

business as usual ... so, he must be stopped. For us though the way is 

clear, he must be supported! 


(not afraid to appear backward) 

NEXT, tongue firmly placed in cheek: what the papers say ... 

The following is an [edited] article by Mark Steel 

which appeared in The Independent. 


Labour MP’s prepared to use 

members’ money to ban them from 

voting 

What a boost this approach would be for British business. Comet would 

never have gone bankrupt if anyone buying a washing machine handed 

over their money and was then told they wouldn’t be given a washing 

machine 

It’s marvellous how they manage it, but every week the people running the 

Labour Party election perform a stunt even more spectacular than the last. 

19 

Next week Margaret Hodge will kidnap John McDonnell, which she will 

claim is in accordance with the Labour Party Constitution, Rule 457. 

(Shadow Chancellor Chained to a Radiator in the Basement Clause (14 

B iii).) Peter Mandelson will reveal he has met Vladimir Putin to request 

he cuts off the oil supply to Jeremy Corbyn’s office, and Hilary Benn will 

announce he has hired a fleet of Tornados to bomb a Momentum branch 

meeting in Exeter. 

Labour must be bold and ambitious, and never before can an 

organisation have illegally banned its own members from 

voting in an election it promised them a vote in, then spent the 

money it took from those members on appealing to the High 

Court to [try and] keep the ban. 

MID-AUGUST 2016

The argument of those who brought in the ban was that, although the 

new members were promised a vote in Labour elections, they didn’t 

mean the next election, but at some unspecified one in the future. 

What a boost this method would be if it was adopted by British business. 

Comet would never have gone bankrupt if anyone buying a washing 

machine handed over their money and was then told they wouldn’t 

actually be given a washing machine, but the money they had paid 

would be used on appealing to the High Court for the company’s right to 

not hand over a washing machine. 

20 

It would be entertaining if it ran the country like this: Angela Eagle would 

announce: “We’ve spent the education budget wisely, on an appeal to the 

High Court that no one in Wales should be allowed to eat bananas.” 

Because Labour must be modern, and to prove how modern it is, the 

plotters are furious at how democratic they are ordered to be by High 

Court judges. Maybe this is how it plans to win a General Election – by 

appealing to the High Court to only allow someone to vote if they’re 

called Kinnock or Eagle. 

But these extreme measures are essential because, as Tom Watson 

explained, the Labour election has been undermined by “Trotsky entryists 

twisting arms of young members”. This explains why Corbyn is expected 

to win again, because the 300,000 new members of Labour are 

powerless before the arm-twisting might of Britain’s 50 Trotsky entryists. 

Now the worry is what other votes they are influencing by arm-twisting. 


We should watch out for this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, when Will 

Young comes second to Alf Barnshaw, the central committee member 

of the Trotsky Entryist group the Revolutionary Movement for Extremely 

Violent Workers’ Anger. 

The whole strategy of the anti-Corbyn plotters appears to be random fury. 

Every vote that goes against them is a result of “bullying”, and one MP, 

Conor McGinn, told the press that Corbyn “threatened to call my Dad”. 

This suggests their aim to win a general election is to go after the toddler 

vote. They are going to campaign for the voting age to be reduced to 

three, then issue a manifesto that goes: “It’s not faIr becoos I wozent 

doing anyfink and Treeza MAy kAlld my daD just like jErmY and thats wie 

I want to b pie minister.” 

21 

If Corbyn is to be defeated, it should be by debate not by a fix 

But they don’t appear to have any desire to work out what might be 

taking place. Because, like a married couple who scream at each other 

for hours about who left the ironing board in the wrong place, clearly 

there is something more to this disagreement than the rows they have 

about who sent a nasty message on Twitter. 

The anti-Corbyn plotters complain Corbyn’s policies make him 

unelectable, so their strategy appears to be to have no policies at all. 

They make no effort to explain why the support for Corbyn is an English 

version of what has happened across Europe and America. Presumably 

they think Bernie Sanders won millions of supporters because he 

borrowed Corbyn’s arm-twisting machine, and the SNP won in Scotland 

because Nicola Sturgeon threatened to call Ed Miliband’s dad. 

MID-AUGUST 2016

And none of them attempt to assess why thousands turn out to hear 

Corbyn in town centres. They must be the only people in political history 

to see huge crowds coming into the streets to support their party and 

think “We’ll ban that lot for a start”. 

22 

So Owen Smith’s campaign insists he will continue with many of Corbyn’s 

radical ideas but do it more competently. If you were cynical you might 

wonder how strongly he backs Corbyn’s ideas, when the people backing 

Smith most fervently are Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, and 

everyone else who hates everything Corbyn stands for. It is like standing 

for the General Synod of the Anglican Church when your campaign 

manager is Richard Dawkins. 

The result is their campaign amounts to a series of unconnected 

exasperated attempts to force him to stand down, by all resigning or 

appealing to a High Court for the right to rig the vote, making them look 

like Wile E Coyote chasing the Road Runner. 

Next week, at a Corbyn rally, Stephen Kinnock will hide above him 

waiting to drop an ACME piano, but the balcony he is on will collapse 

and he will land on Laura Kuenssberg. 

Then Tom Watson will try to shoot him through a hole in a tree, but the 

gun will bend back through another hole and he will shoot himself in 

the face, so he will issue a statement that this proves Corbyn must stand 

down – he simply isn’t competent. 


23 

MID-AUGUST 2016

24 


Iceland’s Pirate Party may form next 

government, according to polls 

From Alexandra Sims in The Independent 

Iceland’s radical Pirate Party, calling for a 35-hour working week, direct 

democracy and total drug decriminalisation, has a strong likelihood of 

forming the country’s next government, according to polls, which the 

party has dominated since last year. 

The anti-establishment party, founded by a group of activists, poets and 

hackers in 2012, won three of 63 seats in Iceland’s parliament, the 

Alþingi, at the last election in April 2013. 

25 

Iceland’s Pirate Party secures more funding than all its rivals 

Support for the party has grown to such an extent some analysts are 

now confident the party could return to the Alþingi with between 18 and 

20 MPs giving them a favourable number of seats to help form the next 

government, Iceland Monitor reports. 

In June, the Social Science Research Institute of the University of Iceland 

found the party was the largest in the country, leading polls at 29.9 

per cent, with the centre-right Independence Party, which forms part of 

Iceland’s coalition government with the Progressive Party, at 22.7 per 

cent. 

MID-AUGUST 2016

The Pirate Party is backed by almost half of Iceland’s voters in a poll 

taken following the Panama Papers scandal made links the Iceland’s 

Prime Minister. Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former Wikileaks spokeswoman and 

founding Pirate Party MP, told the Guardian: “It’s gradually dawning on 

us, what’s happening. 

“It’s strange and very exciting. But we are well prepared now. This is 

about change driven not by fear but by courage and hope. We are 

popular, not populist.” 

26 

She said the party is prepared to form a coalition government with any 

partner that will pledge to its agenda of “fundamental system change”. 

The Independence Party has said it will not subscribe to this. 

“We will be doing things differently,” Ms Jonsdottir added. 

Iceland’s general election had been scheduled to take place in April 

2017, however following political unrest over PM Sigmundur David 

Gunnlaugsson’s connections to the Panama Papers it is now due to take 

place in October, with 29th being the likely date. 

Mr Gunnlaugsson temporarily stepped down from his role as Prime 

Minister in April and has been replaced by Sigmundur Ingi Johannsson, 

formally the country’s agriculture and fisheries minister. 

The Pirate Party were polling at up to 43 per cent in the days following 

the leak, while Mr Gunnlaugsson’s Progressives, the dominant party in 

the current coalition, slumped to single digits. 


Eva Heida Önnudóttir, a political scientist at the University of Iceland said 

she could “very easily see” the party winning 20 to 25 per cent of the 

vote. 

The radical party told the Reykjavik Grapevine last year, the group wants 

to see banks completely separate their investment and commercial arms. 

They have also advocated a new form of direct democracy to “build 

bridges between the general public and those they trust to serve them”. 

The Pirate Party is also calling for asylum for US whistle-blower Edward 

Snowden and are encouraging young people to vote via Pokemon Go; 

investigating the idea of turning polling stations into Pokéstops, the 

Grapevine reports. 

27 

grrrrrrrrr .... 

MID-AUGUST 2016

28 


29 

MID-AUGUST 2016

KISS- 

The previous image is the infamous 1979 painting of Soviet leader 

Leonid Brezhnev kissing the East German president, Erich Honecker. 

30 

Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images 

It was the inspiration for the image of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump 

engaged in a passionate embrace, see overleaf. The work of local artist 

Mindaugas Bonanu, it went viral on social media after it was unveiled in 

May, and has since become a popular backdrop for selfies. 

It was apparently too much for some in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, 

and the mural alluding to the close ‘right-wing-bomb-them-all-think-set’ 

of the Russian president and the US presidential candidate, daubed on 

the wall of the BBQ restaurant Keulė Rukė, was covered over with white 

paint the other night. 

Restaurant owner Dominykas Čečkauskas said that the censorship was 

more than “simple vandalism” but “a terrorising attack on freedom of 

speech in Lithuania”. 


KISS 

“The purpose of the attack was to remind us, the people of the free 

world, that there are still active advocates of authoritarianism in our 

society,” he said on Keulė Rukė’s Facebook page. “We saw similarities 

between the two heroes [Trump and Putin]. ... They both have an ego that 

is too big, and it is funny that they get along well,” Čečkauskas previously 

told the Baltic News Service. 

31 

It’s not yet clear who was responsible for the attack but it comes at a 

time of escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, a military ally of 

Lithuania. 

Čečkauskas has promised to reinstall the artwork which he describes as 

“a world famous symbol of liberty and defiance”. 

Verdict on mural: JOB DONE! 

MID-AUGUST 2016

32 


33 

MID-AUGUST 2016

34 


Chinese invest in the UK 

Everything from prime London real estate to football clubs has been 

bought up by investors from the people’s republic. China is a big spender 

in the UK, where it has invested more than in Germany, France and Italy 

combined in recent years. 

Investors have sunk around $38bn (£29bn) into everything from prime 

London real estate to banks and football clubs according to figures from 

the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. 

35 

Alongside the low-key property deals, Chinese companies have also 

struck deals to buy a string of household names over the past few years. 

Shanghai-based Bright Foods owns 60% of Weetabix after it paid £720m 

to get its teeth into the cereal company in May 2012, while Hony Capital 

paid £900m for restaurant chain Pizza Express in July 2014. 

Some of the UK’s retail powerhouses are also under Chinese ownership, 

including the famous Hamleys toy shop on Regent Street, sold to footwear 

firm C.banner international for £100m in October last year. 

The House of Fraser department store chain is Chinese-owned, after 

Nanjing Cenbest paid £480m for an 89% stake in September 2014. 

MID-AUGUST 2016

Dr Tony Xia bought Aston Villa for an undisclosed sum thought to be 

around £52m in June, saying he wanted to restore the relegated club to 

its former glory and make it the “best known football club in the world”. 

Villa’s near neighbours West Bromwich Albion are on the verge of being 

sold to an investment group led by Chinese entrepreneur Guochuan Lai, 

while fellow Midlands club Wolverhampton Wanderers was bought by 

investment group Fosun International for around £45m last month. 

36 

Chinese investors’ sporting ambitions also extend to golf, with the 

Wentworth club sold to Reignwood for £135m in September 2014, while 

Dalian Wanda Group paid £320m for 92% of Sunseeker Yachts in June 

2013. 

Sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation is also a big 

investor in the UK. Its holdings include a £450m 10% stake in Heathrow 

Holdings, the firm behind the UK’s hub airport, bought in November 

2012. 

So, while politicians encourage us to think Brexit is taking control of ‘our 

country’ ... bankers, big business, financiers and fat cats are selling 

Britain by the pound. I suggest you start practicing those chopsticks if you 

haven’t already ... 


37 

MID-AUGUST 2016

38 


39 

MID-AUGUST 2016

40 

Use this virtual keyboard, 

write an article and send it in ... 


and remember, 

capitalism does not 

work, i’ve just spent 

all my wages and i’m 

still not pissed ... 

41 


MID-AUGUST 2016

42 

Writing 

worth reading 

Photos 

worth seeing 



43 

MID-AUGUST 2016

44 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


Absolutely damaged by the swiftly decaying 

state of the nation ... Words fail me, what is the 

use of words when the person you are saying 

them to is unable to grasp your, and their, 

meaning? 

Worryingly, we have left even that irrational 

road, the one where stupidity reigns, and 

now follow a path where basic facts and 

knowledge acquired over time are being 

replaced by entrenched banal myths, hearsay 

and superstition. The shit-faced fudge of 

complacency and mad spouters will now be 

defended to the death by a renewed Trident. 

Reason cannot be relied on in the present or 

near future (if ever?) and its utterly terrifying. 

Just who are the terrorists? For evidence of 

this I direct your (still giggling but increasingly 

alarmed) attention to Donald Trump and his 

campaign to become US President. As Britain’s 

government is a happy lapdog of US mischief in 

the world ... and a blindly loyal follower of US 

foreign policy, what will our May/TweedleDum/ 

TweedleDee/Johnson government do if Trump 

suceeds and begins his Term of Ignorance? 

45 




stooges, Blairites and Tories – or the US 





MID-AUGUST 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

15


c 

SEPTEMBER 2016

d 


The 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 



Opening 03 

Corporate ... 09 

Non-mother Theresa May as non-saint ‘mother teresa’ Artwork: Alan Rutherford 
















your dreams! 

Articles to: 


Government policy 18 

How did we ...? 21 

Clueless 23 

Britain on lookout 27 

Britain’s secret wars 35 

Dead sheep 59 

Letters 71 

1 

SEPTEMBER 2016

2 

RODCHENKO & STEPANOVA 

CONSTRUCTIVISTS 


OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Art which has no part in life 

will be filed away in the 

archaeological museum of 

antiquity. 

Down with Art, the shining 

patches on the talentless life 

of a wealthy man. 

Down with Art, the precious 

gem in the dirty dark life of a 

poor man. 

Down with Art, the means to 

escape from the life which is 

not worth living! 

Alexander Rodchenko 

Hello, 


welcome, again, Peter Lewis from over the 

road. 

Still trying to ignore the media circus, lies 
















3 

SEPTEMBER 2016

4 


CORPORATE TOTALITARIANISM 

Aldous Huxley (and Goering) nail it 

Quotes brought to our attention by Philip Roddis 

‘By means of ever more effective methods of mindmanipulation, 

the democracies will change their nature; 

the quaint old forms – elections, parliaments, Supreme 

Courts and all the rest – will remain. The underlying 

substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the 

traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain 

exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy 

and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast 

and editorial. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its 

highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thoughtmanufacturers 

and mind-manipulators will quietly run 

the show as they see fit.’ 

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 

5 

As the west sleepwalks into nuclear confrontation over Syria 

with a Russia our leaders have pushed into a corner – using 

all their corporate backed might to paint black white, up down 

and evil common sense – Huxley’s words could have been 

freshly coined just this morning. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

And more brutally Herman Goering’s words at the Nuremberg 

trials: 

6 

‘Why of course the people don’t want war. That is 

understood…But after all it is the leaders of the 

country who determine the policy and it is always a 

simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is 

a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, 

or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the 

people can always be brought to the bidding of 

the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell 

them they are being attacked, and denounce the 

peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the 

country to danger. It works the same in any country.’ 



We’d like to 

teach das weld 

to sing in 

perfect 

harmony 

7 

SEPTEMBER 2016

8 


GREAT ZIMBABWE 

Adapted form ‘Lost cities #9: racism and ruins – the plundering of Great 

Zimbabwe’ which appeared in The Guardian 

In the 19th century, European visitors to this abandoned medieval city 

refused to believe that indigenous Africans could have built such an 

extensive network of monuments. Such ignorance was disastrous for the 

remains of Great Zimbabwe 

In the early 16th century, rumours of a mysterious fortress with 

gargantuan walls, abandoned in the African jungle, spread around 

Europe. Surrounded by goldmines and sitting on a 900-metre-high 

hill, the city was thought to represent the summit of a unique African 

civilisation which had traded with distant Asian countries, including China 

and Persia. 

9 

A Portuguese sea captain, Viçente Pegado, was one of the first foreigners 

to encounter the site, in 1531. He wrote: “Among the goldmines of the 

inland plains between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers [is a] fortress built 

of stones of marvellous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining 

them … This edifice is almost surrounded by hills, upon which are others 

resembling it in the fashioning of stone and the absence of mortar, and 

one of them is a tower more than 12 fathoms high.” 

SEPTEMBER 2016

Great Zimbabwe was constructed between the 11th and 14th centuries 

over 722 hectares in the southern part of modern Zimbabwe. The whole 

site is weaved with a centuries-old drainage system which still works, 

funnelling water outside the houses and enclosures down into the valleys. 

At its peak, an estimated 18,000 people lived in the capital of the 

Kingdom of Zimbabwe. Only 200 to 300 members of the elite classes 

are thought to have actually stayed inside its massive stone buildings, 

watched over at night by guards standing on the walls, while the majority 

lived some distance away. 


Today, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are a shell of the abandoned city 

that Captain Pegado came across – due in no small part to the frenzied 

plundering of the site at the turn of the 20th century by European 

treasure-hunters, in search of artefacts that were eventually sent to 

museums throughout Europe, America and South Africa. 

It was said that Great Zimbabwe was an African replica of the Queen of 

Sheba’s palace in Jerusalem. The idea was promoted by the German explorer 

Karl Mauch, who visited in 1871 and refused to believe that indigenous 

Africans could have built such an extensive network of monuments. 

“I do not think that I am far wrong if I suppose that the ruin on the hill is 

a copy of Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah,” Mauch declared, “and 

the building in the plain a copy of the palace where the Queen of Sheba 

lived during her visit to Solomon.” He further stated that only a “civilised 

nation must once have lived there” – his racist implication unmistakeable. 

Other European writers, also believing that Africans did not have the 

capacity to build anything of the significance of Great Zimbabwe, 


suggested it was built by Portuguese travellers, Arabs, Chinese or 

Persians. Another theory was that the site could have been the work of a 

southern African tribe of ancient Jewish heritage, the Lemba. 

 

Adding to the mystery, the indigenous people living around the site were 

said to believe it was the work of demons, or aliens, on account of its 

impressive size and the perfection of its workmanship. 

In 1905, however, the British archaeologist David Randall-MacIver concluded 

the ruins were medieval, and built by one or more of the local African Bantu 

peoples. His findings were confirmed by another British archaeologist, 

Gertrude Caton-Thompson, in 1929, and this remains the consensus today. In 

the language of the builders’ descendents, the Shona people who live in the 

region today, Zimbabwe means “big stone houses” or “venerated houses”. 

11 

The city’s buildings were made of impressive granite walls, embellished 

with turrets, towers, decorations and elegantly sculpted stairways. The 

most notable of the buildings, an enclosure 250 metres in circumference 

and 9.75 metres high, was crafted with 900,000 pieces of professionally 

sliced granite blocks, laid on each other without any binders. Its perimeter 

columns were decorated with soapstone sculptures of a silhouetted bird 

with human lips and five-fingered feet. 

More than 4,000 gold and 500 copper mines were found around the 

site, and it was suggested that for three centuries, 40% of the world’s 

total mined gold came from the area, compounding to an estimated 600 

tonnes of gold. Thousands of necklaces made of gold lamé have been 

discovered among the ruins. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

Great Zimbabwe’s prosperity came from its position on the route between 

the gold producing regions of the area and ports on the Mozambique 

coast; over time it became the heart of an extensive commercial and 

trading network. The main trading items ranged from gold, ivory, copper 

and tin to cattle and cowrie shells. Imported items discovered in the ruins 

have included glassware from Syria, a minted coin from Kilwa, and 

assorted Persian and Chinese ceramics. 

12 

The period of prosperity at Great Zimbabwe continued until the mid-15th 

century, when the city’s trading activity started to decline and its people 

began to migrate elsewhere. The most common hypothesis to explain 

the abandonment of the site is a shortage of food, pastures and natural 

resources in Great Zimbabwe and its immediate surroundings. But the 

precise cause remains unclear. 

Great Zimbabwe is a fusion of manmade and natural beauty; a complex 

of 12 groups of buildings spread over 80 stunning hectares of the 

Mutirikwi valley. In the words of the Zimbabwean archaeologist and 

art historian Peter Garlake, the site displays “an architecture that was 

unparalleled elsewhere in Africa or beyond”. 

The ruins are divided into three main architectural zones: the Hill 

Complex, the Great Enclosure and the Valley Complex. The oldest, the 

Hill Complex, was occupied from the ninth to the 13th centuries. Believed 

to have been the spiritual and religious centre of the city, its ruins extend 

some 100 metres by 45 metres. 


13 

SEPTEMBER 2016

14 

Notable features of the Hill Complex included a huge boulder in a shape 

similar to that of the Zimbabwe Bird, from where the king presided over 

every important ritual, such as the judgment of criminals, the appeasing 

of ancestors and sacrifices to rainmaker gods. The sacrifices happened 

over a raised platform below the king’s seat, where oxen were burned. 

If the smoke went straight up, the ancestors were appeased. If it was 

crooked, they were unhappy and another sacrifice must be made. 

South of the Hill Complex lies the Great Enclosure, occupied from the 

13th to the 15th centuries: a spectacular circular monument made of cut 

granite blocks. Its outer wall, five metres thick, extends some 250 metres 

and has a maximum height of 11 metres, making it the largest ancient 

structure in Africa south of the Sahara. 

The most fascinating thing about the Great Enclosure walls is the absence 

of sharp angles; from the air they are said to resemble a “giant grey 

bracelet”. A narrow passage just inside the walls leads to a conical 

tower, the use of which has been the subject of much speculation – from 

symbolic grain bin to phallic symbol. 


The last part of the ruins is the Valley Complex: a series of living 

ensembles made up of daga (earth and mud-brick) houses, scattered 

throughout the valley and occupied from the 14th to 16th centuries. 

Here lived about 2,000 goldsmiths and equally numerous potters, 

weavers, blacksmiths and stonemasons – who would heat large granite 

rocks in a fire before tossing water on the red-hot rock. The shock of cold 

water cracked the granite along fracture planes into brick-shaped pieces 

that could be stacked without the need for mortar to secure them. Millions 

upon millions of these pieces were produced in the plains below and 

hauled up the hill, as the city constantly expanded. 

The function of its massive, non-supportive walls have various 

interpretations: some believe they were martial and defensive, or that 

they were a symbolic show of authority, designed to preserve the privacy 

of royal families and set them apart from commoners. 

15 

Unfortunately, the ruins have been damaged over the last two centuries 

– not least due to the British journalist Richard Nicklin Hall, who in 

1902 was appointed curator of Great Zimbabwe by the British South 

Africa Company for the purposes “not [of] scientific research, but the 

preservation of the building.” 

Hall destroyed a significant part of the site, claiming he was removing 

the “filth and decadence of the Kaffir [ie African] occupation”. In his 

search for signs that the city had been created by white builders, layers of 

archeological deposits up to four metres deep were lost. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

Reconstruction attempts by Zimbabwe nationalists since 1980 have 

caused further damage – as have some of the roughly 20,000 tourists 

who visit the site every year, climbing the walls for thrills and to find 

souvenirs. 

Political and ideological battles have also been fought over the ruins. In 

1890, the British mining magnate and coloniser Cecil Rhodes financed 

archeologist James Theodore Bent, who was sent to South Rhodesia by 

the British Association of Science with instructions to “prove” the Great 

Zimbabwe civilisation was not built by local Africans. 

16 

The government of Ian Smith, prime minister of Southern Rhodesia 

(modern Zimbabwe) until 1979, continued the colonial falsification of the 

city’s origins in official guide books, which showed images of Africans 

bowing down to the foreigners who had allegedly built Great Zimbabwe. 

In 1980, Robert Mugabe became prime minister, and the country was 

renamed “Zimbabwe”, in honour of the Great Zimbabwe civilisation, 

and its famous soapstone bird carvings were depicted in the new 

Zimbabwean flag. 

Yet much is still to be known about the ancient capital city. With no 

primary written documents discovered there or elsewhere, Great 

Zimbabwe’s history is derived from archaeological evidence found on the 

site, plus the oral history of the local Shona-speaking people, particularly 

regarding spiritual beliefs and building traditions. 

Designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1986, the preservation of 

Great Zimbabwe – led by the National Museums and Monuments of 


Zimbabwe organisation – is now challenged by uncontrolled growth of 

vegetation, which threatens the stability of its dry stone walls. The spread 

of lantana, an invasive flowering shrub introduced to Zimbabwe in the 

early 20th century, has put added of strain on the preservation work. 

“Great Zimbabwe’s significance – not only in Zimbabwe’s history, but 

Africa’s as a whole – is immense,” says Clinton Dale Mutambo, founder 

of the marketing company Esaja in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. “How 

a powerful African empire built a kingdom that covered vast swaths of 

southern Africa is a source of pride for Zimbabweans – and something 

that colonial governments tried for a long time to undermine by linking 

this wondrous kingdom to the Phoenicians.” 


There is much to be said for the claim that Great Zimbabwe was built by 

ancestors of the Lemba tribe. DNA testing finds this tribe have semetic 

origins, meaning thousands of years ago they came originally from the 

eastern Mediterranian. However, by the time Great Zimbabwe was built, 

in medieval times, the Lemba had become decidely African, having so 

thoroughly intermixed with Bantu Africans over many hundreds of years 

that, among other African traits, the Lemba have dark skin and speak a 

Bantu language. 

So, despite all attempts to prove unknown whites built Great Zimbabwe, it 

was black Africans. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

GOVERNMENT POLICY 

18 

IN THE UK ... 


19 

Artwork: Peter Kuper 

QED! 

SEPTEMBER 2016

20 


HOW DID WE GET 

INTO THIS MESS?: POLITICS, 

EQUALITY, NATURE 

Plug for George Monbiot’s book 

‘Without countervailing voices, naming and challenging power, political 

freedom withers and dies. Without countervailing voices, a better world 

can never materialise. Without countervailing voices, wells will still be 

dug and bridges will still be built, but only for the few. Food will still be 

grown, but it will not reach the mouths of the poor. New medicines will 

be developed, but they will be inaccessible to many of those in need.’ 

George Monbiot is one of the most vocal, and eloquent, critics of the 

current consensus. How Did We Get into this Mess?, based on his 

powerful journalism, assesses the state we are now in: the devastation 

of the natural world, the crisis of inequality, the corporate takeover of 

nature, our obsessions with growth and profit and the decline of the 

political debate over what to do. While his diagnosis of the problems in 

front of us is clear-sighted and reasonable, he also develops solutions 

to challenge the politics of fear. How do we stand up to the powerful 

when they seem to have all the weapons? What can we do to prepare 

our children for an uncertain future? Controversial, clear but always 

rigorously argued, How Did We Get into this Mess? makes a persuasive 

case for change in our everyday lives, our politics and economics, the 

ways we treat each other and the natural world. Wake up! 

21 

SEPTEMBER 2016

22 


CLUELESS 

Heading for the knackers yard on Animal Farm and trying to make sense 

of how the immoral, but sadly generally accepted ’four legs good, two 

legs better’ motto still flies from humanity’s masthead. 

When you look around, in a crowd … or at a world through the selective 

lens of the media, or maybe through the fog of anothers’ myopic 

worldview, you may glimpse reality. Sometimes, because it corresponds 

to our preferences and prejudices, we will unquestionably accept these 

nuggets and flashes, and then assemble them in some recognisable 

order to make sense of their obvious disorder. Our worldview is the 

product of all kinds of information within our grasp, tainted and 

corrupted as some of it surely is, we may still reach conclusions which 

inform our actions … or inaction. 

23 

Artwork: unknown 

Unconsciously simplifying our acquired worldview to fit one of the 

variously sanctioned streams of official hogwash we will present our face 

to the world, sometimes going along with a contrariness because of a 

‘democratic’ ideal that we may even know will not apply to all. For, unless 

you own or control parts of the media, or have managed to build up a 

following of like-minded morphs, our views will be insignificant … an 

irrelevance … the big questions just seem to be, are we ‘for or against’, 

and there is no place for ‘what about?’ troublemakers. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

An increasingly obvious truism is that most human beings of this world 

will follow, obey and suck up to choice self-important chest puffers, selfpromoting 

bluffers, guffers and huffers … for theirs is, and probably 

always has been, truly, the kingdom of heaven! 

24 

Pity those worthy few who will not go along with the sheep … trying not 

to promote, or champion, another un-checked bully to leader status in 

any sphere … and who, despite an avalanche of status quo opinion, 

would still favourably consider an egalitarian alternative … well, for them 

and their pathetic utterances the weighty scorn, vitriol and abuse of an 

establishment of conspiring greedy fuckers and their sycophantic fawners 

is especially reserved. 

It should be obvious by now that waiting for a lefty ‘chest-puffer’ to 

come along with a mesmerising message that will spur forth a truly 

fairer society capable of spreading worldwide is a nonsense. Also, 

the possibility that all minions of the world will realise they have been 

duped in concert, and that their poverty of choice and ambition is 

being so restricted by, and in favour of, a few greedy, duplicitous and 

unchallenged usurpers, that they will, en masse, agree to fight the fight 

… is a fantasy of, and in, our time (although not ruled out). 

A duty to future generations is speaking out against injustice, not selfishly 

taking advantage of dodgy inheritance rules to provide a materialistic 

legacy for only your offspring to swagger the swag. If you are one of 

those egalitarian types, it may be that by placing yourself at the centre of 

your understanding of this world of shite, and then undermining, however 

you can, the flimsy foundations of our ‘get-rich-quick-and-fuck-the-rest’ 


egime is a way of fulfilling that duty. Being aware of, arguing for and 

supporting ‘caring’ collective activity is positively marking time, unfurling 

your banner to take a stand is keeping a flame of insurrection alive … 

a lutta continua … Personally, I will leave this sack of skin, bones, shit 

and piss knowing a collective in the future will wrestle the capitalist beast 

to submission and bring about the really egalitarian society that is most 

assuredly coming. 


[not afraid to appear backward in print] 

25 


SEPTEMBER 2016

26 


BRITAIN ALWAYS ON 

THE LOOKOUT FOR A 

SKIRMISH OR TWO 

Britain is now the second biggest arms dealer in the world 

Exclusive: Two-thirds of UK weapons have been sold to 

Middle Eastern countries since 2010 

27 

from Jon Stone, in The Independent 

Britain is now the second biggest arms dealer in the world, official 

government figures show – with most of the weapons fuelling deadly 

conflicts in the Middle East. 

Artwork: G.M. Payne 

Since 2010 Britain has also sold arms to 39 of the 51 countries ranked 

“not free” on the Freedom House “Freedom in the world” report, and 22 

of the 30 countries on the UK Government’s own human rights watch list. 

A full two-thirds of UK weapons over this period were sold to Middle 

Eastern countries, where instability has fed into increased risk of terror 

threats to Britain and across the West. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

Meanwhile statistics collated by UK Trade and Investment, a government 

body that promotes British exports abroad, show the UK has sold more 

arms than Russia, China, or France on average over the last 10 years. 

Only the United States is a bigger exporter. 

“The UK is one of the world’s most successful defence exporters, 

averaging second place in the global rankings on a rolling ten-year 

basis, making it Europe’s leading defence exporter in the period,” the 

body boasted in a report released this summer. 

28 

Ministers, who must sign-off all arms export licences, say the current 

system is robust and that they have revoked permission to export defence 

equipment in the past – for example in Russia and Ukraine. 

But the Government has also ignored calls to stop selling weapons to 

repressive regimes, including Saudi Arabia, which has been accused by 

UN bodies of potentially committing war crimes in its military operation in 

Yemen against Houthi rebels. 

Both the European Parliament and the House of commons International 

Development Committee have called for exports to the autocracy to stop, 

but the Government says it has not seen evidence of Saudi war crimes. 

The saudi-led coalition has bombed multiple international hospitals run 

by the charity Médicins Sans Frontières, as well as schools and wedding 

parties. Food factories have also been hit, as Yemen faces severe food 

shortages. Human rights groups say there is evidence civilian targets are 



29 

BY DISMISSING CONCERNS OF 

ARMS SALES TO SAUDI ARABIA 

MAY GLEEFULLY TAKES ON 

WARMONGER ROLE AND DONS THE 

BUTCHERS APRON FOR MORE BUSINESS 

SEPTEMBER 2016

deliberately hit. The coalition has opened investigations into a number 

of incidents and has repeatedly claimed in statements that the coalition 

‘is committed to full respect for international humanitarian law in the 

conduct of our operations in Yemen’. 

A joint analysis conducted by the Independent and Campaign Against 

the Arms Trade found £10bn in arms licences were issued 2010-2015 to 

regimes designated ‘unfree’ by Freedom House, including China, Oman, 

Turkmenistan and United Arab Emirates. 

30 

Meanwhile £7.9bn worth of arms were sold to countries on the ‘human 

rights priority countries’ list, which is maintained by the Foreign Office and 

includes countries judged by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to have 

‘the worst, or greatest number of, human rights violations’. 

Customers on this list included Saudi Arabia, which was sold bombs, 

missiles, and fighter jets, Israel, which was sold drone components and 

targeting equipment, and Bahrain, which was sold machine guns. 

Assault rifles and pistols were sent to the Maldives, while Turkmenistan was 

sold guns and ammunition. 

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade warned that the 

dependence of British exporters on unsavory regimes could make 

the UK less likely to intervene against human rights violators. 

“These terrible figures expose the hypocrisy at the heart of UK foreign policy. 

The government is always telling us that it acts to promote human rights 

Artwork: G.M. Payne 


31 

SEPTEMBER 2016

and democracy, but it is arming and supporting some of the most repressive 

regimes in the world. The impact of UK arms sales is clear in Yemen, where 

British fighter jets and bombs have been central to the Saudi-led destruction,” 

he told The Independent. 

“These regimes aren’t just buying weapons, they’re also buying political 

support and legitimacy. How likely is the UK to act against human rights 

violations in these countries when it is also profiting from them? 

32 

“There is no such thing as arms control in a war zone and there is no way of 

knowing how these weapons will be used. The fact that so many weapons 

were sold to Russia and Libya is a reminder that the shelf-life of weapons is 

often longer than the governments and situations they were sold to.” 

A Government spokesperson said its approach to arms export control was 

“sufficiently tough”. 

“The Government takes its arms export control responsibilities very seriously 

and operates one of the most robust regimes in the world. We rigorously 

examine every brokering application on a pre-licensing case-by-case basis 

against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. 

“Export licensing requires us to consider how the equipment will be used by 

the end-user and risks around human rights abuses are a key part of our 

assessment. We consider this approach to be sufficiently tough but where 

there is evidence of a need for further action we have the powers to do so 

under existing legislation”. 

Artwork: Paul Tompsett 


Cradle of Islam 

33 

SEPTEMBER 2016

34 


BRITAIN’S SECRET WARS 

For more than 100 years, Britain has been perpetually at 

war. Some conflicts, such as the Falklands, have become 

central to our national narrative, but others, including 

the brutal suppression of rebels in Oman, have been 

deliberately hidden 

by Ian Cobain 

Taken from The Guardian 

35 


In the months after the surrender of Japan on 14 August 1945, the British 

people were ready to believe that war was behind them. The newspapers 

were full of stories about possible home rule for India, and dockers going 

on strike in London, Liverpool and Hull. It is questionable how many 

readers of the Manchester Guardian on 6 December 1945 saw, let alone 

read, a short item that was tucked away at the foot of page six, nestled 

between a reader’s letter about the Nuremberg war crimes trials and a 

leading article about the foundation of the United Nations. 

Under the headline “British in Indo-China” appeared a copy of a letter 

that had also been sent to Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary. “It appears 

that we are collaborating with Japanese and French forces against the 

nationalist forces of Viêt Minh,” the letter read. “For what purpose is this 

SEPTEMBER 2016

collaboration? Why are we not disarming the Japanese? We desire the 

definition of government policy regarding the presence of British troops 

in Indo-China.” The letter was signed by the “British other ranks” of the 

signal section of an infantry brigade based in Saigon. 

36 

It was highly unusual – notwithstanding the egalitarian spirit of those 

postwar days – to see a group of low-ranking British troops so publicly 

demanding that the foreign secretary explain his government’s policies. 

But what was truly extraordinary was the disclosure that British troops 

were fighting in the former French colony against the local population, 

and that they were doing so alongside their former enemies: the 

Japanese army and the Vichy French. 

Few members of the public were aware that the British government 

had been so anxious to see the French recover control of their prewar 

colonial possession that the entire 20th Infantry Division of the British 

Indian Army had been airlifted into the country the previous August, 

with orders to suppress the Vietnamese people’s attempts to form their 

own government. There were almost 26,000 men with 2,500 vehicles, 

including armoured cars. Three British artillery regiments had also been 

dispatched, the RAF had flown in with 14 Spitfires and 34 Mosquito 

fighter-bombers, and there was a 140-strong contingent from the Royal 

Navy. 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15 

On landing, the British had rearmed the Vichy troops with new .303 

British rifles. Shortly afterwards, surrendered Japanese troops had also 

been rearmed and compelled to fight the Vietnamese – some under the 

command of British officers. 

Artwork: unknown

37 

SEPTEMBER 2016

38 


The British were operating in accordance with an order that they should 

show a ruthless disregard for civilians, who, consequently, were killed and 

maimed in large numbers. “There is no front in these operations,” the 

order said. “We may find it difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Always 

use the maximum force available to ensure wiping out any hostilities we 

may meet. If one uses too much force, no harm is done. If one uses too 

small a force, and it has to be extricated, we will suffer casualties and 

encourage the enemy.” 

Many of the troops who were expected to act on such orders were 

appalled. One of the signatories to the letter to Bevin was Dick 

Hartmann, a 31-year-old soldier from Manchester. Hartmann later 

recalled: “We saw homes being burned and hundreds of the local 

population being kept in compounds. We saw many ambulances, open 

at the back, carrying mainly – actually, totally – women and children, who 

were in bandages. I remember it very vividly. All the women and children 

who lived there would stand outside their homes, all dressed in black, 

and just grimly stare at us, really with … hatred.” 

39 

Back in the UK, parliament and the public knew next to nothing about 

this war, the manner in which it was being waged, or Britain’s role in it. 

And it appears that the cabinet and the War Office wished their state of 

ignorance be preserved. 

At the Allies’ south-east Asia headquarters in Ceylon, however, and at the 

War Office in London, British commanders and senior defence officials 

were enraged by the letter. Hartmann and his comrades were warned 

that a brigadier was coming to see them. 


SEPTEMBER 2016

“He just came in one morning and gave us a haranguing about the evils 

of our ways. He said a few years before we would have been shot, but 

unfortunately he couldn’t do that now.” Hartmann was worried. But some 

of his comrades had many years of jungle combat behind them and 

were unimpressed by the brigadier and his bluster. They told him, bluntly, 

that they believed Britain’s cause in the country to be unjust, and that he 

should make himself scarce. The brigadier turned on his heel, and did 

just that. 

40 

But there were no more letters from Saigon, there was little press 

attention, and almost no comments were made in the Commons. Despite 

the size of its military commitment to Indochina, this was to be a British 

military operation that would be kept out of sight, and largely out of 

mind. And it would not be the last such campaign. 

Almost 70 years later, in September 2014, David Cameron, the British 

prime minister, gave a statement in which he prepared the country for the 

resumption of military action in Iraq, this time against Islamic State forces. 

“We are a peaceful people,” Cameron said, standing in front of two union 

jack flags. “We do not seek out confrontation, but we need to understand 

we cannot ignore this threat to our security … we cannot just walk on by if 

we are to keep this country safe. We have to confront this menace.” 

Nobody doubted that the prime minister was under pressure to act 

after Islamic State had filmed the brutal murder of a British aid worker 

and threatened the slaughter of a second. Moreover, nobody disputed 

his assertion that the British are “a peaceful people” who do not seek 

confrontation. 


In fact, between 1918 and 1939, British forces were fighting in Iraq, 

Sudan, Ireland, Palestine and Aden. In the years after the second 

world war, British servicemen were fighting in Eritrea, Palestine, French 

Indochina, Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Egypt, China and Oman. Between 

1949 and 1970, the British initiated 34 foreign military interventions. 

Later came the Falklands, Iraq – four times – Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra 

Leone, Afghanistan, Libya and, of course, Operation Banner, the British 

army’s 38-year deployment to Northern Ireland. 

For more than a hundred years, not a single year has passed when 

Britain’s armed forces have not been engaged in military operations 

somewhere in the world. The British are unique in this respect: the same 

could not be said of the Americans, the Russians, the French or any other 

nation.Only the British are perpetually at war. 

41 

One reason that this is rarely acknowledged could be that in the years 

following the second world war, and before the period of national selfdoubt 

that was provoked in 1956 by the Suez crisis, Britain engaged in 

so many end-of-empire scraps that military activity came to be regarded 

by the British public as the norm, and therefore unremarkable. Another is 

that since 1945, British forces have engaged in a series of small wars that 

were under-reported and now all but forgotten, or which were obscured, 

even as they were being fought, by more dramatic events elsewhere. 

A great deal is known about some conflicts, such as the 1982 Falklands war 

and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Britain’s role in the two world wars has 

become in many ways central to the national narrative. But other conflicts are 

remembered only dimly or have always remained largely hidden. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

One strategically vital war, waged by Britain for more than a decade, 

was fought for most of that time in complete secrecy. In January 1972, 

readers of the Observer opened their newspaper to see a report 

headlined “UK fighting secret Gulf war?” On the same day, the Sunday 

Times ran a very similar article, asking: “Is Dhofar Britain’s hush-hush 

war?” British troops, the newspapers revealed, were engaged in the war 

that the sultan of Oman was fighting against guerrillas in the mountains 

of Dhofar in the south of the country. 

42 

Four years earlier, the devaluation crisis had forced Harold Wilson’s 

government to pledge that British forces would be withdrawn from all 

points east of Suez by December 1971 – the only exemption being a 

small force that was to remain in Hong Kong. Now the Observer article 

was demanding to know: “Has Britain really withdrawn all her forces 

from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula? Or is the British 

government, like the Americans in Laos, waging a secret war without the 

full knowledge of parliament and public?” The Observer located one of 

the insurgency’s leaders, who told its reporter that the war had begun 

with an “explosion” in the country on 9 June 1965, triggered by what he 

described as poor local governance and “the oppression of the British”. 

By the time the Observer and Sunday Times were publishing their first, 

tentative reports, Britain had been at war in Oman for six-and-a-half 

years. 

Situated on the south-west corner of the Arabian peninsula, the Sultanate 

of Oman is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the north, and by 

Saudi Arabia and Yemen to the west and south-west. The country also sits 

alongside the Strait of Hormuz, the 33-mile wide waterway through which 


oil from the Persian Gulf makes its way to market. In the 1960s, more 

than 60% of the western world’s crude oil came from the Gulf, a giant 

tanker passing through the Hormuz bottleneck every 10 minutes. As the 

oil flowed, local economies flourished and became important markets for 

exported British goods: London became even more anxious to protect its 

interests in the region and the local rulers who supported them. 

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Britain maintained control of 

successive sultans of Oman to prevent any other colonial power gaining 

a foothold in the region. It achieved this through a simple means: money. 

In the mid-1960s, the country’s tyrannical ruler, Sultan Said bin Taimur 

received more than half his income directly from London. Only from 

1967, when Omani oil was pumped from the ground for the first time, 

did the country begin to generate most of its own income. 

43 

Even then, Britain exercised enormous control over the sultan. His 

defence secretary and chief of intelligence were British army officers, 

his chief adviser was a former British diplomat, and all but one of his 

government ministers were British. The British commander of the Sultan 

of Oman’s armed forces met daily with the British defence attache, and 

weekly with the British ambassador. The sultan had no formal relationship 

with any government other than that of the UK. 

Officially, the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman was an independent state. 

In truth, it was a de facto British colony 

SEPTEMBER 2016

The official British position was that the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman 

was a fully sovereign and independent state. In truth, it was a de facto 

British colony. As such, successive British governments were responsible 

for the woeful political, social and economic conditions that the sultan’s 

subjects endured, and which both created and fuelled the popular revolt. 

44 

In the mid-1960s, Oman had one hospital. Its infant mortality rate 

was 75% and life expectancy was around 55 years. There were just 

three primary schools – which the sultan frequently threatened to close 

– and no secondary schools. The result of this was that just 5% of the 

population could read and write. There were no telephones or any other 

infrastructure, other than a series of ancient water channels. The sultan 

banned any object that he considered decadent, which meant that 

Omanis were prevented from possessing radios, from riding bicycles, 

from playing football, from wearing sunglasses, shoes or trousers, and 

from using electric pumps in their wells. 

Those who offended against the sultan’s laws could expect savage 

punishment. There were public executions. Conditions in his prisons – 

where Pakistani guards received their orders from British warders – were 

said to be horrendous, with large numbers of inmates shackled together 

in darkened cells, without proper food or medical attention. 

The people of Oman despised and feared both their sultan and the 

British who kept him in place and colluded with his policy of nondevelopment. 

Unsurprisingly, the sultan often had to call upon the British 

to provide the military force required to protect him from his own people. 


During the 1950s there were a number of uprisings in the north of the 

country, which were put down by British forces. Both the SAS and the 

RAF were critical to the success of these counter-insurgency operations. 

Between July and December 1958, for example, the RAF flew 1,635 

sorties, dropping 1,094 tons of bombs and firing 900 rockets at the 

insurgents, their mountain-top villages and irrigation works. This was 

more than twice the weight of bombs that the Luftwaffe dropped on 

Coventry in November 1940. 

In 1966, a new rebellion broke out in the south of the country, among 

the people of Dhofar province. The following year, after surviving an 

assassination attempt, the sultan and his Dhofari wife retired to his 

palace on the coast at Salalah. He was so rarely sighted that many of his 

subjects became convinced that he must have died, and that the British 

were concealing that from them. 

45 

For the new Labour government, the close relationship with the client 

sultanate presented an ideological problem. The Labour party had 

been elected in 1964 on a manifesto that included a pledge to wage a 

new “war on want” in the developing world, and to fight for “freedom 

and racial equality” at the United Nations general assembly. It would 

cause the most excruciating humiliation were it to become known more 

widely, at home and abroad, that Oman was the last country on earth 

where slavery remained legal. The sultan owned around 500 slaves. 

An estimated 150 of them were women, whom he kept at his palace at 

Salalah; a number of his male slaves were said to have been physically 

deformed by the cruelties they had suffered. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

After the rebellions of the 1950s, the Sultan of Oman’s armed forces 

were reorganised, with British advice, training, equipment and funds. 

More Omanis were recruited into the ranks, but all of the officers were 

British. Some were “seconded officers” while others were so-called 

contract officers, or mercenaries – men who had previously served in 

Oman with the British Army and who had chosen to return to earn 

handsome rewards. 

46 

Initially, the rebels they faced in Dhofar were Arab nationalists. However, 

to the west of Dhofar lay Aden, from which the British were forced to 

withdraw at the end of 1967, in the face of increasingly violent rebellions. 

British rule had been replaced by a Marxist state, the People’s Democratic 

Republic of Yemen, which received aid from both China and Russia. 

By early 1968, a Dhofari nationalist insurgency was developing into a 

Chinese-backed revolutionary movement with pan-Arabian ambitions. To 

the British officers, however, the foe was always simply the adoo – Arabic 

for enemy. By the end of 1969, the adoo had captured the coastal town 

of Raysut, and by early the following year they controlled most of the high 

plains and were within mortaring distance of the RAF base at Salalah. 

Any enemy corpses we recovered were propped up in the souk as a 

salutary lesson to would-be freedom fighters 

Anonymous British officer 

The new oil fields on the desert between Dhofar and the capital, Muscat, 

were beginning to look vulnerable. Some in London were developing a 

fearful Middle Eastern domino theory, in which they envisaged the Strait 

of Hormuz falling under communist control. 


The British response was merciless. “We burnt down rebel villages and 

shot their goats and cows,” one officer wrote. “Any enemy corpses we 

recovered were propped up in the Salalah souk as a salutary lesson to 

any would-be freedom fighters.” Another officer explained that unlike 

in Northern Ireland, where soldiers were anxious to avoid killing or 

wounding non-combatants, he believed that in Dhofar there were no 

innocents, only adoo: “The only people in this area – there are no 

civilians – are all enemy. Therefore you can get on with doing the job, 

mortaring the area and returning small arms fire without worrying about 

hurting innocent people.” 

In their determination to put down a popular rebellion against the cruelty 

and neglect of a despot who was propped up and financed by Britain, 

British-led forces poisoned wells, torched villages, destroyed crops and 

shot livestock. During the interrogation of rebels they developed their 

torture techniques, experimenting with noise. Areas populated by civilians 

were turned into free-fire zones. Little wonder that Britain wanted to fight 

this war in total secrecy. 

47 

There was no need to resort to the Official Secrets Acts or the D-notice 

system in order to conceal the Dhofar war, and the ruthless manner in 

which it was being fought, from the outside world. Two simple expedients 

were employed: no journalists were permitted into the country, and 

nobody in government mentioned the war. When Wilson published 

his account of the Labour government of 1964-70, for example, he 

mentioned the war that the US was fighting in Vietnam almost 250 times. 

His own government’s war in Oman was not mentioned once. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

While the Wilson government had every reason to be sensitive about 

the military support it was providing to a slave-owning despot, whose 

rule might charitably be described as medieval, there were additional 

reasons for the all-embracing secrecy. This was an era in which the 

developing world and the United Nations had rejected colonialism, and 

Arab nationalism had been growing in strength for decades. It was vital, 

therefore, for the credibility of the UK in the Middle East, that its hand in 

Oman should remain largely hidden. 

48 

John Akehurst, the commander of the Sultan’s Armed Forces from 1972, 

suggests a further reason for the British government not wishing to draw 

attention to its war in Dhofar: “They were perhaps nervous that we were 

going to lose it.” 

Certainly, by the summer of 1970, Britain’s secret war was going so badly 

that desperate measures were called for. On 26 July, the Foreign Office in 

London announced that Sultan Said bin Taimur had been deposed by his 

29-year-old son, Qaboos bin Said, in a palace coup. In fact, the coup was a 

very British affair. It had been planned in London by MI6 and by civil servants 

at the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, and given the go-ahead 

after the election that brought Edward Heath into Downing Street. 

The new sultan immediately abolished slavery, improved the country’s 

irrigation infrastructure and began to spend his oil revenues on his armed 

forces. Troops from the SAS arrived, first as the sultan’s bodyguards, and 

then in squadron strength to fight the adoo. Eventually, the tide turned, 

journalists were permitted into the country, and by the summer of 1976 

the war was won. 


Strategically, the Dhofar war was one of the most important conflicts 

of the 20th century, as the victors could expect to control the Strait of 

Hormuz and the flow of oil. Thousands died, the British won and the 

west’s lights stayed on. Today, the war is still studied at the Joint Services 

Command and Staff College in Britain. But because of the way in which 

information about the long campaign was so successfully suppressed at 

the time that it was being waged, it has been all but blanked out of the 

nation’s memory. Like the British wars in Eritrea, Indochina, the Dutch 

East Indies and Borneo, it is remembered in Britain only by those men 

who fought it, and their families. 

Some aspects of Britain’s role in the coup and the war remain among 

the deep secrets of the British state. Wilson’s correspondence on Oman, 

for example, and that of his successor Heath, are to remain closed to 

historians and the public until 2021. In 2005, a Foreign Office memo 

was briefly made public that describes the way in which the old sultan’s 

own defence secretary, Colonel Hugh Oldman, had taken the lead role 

in planning the coup that deposed Oman’s ruler, in order to safeguard 

British access to the country’s oil and military bases. The document was 

then hurriedly withdrawn – its release, the Foreign Office said, had been 

an unfortunate error. 

49 

Judging from the last decade and a half, there is little sign that the 

British state is about to lose its appetite for war. The first conflict of the 

new century in which the UK became involved was the post-9/11 assault 

against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

This war enjoyed early success, but stuttered and soured after the UK’s 

mission expanded to Helmand in the south of the country. The war 

dragged on, costing an estimated 95,000 lives over 13 years, including 

those of 453 British servicemen and women, and brought little discernible 

benefit to the people of Afghanistan. The 21st century’s second war – the 

2003 invasion of Iraq – was possibly the UK’s greatest foreign policy 

disaster since Suez. Casualty estimates vary widely, from 150,000 dead 

to more than a million. What cannot be disputed is that 179 of the dead 

were British. More than a decade later, Iraq remains in chaos. 

50 

The post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought in the full 

glare of the media and came to haunt the politicians who had initiated 

them. Despite this, Britain continued to invest in war – politically, 

technically and financially – as a means of projecting power and 

securing influence among key allies, and also, it seemed at times, in an 

attempt to impose order and a degree of familiarity upon a chaotic and 

unpredictable world. 

But could this be done in secret? Surely, in the age of global media, 24- 

hour rolling news, social media, and the troops’ own ability to record 

and instantly share images of conflict, it would be impossible for a 

British government to go to war and conceal its actions, in the way that 

Britain’s war in Dhofar was hidden from the public for six-and-a-half 

years? Tony Jeapes, who commanded the first SAS squadron that was 

covertly deployed to Oman, considered this question, and concluded that 

while such secrecy was “an ideal state of affairs”, it would probably be 

impossible to repeat. 


In the years since the Dhofar war, the UK’s special forces have been 

gradually expanded, and since 1996, all its members have been obliged 

to sign a confidentiality agreement. This has reinforced the discretion with 

which members of elite units within the military traditionally perform their 

duties, and it has rarely been broken. 

Meanwhile, the evolution of successive generations of unmanned 

aerial vehicles, or drones, has presented military planners with greater 

opportunities to mount operations that could remain unknown, other than 

to those who are ordering, planning and executing them, and to those on 

the receiving end. 

The reliance of modern societies on the internet and the increasing 

frequency with which states probe and attack each other’s cyber defences 

have led some analysts to talk of a hybrid warfare, much of which is 

shrouded in deniability. The result is that the line between war and peace 

is increasingly blurred. 

51 

In the years after 9/11, hints began to emerge, in the footnotes of 

the budget statements of the Ministry of Defence, and from scraps of 

evidence salvaged from the coastal villages of Somalia, the mountains 

of Yemen and the cities of Libya, that the British were once again waging 

war in secret. It appeared that a lethal trinity of special forces, drones and 

local proxies was being brought to bear in a way that would spare the 

British public the disagreeable details of the nature of modern war, and 

relieve parliament of the need to debate the wisdom of waging it. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

In July 2007, less than a week after succeeding Tony Blair as prime 

minister, Gordon Brown had announced a series of sweeping 

constitutional changes that he said would make the British government 

“a better servant of the people”. One measure – clearly a response to the 

deeply unpopular war in Iraq and the calamitous and costly expedition 

into Helmand – was to give members of parliament the final say on 

declarations of war. 

Six years later, in August 2013, parliament exercised its new right when 

MPs rejected a government motion that would have authorised military 

intervention in Syria’s bloody civil war. 

52 

Ministers of the coalition government were appalled by the vote – it was said 

to be the first against a British prime minister’s foreign policy since 1782 – 

and argued that it not only blocked the deployment of British troops, it also 

prevented the UK from providing any military assistance whatsoever. 

“It is clear to me,” Prime Minister David Cameron told the Commons, 

“that the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does 

not want to see British military action. I get that and the government will 

act accordingly.” 

But those words – “act accordingly” – were not quite what they seemed. 

In July 2015, the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, gave MPs an update 

on the renewed military operations in Iraq – the campaign that Cameron 

had announced while standing before two union jack flags and declaring 

the British to be “a peaceful people”. The RAF, he said, had carried out 

300 air strikes in Iraq, there were 900 UK personnel engaged, and the 


operation had cost £45m in the previous 12 months. He reassured his 

audience that “our position remains that we would return to the House for 

approval before conducting air strikes in Syria”. 

Before making this statement, Fallon was said to have been unsettled 

by talk in Washington political circles that the UK’s refusal to act in Syria 

could be seen only as a sign of British decrepitude. His statement was 

deeply misleading: for at least 18 months, RAF pilots who were said to 

have been “embedded” with the US and Canadian military had been 

carrying out airstrikes against targets in Syria. Others had been flying 

combat missions with the French military over Mali. They were said to be 

under the command of these foreign forces, but they were clearly a British 

contribution to a war that MPs had decided the country should avoid. 

53 

Two weeks later the truth was out, and Fallon was back on his feet in the 

Commons, explaining himself to angry MPs. 

“Embedded” service personnel were nothing new, he declared; they 

comply with UK law, but “have to comply with the rules of engagement 

of the host nation”. He had not publicised what had been happening 

because these pilots had been assisting with other countries’ operations. 

Moreover, he made clear that the failure to publicise what was happening 

should be regarded as “standard practice”. 

In December 2015, MPs voted that overt military action against 

Islamic State forces should finally proceed. The government was given 

parliamentary approval for military operations that had already been 

covertly under way for two years. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

In the Gulf, meanwhile, it was disclosed that British military personnel 

were sitting in the control rooms from which the Saudi Arabian air force 

was guiding its bombers on to targets across Yemen. The British were 

helping their Saudi counterparts key in the codes that would help them 

select and attack their targets. The Saudis were not only flying Britishbuilt 

aircraft and dropping British-made bombs, they were dropping 

vast numbers of them. Over a three-month period in 2015, the value of 

exports of British-made bombs and missiles had increased by 11,000%, 

from £9m to £1bn. 

54 

This bombing campaign has been heavily criticised by rights groups 

for causing thousands of civilian deaths. In parliament, the British 

government has had little to say about this, other than to insist that it 

“obeys the norms of humanitarian law”. 

Once again, the government appeared to be quietly pulling the country 

into a Middle Eastern conflict without any parliamentary oversight or 

approval. And covert, undeclared and unreported warfare could be seen 

to be not merely a possibility, but the reality of many of the UK’s military 

operations. 

This piece is an edited extract from Ian Cobain’s study of official secrecy 

in the UK, The History Thieves (Granta, £20). To order a copy for £16, go 

to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 

£10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99. 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15 

Artwork: still unknown

55 

SEPTEMBER 2016

56 

wonder 

what they 

are laughing 

about? 

Artwork: John Tenniel 


57 

TORY CARE BEARS 

SEPTEMBER 2016

58 



DEAD SHEEP 

Jonathan Maitland’s play about 

Tory treachery and Maggie the temptress: how 80s politics 

inspired a script for Brexit Britain 

My play Dead Sheep, about Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe, 

already included a prime minister’s downfall, a machinating wife and an 

ambitious blond maverick. Reworking it since the referendum has been a 

writer’s dream 

When I asked the BBC’s former chief political correspondent John 

Sergeant for advice about my play Dead Sheep in 2014 he told me 

colourfully but gently that I was wasting my time. John, a former 

colleague, had a point. Who’d be interested in a play about Geoffrey 

Howe and Margaret Thatcher, especially as Thatcher’s story had already 

been explored in dramas like The Iron Lady, The Long Walk to Finchley 

and The Audience? 

But I felt those productions had missed a trick, for understandable 

dramatic reasons, in treating Howe as a jealous, pompous, bitpart 

player. I had always thought there was much more to him. His 

relationship with Thatcher was also the most effective way, I believed, 

to examine the flaws and qualities of the woman who moulded modern 

Britain. 

59 

SEPTEMBER 2016

Howe was Thatcher’s chancellor and foreign secretary. People thought he 

was a comically bad public speaker, hence the play’s title: “Being attacked 

by Geoffrey Howe,” said Labour’s Denis Healey, “is like being savaged 

by a dead sheep.” But when Howe and Thatcher fell out over Europe, he 

made one of the greatest political speeches of all time. It destroyed her. 

He was supported by his wife, Elspeth, a formidable woman who loathed 

Thatcher. And vice versa: an observer called them “wasps in a jam jar”. 

So I ignored John. If I don’t write it, I thought, one day someone else will. 

60 

There was another wind at my back. The more I researched, the more 

struck I became by the parallels. In the 1980s, when the play is set, 

the Tories were divided over Europe. In April 2015, when Dead Sheep 

premiered at London’s Park theatre, the song remained the same. Then 

as now, it was about sovereignty, identity and economics. 

That gave me opportunities. Hence a scene in which a louche, 

Eurosceptic Alan Clark berates Geoffrey over his support for the EU. 

Geoffrey warns Alan the Tory party could split in two over the issue. 

“What?” sneers Clark. “A breakaway party for Eurosceptics? Don’t be 

ridiculous.” Not a screamer on the page perhaps but on stage it got 

laughs every night. 

We were offered a three-month national tour after the run at the Park 

and, after a succession of failures (I’ve had more TV ideas turned down 

than Alan Partridge) I felt lucky for once. Then, in June this year, the cards 

fell totally in the play’s favour. 


As a remainer I was shocked and upset when Britain voted for Brexit. But 

then, being a selfish, opportunistic bastard, it dawned on me that the 

political cloud had a silver lining. Dead Sheep may have been relevant 

in 2015 but in 2016 it was uncannily so. A Tory PM makes a fatal 

miscalculation over Europe? Tick. The PM is betrayed by an ally? Tick. A 

Tory wife machinates exquisitely at the heart of it? Tick. There’s more. In 

Dead Sheep a blond, charismatic, maverick Tory wants to be PM. Sound 

familiar? 

The play needed plenty of post-referendum tweaks. Ian Gow, Geoffrey’s 

friend, now says in the play that leaving Europe would be impossible: 

“Too complicated, for a start. Undoing all those laws. Like the political 

equivalent of reversing a vasectomy.” It’s been a writer’s dream: 

reworking a script with the benefit of hindsight to make the echoes 

louder. Thatcher now quotes Churchill about Britain being “of Europe, 

but not part of it. Interested but not absorbed.” And she showboats more: 

“History will prove me right one day, Geoffrey. The majority of the people 

are with me on this.” 

61 

The Guardian’s Michael Billington commended the original production 

but felt it should have shown Thatcher’s sexual side (as admired by 

Alan Clark in his Diaries). On reflection I agreed. Now, Margaret (Steve 

Nallon, who previously impersonated her on Spitting Image) flirts with 

her blunt press secretary Bernard Ingham, a Yorkshireman, in a way that 

is – I hope – entertaining and instructive. “Did you see the way President 

Mitterrand looked at me, Bernard? He likes women, you know.” Bernard 

turns puce as Margaret moves close and coos: “I am a woman, you 

know.” 

SEPTEMBER 2016

This whole process has made me realise something I never fully 

appreciated: drama’s advantage over current affairs. As a longtime TV 

and radio reporter I’ve made countless shows that claimed to give “the 

full story” but didn’t. Drama, I’ve discovered (rather late in the day) fills 

the human gaps in the story and so completes the picture. 

There’s one piquant quote that hasn’t made it into the new version. 

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” it is said. “It rhymes.” You’re telling me. 

Dead Sheep is at Westcliff Palace theatre, Southend, on 12 

September and on a UK tour until 28 November 

62 

We asked the man in the street, ‘Do you think history repeats 

itself?’ 


well, YEAH, 

but its more of a 

continuation of soaring 

inequality, arms trading, 

union bashing, increased 

racism ... and now, 

fucking grammar schools 

again! 

63 


SEPTEMBER 2016

64 

THE MINERS STRIKE 



THE POLICE STRIKE? 

65 

SEPTEMBER 2016

66 

Crickey ... a virtual keyboard, 

use it at your own peril 


YEAH, 

capitalism certainly does 

not work for most people 

... they know its just a 

get-rich-quick scam for 

the selfish 

67 


SEPTEMBER 2016

68 

Writing 

worth reading 

Photos 

worth seeing 



69 

SEPTEMBER 2016

Artwork: still unknown 

70 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


Same old same old! 

Absolutely damaged by the swiftly decaying state of 

the nation ... Words fail me, what is the use of words 

when the person you are saying them to is unable to 

grasp your, and their, meaning? 

Worryingly, we have left even that irrational road, 

the one where stupidity reigns, and now follow a 

path where basic facts and knowledge acquired 

over time are being replaced by entrenched banal 

myths, hearsay and superstition. The shit-faced 

fudge of complacency and mad spouters will now 

be defended to the death by a renewed Trident. 

Reason cannot be relied on in the present or near 

future (if ever?) and its utterly terrifying. Just who 

are the terrorists? For evidence of this I direct your 

(still giggling but increasingly alarmed) attention 

to Donald Trump and his campaign to become US 

President. As Britain’s government is a happy lapdog 

of US mischief in the world ... and a blindly loyal 

follower of US foreign policy, what will our May 



71 




stooges, Blairites and Tories – or the US presidential 

circus and their flunkies – will come up with anything 

remotely of benefit to anyone other than the 

rampantly corrupt ruling class wankers intent on 

fucking us all. 

SEPTEMBER 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

16


c 

October 2016

d 


The 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 





Opening 03 

Cable Street 05 

Artwork: Andreas Achenbach, Rough Seas ahead mateys! 

Cover & frontispiece: 

Cable Street mural. 













your dreams! 

Articles to: 


Universal Suffrage 13 

Ignore Naysayers 23 

Anti-Semitic? 26 

Save the Flowers 35 

Seydou Keïta 39 

Township/Rearick 44 

Ignoramuses 49 

Letters 63 

1 

October 2016

2 


OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

OKTOBER 1917 


Hello, 



road. 





3 

The end may 

justify the means 

as long as there 

is something that 

justifies the end 










Leon Trotsky 




October 2016


FASCIST MOSLEY THWARTED

‘An antidote to the far right’s poison’ 

THE BATTLE FOR 

CABLE STREET’S MURAL 

Eighty years on from the day anti-fascists clashed with Oswald 

Mosley’s blackshirts in the Jewish East End of London, David 

Rosenberg tells the story of the long struggle to protect the giant 

artwork and its enduring message of solidarity 

‘It was frightening,’ says Rene. ‘They slung my brother in a Black Maria. My 

mum was waiting up for him and he didn’t come home. He was in a police 

cell. My dad came home covered in blood.’ 

5 

Sally chips in: ‘They knocked my brother out. The police were going by on 

horseback and hit him with a truncheon. He was only 12.’ 

Beattie remembers ‘lots of scuffles’ and ‘a lorry turned over’. Her friend, 

Ginnie, was pushed through a shop window. 

In a Jewish day centre in London’s East End, three elderly women are 

recalling the 1936 Battle of Cable Street. That summer, East End Jews 

were under siege from Oswald Mosley’s fascists. Blackshirted street corner 

speakers railed against the Jews, ‘rats and vermin from the gutters of 

Whitechapel’, blaming them for every social ill. 

October 2016

‘My father worked from six in the morning until 10 at night,’ says Sally, ‘but 

he’d have kids shouting at him, ‘Go home Jew!’’ Beattie learned to answer 

back: ‘When they said, ‘Go home Jew!’, I said, ‘I am home’.’ 

Oswald Mosley intended to march his blackshirts – pictured on parade in 

Royal Mint Street, London, a few days before the battle – through the East 

End’s Jewish district. 

6 

It was late September 1936. Posters declared: ‘Mosley speaks in East 

London. Four great meetings. Four marching columns.’ He was threatening 

to march thousands of blackshirts right through the area’s Jewish district, 

on Sunday, 4 October. Nearly 100,000 East Enders, Jews and non-Jews, 

petitioned home secretary John Simon to ban the march. He refused, and 

sent 7,000 police to protect the blackshirts’ free passage. 

On the day, though, anti-fascists vastly outnumbered both Mosley’s forces 

and the police, and blocked Mosley’s path. When the police tried to clear 

a route further south through Cable Street, they met determined resistance. 

Irish dockers and railway workers came from the far end of the street to 

help the Jews build barricades. Paving stones were ripped up, bricks flew, 

and angry Jewish women threw bottles, kitchen utensils and the contents 

of chamber pots on to the police from the tenements. The police retreated 

and ordered Mosley to turn round and go home. 

This October, the three women will tell their stories publicly during a 

weekend of activities celebrating the 80th anniversary of the battle. Another 

veteran, 101-year-old Max Levitas, will speak at a rally, alongside Labour 

leader Jeremy Corbyn, local MP Rushanara Ali, and TUC general secretary 


Frances O’Grady. Every five years, since 1986, Cable Street veterans 

have passed on their experiences at such events, but their numbers are 

dwindling. 

Fortunately, the events of that day have been captured for subsequent 

generations in a breathtaking, politically charged mural on the side of 

the former St George’s town hall in Cable Street. It depicts the battle at its 

height: banners waving, bottles and tools flying through the air, mounted 

police with truncheons drawn. But this mural has its own anniversary this 

year, and its own dramatic story to tell. 

Forty years ago, in the town hall basement, the work was commissioned 

and the first sketches made; it was finally unveiled seven years later. During 

that period, East Enders were being terrorised by a new generation of 

fascists whose targets included the mural itself. 

7 

Longstanding Cable Street residents Dan Jones and Roger Mills were part 

of the basement group. ‘The idea of a mural lasting any amount of time is 

ridiculous, but it has been preserved and looked after,’ says Jones, grateful 

that this extraordinary landmark has survived the rapid gentrification that 

has swept aside communities, cultural memories and sites of struggle. 

The mural embodies physical resistance and owes its existence to a 

collective act of cultural resistance. In 1974, Thames Television unveiled its 

Arts Council-backed Eyesights project. Professional artists would descend 

on Tower Hamlets and inspire residents through posters on advertising 

hoardings. The basement group, completely bypassed, nicknamed the 

scheme ‘eyesores’ and fought for alternative, locally inspired projects, 

October 2016

including the mural. But people considered the proposal ‘very ambitious’, 

says Mills, ‘and it was put on the backburner’. 

Jones pursued it, though, and invited artist Dave Binnington to the 

basement. Binnington had produced vivid and striking work under 

London’s Westway flyover, inspired by the Mexican mural artists David 

Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. He read voraciously about the battle, and 

both he and Mills interviewed veterans to collect firsthand information. 

Binnington projected a slide of an early design on to the town hall wall. He 

recruited another artist, Paul Butler, to produce a series of predella panels 

across the lower section, narrating the battle. 

8 

A mural project committee leafleted locals, inviting them to contribute 

poems, drawings and memories and offering them the chance to appear 

in the mural. ‘Just as the crowd in 1936 was made up of local people,’ the 

leaflet stated, ‘so shall the mural be an image of people living here now.’ 

Many faces in the mural were taken from newspaper photos of the battle, 

but the more ethnically diverse group behind a banner on the lower left 

represents Cable Street’s 1970s residents. By then, few Jews lived there. 

The Irish remained, but the new fast growing community was Bangladeshi. 

Like earlier Jewish immigrants they worked in the rag trade around Brick 

Lane and Cannon Street Road, which crosses Cable Street. Like the Jews, 

they too were targeted by racists and fascists. The National Front stepped 

comfortably into Mosley’s boots. 

Bangladeshi Nooruddin Ahmed, who came to the East End in his teens, 

recalls the febrile atmosphere: ‘Most of Tower Hamlets was a no-go area 


for Bengalis,’ he says. Brick Lane and Cannon Street Road were ‘the sole 

places where Bengalis felt relatively comfortable’. 

Julie Begum conjures up the fear. ‘You went to school, you went home, you 

didn’t hang around. You did your shopping, and you hoped that you were 

not going to be attacked on your way there or back.’ 

Britain’s first Bengali MP, Rushanara Ali, settled in the East End with her 

parents in the early 1980s. As a child, she recalls, ‘we weren’t allowed 

to go out and play unsupervised, even right outside, because there was 

a lot of racism.’ In the evening she stood at the window with her mother 

watching for her father to get home safely from work. 

On 4 May 1978, Altab Ali, a 25 year old Bengali machinist, was walking 

home from work when he was attacked and stabbed to death by a racist 

gang near Whitechapel Road. There were local elections that day. The NF 

were contesting 41 seats in Tower Hamlets. 

9 

In 1982, the incomplete mural was daubed with six-foot high racist 

slogans. Binnington was devastated and abandoned the project. Two 

other artists, Des Rochfort and Ray Walker, helped Butler reimagine 

and complete the mural. It may look like one dynamic, convulsive, and 

coherent image, but it was created in sections by three individuals, each 

with their unique style. 

Ten years after the unveiling, as Butler was restoring the weatherbeaten 

mural, the fascists returned: the British National Party had won a local 

council seat. Its emboldened supporters paint-bombed the mural and 

October 2016

threatened Butler. ‘I had my tyres slashed and white paint poured all over 

my car,’ he says. ‘We had to have a police guard. You felt very vulnerable 

up the scaffolding. You could be shaken off it like an apple on a tree.’ 


Butler’s further restoration experience in 2011 was less fraught. Local 

teachers brought students – most of Bengali and Somali heritage – to 

see the mural and question Butler and Mills. Butler enthuses about how 

strongly these young people identified with the narrative. Last year, Rachel 

Burns, a Jewish teacher whose grandparents inhabited the volatile East 

End of the 1930s, worked on a project centred on the mural, involving 

four schools, with Jewish and Muslim schools working together. The 

students, she says, ‘realised it was not only about racism but also about 

solidarity’. 

Rushanara Ali was 12 when she first visited the mural with her history 

teacher, but its potency stayed with her. As a student at Oxford, she wrote 

her first article for the student magazine about the mural. Though it 

depicts the struggles of Jewish immigrants, she is emphatic that it ‘belongs 

to everybody. It is part of us, part of our community’s local heritage.’ 

Jones, whose Jewish mother was an anti-fascist activist in the 1930s, 

remembers proudly that the mural project was championed by two of 

Tower Hamlets’ first Asian councillors. 

Cable Street forms the boundary of Ali’s constituency. The south side, 

including the mural, is the territory of Jim Fitzpatrick MP. He marvels at 

the power of art to communicate ‘to people who might not be interested 

in reading history’ its central message: that ‘collective political action, 

bringing people together, is the antidote against the far right’s poison’. 


Back at the day centre, Beattie describes the battle as if it happened last 

week: ‘When I walked out my flat on Goulston Street I could not believe 

how many people were there. They were chanting, ‘They shall not pass!’’ 

They did not pass. 

‘We showed them what we were made of,’ says Rene. ‘With people like 

Beattie, we got the better of them.’ 

11 

October 2016

12 


MEN OF ENGLAND 

[& WOMEN] 

Men of England, wherefore plough 

For the lords who lay ye low? 

Wherefore weave with toil and care 

The rich robes your tyrants wear? 

Wherefore feed and clothe and save 

From the cradle to the grave 

Those ungrateful drones who would 

Drain your sweat – nay, drink your blood? 

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge 

Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, 

That these stingless drones may spoil 

The forced produce of your toil? 

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, 

Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm? 

Or what is it ye buy so dear 

With your pain and with your fear? 

The seed ye sow, another reaps; 

The wealth ye find, another keeps; 

The robes ye weave, another wears; 

The arms ye forge, another bears. 

Sow seed – but let no tyrant reap: 

Find wealth – let no imposter heap: 

Weave robes – let not the idle wear: 

Forge arms – in your defence to bear. 

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells – 

In hall ye deck another dwells. 

Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see 

The steel ye tempered glance on ye. 

With plough and spade and hoe and loom 

Trace your grave and build your tomb 

And weave your winding-sheet – till fair 

England be your Sepulchre. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

& THE STRUGGLE 

FOR UNIVERSAL 

SUFFRAGE 

13 

October 2016

14 

During the early years of the 19th century, when Rochdale was thriving as 

a textile manufacturing centre, all was not peace and harmony. At this time 

the inhabitants of the town and surrounding area could be divided into three 

groups or classes. There were the members of the upper-class, the wealthy 

land owners, the Tory gentry, who were members of the Anglican Church. 

These people had the ability to wield real power through their connections 

in the church, the magistrature, and by casting a vote in elections. The 

middle-class, the nouveau-riche entrepreneurs who were ambitious, selfmade 

men, saw themselves as the engines of this economic boom but 

completely disenfranchised since they were unable to vote in elections. Many 

of the members of this group belonged to one or other of the diverse nonconformist 

churches that had sprung up in the area, Politically, they were 

Whigs and later Liberals and they were determined to wrestle power away 

from the traditional ruling class. At the bottom of the heap economically and 

politically were the working-class who made up 96% or the population of 

Rochdale. 

The industrialization of the textile industry led first to the concentration of 

formerly rural people into Rochdale. The population exploded and by 1841 

there were 68,000 people in a town that just 20 years earlier had 23,000. 

Living conditions in the overcrowded, squalid and increasingly polluted town 

were dreadful. As mechanization increased and prices for cloth fluctuated, 

the wages paid to factory workers and the prices paid to independent 

handweaves spiraled ever downwards. As local medical practitioners at the 

time commented ‘the labouring classes in the Borough of Rochdale ... are 

now suffering great and increasing privations. That they are unable in great 

numbers to obtain wholesome food in sufficient quantities to keep them in 

health; and that they are predisposed to disease and rendered unable to 


esist its attacks.....In this respect the population amongst whom we practice 

are in a much worse state now than they were five or six years ago.’ 

It was in this climate that Rochdale as a town developed, and the drama 

played out in the meeting halls and on the streets of the town over several 

decades. Driven by a thirst for wealth and power the middle-class clashed 

on ideologal grounds with the ruling upper-class Tories. Meanwhile, the 

working-class fought to stave off starvation and learned how to organize 

their considerable numbers against the overwhelming power of the rich and 

powerful who controlled every aspect of their lives. 

The political battle that ensued at the beginning of the 19th century was 

no simple struggle. The often competing goals of the various classes were 

inevitably intertwined. I will endeavour to unravel them but apologize in 

advance for any oversimplification. 

15 

In 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon’s army was defeated and the 

Twenty Years War came to an end. Having won the war, England faced 

a serious problem at home. In fact, the country teetered on the brink of 

revolution. Even before the war there had been unrest in the country . It was 

in every respect a period of repression in which the condition of the poor 

had steadily deteriorated. Exploited in factories by the new capitalists and on 

the land by the old aristocracy, the frustrations of the poor often manifested 

themselves in violence, notably bread riots in Rochdale. In 1791 a riot was 

put down by the militia, on the order of magistrate Thomas Drake, resulting 

in two deaths. Falling wages precipitated attacks on weavers’ cottages, and 

in one incident in 1808, an angry crowd liberated several men, who had 

been arrested, and burned down the ‘lock-up’ on Rope Street. In reaction to 

October 2016

the unrest Rochdale became a barracks town giving it a permanent military 

presence ready at a moments notice to put down any riots. 

The move to reform the existing parliamentary system dominated the political 

mood of the country. A party of reform minded men, equipped with blankets 

to keep them warm on overnight stops, set off from Manchester on March 

24, 1817 to present a petition to the Prince Regent in what became known 

as the March of the Blanketeers. 

16 

The same year a large political reform meeting was held on Cronkeyshaw 

Common outside Rochdale. 35,000 men and women marched through 

Rochdale to the Common, and amongst the crowd at the meeting was 

Samuel Bamford, a reformer/radical from Middleton. 

The Peterloo Massacre 

Two years later Bamford led a party of Middleton people to an assembly on 

open ground near St. Peter’s Church in Manchester, where they hoped to 

hear Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt speak. 

‘They wore their Sunday suits and clean neckties; and by the side of fustian 

and corduroy walked the coloured prints and stuffs of wives and sweethearts, 

who went as for a gala-day, to break the dull monotony of their lives, and 

to serve as a guarantee of peaceable intention. Such at least was the main 

body, marshalled in Middleton by stalwart, stout-hearted Samuel Bamford, 

which passed in marching order, five abreast down Newton Lane, through 

Oldham Street, skirted the Infirmary Gardens, and proceeded along Moseley 

Street. each leader with a sprig of peaceful laurel in his hat.’ 

Peterloo: the 15th Hussars rode, with sabers drawn, into the crowd ... 



October 2016

Among the throng on St. Peter’s Field it was reported that some banners 

were seen saying ‘Bread or Blood’, ‘Liberty or Death’ and ‘Equal 

Representation or Death’. Hunt had barely made it onto the stage when 

the 15th Hussars, dispatched by magistrate the Rev. Hay, later the Vicar 

of Rochdale, rode, with sabers drawn, into the crowd . Eleven people 

were killed and 400 injured in what became known as the Peterloo 

Massacre. 

18 

The government of the day finally addressed the parliamentary reform 

issue in 1832, by passing the Parliamentary Reform Act. Unfortunately, 

for the majority of the people in Rochdale and around the country 

nothing changed. The Act abolished ‘Rotten Boroughs’ and gave their 

seats to new towns including Rochdale. It extended the franchise but only 

on the basis of wealth to £10 householders in boroughs and £50 tenants 

in the counties. In Rochdale this meant that 687 out of a population of 

28,000 could now vote. 

Rightly or wrongly, the mass of the working-class saw the right to vote 

as a chance to influence government policy (something that continues 

to be almost impossible, even with universal sufferage) and to improve 

their miserable lot. A national movement known as Chartism grew up 

to address this working-class discontent. It derived its name from the six 

point charter that set out the demands of the organization, demands 

which some were prepared to back with force if necessary: 

1. Universal (male) sufferage. 

2. Annual Parliaments. 

3. Vote by (secret) ballot. 


4. Abolition of property qualifications for M. P.’s. 

5. Payment of M. P.’s. 

6. Equal Electoral Districts. 

Chartist Demonstration 

In Rochdale one of the prominent figures in the Chartist movement was 

Thomas Livsey. Livsey was a local lad, the son of a blacksmith, who was 

educated until the age of 15 in Rochdale. Livsey also worked locally 

on such issues as shortening working hours in the mills, restricting 

child labour and fighting the Poor Laws that introduced the despised 

workhouses. Livsey was an affective interlocutor between the middle-class 

and the working-class and a strong advocate for the latter. He was also 

involved in the development of the local Co-operative movement. 

19 

The struggle for acceptance of the Charter raised passions and for a 

while there were real concerns that it could lead to an armed insurrection. 

Plans to organize a period of sustained protest across the country in 

1839 collapsed in disarray. By 1842 when the Charter was still a dream, 

it began to be apparent to a lot of people that the way forward for 

working-class people lay not in electoral reform but in self-improvement, 

a decision which in Rochdale led to Co-operation. 

The middle-class fought for parliamentary reform because they wanted 

to have access to the power that the Tory gentry had by right. The only 

way to achieve the change they wanted was to create a ground swell 

of discontent and to do this they needed to enlist the support of the 

working-class. The working-class joined the frey in a desperate attempt 

to give some strength to their demands for improved living and working 

October 2016

conditions. Throughout this whole period, life and work in Rochdale was 

characterized by riots and strikes over food shortages, pay and working 

conditions. 

From Manchesterhistory.net 

20 

The Right to Vote 

1832 Great Reform Act. Before this time only landowners could vote for 

MPs to sit in the House of Commons. This meant 1 in 7 men could vote. 

(440,000 people) After 1832 the male urban middle classes gain the 

vote, and so the electorate increases to 1 in 5 men (650,000 people). 

1867 Second Reform Act. This extends the vote to the skilled urban male 

working class. The electorate increases to 1 in 3 men. 

1884 Third Reform Act. The vote is now given to working class men in 

the countryside. The electorate is now 2 out of 3 men. 

1918 Representation of the People Act. Almost all men over 21 years 

old, and women over 30 years old now have the vote. 

1928 Effectively all women and men over 21 now have the vote. 

So scandalously, women had to fight on for their right to vote 

until, because some Suffragettes supported the War, over 30s 

got the vote in 1918 ... but others had to wait for equality until 

finally all citizens over 21 had the vote in 1928. 


21 

October 2016

22 


IGNORE THE PATRONISING 

NAYSAYERS, LABOUR MEMBERS 

CAN DRIVE A REVOLUTION 

David Wearing 

Rather than trying to appeal to voters’ more base instincts, the party can 

thrive by mobilising its supporters to spread its message 

‘Labour members can win the right to be heard by taking up a multitude 

of local causes in communities up and down the country.’ Jeremy Corbyn 

said, addressing a crowd in Ramsgate, Kent. 

23 

While there is much that the Labour leadership can do to help ensure 

national electoral success once Jeremy Corbyn is crowned for the second 

time, the most important factor is not in the hands of the Westminster 

villagers. It is the hundreds of thousands of people that make up the new 

mass membership of the party that can have the biggest impact. It is they, 

more than anyone, who now have the means to change the country. And 

they can get started on it straight away. 

May has never won an election as prime minister. We must ensure she 

never does 

October 2016

The political and cultural theorist Jeremy Gilbert identifies two competing 

approaches as to how Labour should address the question of electability: 

marketing and movement-building. The marketing approach treats the 

electorate as consumers with fixed preferences, where the ideal politician is 

a polished salesperson armed with a perfectly calibrated retail policy offer. 

The movement-building approach treats public opinion as a changeable 

landscape, where elections are won not only by competent politicians but 

by social forces mobilised in support of a transformative agenda. 

24 

As Gilbert notes, the problem with the marketing approach is that it 

cannot explain how socio-political change happens. Imagine if Sylvia 

Pankhurst or Rosa Parks had said that ‘we have to accept where people 

are’ on women’s rights, or ‘we understand the public’s legitimate 

concerns’ on desegregation. The legacy of those figures, and thousands 

of activists like them, is a standing rebuke to the oft-repeated, ahistorical 

nonsense that Labour can achieve nothing with protest, but only by first 

winning power. In reality, the power to enact serious change can only 

be won by first preparing the ground through patient and committed 

grassroots action. 

The other problem with the marketing approach is that it encourages the 

erasure of moral red lines. If majority opinion blames immigrants and 

people on social security for the country’s problems, then Labour must 

appeal to these voter-consumer preferences. Consciences can always be 

soothed with some feeble rhetoric about how it is, in some tortured sense, 

progressive to collude in the politics of scapegoating. The marketing 

approach precludes not only a transformative agenda, but sometimes 

even basic levels of human decency. 


The alternative is to treat people as adults who can be engaged in 

conversation and potentially persuaded of a different point of view. And 

the emergence of a social movement means that the task of persuasion 

can be taken up, not by a remote elite, but by your friends, family, 

neighbours and colleagues. In workplaces, round dinner tables, in 

pubs and cafes, every lying tabloid front-page can now be met with a 

counterargument from a familiar and trusted voice. 

Labour members can win the right to be heard by taking up a multitude 

of local causes in communities up and down the country. And often, 

attitudes can shift through the experience of these collective struggles. In 

the late 1960s, London dockers marched in support of Nigel Farage’s 

hero, Enoch Powell. But by 1976, some of those same dockers were 

supporting the famous Grunwick strike, where a largely female, 

immigrant workforce, together with union allies from the ‘white working 

class’, put up a formidable fight against their common opponents. 

Empowering the best aspects of British society is always a more 

constructive path than pandering and genuflecting to the worst. 

25 

Labour as a mobilised mass movement can be a space where the 

marginalised and the voiceless gain political agency, and build social 

bonds with the rest of society. The single mothers organising childcare 

so that more people can participate in Momentum meetings is just one 

example of how this can work. A thousand local initiatives like this can 

counteract social atomisation and division, and help foster the ethos 

of kindness and mutual obligation that is the foundation of any serious 

leftwing politics. 

October 2016

For now, the Labour membership’s potential to organise as an active 

social movement has yet to be realised, which is unsurprising given the 

exclusionary, aggressive and patronising attitude they have been greeted 

with by the party establishment. But those members should not allow 

themselves to be demoralised by what’s happening in Westminster. 

Instead, they can take the initiative themselves, and set about shifting 

the ground on which future general elections will be fought and won. In 

time, their children and grandchildren will look back on that work with 

gratitude, as they enjoy life in the better, happier country that it helped to 

create. 

26 

Cover of Sheep in the Road from one year ago 


27 

October 2016

SOCIALISTS SHOULD DEFEND THE RIGHT 

OF THE OPPRESSED TO RESIST THE 

VIOLENCE OF THE OPPRESSOR 

We should show our solidarity by rallying around the call made by Palestinians 

themselves for an international campaign to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, 

just as apartheid South Africa faced a similar campaign decades ago.

BUT, ARE WE ANTI-SEMITIC? 

1. If you think ‘Israel’, ‘Zionists’ and ‘Jews’ are interchangeable terms, 

you may well be anti-semitic. 

2. If you think a Jewish conspiracy controls the media/international 

finance/politics/the BBC, you are anti-semitic. There is no conspiracy. I’m 

well-connected in the Jewish community so I’d definitely be invited and 

I’ve heard nothing. 

3. If you use the term ‘Rothschild’ to imply ‘Jews’, you are definitely an 

anti-semite. And congratulations on using the exact same words as the 

Nazis and those who incited the Tsarist pogroms, etc. 

4. If you try and hide your belief in a ‘Jewish conspiracy’ by using the 

term ‘Zionist conspiracy’, you’re fooling no-one. Unless you genuinely 

believe the Israeli government is behind everything, its clear you’re 

including other Jews in your ‘conspiracy’. 

5. If your only defence is ‘Jews aren’t a race so I’m not racist’ or ‘Jews 

aren’t the only semites so I’m not an anti-semite’, or if you see antisemitism 

as somehow less important than other forms of racism, then 

you’re most likely an anti-semite. 

6. If you think every Jew needs to condemn Israel in every tweet, 

comment, etc, then you may be an anti-semite (see point 1). 

6. Supporting the desire of Palestinians for legitimate self-determination, 

human rights and their own state, and condemning Israeli government 

policies does not make someone anti-semitic. But see points 1–6. 

29 

A test from David Schneider 

October 2016

OK, so you have convinced yourself you are not anti-semitic. But the 

Labout Party has been jumping through hoops held up by people like 

Jonathan Sacerdoti, of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, who said, 

referring to Jackie Walker, a Jewish woman who was vice-chair of 

Momentum until recently: ‘If the Labour Party has truly readmitted a 

member who publicly subscribes to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of 

Jews financing and causing the slave trade, their ongoing inquiry into 

anti-Semitism can barely be taken seriously.’ 

30 

He added that for the Labour Party to readmit people who spread 

‘malicious myths’ about Jews ‘tells us that anti-Semitism in the Labour 

Party is becoming institutional’. 

In a Facebook post about the trans-Atlantic slave trade before her 

suspension, Jackie Walker, the vice-chair of the left-wing Labour Partylinked 

movement, wrote: ‘I’m sure you know, millions more Africans 

were killed in the African Holocaust and their oppression continues 

today on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews...and many Jews 

(my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade 

which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the 

Caribbean’. 

Following the lifting of her suspension the activist, who is also vice-chair 

of Thanet Labour party, wrote a blog post for Labour Briefing saying 

she had not said sorry. She added: ‘I will never apologise for being an 

Internationalist, for holding all life as precious, for not valorising one 

genocide, one holocaust, over any other’. ‘And if you ask if I think anti- 

Semitism is a major problem in the Labour Party, I would give almost 


the same response as the one I was suspended for – ‘No’ but with one 

amendment: anti-Semitism is not a major problem, the suspension 

process is.’ 

Ms Walker accused the media of taking her comments out of context to 

‘support their own slapdash, anti-Labour, anti the present leadership, 

rhetoric’. She said there was a McCarthyite campaign – referring to 

the anti-Communist witchhunt in the US in the 1950s – against the left 

within Thanet Labour and suggested that the right wing of the party and 

the media were collaborating with ‘Israeli propagandists’ to smear the 

left. Ms Walker said: ‘The fear in my CLP [constituency Labour Party] is 

palpable; McCarthyism lives and with the same purpose – the destruction 

of the left’. 

31 

Following the uproar, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced he would 

launch an inquiry into anti-Semitism within the party. He said the party 

was ‘anti-racist’ and had a long history of fighting against all forms of it. 

Now then, from The Independent, here is a real bit of twisted 

history ... 

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been criticised for sharing an 

‘awful, warped piece of propaganda’ after it published a satirical video 

about the history of the Jewish people. 

Titled ‘Welcome to the Home of the Jewish People,’ the three-and-a-half 

minute long video depics Jacob, Rachel and their child, enjoying life in 

the ‘Land of Israel’. 

October 2016

‘No matter who came knocking at the door, the Jews stayed put in their 

home-sweet-home, the Land of Israel, for 3,000 years,’ the post on the Israel 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs Facebook page reads. 

However, the couple are interrupted by a knock at the door from ‘two 

hipsters with well-groomed beards’ who speak in an ‘ancient assyrian 

language’. After the Asyrrians take over the living room, Jacob and Rachel 

move to their bedroom. ‘So it’s now 750BC. In about 2,750 years, we’ll 

have some quiet here,’ Jacob jokes. 

32 

The family are then interrupted again by a procession of visitors who claim 

the house as their own, including Greeks, Romans, Arabs, crusaders, 

Mamluks and Turks from the Ottoman Empire. 

There is then another knock on the door as the British arrive, claiming the 

house in the name of the British Empire. The British then give them back their 

house ‘in the name of the League of Nations’. 

The couple celebrate the news, and Jacob says: ‘Finally, a state of our own, 

the Land of Israel.’ 

However, they are interrupted by a Palestinian couple knocking on the door, 

who peer inside the house before the video ends. 

The video has been denounced as racist, historically inaccurate and insulting. 


‘What an awful, warped piece of propaganda,’ one person commented 

underneath the video. ‘A complete and total erasure of Palestinians. Do you 

really think people are this stupid?’ 

One commentor said: ‘Our foreign minister pushing the narrative of 

ignorance ... The truth is the Jews were a minority for most of the last 

thousand years in Israel, arabs lived here for a pretty long time, and 

geopolitics is not as simple as [defence minister Avigdor] Liberman would 

like it to be.’ 

Another wrote: ‘Except that, you know, after the couple got their home 

back they started taking other flats in the building and claiming it was 

always theirs.’ 

33 

The Independent says it has contacted the Israel Ministry of Foreign 

Affairs for comment. I suspect, as they don’t need to explain their actions 

to anyone, none will be forthcoming ... 

October 2016

THE NHS IS THE 

FLOWER OF THE 

WELFARE STATE 

JEREMY FRONT-BOTTOM’S FARTS 

KILL FLOWERS

SAVE THE FLOWERS! 

‘These are the lyrics of a song, CLOSE THE DOOR, by Pokey 

LaFarge. It’s what we will have soon as the NHS is destroyed 

and then privatised’, wrote Ian. 

Close the Door, close the door, don’t let the doctor come in 

Close the door and lock it tight 

I’ve got no money for the doctor tonight 

35 


Three weeks I spent in the hospital 

It left me with a stack of bills sky high 

I’ll never be able to pay them I know 

I wish I would have stayed there and died 

La dee da dee da, la dee da dee dum… 

Tell me why, please, tell me why 

We must pay for the things that we need 

While a doctor gets richer off me each day 

I barely have the money to eat 

So I’ll never go to the doctor no more 

October 2016

No matter how sick I get 

No doctor will ever get my dough 

‘Cause I work too damn hard for that 


36 

Oh, the doctor he sticks his needle in 

He says just to take some blood 

What he claimed it was not red but green 

And boys he took all that he could 

1st verse 



Artwork: Alan Hardman 

HOW CAN A POOR MAN STAND SUCH TIMES AND LIVE, 

best sung by Ry Cooder, lyrics by Alfred Reed 

Well, the doctor comes around with his face all bright 

And he says, ‘In a little while you’ll be all right’ 

All he gives is a humbug pill, dose of dope and a great big bill 

Tell me, how can a poor man stand such times and live? 

Well there once was a time when every thing was cheap 

But now prices nearly puts a man to sleep 

When we get our grocery bill, we just feel like making our will 

Tell me, how can a poor man stand such times and live? 

Prohibitions good if it’s conducted right 

There’s no sense in shooting a man ‘til he shows flight 

Officers kill without a cause then they complain about the 

funny laws 

Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live? 

37 

October 2016

SEYDOU KEÏTA 

P H O T O G R A P H E R 

Back in May, in issue 10 of ‘Sheep in the Road’, we spotlighted Malian 

photographer Malick Sidibé, here is another, also from Bamako, Seydou 

Keïta. Keïta’s use of repeat pattern backdrops for his portraits are widely 

acknowledged, not only as a record of Malian society (1940-1960) but also 

as art. 

From the introduction to this book, ‘What was Seydou Keïta seeking when 

his subjects walked into his studio in Bamako, Mali? Clearly he saw the 

extraordinary beauty and stunning graphics of the women’s clothing – the 

extravagant shapes of the sleeves and the billowing sumptuousness of the 

skirts. He recognised the stately power of the queenly turbans that so many of 

the women wore, lending them a commanding air. His men were dashing, 

and Keïta tailored his images to emphasize the pleasing contours of an 

oversizzed jacket or a short pant leg. He fashioned these pictures by layering 

pattern on pattern. He understood how overlapping geometric expanses could 

electrify a picture. Keïta was Matisse’s soul mate, evoking the pleasurable 

charge of Matisse’s flattened panes of vibrant colour with his interlocking 

black and white patterns. His eyes were open to all the seductive powers of 

ornamentation and adornment. Many of his subjects were achingly beautiful 

in their African splendour. He was large-hearted, bestowing on his sitters a 

honed sense of how to make each as becoming as they could be. The aplomb 

with which they present themselves and yet the utter ordinariness of the 

storefront photograph creates a heightened mix of formality and intimacy that 

is beguiling.’ [writes Kathy Ryan] 

39 

October 2016

40 


41 

October 2016

42 


TOWNSHIP: LIFE AFTER SO

UTH AFRICAN APARTHEID 

Anne Rearick: photographer

46 

In the two decades since 

the end of apartheid 

South Africans have 

held onto the hope 

that housing, jobs and 

education will become 

available to all. Yet, 

townships often remain 

places where survival, 

not quality of life, define 

daily life. 


48 


SHARP BARBS DULLED BY 

IGNORAMUSES & PARLIAMENT 

Back in the early 1970s, when getting some picture framing done, the 

picture framer was chit-chatting and name dropping and I remember 

him mentioning Gerald Nabarro. It seems Gerald was a very vain 

man who not only had all the numberplates of his collection of cars 

personalised to NAB 1, NAB 2, etc (8 in all) … but also had all cartoons 

of him expensively framed, whether anti or pro, he just loved to be in the 

limelight, no matter if he were portrayed as a right-wing bigot. 

49 

This kind of vanity, a blind thick-skinned subscription to a thought/act/ 

image without even the slightest understanding/acceptance/realisation 

of its critical message is being increasingly employed by the ‘worthy 

arty-farty’ crowd of Banksy applauders. As an instance, the Cheltenham 

Banksy, ‘our Banksy’ as a bunch of so-called art-lovers have called it 

in the local media, depicted sinister spies listening in around an actual 

phonebox in Cheltenham. Cheltenham is home to super spy listening 

post, GCHQ … so the political message about the wrongness of this 

surveillance activity is beautifully made obvious ... job well done! 

The graffiti was then vandalised (hopefully by Banksy), its message 

received, its work done, lets move on … but such a hoo-hah erupted in 

Cheltenham, ‘how could anyone vandalise ‘our Banksy’, estimated to be 

worth a million quid, a tourist attraction even’. This kind of absorption 

October 2016

of all of Banksy’s anti-establishment graffiti into the mainstream is a 

seemingly successful attempt by the [art] establishment to nullify the 

message and commodify this rebellious flame … fuckers! And maybe 

Banksy needs to re-think his stretegy of exposing the lies and doublestandards 

of the establishment? 

50 

Here is another truth of ‘Banksy’s message’ writ loud in a grotesque 

parody of the initial graffiti’s, Shami Chakrabarti and Jeremy Corbyn 

were the loudest critics of the Snooper’s Charter – but now they’re in 

power (?), they’ve gone ‘establishment’ quiet. Theresa May’s first attempt 

to spy on us began in 2012. Four years on, it looks as though she has 

finally ground Parliament into submission. No wonder alert and informed 

voters are so cynical of Parliament’s sitting gangsters. 

From the Independent, Mike Harris writes: 

If you’re concerned there will be no opposition to Brexit, or that the 

Tories will abandon the Human Rights Act, or we face a militarised police 

by stealth, then frankly you should be very worried indeed. Britain is 

now a one party state and the people you expected to stand up for our 

fundamental liberties are absent on duty. 

In the coming fortnight, the illiberal Investigatory Powers Bill will pass 

through Parliament, making it easier for the British Government to spy on 

citizens entirely innocent of any crime. 


51 

October 2016

The bill will allow the Government to hand UK tech firms top-secret 

notices to hack their customers; the police will be able to look at your 

internet browsing history, and your personal data will be tied together so 

the state can find out if you’ve attended a protest, who your friends are, 

and where you live. The most authoritarian piece of spying legislation any 

democratic government has ever proposed has sped through Parliament 

with only a whimper of opposition. 

52 

What makes this all the more incredible is that some of the most 

prominent and respected voices for liberty will abstain from voting this 

draconian legislation down. The Investigatory Powers Bill, a Snooper’s 

Charter, is the canary in the coal mine for our diseased democracy. 

Shami Chakrabarti spent 13 years as Britain’s most prominent 

human rights defender. Just six months ago, she told the media that 

the Government ‘must return to the drawing board’ with its illiberal 

Investigatory Powers Bill, because to do anything else would show 

‘dangerous contempt for parliament, democracy and our country’s 

security’. 

Jeremy Corbyn, in his column for the Morning Star, denounced the 

extension of state surveillance rushed through parliament two years 

ago, describing it as a ‘travesty of parliamentary democracy’ and 

praising Liberty (then run by Shami Chakrabarti) for lobbying MPs 

to oppose it. Diane Abbott agreed, writing in June this year that 

this ‘Snoopers’ Charter will target minorities – and do nothing to make us 

safer’. 


Abbott added: ‘My own privacy has been violated because of the political 

whims of unknown state officials, when they decided to monitor my 

emails, calls, texts, browsing history for years.’ Jeremy Corbyn was also 

put under surveillance, as was his fellow Labour politician Baroness 

Doreen Lawrence, who was spied on by the Metropolitan Police as 

she grieved for her son who had lost his life in a racist attack. Shami 

Chakrabarti is now the shadow Attorney General, the law officer for 

Her Majesty’s Opposition. The two politicians who had been spied on, 

Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, are now the Leader of Her Majesty’s 

Opposition and shadow Home Secretary, respectively. 

You would think that given three of the most high-profile figures to 

oppose state snooping were now at the very top of the Labour Party, 

the opposition would be tearing the Government apart. Not quite. 

Instead, it was announced yesterday that Labour would neither be tabling 

major amendments to the legislation in the House of Lords to make it fit 

for purpose, but – worse – nor would the party be voting against the new 

powers contained in the bill. 

53 

Chakrabarti is Labour’s law officer. Just months ago, the human rights 

group she ran argued that the ‘proposed new law breaches our human 

rights’. If this is the case, how on earth can she stay quiet while Labour 

abstains? Theresa May is about to get away with the largest expansion of 

state surveillance powers in peacetime, and no one can quite explain why 

Labour politicians who have been spied upon still sit on the fence. 

Across the Western world, faith in politicians from across the political 

spectrum is ebbing away. Instead, populists such as Donald Trump tell us 

October 2016

the elites are lying and that politicians say one thing and do another. Yet 

when politicians who do genuinely oppose intrusive surveillance powers 

stay quiet in the face of draconian legislation, it feeds conspiracy theories 

that democracy is a fix. 

If social democrats are too frightened to stand up for what they believe 

in, then why bother voting for them? Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected by 

Labour members who wanted to see the party change direction. It’s 

hard to see how giving the Tories a free pass to give the state unjustified 

powers is part of that mandate. 

54 

Labour has just weeks to get this legislation right. Chakrabarti, Corbyn 

and Abbott can with no good reason abstain – they must work with the 

Liberal Democrats, the SNP and independent members of the House of 

Lords to make amendments to remove some of the worst elements of 

this bill; from police access to our web browsing history through to the 

request filter (which is like a powerful search engine, except it can trawl 

through the data of innocent citizens). If they fail, it will embolden the 

Mayist Tories to continue their permanent revolution against liberty and 

liberals. 

Theresa May’s first attempt at the Snooper’s Charter began in 2012. 

Four years on, it looks as though she has finally ground parliament into 

submission. If she wins this battle unopposed, you wonder which other 

freedoms we shall lose. 

Mike Harris is the founder and director of 89up and the former head of 

advocacy at Index on Censorship 


WAR HEADS 

55 

UK PARLIAMENT+USA+ISRAEL+SAUDI 

ARABIA V IRAQ AFGHANISTAN IRAN 

LYBIA YEMEN SYRIA RUSSIA 

October 2016

56 


57 

October 2016

58 




YEAH, beware, 

capitalism and war go 

together like a slug and 

a lettuce ... and there are 

some arseholes tossing 

the salad, ffs! 

59 


October 2016

60 

Writing 

worth reading 

Photos 

worth seeing 



61 

October 2016


62 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 




the world ... Words fail me, what is the use of words 


grasp your, and their, meaning? 






fudge of complacency and mad spouters will now be 

defended to the death by the threat of nuclear war. 




(still giggling but increasingly alarmed) attention 

to Donald Trump and his campaign to become US 

President. As Britain’s government is a happy lapdog 

of US mischief in the world ... and a blindly loyal 

follower of US foreign policy, what will our May 



63 




stooges, Blairites and Tories – or the US presidential 

circus and their flunkies – will come up with anything 

remotely of benefit to anyone other than the 

rampantly corrupt ruling class wankers intent on 


October 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 


WAR

money money money

you can’t take it with you

d 

Sheep in the Road editor receives Airbrusher Award at WAFFLERS Conference, but by sharing 

stage with arch-Trotskyite he squanders chance to become a Labour Party member ... 

schizzen! 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 17

The 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 



Page 16, Socialist Extrapolator, 22 October 2016 



Cover & frontispiece: Knight, 

Miser & Merchant from 

‘The Dance of Death’: Hans 

Holbein, 1524-5. 













your dreams! 

Articles to: 


Opening 03 

Injustice 05 

Justice? 13 

Badges 18 

Basic Income? 35 

West Africa Notes 41 

Labour 51 

Norman Conquest 52 

Democracy 57 

Revolution review 61 

Cup in hand 65 

White poppies 69 

Letters 77 

1 

NOVEMBER 2016

2 


OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Graffiti by FAILE, a collective comprising Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller: New York 


The end may 

justify the means 

as long as there 

is something that 

justifies the end 

Leon Trotsky 

Hello, 

Welcome to magazine number 17, and 


road. 












now appear very sporadically. 

Without contributors this project has 

failed to live up to its original ideal! 

Probably the last issue for a while ... in the 

meantime, a luta continua! 

3 

NOVEMBER 2016

ALBERT WOODFOX 

HERMAN WALLACE

INJUSTICE: ANGOLA THREE 

From article by Billie Mizell (SEVEN magazine, April 2007) 

and other sources 

Angola Prison began life as a plantation in Louisiana and its name comes 

from the former African homeland of the slaves who were forced to work 

its fertile land. Two hundred years later, little has changed there. Three 

quarters of Angola’s inmates are black and most of them work from dawn 

to dusk in the soybean, cotton and wheat fields, performing backbreaking 

labour under a sweltering sun. Around 85% of the inmates who enter 

Angola will die there. 

5 

Artwork: Rigo 23 

The civil rights movement was late coming to the old plantation, but it 

finally slipped past the razor wire and iron gates in the early 1970s through 

two African-American prisoners: Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. 

Arriving on unrelated armed robbery convictions and both sentenced on 

questionable evidence by all-white juries, they came to the prison having 

already earned reputations as political activists. 

Woodfox and Wallace were escorted into an institution once dubbed 

‘the bloodiest prison in America’ by Peter Fenelon Collier’s investigative 

publication ‘Collier’s Weekly’. Inside its walls, violence was so 

commonplace that inmates slept with lunch trays or Bibles strapped to their 

chests in case they were stabbed as they slept. Due to a serious shortage 

of guards, ‘trusty’ inmates were permitted to carry guns and guard other 

prisoners. Murders were nearly a daily occurance. 

NOVEMBER 2016

Woodfox and Wallace immediately began peacefully organising their 

fellow inmates against the racial segregation, sexual slavery, rampant 

violence and systematic brutality, which were rife inside a prison that was 

soon to be under federal investigation for its abhorrent conditions. Their 

protest methods included hunger strikes and escorting weaker inmates 

through the prison yard as a means of protection. 

6 

Shortly after the pair’s arrival, a white prison guard was found stabbed to 

death in one of the black inmate buildings. Woodfox and Wallace were 

immediately identified as suspects despite no witnesses or any physical 

evidence to link them to the crime. In 1972, the men were convicted of 

the guard’s murder by all-white juries and sentenced to life in prison. The 

Angola administration determined that they would spend the sentence in 

solitude and it was more than four decades before their release, they are 

the longest known survivors of solitary confinement in the history of the US. 

In the years that have followed, a mountain of evidence has been turned 

up to indicate that not only were Woodfox and Wallace not guilty, but they 

were set up by Angols’s administration, probably because of their known 

affiliation with the Black Panther Party. The party was founded in 1966 

by Huey Newton and Bobbly Seale. It followed Malcolm X’s belief in the 

international unity of the working classes across colour and gender. 

The bloody fingerprints found at the scene of the crime failed to find a 

match with either Woodfox or Wallace. The authorities, however, did not 

run them against anyone else despite having the prints of every Angola 

inmate and employee on file. 


After Woodfox and Wallace were already in solitary confinement, 

eyewitnesses started popping up. Each testified with a wildly different story, 

and it has recently been verified through prison documentation that each 

was handsomely rewarded for their statements with cigarettes, cushy jobs 

and pardons. Every living eyewitness has now recanted their testimony and 

provided an affidavit saying they were pressured to lie. 

Two days after the prison guard’s murder, a man with a reputation with 

activism and a friend of Woodfox and Wallace, Robert King Wilkerson, 

arrived at Angola. He was immediately placed under suspicion for the 

killing even though he could not have participated in it and sent to his own 

solitary cell. 

A year later, he was charged with the murder of a fellow inmate despite 

no physical evidence and the repeated confessions of another inmate 

who insisted he had acted alone. A Louisiana state judge ordered that 

Wilkerson be shackled and his mouth covered with duct tape during his 

trial. He was also convicted of murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to 

life imprisonment. 

7 

Wilkerson’s conviction was overturned in 2001, and after spending almost 

30 years in solitary confinement he walked out of Angola into a throng of 

supporters who had gathered around the gates of the remote prison. 

Addressing them, he said simply: ‘I may be free from Angola, but Angola 

will never be free from me.’ It was his vow to work on behalf of the release 

of his friends. It is a vow that he has kept and it has earned him a bevy of 

human rights honours. 

NOVEMBER 2016

8 ROBERT KING WILKERSON 

THE ANGOLA THREE 


The state of Louisiana has gone to great lengths to silence these men, 

but they have yet to be broken. In addition to surviving four decades of 

solitary confinement, Wallace and Woodfox have a support network that 

includes the American Civil Liberties Union, a dame of the British Empire, 

exonerated political prisoners, a rock star and support organisations in five 

US cities along with half a dozen foreign countries. 

In 2006 many of these supporters travelled to Louisiana to attend the 

evidentiary hearing granted by a Louisiana court on Wallace’s case. 

The hearing was held in an administration building at Angola as it was 

determined unsafe to have it held in the courthouse. 

It was the first time in the institution’s history that a post-conviction criminal 

proceeding was held behind the penitentiary’s gates. Supporters had been 

assured that they would be allowed to attend the hearing as it would be open 

to the public, just as it would have been had it been held in a courtroom. 

9 

Artwork: Rigo 23 

However, armed police teams at the prison’s entrance greeted those 

gathering for the hearing. Attack teams on the foofs of nearby buildings 

kept guns and video cameras trained on the group of supporters until 

the assembly received the news that the hearing had concluded and they 

began their long journeys back to their homes all over the world. 

The authorities attempt to make Wallace appear a threat did not work 

this time. On 7 November 2006, after 34 years of solitary confinement, a 

Louisiana state court commissioner recommended to overturn Wallace’s 

1972 conviction. Wallace believed he had his ‘foot on the stairway to 

freedom’. 

NOVEMBER 2016

However, with the complexities of appeal and counter-appeal and the 

determination of strong opponents of the inmates’ release it wasn’t until 1 

October 2013 before Wallace was released. Louisiana’s Attorney General, 

James Caldwell, had stated that he opposed releasing the two men ‘with 

every fibre of my being,’ and added, rather unconvincingly, that they have 

never been held in solitary confinement but are in ‘protective cell units 

known as CCR [Closed Cell Restricted]’. The warden of Angola and Hunt 

prisons, Burl Cain, repeatedly suggested that Woodfox and Wallace had to 

be held in solitary because they subscribed to ‘Black Pantherism’. 


Tragically, when eventually released from prison on 1 October 2013, 

71-year-old Herman Wallace, who had advanced liver cancer, was reindicted 

in ugly vengeful righteousness on 3 October 2013. He died on 4 

October 2013, before he could be re-arrested – so, in theory, he died a 

free, but destroyed, man. 

Meanwhile Woodfox was still running the gauntlet of US injustice. On 20 

November 2014, Woodfox had his conviction overturned by the US Court 

of Appeals. The three-judge panel found unanimously that the selection of 

the grand-jury foreperson in the 1993 trial formed part of a discriminatory 

pattern in that area of Louisiana. Concluding that it amounted to a 

violation of the US Constitution, the judges struck down Woodfox’s 

conviction. The state of Louisiana refused to release him, however, and his 

guards refused to unshackle him or release him from solitary confinement. 

On 12 February 2015, Woodfox was re-indicted. 

On 8 June 2015, U.S. District Judge James Brady ordered the release of 

Woodfox and overturned the second conviction for the killing of the guard. 


The order also barred a third trial from taking place, shockingly four days 

later, a federal appeals court overturned Brady’s decision and ordered 

that Woodfox would remain in prison until the matter was resolved. 

Albert Woodfox was eventually released on 19 February 2016, after the 

prosecution agreed to drop the push for a retrial and accept his plea of no 

contest to lesser charges of burglary and manslaughter. 

The cases of the Angola Three have gained increased interest over the 

last few years. Since his release, Robert King Wilkerson has worked to 

build international recognition for the Angola 3. He has spoken before 

the parliaments of the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Indonesia, Brazil 

and United Kingdom about the case, and about political prisoners in the 

United States. King Wilkerson was received as a guest and dignitary by the 

African National Congress in South Africa, and has spoken with Desmond 

Tutu. Amnesty International has added them to their watch list of ‘political 

prisoners’/’prisoners of conscience’. 

11 

NOVEMBER 2016

12 


JUSTICE: MAYBE? 

Justice is long overdue for the widows of South African 

mineworkers. It is vital the court of appeal upholds a ruling 

that makes South Africa’s gold mining industry accountable to 

women whose husbands died from silicosis 

From an article by Dean Peacock and Emily Nagisa Keehn 

The authors are respectively current and former members of 

Sonke Gender Justice 

For decades, women in rural South Africa have shouldered the burden of 

caring for mineworkers who return home with silicosis contracted in South 

Africa’s gold mines. These women do the back-breaking and emotionally 

taxing work of caring for men who are dying slow and painful deaths, their 

lungs irreparably scarred by the silica dust they breathe in underground. 

13 

Testimony from women in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province reveals 

the brutal toll silicosis has taken on families. ‘My husband was the sole 

breadwinner,’ recalled one woman. ‘If we had money, he had sent it. 

During his last days, he lost his strength and his chest closed up. It was 

difficult for him to cover himself with blankets, so I would cover him up. 

He could not go outside to relieve himself, so he would do it right there in 

the bed. I would have to throw it away. On his last day his chest closed up 

completely. I am left with almost nothing.’ 

NOVEMBER 2016

From village to village, such stories were a recurring refrain. ‘I used to carry 

[my husband] around,’ said another woman. ‘I used to go from house to 

house asking for food, we had children going to school. At times I would 

get piece jobs so we could eat.’ 

Eventually, this woman’s husband became unable to breathe. He died 

before he could even get in a car to go to hospital. 

14 

These conditions are the predictable outcome of deliberate mining policies 

started in the 1880s, when gold was first discovered. Gold mining houses 

colluded with British colonial governments to put in place a range of taxes 

and legislation that forced black men to leave their land to work in the 

mines. 

Once there, these men were forced to do dangerous jobs. Their work 

exposed them to malnutrition, tuberculosis and dangerous levels of silica 

dust. Many developed silicosis, which scars the lungs, makes breathing 

difficult, increases vulnerability to tuberculosis and can ultimately cause 

asphyxiation. 

Black women, on the other hand, were required to remain in rural areas, 

where they carried out the work of raising workers and, often, caring for 

them when they later returned home desperately ill. 

This exploitation remained entrenched for most of the 20th century. The 

mining industry corrupted the medical examination boards ostensibly in 

charge of mineworkers’ health. The boards then underreported cases of 

silicosis, decreasing workers’ eligibility for compensation. Together with 


the apartheid government, the industry set up a distinct and difficult to use 

compensation scheme. One study by Deloitte found that less than 1.5% of 

claims had been paid out to eligible miners. 

The consequences of this arrangement were predictable. A 2009 report 

revealed that almost all miners interviewed in the former republic of 

Transkei, the largest provider of mining labour, had symptoms of respiratory 

illness. None were formally employed. About 92% said they went without 

food or experienced hunger on a monthly basis. 

South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution has allowed human rights lawyers 

and mineworkers to begin to hold mines accountable. 

In 2011, South Africa’s constitutional court issued a landmark ruling 

allowing Thembekile Mankayi, who had contracted silicosis working 

underground, to sue AngloGold Ashanti for full loss of wages, damages 

and medical expenses, regardless of what was already available to him 

under the miner-specific compensation scheme. 

15 

Human rights lawyers subsequently petitioned the courts to allow a class 

action lawsuit; potentially, hundreds of thousands of miners would join 

together to sue for as much as 20-40bn rand (roughly £1.2bn-£2.3bn). 

Two South African non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – the 

Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an Aids activist group, and Sonke 

Gender Justice, a gender equality organisation – applied to join the case 

as amici curiae (impartial advisers to the court), introducing evidence on 

the social costs of silicosis. 

NOVEMBER 2016

TAC drew attention to the relationship between silicosis and tuberculosis 

(TB). Sonke offered evidence on the gendered impact of silicosis, 

particularly the financial, emotional and physical burden borne by women 

and girls who care for sick mineworkers when they return home, often 

foregoing their own income and education. The amici argued for the 

authorisation of the class action, and the transmission of claims to widows 

and dependents. 

16 

A century of damage caused by the South African gold mining industry 

requires remedy ... so refreshingly on a positive note, and despite 

opposition by the mining houses, the court admitted them as amici. 

Sonke’s affidavit on the gendered impact of silicosis was also admitted into 

the proceedings. 

In May this year, the Johannesburg high court granted its historic ruling. 

It amended existing common law to allow general damages to be 

transmitted to the widows and dependents of miners who died in the early 

stages of litigation. Prior to this ruling, if plaintiffs died before pleadings 

had closed their claims would become void. 

The ruling sets an important precedent that affirms women’s rights and the 

imperative to remedy the gendered harms imposed by the mining industry. 

However, predictably, in an industry that puts profits before people’s lives, a 

morally reprehensible and disgraceful action by the mining companies has 

them appealing the decision (fuckers!). 


As the case unfolds, it is critical to remember what is at stake. 

More than a century of damage caused by the South African 

gold mining industry requires urgent remedy. The mining 

companies must pay long overdue compensation to the workers, 

widows, children, and communities they have impoverished. 

Dean Peacock is executive director of Sonke Gender Justice. Emily Nagisa 

Keehn, formerly Sonke’s manager for policy development and advocacy, is 

an associate director of the academic programme at Harvard Law School’s 

human rights programme. A non-governmental organization (NGO) is any 

non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group which is organized on a local, national 

or international level. 


NOVEMBER 2016

18 


19 

NOVEMBER 2016

20 


21 

NOVEMBER 2016

REBELIOUS 

BADGES 

1978-1986 

22 


23 

NOVEMBER 2016

24 


25 

NOVEMBER 2016

26 


27 

NOVEMBER 2016

28 


29 

NOVEMBER 2016

30 


31 

NOVEMBER 2016

32 


33 

NOVEMBER 2016

34 


DISCUSSION 

A BASIC INCOME? 

Some Reasons to Support a Basic/Universal Income 

A Basic Income will help us rethink how and why we work, it can help you do 

other work and reconsider old choices: It will enable you to retrain, safe in 

the knowledge that you’ll have enough money to maintain a decent standard 

of living while you do. It will therefore help each of us to decide what it is we 

truly want to do. 

35 

A Basic Income will release Trade Unions from defending ‘dead’ trades, it will 

free them to argue against such uglies in the world, like dangerous trades, 

exploitation of migrant workers, time-wasting jobs that can be replaced 

by new technology, armaments factories, and wasteful follies like Trident’s 

replacement, and so forth. 

A Basic Income will contribute to better working conditions as with the insurance 

of having unconditional basic income as a safety net, workers can challenge 

their employers if they find their conditions of work unfair or degrading. 

A Basic Income will downsize bureaucracy because a basic income scheme 

is one of the most simple tax / benefits models, it will reduce all the 

bureaucracy surrounding the welfare state thus making it less complex and 

costly, while being fairer and more emancipatory. 

NOVEMBER 2016

A Basic income will make benefit fraud obsolete, it will vanish as a possibility 

because no one needs to commit fraud to get a basic income: it is granted 

automatically. Moreover, an unconditional basic income will fix the threshold 

and poverty trap effects induced by the current means-tested schemes. 

A Basic income will help reducing inequalities because it is also a means for 

sharing out the wealth produced by a society to all people thereby reducing 

the growing inequalities across the world. 

36 

It will provide a more secure and substantial safety net for all people. Most 

existing means-tested anti-poverty schemes exclude people because of their 

complexity, or because people don’t even know how to apply or whether 

they qualify. With a basic income, people currently excluded from benefit 

allowances will automatically have their rights guaranteed. 

A Basic Income will contribute to less working hours and better distribution 

of jobs, people will have the option to reduce their working hours without 

sacrificing their income. They will therefore be able to spend more time 

doing other things they find meaningful. At the macroeconomic level, this will 

induce a better distribution of jobs because people reducing their hours will 

increase the jobs opportunities for those currently excluded from the labor 

market. 

A Basic Income will reward unpaid contributions to society. A huge number 

of unpaid activities are currently not recognized as economic contributions. 

Yet, our economy increasingly relies on these free contributions (think about 

wikipedia as well as the work parents do). A Basic Income would recognise 

and reward theses activities. 


A Basic Income will strengthen our Democracy as with a minimum level of 

security guaranteed to all citizens and less time in work or worrying about 

work, innovation in political, social, economic and technological terms would 

be a more lively part of everyday life and its concerns. 

A Basic Income is a fair redistribution of technological advancement and, 

thanks to massive advancements in our technological and productive 

capacities, the world of work is changing. Yet most of our wealth and 

technology is as a consequence of our ‘standing on the shoulders of 

giants’: We are wealthier not as a result of our own efforts and merits but 

those of our ancestors. Basic income is a way to civilize and redistribute the 

advantages of that on-going advancement. 

A Basic Income will end extreme financial poverty. Because we now live in a 

world where we have the means (and one hopes, the will) to end the kinds 

of suffering we see as a supposedly constant feature of our surroundings, a 

Basic income is a way to join together the means and the will. 

37 

Interfered with, and Edited from Basic Income UK 

And from Courtenay Inchbald (whoever he is?): ‘The basic income will be 

at the expense of the tax-payer, i.e. rich people, and it will be very costly, so 

it is important to ensure that the culture created by a basic income policy is 

positive to the rich as well as the poor and makes the rich willing to pay more 

tax rather than to leave. [‘fuck them!’ Ed.] Basic income is the simple element 

that allows the best parts of socialism and capitalism to be combined. It allows 

government to concentrate on making its territory a place where everyone, rich 

and poor, wants to live and where poor citizens can afford to live.’ 

NOVEMBER 2016

38 


NO 

CLEAN 

39 

FOR MILLIONS 

WATER 

IN THIS CRAZY 

UPSIDE 

WORLD ... 

WHAT THE 

FUCK! 

DOWN 

NOVEMBER 2016

40 


WEST AFRICA NOTES 

WHILE THE WEST LOOKS THE 

OTHER WAY 

1. CRUEL SEA: ANOTHER MIGRANT-REFUGEE SAGA 

From an article by Saeed Taji Farouky, 2007 [and still happening] 

The photographer, Juan Medina, based in the Canary Islands, has been 

documenting one of the world’s busiest and deadliest illegal immigration 

routes. Up to 1,000 immigrants a week leave Africa’s west coast hoping 

to reach the Canary Islands and EU territiry. Hundreds are detained 

every week in Spanish centres and dozens more drown in unseaworthy, 

overcrowded boats. 

41 

Medina’s images tell of a man who has been following this story for 

years. His most striking photographs avoid the obvious dramatic 

moments – the pile of dead, anonymous bodies on an otherwise pristine 

beach – that have become symbolic of this endlessly repeating tragedy. 

Instead, his impact lies in looking at what happens when the world of 

the illegal immigrant collides with the world of the coast guard, the Red 

Cross worker or the tourist. In one image, a crowd of tourists, camped on 

one of the island’s famous beaches stares, motionless, at a pair of dead 

bodies. In another image, a group of tourists – ageing and naked except 

for swimming trunks – carries the body of an immigrant on a stretcher. 

NOVEMBER 2016

Another photograph shows a family cowering on the boardwalk as a 

pair of disorientated recent arrivals, still dripping wet, stumble along the 

pavement. One of the most disturbing images though shows the hands 

of a cemetry worker hammering a plaque inot place on a concrete coffin. 

The plaque simply reads. ‘Immigrant No. 3’. 

It is true that some of Medina’s images are little more than piles of dead 

bodies on the Canary Islands’ rocky shore. But the photographs that 

really define his style are more biting confrontations, which seem to 

ask the viewer, ‘What would you do in this situation?’ They make their 

audience wonder what role we might unwittingly play in this mass exodus. 

42 

Medina looks closely at what happens when the immigrants are caught 

and ‘processed’. He asks questions about who handles them – the 

military or an aid agency – and if they are taken to mainland Spain or a 

holding centre in West Africa and how they are treated. 

The route from Mauritania’s coast to the Canary Islands is a relatively 

new one (in 2007, ed.) for illegal African migration. The traditional 

passage has been to cross the narrow Straits of Gibraltar between 

Tangier and the coastal cities of southern Spain. However, as security 

steadily increases along that border much of Africa’s illegal traffic has 

moved to the Mauritanian coast. 

Many of Medina’s images illustrate the number of deadly obstacles 

plaguing the trip. there are bodies strewn against the sharp volcanic 

rocks that define the Canary Islands’ coastline and migrants struggling to 

escape their capsized and overcrowded boats. 


43 

NOVEMBER 2016

In trying to understand the migrants determination despite the obvious 

dangers, just what would compel someone to risk his/her life for an 

uncertain, and often unrealistic, future? Some will be convinced by the 

mythology of success and riches to be had in Europe, bravado stories 

from those who have managed to ‘disappear’ in Europe’s ghettos trickle 

back – but many others will live or die making this hazardous journey, 

hoping to escape intolerance, poverty and war ... even slavery! 

44 

2. A MAURITANIAN MORATORIUM? 

From an article by Kate Hodal, 2016 

Two brothers who say they were regularly beaten and forced to work as 

child slaves in Mauritania have taken their case to a regional African 

child rights body, where they are testifying against their abuser and the 

Mauritanian government. 

The move has been heralded by human rights groups as hugely 

significant for the abolitionist movement in the west African republic, 

where modern-day slavery is more prevalent than anywhere else in the 

world. 

Said Ould Salem, now 16, and his brother Yarg, 13, became slaves at 

birth to the wealthy El Hassine family due to a highly rigid caste system 

and the practice, entrenched over the course of centuries, of passing 

down slave status from mother to child. 


45 

Considered the property of the El Hassine family, the boys were working 

full days by the age of five, running errands and cleaning the house 

until they were able to perform harder tasks such as manual labour and 

shepherding camel. 

‘We weren’t allowed to eat the same food as the rest of the family, or eat 

at the same time as them, or sleep in the same rooms, or wear the same 

clothes,’ said Said speaking from Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital. 

NOVEMBER 2016

‘We were not equal to the rest of the family, that was made obvious. They 

would beat us for any reason, sometimes we didn’t even know the reason.’ 

The brothers managed to escape five years ago, aged just eight and 11, 

with the help of an aunt and a local anti-slavery group. A few months 

after their escape, the criminal court of Nouakchott found Ahmed Ould El 

Hassine guilty of holding them captive and denying them education. 

46 

In the first – and only – successful prosecution under Mauritania’s 

2007 anti-slavery legislation, El Hassine was sentenced to two years’ 

imprisonment and ordered to pay $4,700 (£3,866) in compensation. 

Although the boys’ lawyer appealed the sentence, arguing it was far too 

lenient, the supreme court released El Hassine on bail a few months later, 

in clear breach of the verdict. 

Five years on, with the help of lawyers and activists, the boys have taken 

their case to the regional court of the African Committee of Experts on 

the Rights and Welfare of the Child, a body of the African Union. Rights 

groups representing the brothers are arguing that Mauritania has failed 

to prosecute those responsible for enslaving them effectively. They point 

out that the boys have been denied an education and physically abused, 

in breach of Mauritania’s obligations under the African charter on 

children’s rights and welfare. 

Minority Rights Group International (MRG), which along with Mauritanian 

human rights group SOS Esclaves is acting on behalf of the brothers, said 

it was a good sign the regional court had declared the case admissible 

nine months after it was opened. 


‘We can now hope that these two boys will finally receive the justice they 

deserve, following a complete failure of the justice system in Mauritania 

to protect them and to challenge the current system of impunity favouring 

slave owners,’ said Ruth Barry, MRG’s legal officer. 

Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981, the last country in the world to 

do so, and only made it a crime in 2007. Yet rights groups claim slavery 

is hugely pervasive, with chattel slavery alone accounting for roughly 

800,000 people out of a population of 3.5 million. 

Hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of members of one family can be 

beholden to another, anti-slavery activists in Mauritania claim, treated as 

the property of their masters and forced to work for years without pay or 

a single day off. 

47 

Slaves tend to be predominantly Haratine – descendants of black ethnic 

groups who have historically been enslaved by the Moor and Berber 

majority – with male slaves herding cattle or working on farms. Women 

usually carry out domestic tasks around the house, including raising the 

children of the families to whom they are enslaved. Forced marriage is 

common – as is physical abuse and rape – and any child born of such a 

marriage becomes another slave, by default. 

Despite current legislation criminalising slavery, laws are rarely enforced, 

said Sarah Mathewson, Africa programme manager at Anti-Slavery 

International, which helped take the original case to the Mauritanian court 

in 2011. A regional court ruling in favour of the boys is likely to have a 

significant impact on Nouakchott’s current approach to slavery, she added. 

NOVEMBER 2016

‘The president still continues to deny the existence of slavery, saying that 

it’s only the ‘legacy’ of slavery that exists. Police refuse to investigate, 

judges throw cases out, or they often change the charges so it’s not a 

slavery charge, but ‘exploitation of a minor’ or ‘non-payment of wages’. 

There’s blanket denial at every stage,’ Mathewson said. 

‘If we get a favourable decision against the Mauritanian government, 

although it would be non-binding, they can still put a huge amount of 

pressure on the Mauritanian government to do whatever they say has to 

happen – it’s another avenue to put pressure on them to act.’ 

48 

The regional court hearing has already hurried Mauritania into action. 

The country has agreed a date next week for the brothers’ appeal against 

the lenient 2011 sentence. 

As for Said and Yarg, who are both in secondary school and respectively 

dream of becoming a human rights defender and a lawyer, the possibility 

of closure brings them great hope. 

‘We are very happy the case is back in court and look forward to a good 

result,’ said Said. 

‘We’ve been waiting a long time, and our lives are very different. We are 

proud because we are free. We feel like we are people now.’ 


49 

NOVEMBER 2016

50 


LABOUR 

Artwork: Laura Knight – Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring 

The English economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) developed what is 

known as the ‘labour theory of value’. This holds that the exchange-value 

of a good or service is determined solely by the amount of labour involved 

in its production. Karl Marx developed this idea, arguing that the capitalist 

pays his workers less than the value their labour has added to the goods, 

and that the ‘surplus labour’, after all costs are accounted for [including the 

capitalist’s fat salary and provision for future development] ... yes yes, this 

‘surplus labour value’, that he obtains for free, creates – the capitalist’s 

profit ... which he trousers with a smile. 

The word ‘labour’ denotes both the workforce as a whole, especially wageearning 

employees, and any paid-for service supplied by workers in the 

production of wealth. In a totally unregulated labour market, according to 

the laws of supply and demand, workers must compete against each other 

by offering to work more for less pay. As a defence, and to counter this, 

workers formed trade unions, which engage in collective bargaining with 

employers in an attempt to ensure equal pay for equal work. 

‘Equal pay for equal work’ hmmm ... despite the Equal Pay Act 45 years 

ago, women still earn less than men in Britain today. Overall, women can 

expect to earn significantly less than men over their entire careers as a 

result of ... differences in caring responsibilities; clustering in low skilled 

and low paid work, the qualifications and skills women acquire; and just 

outright discrimination. 

During World War II 

women showed they were equal to men 

by successfully taking over workplaces 

while the men were away ... 

51 

NOVEMBER 2016

52 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST 2016 

Deceit, Myths and Lies are the new 

currency of a political discourse where 

the simplicity of the small man defeats 

his social betters for the worse. Brexit, 

Trump, what next wee man? 


53 

NOVEMBER 2016

TRUMP 

54 


never mind ... 

every president 

rewards us so 

55 

NOVEMBER 2016

ight, the people 

have spoken, we’re 

going to take back 

our country 

oh dear 

56 

well, errm 

might have a problem, 

the country is now 

owned by russian 

oligarchs, arab sheikhs, 

chinese communists, 

american shit-kickers, 

indian fraudsters ... 

gulp! 


... 

If you think the High Court is interfering in DEMOCRACY, then 

you don’t understand how Britain works [gulp] 

If our own Government can be so woefully ignorant of British 

history, perhaps it is time to adopt a written constitution to 

serve as a reminder [for goodness sake!] 

Geoffrey Robertson QC 

The Lord Chief Justice of England has stopped the UK’s Prime Minister 

from trying to overturn the result of the Civil War. That war, from 1642 

to 1646 and which left one in 10 Englishmen dead in muddy fields, 

established the sovereignty of Parliament, which Theresa May’s Attorney 

General sought to circumvent by using an arcane power called the royal 

prerogative to trigger Article 50. 

57 

Artwork: Hans Holbein – adapted 

As he should have known, this power cannot be used to repeal an existing 

law; the 1972 statute by which Parliament took us into the common market 

can only be repealed by Parliament itself. [why wasn’t this mentioned before?] 

If the Government can be so woefully ignorant of our constitutional history, 

perhaps it is time to adopt a written constitution to serve as a reminder. 

The Attorney General was forced in court to concede that the EU 

referendum was merely advisory – it placed no obligation whatever on the 

Government to accept and act upon the very close result in which only 37 

per cent of eligible voters wanted to leave, against 35 per cent of remainers 

and 28 per cent who did not bother to vote (perhaps because they believed, 

as opinion polls had indicated, that remain would carry the day). 

Now that they have seen the economic and social damage that the 

NOVEMBER 2016

eferendum result has wrought, even before negotiations for exit have 

begun, MPs and peers must be given the opportunity to vote against any 

notice under Article 50, or else vote for a second referendum – perhaps 

one that, like most referendums in sensible democracies, is binding only 

if carried by a two-thirds majority. 

58 

Some Brexiteers angrily proclaim that the judges decision that Article 

50 should be referred to Parliament for ratification, is to defy the will 

of the people, in a democracy? Despite the fact that they would be 

defying the will of only 37 per cent of the people, it has to be pointed out 

that these objectors do not know the true meaning of democracy. Our 

forebears have not fought and died for government by opinion poll, but 

for a representative democracy. That means, as the great conservative 

philosopher Edmund Burke pointed out in his Letter to the Electors of Bristol 

(one of the crucial documents in our unwritten constitution), that as their 

MP, he had a duty to do everything he could for them, but when it came 

to a vote in Parliament his duty as their MP was to vote as his conscience 

dictated, for what he believed to be the best interests of the nation. 

Stop complaining about the legal challenge to Brexit – it’s democracy 

So the simple fact is that, whatever the views of their constituents, our 

MPs are fully entitled to reject the bill that the Government will now have 

to bring forward to begin the process of departing from Europe. (The 

Government may, of course, appeal to the Supreme Court, although it is 

unlikely to succeed). 


Thursday, 3 November’s judgment was unforeseen – other than by a 

few lawyers familiar with the conventions and traditions of our ‘unwritten 

constitution’, a form of nudge-and-wink governance we have the 

distinction of sharing in the world only with Saudi Arabia. 

It is the latest and perhaps the best example of why we really need to 

write our political bible, so that everyone from school children to the 

Attorney General can study and understand it. It could include (most 

constitutions do) a bill of rights which would be genuinely British, for 

example protecting the right to trial by jury. This would fulfil an election 

promise recently repeated by the Lord Chancellor. 

It is anomalous that the nation of Milton, Shakespeare, Bentham and Mill 

cannot put into words the way in which its government must work. 

No doubt it would take time to agree a draft, which would have to be 

amended by a constitutional convention and then submitted (how ironic) 

to a referendum. But it would be worth the effort for the educational value 

of helping people to understand, and actually take pride in how our 

rights were won. 

59 

These rights include the power of our courts to stop the 

executive (ministers and their civil servants) from using 

the royal prerogative to subvert our right to live in a 

representative democracy where Parliament is sovereign. 

from The Independent 

CIVIL 

WAR? 

NOVEMBER 2016

60 


THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 

IN PICTURES 

Sally Campbell spoke to artist Tim Sanders and historian John Newsinger 

about creating a graphic representation of Russia 1917 

Two and a half years ago Tim Sanders, regular cartoonist for Socialist 

Worker, approached Bookmarks the socialist publisher with a proposal 

for a graphic history of the Russian Revolution. This month the result, 

1917: Russia’s Red Year, will hit the shelves. 

61 

‘For the first time in my life I thought about something before it was too 

late,’ says Tim. ‘I figured either the centenary will be pretty much ignored 

by mainstream media or there’ll be tonnes and tonnes of books saying 

what a terrible thing the revolution was and thank god the workers didn’t 

take control – all the usual stuff. 

‘So I thought I’d try to make a tiny little contribution to a counter-current 

and the best way for me to do it would be to draw pictures.’ 

Bookmarks put Tim in touch with socialist historian – and graphic novel 

fan – John Newsinger, who eagerly agreed to work on the script. 

Rather than a straight retelling of the history, says John, ‘we wanted to 

show how the events of 1917 impacted on two ordinary Russians, a man 

and a woman. We created Peter and Natalia. 

NOVEMBER 2016

‘We wanted to put on display the self-activity of the working class. From 

that point of view we looked at the taking over of the factory, the taking 

over of the posh restaurant, the mansion, regulating food prices – that this 

was what was driving the revolutionary process.’ 

There has been an explosion in graphic fiction over the past couple of 

decades, though it is a new departure for Bookmarks – and for Tim and 

John. How did they feel this project could fit into the wider trend? 

62 

‘A lot of graphic fiction is radical in the broader sense,’ says John. ‘Much 

of the stuff that Pat Mills has done over the years, for example, has been 

incredibly radical.’ 

Pat Mills is one of the most prominent British comics writers and editors, 

creator of the 2000AD comics and of the Charley’s War series of graphic 

novels about the First World War. He has written a foreword for Russia’s 

Red Year, which he describes as ‘a gem of a book that celebrates the 

people’s victory over their oppressors. It’s exciting, informative, emotional, 

funny, beautifully painted and so relevant to our own times. It’s a work of 

truth.’ 

As John makes clear, ‘At a time when the ideas of the revolution are going 

to be hotly contested, we felt it would be a good idea to put a particular 

interpretation of these events forward in a graphic form that could reach 

an audience that might otherwise not read anything about the Russian 

Revolution.’ 

The process of working on the book was challenging for both authors. 


Tim talks about how much he learned about the graphic novel form: 

‘Comic books are very much like films; it’s all angles and close ups and 

long shots and building atmospheres. It takes some getting used to reading 

them – you can’t read a graphic book at all like you read a novel.’ 

For John, the joy was in the research: ‘There’s a scene with a Jewish 

geezer drowning in the canal and the only way he can get the onlooking 

police to rescue him is to shout ‘Down with the Tsar!’ so they’ll arrest him. 

Apparently that really was a joke of the time. Coming across stuff like that 

in the first-hand accounts was a revelation.’ 

The authors hope the graphic novel will connect to new audiences, as 

well as providing a fresh view for those who already know the history. 

They chose to focus just on the year 1917 so that they could best express 

the hope and potential of the revolution. 

63 

‘A lot of people I know are slightly sceptical about the project,’ says Tim, 

‘like ‘why do you want to write about that?’ That reflects the dominant 

opinion at the moment. I have learnt that we have an enormous 

challenge in convincing people that revolution is a good idea because it’s 

a big risk, as the story shows. ‘Ultimately the ending isn’t very happy, but 

potentially and briefly it was a beacon to the world and still is. 

‘We’re trying to connect people with the successful part of the revolution – 

the part which was a beacon.’ 

1917: Russia’s Red Year is published this month by Bookmarks, £14.99 

https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk 

NOVEMBER 2016

A cartoon after the Jallianwala massacre 

of Indian civilians at Amritsar 

by British troops on 

13 April 1919. 

Captioned 

‘Progress to Liberty - Amritsar style’. 

Cartoonist: David Low 

Published: The Star, 16 Dec 1919 

64 


CUP IN HAND 

Theresa May has some cheek going cap in hand to India, an ex-British 

colony, for a post-Brexit deal 

The Government’s position seems to involve the hope that India will sign 

a cushy deal with us, while we crack down on Indians in Britain who’ve 

outstayed their frosty welcome 

Words borrowed from Harriet Williamson and Mirza Waheed 

Theresa May is visiting India this week cup in hand, to ask for a 

favourable post-Brexit trade deal. There’s arrogance in May’s return to 

Britain’s former colony, expectant that India will come up with the goods, 

but ultimately, the move shows how much the tables have turned. 

Many people, particularly in my grandparents’ generation, still view 

British imperialism and empire with a dewy-eyed longing. The reality is, 

of course, that British rule in India caused the deaths of millions of people 

through administrative failure and imperialist cruelty. Numerous famines, 

outbreaks of cholera, the arbitrary and rushed drawing of the border 

between India and the newly-created Pakistan, mass-displacement, and 

the destruction of India’s cottage industries left the country impoverished 

and unstable. 

65 

NOVEMBER 2016

The lethal legacy Britain presented to the Indian sub-continent as it 

staggered away in 1947, begrudgingly conceding independence to India 

and Pakistan, has left the 2 countries on a war-footing with each other 

ever since. 

In the past few weeks, the two nuclear states have, between them, killed 

two dozen civilians and injured scores of others in exchanges of artillery 

fire across the disputed border – known as the ‘line of control’ – that 

divides Kashmir into parts controlled by India and Pakistan. 

66 

The latest flare-up in the long-running war of attrition between the 

two countries comes on the heels of a bloody summer of protest and 

repression in Kashmir that has now been erased from memory by the 

banging of war drums in Delhi and Islamabad. Since July, when the 

killing of a young militant leader sparked a furious civilian uprising 

across the Kashmir valley, the Indian state has responded with singular 

ruthlessness, killing more than 90 people. Most shocking of all has been 

the breaking up of demonstrations with ‘non-lethal’ pellet ammunition, 

which has resulted in a mass-blinding of hundreds of Kashmiri civilians. 

In four months, 17,000 adults and children have been injured, nearly 

five thousand have been arrested, and an entire population spent the 

summer under the longest curfew in the history of curfews in Kashmir. 

Imperialism set India up as both Britain’s workhouse and convenient 

marketplace, and when India finally gained independence, it was 

reduced to one of the world’s poorest economies. For Britain to 

come begging now that we’ve made such a mess of things with our 


yet-undefined Brexit, opposed by 48.1 per cent of the electorate, is 

laughable. 

Although a number of the more vehemently right-wing newspapers 

chose to focus on May’s ‘hardball’ stance on immigration during her 

visit, they didn’t pick up on the incongruity of the Prime Minister haggling 

over ‘Indians with no right to remain in the UK’ whilst hankering after a 

lucrative trade deal. 

At a tech summit in Delhi, May was pressured by business leaders 

including Sir James Dyson and Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra beer, 

to welcome more skilled Indian workers and students to Britain. The 

Government’s current position seems to involve the hope that India will 

still sign a cushy deal with us, while we crack down on Indians in Britain 

who’ve outstayed their frosty welcome. 

67 

The political conversation in Britain has, despite the influence of Corbyn, 

shifted perceptibly to the right. May knows that to keep the would-be- 

Ukippers and Brexit-devotees onside, she must act ‘tough on those 

foreign people’ despite surely recognising that she cannot turn back the 

clock on globalization. 

The isolationist, shut-the-door sentiments that brought us Brexit are not 

going to serve Britain well when it comes to making international trade 

agreements, and to belief otherwise is a self-important indulgence 

that we can no longer afford. We live, for better or worse, in an 

interconnected world, and the issue of migration cannot be wiped off the 

table during trade discussions. 

NOVEMBER 2016

India wants access to the UK labour market for skilled workers, and the 

UK government wants to pander to the narrative that immigrants are 

an unnecessary scourge on our increasingly less green and pleasant 

land. On the basis of this impasse, a free trade agreement seems like a 

childish fantasy. 

I wouldn’t blame India for putting up two fingers to Theresa 

May and Britain. 

From Independent and Guardian 

68 

MAYBE 

MORE CHEEK 

THAN A BABOON’S 

ARSE 


THE WHITE POPPY 

White Poppies are worn in the run-up to Remembrance Day every year 

by thousands of people in the UK and beyond. White Poppies have been 

worn in this way for over eighty years. They are distributed by the Peace 

Pledge Union (PPU). 

There are three elements to the meaning of White Poppies: they represent 

remembrance for all victims of war, a commitment to peace and a 

challenge to attempts to glamourise or celebrate war. 

White Poppies recall all victims of all wars, including victims of wars that 

are still being fought. This includes people of all nationalities. It includes 

both civilians and members of armed forces. Today, over 90% of people 

killed in warfare are civilians. 

69 

In wearing White Poppies, we remember all those killed in war, all those 

wounded in body or mind, the millions who have been made sick or 

homeless by war and the families and communities torn apart. We also 

remember those killed or imprisoned for refusing to fight and for resisting 

war. 

We differ from the Royal British Legion, who produce Red Poppies. The 

Legion says that Red Poppies are to remember only British armed forces 

and those who fought alongside them. 

NOVEMBER 2016

We want to remember British military dead, but they are not the only 

victims of war. We also remember, for example, civilians killed in the 

bombings of London, Coventry and Belfast, and in the bombings of 

Dresden, Hiroshima, Baghdad and Kabul. 

White Poppies symbolise the conviction that there are better ways to 

resolve conflict than through the use of violence. They embody values 

that reject killing fellow human beings for whatever reason. Nearly 100 

years after the end of the ‘war to end all wars’ we still have a long way 

to go to put an end to a social institution that even in the last decade has 

contributed to the killing of millions. 

70 

From economic reliance on arms sales to renewing and updating 

all types of weapons, the UK government contributes significantly to 

international instability. The outcome of recent military adventures 

highlights their ineffectiveness and grim consequences. 

The best way to respect the victims of war is to work to prevent war in 

the present and future. Violence only begets more violence. We need 

to tackle the underlying causes of warfare, such as poverty, inequality 

and competition over resources. A temporary absence of violence is not 

enough. Peace is much deeper and broader than that, requiring major 

social changes to allow us to live more co-operatively. 

A message originally associated with Remembrance Day, after the 

first world war, was ‘NEVER AGAIN’. This message slipped away. In 

response, White Poppies were developed in 1933 by the Co-operative 

Women’s Guild to affirm the message of ‘NO MORE WAR’. 


Many of the activities around Remembrance Day are detached from any 

meaningful attempt to learn the lessons of war. Arms companies allow 

their staff to pause work for the two minutes’ silence. Politicians who 

plough billions into nuclear weapons lay wreaths at the cenotaph. Arms 

dealers sponsor Remembrance events even while their work makes war 

more likely. 

In 2014 for example, the British Legion Young Professionals’ ball 

was sponsored by Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest arms 

companies. Lockheed Martin plays a major role in manufacturing the 

Trident nuclear weapons system. Each Trident missile is capable of 

killing far more people than the 888,000 people represented by the Red 

Poppies that were displayed at the Tower of London at the time. 

71 

Working for peace is the natural consequence of remembering the 

victims of war. If, for example, we were remembering the victims of 

road accidents, we might well do so by working to prevent further road 

accidents. This logic, which would apply in other areas of life, is rejected 

by those who seek to misuse Remembrance Day to promote militarist 

values that only make war more likely. 

from http://www.ppu.org.uk 

NOVEMBER 2016

72 




hey, beware, 

capitalism, war, brexit and 

trump go together like slugs 

and lettuce ... and there are 

some arseholes tossing off in 

this salad, ffs! 

73 


NOVEMBER 2016

74 

Writing 

worth reading 

Photos 

worth seeing 



75 

NOVEMBER 2016


76 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 




the world ... Words fail me, what is the use of words 


grasp your, and their, meaning? [is this the only letter 

we have? ... (‘yes’, ed.)] 






fudge of complacency and mad spouters will now be 

defended to the death by the threat of nuclear war. 




(still giggling but increasingly alarmed) attention to 

President Donald Trump and his campaign to trumptrump-trumpety-trump 

all over the world. As Britain’s 

government is a happy lapdog of US mischief in the 

world ... and a blindly loyal follower of US foreign 

policy, what will our May government do now as 

Trump begins his Term of Ignorance? 

77 




stooges, Blairites and Tories – or the US circus 

and their trumping flunkies – will come up with 

anything remotely of benefit to anyone other than 

the rampantly corrupt ruling class wankers intent on 


NOVEMBER 2016

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FIST PRESS 

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