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Lessons In Standards

It restricted elementary education to the age of 15, thus abolishing the popular higher grade schools through which radical education boards had comparative backwardness table 1 % boys and girls in full-time education and training at 18 in eec countries, 1981-1983 boys girls denmark 82/83 65.7 61.9 netherlands 82/83 s6.3 48.6 italy 82/83 49.6 51.1 belgium 82/83 44.7 47.1 france 82/83 38.8 50.1 germany 81/82 28.1 33.7 ireland 82/83 27.2 37.1 uk 82/83 17.8 16.8 source: eurostats education and training 1985 table 5 the tables tell their own story of britain's endemic educational backwardness. Including universities and polytechnics, britain has 14% of the relevant age group in higher education compared with the usa where 30% study at degree level, japan where 37% are in university or college, and germany where 20% are in universities or polytechnics.6 this comparative educational under- the future of education: nothing to write home about 25 marxism today january 1988  'any opposition, if it is to be effective, must go on the ideological offensive and fight for an alternative educational revolution with all the trenchancy and appeal that thatcher now commands' development in england and wales (not so much in scotland which has a different system) has a long history.

Reaganism For Ever?

It will take no a marxism today january 1988 'in his final year, both reagan's power and personal popularity have declined, yet reaganism still frames political debate'  miracles for these conditions to be met, in which case bush or dole can draw on the political assets generated by: relative economic success, peace (ie, few americans directly at war), social order (ie, gross inequities but no riots), and their very impressive resumes and evident capacity to stay afloat in top-level national politics. Perhaps cuomo (if he enters the race) or dukakis might be able to combine a critique of reaganite selfishness with a promise of economic growth convincingly enough to win back some of the traditionally democratic voters who now routinely vote for republican presidents, and to persuade new voters that whatever reagan may or may not have accomplished, reaganism now means cultural and social stagnation.

Violent Screen Play

Popular discussion is even more rigid in assuming that there is something called violence whose effects get worse the more often this violence is repeated and according to how graphic and horrific the portrayal of violence is. What feminists have long objected to on tv is the way in which violence is offered as a natural part of masculinity in a highly-gendered universe and how frequently violence is shown to be an almost acceptable part of how men relate to women.

Women Behind Bars

hirdly, crime among women is mainly a non-middle class activity, and it involves more young women than older women. For just as social femininity finds its purest expression in women's abstention from crime, so social masculinity finds its purest, and most heroic, expression in men's involvement in crime.

Matters Of Taste

but it's notable that their definition represses other complex realities of independent tv production: that it is a petit-capitalist commercial sector containing companies with varied political and cultural aims; that the right has no quarrel with a competitive commercial independent sector, and has also championed this sense of 'independence'; and that channel 4's relations with its noncommercial popular production outfits are far from smooth, as the case of ceddo film and video workshop shows. Michael grade, bbc tv's controller of programmes, put his case for privatising channel 4: it would create competition for advertising sales between the independent tv companies and hold down the rapid rise in advertising revenue.

Blue Election, Election Blues

Lot of people think this is the only way marxism, which has as strong a hold material interests did not, on their own, open to them to advance in a society over the labour 'centre' as it does on guarantee an automatic majority for where competition and selectivity have the so-called 'hard left', material inlabour in the working-class this time, become the name of the game. an image of the new, share-owning principles or squeeze her into a 'better' working class, and to expand the bloc, hy has it taken labour and school? symbolically, around the image of the left more generally so in fact, the harder things get in 'choice'.

Credibility and Mystery

With words we still name our losses and our endurance because we have no other recourse, and because people are incurably open to words and slowly they form our judgement. it is the writer's openness to the ambiguity and uncertainty of any experience (even the experience of determination and certainty) which gives clarity, and thus a kind of certitude, to his writing.

Denis Healey Interview

You yourself have said repeatedly that there never has been a real possibility of an all-out invasion of western europe since 1945, so what is the soviet threat? i've said that there's no evidence that the russians have ever planned an attack on western europe from a standing start in the central front, which is one of the scenarios which nato worries about, but i've always believed that there was a risk of fighting developing between the warsaw pact and nato  26 april 1986 marxism today countries as a result of an explosion in eastern europe, like east berlin in 1953, hungary in 1956, and of course the invasion of czechoslovakia by the red army and other forces in 1968. do you think mr gorbachev really represents something new in the soviet union? by far the most important thing which gorbachev said in his speech in the congress, though little commented on in the western press, was when he went out of his way to revise the doctrine of the two camps - the belief that the struggle between the capitalist and what they call the socialist world was a permanent feature of the world and would end in the victory of socialism by peaceful means, unless the capitalists chose to fight it.

REVIEWS: Clashing Value

thus the energetic work of the new right in redefining the language of racism to give us the essential oneness and historic destiny of english culture has found a powerful popular response - even if it is baulked by the unmonolithic state (ray  38 february 1986 marxism today honeyford was, in the end, sacked.) Even the new right's plans for the future must find their roots in past edens when britain was 'one nation' (the oneness being of race not class) and human nature was still in its state of sin, sexual difference and anti-socialism.

PORT-POURRI

they consider for example that council leader derek hatton (left) on liverpool labour council march, june 1985 marxism today john hamilton, has been purposely eclipsed in media coverage and influence by militant 'deputy' leader hatton, whose role has been that of prince regent, not crown prince. The left coalition rebuilt the neglected party organisation and led the ultimately successful fightback against the liberals who had supplanted the tories as the city's right party, while avoiding the obloquy attached to the tories' national policies.

No Private Drama

increasingly, on all or several of the key issues of controversy outlined in this article, common cause is being made between communist party hardliners and the morning star, some of the labour party left often called the hard left, and 'entrist' socialists who have gone into the labour party in some force since 1979. In developing the theme of a populong standing opposition by a minority lar alliance contained in earlier versions of within the party to the british road com- the party's programme, the broad demomitment to a pluralistic democratic social- cratic alliance upgraded the significance of ism, and the party's preparedness to, while issues of democracy and oppression, and combatting anti-sovietism and supporting the movements built around - them like peace initiatives by socialist countries to feminism, black people's organisations criticise them on such issues as the inva- and so on.

Retreating from reality

Similarly, those that are trying to construct a theoretical basis to understand the relationship between the labour movement and the women's movement, that is those who are exploring the concept of alliances within the working class movement, are caricatured as trying 'to justify the creation of a new mass electoral alliance around the labour party. . . the authors have defined what they are looking for in such a narrow way that they are blind to many of the creative developments in the working class movement. because they look at the class struggle in an abstract, unhistorical way, the authors are dismissive of attempts, particularly in marxism today, to account for the specific nature of the current political crisis.

RENAISSANCE Labour Style

So i believe a major split is coming within the tory party from a lot of tories who are terrified that the way the government has presented its case, carried it forward, and the conflicts with local government and the miners, are now opening the door to a backlash which could bring to power the sort of radicalised labour government that they fear above all else. now we have got to accept that not only has the labour party's position declined dramatically over the last 20 years, but there is also a long-term decline in support for the tory party which has been masked by the weakness and debilitation of the labour movement.

HEALTH CARE REAGANOMICS

In 1982 the health care grants given by the federal government to american cities were cut by 42%, and 10% fewer people were provided with health care, according to the children's defence fund, a national pressure group. indeed, the only proposals in walter monday's manifesto that would have any direct impact on health care are the commitment to preserve the age for free medical care at 65 years, and the pledge to spend more on those who suffer from sickle cell aneamia largely blacks, hispanics and people from the eastern mediterranean.

Rump or Rebirth?

However, problems of the communist party and the critics are right in pointing out that the revolutionary left (eric heffer in marxism views expressed about labour's future today dec 1983, royden harrison in prospects by me and others in marxism labour herald oct 28 1983) or for a bias today are in a way, 'an up-to-date version of against women (anna coote, marxism the poplar front' (heffer) and that, in my today jan 1984, doreen massey, lynne own case, 'popular frontism, in one form segal, hilary wainwright, new socialist or another (has) characterise(d) his politics jan-feb 1984). a truly socialist mass party however, there is a fundamental distinction within this body of labour-oriented socialists, and it lies at the root of the arguments about the forward march of 'the continuation of the struggles in which the left has been engaged, with the purpose of achieving predominance and turning the labour party into a socialist party free from the constriction hitherto imposed on it by its leaders.

APPEAL OF REAGANISM

And against reagan's hybrid in texas, california and florida, there are keynesian-supply side economics (a heavy signs of class-based voting among latinos, as rearmament programme and government the better-off and more suburbanised vote deficits coupled with business-slanted tax cuts), the democrats have no coherent, or republican. Conscious of reagan's cold-war reputation, the white see a very different america, there is more to house has done all it can to present him as a reaganism than reagan.

HIP LITTLE ENGLANDERS

Socialism was both part of what was seen as the working-class tradition, and the force behind the anti-racist politics that turned out to be the main political issue in boy george of culture club  38 november 1983 marxism today pop at the time. you don't have to be an especially vulgar jonathan king is a happy man today, marxist to find the lack of nationalistic because british groups are once again sentiment in british pop a little surprising.

NO GO MUSIC

a no go playlist: einstiirzende neubauten: strategien gegen architektur (mute compilation of early releases) einstiirzende neubauten: brand (working title of new lp to be released this month on some bizzare/virgin) spk: dekompositiones (side effekts 12" ep) foetus over frisco: custom built for capitalism (self immolation records 12") marc almond/foetus: a million manias (from marc and the mambas' 'torment and toreros' double lp on some bizzare) test dept: efficiency (from the no go i'm talking about is a loose grouping of art extremists and musicians— berlin's einstiirzende neubauten, south london's test dept, new zealand and chinese expatriates' spk, the various foetus mutations and, closer to the public's heart, birthday party (defunct), soft cell's marc almond and the mute label — whose work isolates them from the mainstream and its rewards, therefore forcing them to find accommodation in the ruins of industrialism.

Popular Front Revisited

Some of these latter may relate only to 'single issue campaigns'; others express, across a broad spectrum of issues, the interests and attitudes of such important sections of the people as black people, women, national minorities, etc. 'alliance' in this sense is not only to do with uniting the working class; it is also to do with building a broader alliance, since the other social forces and movements, even if predominantly working class in composition, are not exclusively working class. The working class is not sealed off from the rest of society in a watertight box, it is influenced often for the worse but the politics of unity my theme has been the need to unite the working class and build a broad alliance against the main enemy, thatcherism, the present form of extreme right wing tory reaction — not an electoral arrangement, though it will certainly affect future election prospects, but an alliance built in struggle now.

Class of '83

James broader view of the educational aspects of callaghan and shirley williams, his educa- politics and of the place of the education tion secretary, lifted the terms of reference system in a strategy for social and cultural for their 'great debate' about education in change. Coming in on the tail end of educational thatcherism labour's strategy of modernisation, their to talk of a strategy perhaps imputes too particular concern was to make education coherent an approach to education by the serve the'needs of industry'more directly, present government.

A Long Haul

To refer to the relative decline of a particular sector of a class is not to launch a political attack on those who have sustained the labour movement for so long and without whose political and industrial muscle the working class movement would be hopelessly exposed. political relations between movement and class — specifically, the way changes in the structure and composition of the working class are likely to affect the industrial structure and political culture of the labour movement.

Recipe for Defeat

As two labour left activists we find ourselves in substantial agreement with the broad distinctions which he makes between various left strategies, with the critique that he launches of the strategic perspectives which have tended to dominate the recent campaigns for party democracy and the deputy leadership, and with his advocacy of an alternative strategy which shifts the emphasis of labour left politics from internal leadership struggles to outward-looking mass political work. this shift of emphasis is the main subject of a new labour coordinating committee pamphlet, to which we are the principal contributors, labour and mass politics: rethinking our strategy.1 we believe that such a shift has rather more support, both explicit and implicit, within the ranks of the labour party than aaronovitch implies, but needs more detailed elaborajion than he was able to provide in his article.

Democracy and Marxism

labour has real power outside parliament, and the people we represent can only look to an advance of their interests and of the  12 may 1982 marxism today prospects of socialism if labour mps harness themselves to the movement outside and develop a strong partnership which alone can infuse fresh life into parliament as an agent of democratic change. marxism and the labour party the communist manifesto, and many other works of marxist philosophy, have always profoundly influenced the british labour movement and the british labour party, and have strengthened our understanding and enriched our thinking.

THE INDIAN TOUR

Till 1968 cricket (and only six countries play test matches: australia, india, england, new zealand, the west indies and pakistan, sri lanka will become a test-playing country next february) was effectively divided between south africa who played against australia, england and new zealand, and the rest who played against one another. 38 december 1981 channel five marxism today the indian tour mihir bose on the evening that the president of the indian board of control for cricket announced that the england tour of india could at last go ahead, mark tully, the bbc's indian correspondent remarked, 'mrs gandhi has realised that there are no votes to be got in cancelling the cricket.'

Football in Decline

dave triesman football in d e c l i n e some nine months ago on a 'phone-in' programme devoted to the 'crisis in british football', stan of shepherds bush advocated that soccer's problems could be resolved over-night if all football hooligans were branded on the back of their hands. if british professional football is to survive in the long term as a viable system involving a reasonable number of clubs supported by live fans, then it cannot simply subsist under the aegis of those who have either bought their way to membership of the exclusive club of directors or have managed to seize control of 1 arsenal chairman dennis hill-wood responded 'i have never been so insulted by anyone in footall as by this little upstart puppy.