Sheep in the road 16 by Hand Over Fist Press

HAND OVER FIST PRESS

SHEEP

IN THE ROAD

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

October 2016

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

The

CONTENTS ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Edit & Design: Alan Rutherford Published online by www.handoverfistpress.com

Opening 03

Artwork: Andreas Achenbach, Rough Seas ahead mateys!

Cable Street

Cover & frontispiece: Cable Street mural.

Universal Suffrage

Ignore Naysayers

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!

Anti-Semitic? 26

There is no deadline for submitting articles to be included in the next issue, it will appear whenever, or in your dreams!

Letters 63

Save the Flowers

Seydou Keïta

Township/Rearick 44 Ignoramuses 49

Articles to: alanrutherford1@mac.com

October 2016

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

OPENING Blah-blahblah-blahblah––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

OKTOBER 1917

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end

Hello, Welcome to magazine number 16, and welcome, again, Peter Lewis from over the road. Still 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 and developed with love, enthusiasm and sympathy here at Hand Over Fist Press. Nobody got paid. Perhaps that is the problem? Anyway, ‘Sheep in the Road’ will now appear sporadically and occasionally rather than monthly. Without contributors this project is

Leon Trotsky failing to live up to its original ideal! a luta continua!

October 2016

Artwork: Alan Rutherford

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.’

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.

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‘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.

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

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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.

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,

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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’.

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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.’

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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?

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.

Wherefore feed and clothe and save From the cradle to the grave Those ungrateful drones who would Drain your sweat – nay, drink your blood?

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.

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, That these stingless drones may spoil The forced produce of your toil?

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.

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.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

& THE STRUGGLE FOR UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE October 2016

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 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;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

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resist 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.

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

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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.

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 ... SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

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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.

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.

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4. Abolition of property qualifications for M. P.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. 5. Payment of M. P.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;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.

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

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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 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.

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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.

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

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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.

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.

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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 Farageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;white working classâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, 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.

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.

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For now, the Labour membershipâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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 whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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.

Cover of Sheep in the Road from one year ago

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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.

A test from David Schneider

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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.’

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 antiSemitism is a major problem in the Labour Party, I would give almost

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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’.

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’.

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‘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.

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.

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‘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.’

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 ...

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JEREMY

ARTS F S â&#x20AC;&#x2122; M TTO O B T N FRO

OWERS KILL FL

THE NHS IS THE FLOWER OF THE WELFARE STATE

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

Artwork: Alan Rutherford

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 La dee da dee da, la dee da dee dum… 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 La dee da dee da, la dee da dee dum…

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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?

Artwork: Alan Hardman

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?

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]

October 2016

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

October 2016

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

TOWNSHIP: LIFE AFTER SO

OUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID

Anne Rearick: photographer

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.

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

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.

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?

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.

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

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.

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’.

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

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.

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.

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

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

WAR HEADS 55

UK PARLIAMENT+USA+ISRAEL+SAUDI ARABIA V IRAQ AFGHANISTAN IRAN LYBIA YEMEN SYRIA RUSSIA October 2016

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

October 2016

Crickey ... a virtual keyboard, use it at your own peril SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 14

YEAH, beware, capitalism and war go together like a slug and a lettuce ... and there are some arseholes tossing the salad, ffs!

Artwork: Alan Rutherford

October 2016

Writing worth reading Photos worth seeing

http://www.coldtype.net

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October 2016

Artwork: still unknown

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16

WAFFLE LETTERS

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Dear Editor ... Same old same old! Absolutely damaged by the swiftly decaying state of the world ... 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 the threat of nuclear war. 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 government do if Trump suceeds and begins his Term of Ignorance?

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 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.

October 2016

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KAPUTALA The Diary of Arthur Beagle & The East Africa Campaign, 1916-1918 Alan Rutherford Updated 2nd edn: 2014

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IN THE ROAD Sheep in the Road as a magazine has writing, photography, cartoons and odd assemblages of ideas, rants and reviews ... eminating from a socialist and thoughtful core. Contributors included: Brian Rutherford, Rudi Thoemmes, Joe Jenkins, Robert Arnott, Cam Rutherford, Steve Ashley, Lizzie Boyle, Chris Dillow, Chris Hoare, Joanna Rutherford, West Midland Hunt Saboteurs, Chris Bessant, Craig Atkinson, Martin Taylor, Martin Mitchell ... A pleasure to produce ... thank you

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