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Labour's Forward March: Centre Of Attraction

swing* 17.5% -15 -14 -20 -11 -18 -13 -13 -15 -17 -12 +21 +20 + 19 +21 +22 + 18 + 18 +20 +23 + 17 -12 -12 -12 -16 - 8 - 8 -14 -12 -13 -10 18% 17% 19.5% 16% 19% 15.5% 15.5% 17.5% 20% 14.5% -16 -14 -12 -20 -17 +21 +22 + 17 +22 +23 -10 -16 - 8 -11 -14 18.5% 18% 14.5% 21% 20% -13 - 6 -13 -16 -15 -14 -17 + 18 + 8 +20 +24 +20 + 17 +22 - 9 -11 -12 -13 -11 -11 -12 15.5% 7% 16.5% 20% 15.5% 15.5% 19.5% t 'in the 1980s labour was a regional class party of dispossessed minorities. More voters thought that taxes would rise (42%) than fall (18%), that inflation would speed up (35%) than slow down (19%), that the economy would get weaker (39%) rather than stronger (21%) and that their own standard of living would be lower (27%) not higher (23%).

Patient As Punter Interview with Kenneth Clarke

The theme of the white paper and the way it's addressed to the public is that we are spending vast sums of money on the national health service, we're likely to have to spend vastly more, at the moment it isn't run as well as it ought to be and it needs to be a better public service, so we can get better value out of all this money and make it a better service still. I believe you will get a better distribution of resources in the health service by competition than you do at the moment, where the distribution of money's largely determined by obscure formulae, devised by the health service management, coupled with a lot of lobbying.

It's Off To Work We Go?

it also needs policies which can build on the changes which have taken place in recent years and which are largely (although not entirely) irreversible the growth of service industries and decline of manufacturing, the emergence of a new spatial division of labour, the development of more flexible systems of production and widespread use of new technology, the development of new forms of work (eg, part-time work and self-employment) and decline in full-time work, and the massive growth in women's employment. although it still proclaims that market forces in a 'de-regulated' economy will, if left to their own devices, lead to more efficiency and economic growth, and through this to new jobs, the government has in fact had to devise a whole array of measures to deal with high unemployment, especially long-term unemployment which now stands at over 40% of registered unemployment.

Interview w i t h Neil Kinnock

Of showing that the labour obviously one of the crucial things in the position of the labour party is party's sufficiently responsive to the condition of our society to its relationship with the trade unions, on which the labour party after want to take the lead in representing grievances and having the all is founded. If people were conscious of the ideology of the labour party, broadly stated, it would be a good insurance against the vagaries of shifts in the labour party that is a consequence of our over-dependence on the nature of leaders.

THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF

Whilst its roots can be traced back to the autobiographical fictions of eugene francois vidocq, the world's first private detective, and alan pinkerton, the founder of america's first detective agency, it really begins with the writings of dashiell hammett in black mask who had himself been a pinkerton agent. 34 april 1982 marxism today the stuff that dreams are made of kevin gough-yates the private detective story is a modern phenomenon, born on the pages of pulp magazines in the aftermath of the first world war, during prohibition and economic depression.

EURO-LIFE A Thousand Beams Of Light

achieving the cultural potential of a broadband network will depend on political will and imaginative planning at both these levels: levies and taxes on the bland channels full of imported material; public funding agencies to finance minority material, the bizarre, the challenging, the investigative; ownership rules to break up the conglomerates; independent european news services to tell us what the european parliament and the commission are up to on our behalf; guarantees of universal access and industrial plans to distribute tv production to the regions. The european commission was also captivated by the vision of 'television without frontiers', a free trade zone for tv to go with the internal market for shoes, washing machines and toasters, a single europe 34 bavarian tv have turned out to have stronger political bases than a nebulous concept of euro-tv.

book reviews: - FEMALE DESIRE - DESIRE: THE POLITICS OF SEXUALITY

Reviews june 1984 marxism today 41 female desire: women's sexuality today rosalind coward paladin, £2.95 desire: t h e politics of sexuality ann snitow, christine stansell, sharon thompson (eds) virago, £6.50 spring is in the air, and desire is in the bookshops. In examining the history of sexual radicalism, the essays unearth continuities and paradoxes: between nineteenthcentury campaigns against the double standard and male vice, and the current attack on sexual commercialism; how sexual revolutions and 'movements of "sexual freedom" have so often ended by constricting homosexuality, female sexuality, and one might argue, sexual excitement itself.

Reviews: Mailer's pen is bigger than the Norm

46 september 1985 marxism today mailer's pen is bigger than the norm mailer: his life and times peter manso, viking£16.95 norman mailer has been kind of fucking america into some kind of reaction for nearly 40 years. Facts never speak for them- reviews selves and throughout this book i wanted less description of events and more of the framework from which manso wrote - his relationship to mailer, how he did the book, and also his interpretation of mailer's work.

COMING OUT OF THE COMMUNE Interview with Richard Coles

For a long time i wanted to be more politically active, especially last year after being involved in lesbians and gays support the miners, but i don't want to join the labour party how, i want my political involvement to be in red wedge because i can see it as far more hasn't red wedge got to be organised on totally different grounds to the rather antiquated labour party? How will red wedge seek to involve young people in its own organisation? at the moment we're ironing out the final details about how to set up red wedge in the regions, what red wedge can do on a local basis.

REST IN PIECES Notes on the fragments SOCIALIST FEMINIST SOCIAL POLICY GROUP

In the present hiatus of left politics, ‘beyond the fragments’ offers an alternative political form based on feminist practice as a solution to how the fragments (women’s movement, gay movement, anti-racist and anti-nuclear groups, alter­ native papers, socialist theatre groups, trades councils, tenants’ movements, et al) come together. given our outline of a more complex and contra­ dictory role of the state in relation to one of the fragments—women—what implications arise for the formulation of specific socialist-feminist social policies?

Americanism

Americanism is a word which has too et ot meet pl eh et i mean by americanism no more and noless eh s| on =ihavi)uanuunguunnnunnnufunndonnounnuunnouonqgoon0urn0u0nn00un000000 0000000000000 00n0uungqoontovenooonnooooolonoogoouenoogauvunto unaen ete} than the self-conscious quality of being an history, “american” has also meant to ever so there is at times, let us hint, something ludicrous in this constant canvassing of such an abstract question, something obsessional—asin all nationalism—in the constant drive for an american this and an american that: everything in america must be done, not just differently, but often come to stand for the more crazy caricatures of the national idea and experience espoused by the passionately unreflective: the anti-irish “know-nothings” of the 1850s, the liberty league of the 1930s, the maccarthyites in an all-american way. american conservatism both european observers and american _historians have been all too apt to carry over into this wholly liberal environment the categories of european thought, the “dialectic”, the common notion of political change as motivated by a clash of “left” and “right” has, after all, been a pretty good description of european politics from 1789 until at least the “coincidence” of hitlerism and stalinism in 1932, but american political assump- tions have, all too obviously, shown unity, not dialectic or diversity—a unity so great that it has either deadened speculation or else aroused des- perate attempts to invent a dialectic by which of course, the dead centre but the “vital centre”.

Arts

One can scarcely imagine a com bination m ore pro­ mising or m ore likely to captivate the left-wing theatre audience: the brilliant and tormented figure o f gramsci, set in the context o f one o f the m ost important high-points o f twentieth-century revolution­ ary thought and action, the occupation o f the engineering plants by the turin workers in 1920. 3 meeting o f workers representing the factory councils o f fiat meeting in the office o f giovanni agnelli (founder and chairman o f fiat.) sitting behind agnelli’s desk is giovanni parodi, workers, one o f the leading militants.

Arts

The idea that the world appears to us as it does on ly as a result o f a long process o f integrating various form s o f thinking about the w orld into a single fabric o f language, and that this fabric may have to be torn apart to allow new conceptions to develop, has never been heard o f in those bastions o f reaction. t w o o f the best known o f these pieces are micro i — in which a large sheet o f paper is wrapped in a has ceased to expand, and no longer offers apparently unlimited oppor­ tunities to bright young men and women, and is — as a list published in urinal shows — not renewing the contracts o f a good number o f them.

Ideas

He told me, “ i didn’t go in there 3 .b 4-00 3 .4 m 300 3 .2 .m 2.00 3 .0 m 100 60 1957/8 58/9 59/0 60/1 61/2 62/3 63/4 64/5 65/6 66/7 67/8 6 1 6 2 6 3 6 4 6 5 6 6 6 7 6 8 p e n s io n s in s k ille d t e c h n ic a l p r o f e s s io n s s h t u i g d e n h t s e r r e c He believes that all societies use the school system to impose a universal ideology, the worship o f production; that schools ‘ .translate learning from an activity into a com m odity o f which school is the market,” that the key alienation process takes place not at work but at school before children enter the industrial system; that therefore the key to revolution is deschooling and the key to the survival o f man is the concious limitation o f production.

Life:

7 Days 27 October 1971 sport Cindy is a fast black bitch with a nose

Letters

Although, certainly, the latter would have had more ofthe literary flair that voyeurs of humansuffering such as clancy sigal turn did happen was that both mr. sigal and mr. walzer suggested the contacts for all of the articles, thereby covering what maybecalled the left to right spectrum of the left in america, particularly in regard to the manifestations of it in the area of left-wing publications (dissent, new politics, studies on the left) and those writers, and academics directly or indirectly associated with them. mr. sigal asks indignantly, “just who the hell does julius jacobson think he is?” without burdening the reader with biographical details, it should be clear from myarticle—its criticism of those socialists who support johnson asthelesser evil ; its attack on the “end of ideologists’”’ who deny thereality of the class struggle; its objections to civil rights leaders seeking alliances in the liberal world at the expense of militant struggle against the establishment; its fundamental critical approach to american politics— that jacobson is on the extreme left of what there is of a socialist movement in this country.

Vietnam

the viet minh the french attempt to re-establish their colonial power over the next 84 years revealed two things; the pre-eminence of the viet minh as leaders of the anti-colonial struggle and the strengthening of the viet minh despite all attempts by the french to subvert their political support by military means. by continuing the war they risked losing the considerable economic interests they still had in vietnam, particularly direct investment, while in europe the pressures for german re-armament and capital for the re-building of the french economy made the continuation of war in vietnam even less of a priority, the french therefore agreed with britain that indo-china should be put on the agenda of the geneva conference along with korea.

Reviews

By making ‘liberal’ and ‘humane’ or ‘humanly relevant’ almost interchangeable terms, by stressing an explo ratory openness as a defining element in liberalism, anyth ing short of fascist or totaliy dogmatic writing caa be neatly included in the liberal camp, and life, liberalism and literature identified; by seeing the need for a deep renewal of liberalism as part of a genuine liberal stance , radical criticism can be absorbed and interpreted as a salutary aid towards the new liberalism, and assaul ts on the ideological bases of liberalism subtly deflec ted into helpful checks or counterbalances; by embracing all the left-wing virtues when safely abstracted from actual historical contexts and making left-wing analyses from a conservative centre, criticism can be confused. r4 <) 1965-66 series: <) g 4 orientations <) 4 ~) ¢) coming dates: <) g <) g cc <) s$ s) sy) ¢) ¢) <) g psychology <) <) sy) g yy <) g y j) gy y <) <) <4 <) 4 <) <) <) <) =) 4 <) drama december 9 — david mercer — ‘a suitable case for drama’ therapeutic communities january 6 — david cooper — ‘the transformation of the mental hospital’ < <) sy) y ~ <) <) 4 ¢) y 4 <4 g q q g xy s ¢) writing january 20 — clancy sigal — ‘the writer, commitment, and moon mullins’ thursdaysat 8.30 p.m. <) g <) <) 4 s kingsley hall, powis road, bow, e.3 (bromley underground) <) 4 <} = <) admission — § shillings <) <) sg <) 9 vv yvvyyvyvy pov vv vv

Reviews

Now it is true that the communists are further from the neutrals and nearer to the fascists on the t scale than they are on the f scale: but again how is it possible for so dedicated a follower of measurement as eysenck to produce the thesis that both communists and fascists are highly tough-minded? a further study by eysenck on this theme using both middle class and working class members of the liberal, labour and communist parties has been criticised by rokeach and hanley (1956). 3 more vessels under construction ghana’s national line cargo and passengers services: from west africa to u.k. - continent united states of america - canada - mediterranean and adriatic ports london office: audrey house annexe, 2-4 houndsditch, london e.c.3, telephone: avenue 1981, cable blakstar, london e.c.3 central office: 28th february road, p.o. box 2760, accra. telephone: 64951-52.

Reviews

Such willing participation in women's objectification indicates that male approval is more important to women than female approval, presumably because this is where power resides, and viner argues that this represents a greater expression of male power over women than that found in pornography. In what sounds like a return to 1970s segregationism, greer suggests that women and men may be incompatible, and that in the future women will live in extended groups, with older women helping with childcare.

Reviews

Reviews soundings issue 12 summer 1999 cultural fishing jo littler christopher h. j. bradley, mrs thatcher's cultural policies: 1979 - 1990: a comparative study of the globalized cultural system, columbia university press 1998, $28 since the mid-1980s an increasing amount of attention has been paid to cultural policy by academics, journalists, policy-makers and advisors. The cultural politics and social histories shaping (and shaped by) british cultural policy have become more thoroughly interrogated (for example in andrew blake's and jim mcguigan's work); and one of the main points of tony bennett's recent book culture: a reformer's science was that cultural studies should be more concerned with its actual and potential relationship to policy.

Reviews

But these benign developments have been swamped by the environmental consequences of two decades of explosive economic growth in east asia and elsewhere in the developing world, and the recognition of a multiplicity of new forms of pollution and ecological stress: ozone depletion, global warming, etc. It is difficult not to conclude that, under current circumstances, the quantitative expansion of the global capitalist economy will lead to levels of natural resource loss and ecosystem disruption that will place constraints upon future economic development and pose threats to political stability, as great as those that were faced by the fragile agrarian societies of the pre-modern world.

Reviews

Reviews soundings issue 9 summer 1998 mastering the history of slavery catherine hall hugh thomas, the slave trade: the history of 'the atlantic slave trade 14401870, picador, £25 robin blackburn, the making of new world slavery: from the baroque to the modem 14924800, verso, £15 the similarity between these two books is limited to scale. Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.' 90  priceless? harriet atkinson art treasures of england: the regional collections exhibition at the royal academy of art, january - april 1998 the explicit aim of the recent art treasures of england exhibition at the royal academy was to celebrate the wealth of the english regional galleries, and the richness of their collections.

Poems

francis wilson  soundings turning away we turned away from the perfect curve of the cove's white smile and the candour of days on the beach, the azures of skies and seas and days too much to live up to; behind the rocks which ended it was a kind of antidote: a secret mini-utah of furrowed cliffs, great men's profiles and fossil faces, pitted and blind, where water hauled about by the tides was toil and regret tugging at the shore; and just off-shore, by a taciturn rock, a man, with his back to us and thigh-deep in the swill, of kelp, of dead men's fingers, of limey shells, of bloodless molluscs, beside a small poor ancient boat, was rummaging in its scuffed cuddy, winding things and hauling them in, embroiled in something urgent as if he wanted to hide from us his mysterious purpose. it shielded us from the bright day the unconvincing innocence of the beach; the white smile, the 'azzurrissimo' (the brochures say) that's difficult to stay untroubled in just for a moment: he retched the engine into action suddenly; they reared up and out bumping past a yacht, white logo of pleasure, to keep his secret, his darkness, intact far out, dark speck, half-swallowed by the glitter.

Reviews

Although the 'romance' between joe and jed and the marriage of joe and clarissa are the 'enduring loves' explicitly shown in the novel, there are several analogous relations we are meant to see: jed's love of god, joe's love of science, clarissa's love for john keats and her hunt for an elusive final letter to fanny brawne, the widow's love for her husband killed in the accident, clarissa's love for children. Reviews soundings issue 8 spring 1998 political science: a secret history paul myerscough frederick crews et al, the memory wars: freud's legacy in dispute, granta, £9.99 prior to the publication of t h e unknown freud' in the new york review of books in 1993, frederick crews had received only as much - which is to say as little - attention as any english professor might expect during a career of inconspicuous modesty.