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Europe's Other Self

Stuart hall examines the impact of fundamentalism and third world migration on european identity as europe consolidates and converges, so a w e are advancing steadily towards two anniversary occasions for europe. the problem is (as colin prescod's excellent bbc2 series, black on europe, about the plight of western europe's ethnic minorities, has been showing) the 'barbarians' are already inside the gate; and face-to-face with them, european cosmopolitanism does not stand up well to the test.

View To A Kill

Increasingly we confront moral issues through the screen, and the screen confronts us with increasing numbers of moral dilemmas. Kevin robins questions the morality of our screen-gazing world w hat if we run the tape back and replay the gulf war after american psycho?

Are You Being Served?

The fact is that the relationship of a mental patient with a hospital is not the same as my relationship with waterstone's, any 28 more than my relationship with waterstone's is the same as my relationship with my doctor, or my child's school. it is in these terms that we find ourselves described in countless polytechnic mission statements and hospital business plans; it is as such that we are apologised to by british rail for the non-availability of buffets and the cancellation of trains; it is thus that the conservative party treasurer chooses to refer to what in happier times he might have called his 'members'1.

The End Of The Rainbow

it seems to me that coalition politics all too often takes the same form as class reductionism: it is assumed that the new social movements are essentially 'progressive', and that it is the task of socialists to lead each movement to its natural location in a coalition against the right. In class reductionism, it is likewise assumed that politics is basically a struggle between two camps, and that once we have correctly identified the class nature of every political actor, we can establish its location in the progressive or reactionary camps.

King Billy's Boys

the long black cars that lead the parade proper carry the venerable old who can no longer march the 10 or 12 miles to the ceremonial field and back: the cars carry orangemen great in years and honours, but never, ever, the old women who dance on swollen ankles and sing and wave their flags for king billy. then it was back to belfast to knock out another year's piece, through the littered, unceremonious streets, past the 20ft-high hessian screens the army trundle into place each year between catholic unity flats and the procession coming down the shankill road.

Phantoms At The Opera

These were not only from the excellent and innovative regional companies (scottish opera, welsh national opera, kent opera and opera north) but from small, independent groups in places such as scunthorpe, bromley and milton keynes. britain has a reputation for paying top musicians low rates - not just in opera - and may 1989  culture opera on tour from glasgow and liverpool to plymouth and southsea, britain's leading opera companies are appealing to new audiences with a range of new productions.

The Turning Green Tide

Since the end of the war, a stifling orthodoxy, born of the rigidities imposed at yalta and the emo- marxism today april 1989 'an alreadyhigh level of public sensitivity and expectation on the environment precedes political intervention'  tional scars on a generation of leaders whose formative experiences were of • war, has permeated and frequently paralysed european policy-making. It now encompasses the orthodox political parties of both left and right, the non-partisan pragmatists of the pressure groups, a significant and growing proportion of the mass of ordinary people and its own high priesthood in the greens and deeper greens who make up the activist membership of the new green parties.

BIRMINGHAM - Just Passing Through

And there's the rep and the art gallery clock and hansom's town hall - trust birmingham to get its town hall designed by the man who invented the taxi - and chamberlain's fountain and simon rattle's city of birmingham symphony orchestra play on. fortunately it isn't built yet so we are enjoying beautiful vistas while they flatten broad street: panoramic views of the gas street canal basin; wonderful jumbles of old and new, while watt and boulton and murdoch stand on their plinth and think on 'if i'd known it was going to come to this i wouldn't have boiled the kettle' - and the cranes tower above, still festooned with fairy lights and christmas trees.

Merseyside under the hammer

The political stalemate of labour or around for a little while longer and people, not surprisingly, would liberal in marginal control has been a continuing feature of liverpool welcome some attention to the problems of today, militant is fragile politics for the last decade. council house sales expected to run at 500 a year, the growing and so a political vacuum opened up in the labour party — to be proportion of the population drawing a low income from the dole can filled, in the absence of anything more coherent, by young socialists look forward to a very thin time.

review POLICING THE POLICE

The bi-monthly state research bulletin is a regular source of vital information about the work of the police and security agencies, and time out, new statesman and new society provide frequent outlets for reports by duncan campbell, rob rohrer, martin kettle and others who have monitored the use (and abuse) of increasing police power and the insidious politicisation of police forces. The first volume of policing the police, edited by peter hain last year, provided an extremely useful and thorough critical evaluation by derek humphery of the police act of 1976 (which instituted for the first time a form of independent review of complaints against the police), and of the 1974 and 1976 prevention of terrorism acts (by brian rosesmith).

The Crisis in Town Planning

Yet these towns within the city can remain an essential part of that city, provided of course communications with the city centre are fast and efficient. family housing of a slightly lower density (80 to the acre) can also be compactly planned and still have spaciousness, as has been proved by the elegant housing by architect eric lyons at ham common (bottom left), a rare example of speculative building which shows a healthy awareness of sound land use and twentieth century form.

The Realism of Arthur Miller

The process of this destructive infiltration is carefully worked out in terms of the needs of the other characters—keller's wife and surviving son, the girl the son is to marry, the neighbours, the son of the convict—so that the demonstration of social consequence, and therefore of keller's guilt, is not in terms of any  abstract principle, but in terms of personal needs and relationships, which compose a reality that directly enforces the truth. In reaching out for this new social consciousness —in which "every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of the general life, yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms"—miller, for all the marks of difficulty, uncertainty and weakness that stand within the intensity of his effort, seems clearly a central figure in the drama and consciousness of our time.

Where next for the Campaign?

Previously it was plausible to argue that since the decisions of the government in this country affected only people in this country, a decision was democratic if a majority of people supported it. For most people direct action means the two demonstrations at the north pickenham rocket base in december of last year.

After Thatcher - Ten More Years

In short, if labour is to use the political flux to reform its own political community it has to find a symbolic role for the state; invest regional government and international community with political meaning; force into the public arena, and politicise, the decisions which take place behind closed doors and make people feel helpless; and convince us that it is the hero who can both protect us from harm and liberate us from oppression. After thatcher ten more years what must john major do, asks sarah benton, if populist conservatism is to become the dominant political voice of the 90s i f john major is a strategist, he could reshape the political realignment which margaret thatcher kicked off, then almost destroyed.

What's It Worth Then?

In line with the general direction persona, provides us with some clues to of marketing logic, kennedy shifts the the identity of the new classical con- to 'fiddle poll tax' and the four sea- w 33 marxism today july 1990 'the growing demand for educational or selfimproving leisure draws attention to the value distinctions audiences make between cultural activities'  emphasis away from cultural producer to consumer: 'you're calling the shots now.' For, despite its use of new technology and niche marketing, kennedy's the four seasons is all about affirming forms of collective cultural experience organised around a live event (or the transmitted aura of the event) and working within the parameters of established cultural forms, albeit projected in new ways and to different audiences.

Love Is In The Air

And even the very worst 'in love' moments still represent a certain glamour that derives from the way they can be hooked up to the great cultural moments of despair and yearning that reverberate from jane eyre to elvis presley's 'are you lonesome tonight?' t to acknowledge that the script for love has already been written and is being continually recycled in all the love songs and love stories of western literature and contemporary media, is not however to say that falling, or being, in love turns people into the puppet victims of a repressive romantic ideology. the utopian aspect of love is most frequently expressed in its quite over- t 'lcky, jokey or coy, the message is the same: love is in the air, love is all around' the-top, extravagant claims to be sweeping us off our feet, bigger than both of us, everlasting, indeed existing outside of known time or space, altogether on some transcendental 'higher plane'.

CLOSE UP ON Annie Lennox

This was marked by the album be yourself tonight, where they kicked in the jams, coming up with an overblown pastiche of sly and the family stone, a long way from the mournful, psychedelic phasing of the first album. annie's voice had come to excel in vocal pyrotechnics, increasingly to the detriment of melody lines (as shown in the new album revenge), and she became officially stadium material. In a time of pvc and body piercing, the tourists (fronted by 'zany lady' annie) erred too much on the tacky, camp side of glamour and their songs, strong on fluid harmonies and keyboards, sounded far too serious and concerned about the quality of musicianship.

CONFLICT IN THE SOUTHERN SUDAN

re-organised the administration in the the origins of the current unrest go back southern region, and which are seen as to the colonial policy of the anglo-egyptian contravening the addis ababa agreement government which left the southern sudan of 1972 which established the south's status at independence in 1956 under-developed as an autonomous region, a status won after even by the poor standards of other 17 years of armed struggle by guerilla forces peripheral areas of the country. Since september northern soldiers and policemen, and 1982 anti-government guerrillas calling concern over islamic economic and cultural themselves anya-nya 2 have been attacking domination led to the development of a army detachments, police posts, and arab long and bloody civil war in which several merchants in a band of country across the thousands of people lost their lives and over northern part of the southern region.

The Mass Media - A Highbrow Illiteracy?

spired sixty years’ shrill alarmism over its effect on the nations’ morals, yet until the slade school opened a film department under thorold dickinson in 1960 the mass media had attracted less worthwhile academic commenthere than had,say, the number of interpretations that can dance on reformers’ scapegoat points of the sonnets of donne. henceit is impossible to welcome too warmly the anti-pleasure bias of alarmist attitudes appears also in their habit of isolating the alleged effects of the mass media from the whole social professor hoggart’s current movesto set up within the english department at birmingham university a research centre to study the “bastard art” of popular culture, through a “close sense of its imaginative working’ the uses of literacy is perhaps the most influential attempt made in britain to cope canvas. We’ve heard a great deal about x certi- ficate films making the young too knowing about sex, but next to nothing about the possible effects on the nation’s sexual education of five years of war followed by a decade of peacetimeconscription, with the consequent mass exposure to the moral fragrance of the barrack room, i believe it was in the manchester guardian that jean renoir remarked that every teenage spectator in the cinema knows twenty times as much about sex as any x-certificate film would be allowed to show him, it’s also interesting that, sexwise, a christian programme like “sunday break” has an overall atmosphere well to the “left” of 95 per cent of tv plays; suggesting that the cultural pressures leading to the “new morality” are a good deal more respectable than everybody’s easy butt, the mass media.

Short Cuts A talk with Clare Short

Culture choice words short cuts clare short, mp for birmingham, ladywood, and recently elected on to the labour party's national executive committee, talks to chris granlund about the way reading has influenced her life treasure island was a big book in our childhood. I've hardly read a poem since i left school, i suppose it's because of the pace of life and yet i know i loved that form of expressing ideas the words used so carefully.

PUTTING THE POPULAR BACK INTO CULTURE

there were several choices facing tomkins; devolve the arts and recreation policy to the boroughs, hand them over to a body outside of the glc's committee structure such as the greater london arts association, or take a more radical path to make the policy the result of grassroots involvement within the glc itself. as both lord birkett, director of arts and recreation at the glc, and alan tomkins, policy adviser to the arts and recreation committee, admit, up until 1981 there was little to choose between the leisure policies of either tory or labour administrations in london.

Three Steps Forward One Step Back

Unless the women’s movement is to be relevant to only an elite group of women, then the experience of those women who are at home with kids must be recognised as real. The women’s movement had hardly got started in this country and it seemed to me that any discussion there was, centred on the problems of women who were exceptions any­ way — university lecturers etc — a different species from me.

Labour's Lost Millions 4 - viewpoint

Incidentally, eric, the labour movement — by which term most people mean the labour party, the trade unions, the co-operative and other left political forces like the communists — is a much broader conception than the labour party. 44 february 1984 labour's lost millions 4 we conclude the debate with... dave cook: open to the outside world eric heffer expresses the commonly held view that within the labour party 'to a large extent the renewal process (particularly the constitutional reforms — dc) has been completed, and now the time has come to consolidate the changes, to translate them into campaigns throughout the country and win support for the party.'

Bypassing Politics: The Contradictions of 'DiY Culture'

200  bypassing politics the 'class politics' of nature i find that the work of sociologist klaus eder provides a useful framework within which to think about some of the concerns of this new wave of protest.2 eder argues that a counterculture has always been present within modernity, but that it has recently been foregrounded by growing awareness of what he calls 'the ecological crisis'. e ven though i find eder's a useful framework for looking at possible postindustrial collectivities and solidarities beyond those of traditional left politics, i feel that the new environmental protest politics can only partly be accounted for in eder's terms.

Bypassing Politics? The contradictions of 'DiY culture'

200  bypassing politics the 'class politics' of nature i find that the work of sociologist klaus eder provides a useful framework within which to think about some of the concerns of this new wave of protest.2 eder argues that a counterculture has always been present within modernity, but that it has recently been foregrounded by growing awareness of what he calls 'the ecological crisis'. e ven though i find eder's a useful framework for looking at possible postindustrial collectivities and solidarities beyond those of traditional left politics, i feel that the new environmental protest politics can only partly be accounted for in eder's terms.