HAND OVER FIST PRESS
SHEEP
IN THE ROAD
17 WAR
money money money
you can’t take it with you
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Sheep in the Road editor receives Airbrusher Award at WAFFLERS Conference, but by sharing stage with arch-Trotskyite he squanders chance to become a Labour Party member ... schizzen!
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The
CONTENTS ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Edit & Design: Alan Rutherford Published online by www.handoverfistpress.com
Page 16, Socialist Extrapolator, 22 October 2016
Cover & frontispiece: Knight, Miser & Merchant from ‘The Dance of Death’: Hans Holbein, 1524-5. 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! There is no deadline for submitting articles to be included in the next issue, it will appear whenever, or in your dreams!
Opening 03 Injustice 05 Justice? 13 Badges 18 Basic Income?
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West Africa Notes
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Labour 51 Norman Conquest
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Democracy 57 Revolution review
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Cup in hand
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White poppies
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Letters 77
Articles to: alanrutherford1@mac.com
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OPENING Blah-blahblah-blahblah––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Graffiti by FAILE, a collective comprising Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller: New York
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end Leon Trotsky
Hello, Welcome to magazine number 17, and 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.
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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 very sporadically. Without contributors this project has failed to live up to its original ideal! Probably the last issue for a while ... in the meantime, a luta continua!
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ALBERT WOODFOX HERMAN WALLACE
INJUSTICE: ANGOLA THREE From article by Billie Mizell (SEVEN magazine, April 2007) and other sources Angola Prison began life as a plantation in Louisiana and its name comes from the former African homeland of the slaves who were forced to work its fertile land. Two hundred years later, little has changed there. Three quarters of Angola’s inmates are black and most of them work from dawn to dusk in the soybean, cotton and wheat fields, performing backbreaking labour under a sweltering sun. Around 85% of the inmates who enter Angola will die there.
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The civil rights movement was late coming to the old plantation, but it finally slipped past the razor wire and iron gates in the early 1970s through two African-American prisoners: Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. Arriving on unrelated armed robbery convictions and both sentenced on questionable evidence by all-white juries, they came to the prison having already earned reputations as political activists. Woodfox and Wallace were escorted into an institution once dubbed ‘the bloodiest prison in America’ by Peter Fenelon Collier’s investigative publication ‘Collier’s Weekly’. Inside its walls, violence was so commonplace that inmates slept with lunch trays or Bibles strapped to their chests in case they were stabbed as they slept. Due to a serious shortage of guards, ‘trusty’ inmates were permitted to carry guns and guard other prisoners. Murders were nearly a daily occurance. Artwork: Rigo 23
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Woodfox and Wallace immediately began peacefully organising their fellow inmates against the racial segregation, sexual slavery, rampant violence and systematic brutality, which were rife inside a prison that was soon to be under federal investigation for its abhorrent conditions. Their protest methods included hunger strikes and escorting weaker inmates through the prison yard as a means of protection.
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Shortly after the pair’s arrival, a white prison guard was found stabbed to death in one of the black inmate buildings. Woodfox and Wallace were immediately identified as suspects despite no witnesses or any physical evidence to link them to the crime. In 1972, the men were convicted of the guard’s murder by all-white juries and sentenced to life in prison. The Angola administration determined that they would spend the sentence in solitude and it was more than four decades before their release, they are the longest known survivors of solitary confinement in the history of the US. In the years that have followed, a mountain of evidence has been turned up to indicate that not only were Woodfox and Wallace not guilty, but they were set up by Angols’s administration, probably because of their known affiliation with the Black Panther Party. The party was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobbly Seale. It followed Malcolm X’s belief in the international unity of the working classes across colour and gender. The bloody fingerprints found at the scene of the crime failed to find a match with either Woodfox or Wallace. The authorities, however, did not run them against anyone else despite having the prints of every Angola inmate and employee on file.
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After Woodfox and Wallace were already in solitary confinement, eyewitnesses started popping up. Each testified with a wildly different story, and it has recently been verified through prison documentation that each was handsomely rewarded for their statements with cigarettes, cushy jobs and pardons. Every living eyewitness has now recanted their testimony and provided an affidavit saying they were pressured to lie. Two days after the prison guard’s murder, a man with a reputation with activism and a friend of Woodfox and Wallace, Robert King Wilkerson, arrived at Angola. He was immediately placed under suspicion for the killing even though he could not have participated in it and sent to his own solitary cell. A year later, he was charged with the murder of a fellow inmate despite no physical evidence and the repeated confessions of another inmate who insisted he had acted alone. A Louisiana state judge ordered that Wilkerson be shackled and his mouth covered with duct tape during his trial. He was also convicted of murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to life imprisonment.
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Wilkerson’s conviction was overturned in 2001, and after spending almost 30 years in solitary confinement he walked out of Angola into a throng of supporters who had gathered around the gates of the remote prison. Addressing them, he said simply: ‘I may be free from Angola, but Angola will never be free from me.’ It was his vow to work on behalf of the release of his friends. It is a vow that he has kept and it has earned him a bevy of human rights honours.
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ROBERT KING WILKERSON THE ANGOLA THREE
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The state of Louisiana has gone to great lengths to silence these men, but they have yet to be broken. In addition to surviving four decades of solitary confinement, Wallace and Woodfox have a support network that includes the American Civil Liberties Union, a dame of the British Empire, exonerated political prisoners, a rock star and support organisations in five US cities along with half a dozen foreign countries. In 2006 many of these supporters travelled to Louisiana to attend the evidentiary hearing granted by a Louisiana court on Wallace’s case. The hearing was held in an administration building at Angola as it was determined unsafe to have it held in the courthouse. It was the first time in the institution’s history that a post-conviction criminal proceeding was held behind the penitentiary’s gates. Supporters had been assured that they would be allowed to attend the hearing as it would be open to the public, just as it would have been had it been held in a courtroom.
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However, armed police teams at the prison’s entrance greeted those gathering for the hearing. Attack teams on the foofs of nearby buildings kept guns and video cameras trained on the group of supporters until the assembly received the news that the hearing had concluded and they began their long journeys back to their homes all over the world. The authorities attempt to make Wallace appear a threat did not work this time. On 7 November 2006, after 34 years of solitary confinement, a Louisiana state court commissioner recommended to overturn Wallace’s 1972 conviction. Wallace believed he had his ‘foot on the stairway to freedom’. Artwork: Rigo 23
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However, with the complexities of appeal and counter-appeal and the determination of strong opponents of the inmates’ release it wasn’t until 1 October 2013 before Wallace was released. Louisiana’s Attorney General, James Caldwell, had stated that he opposed releasing the two men ‘with every fibre of my being,’ and added, rather unconvincingly, that they have never been held in solitary confinement but are in ‘protective cell units known as CCR [Closed Cell Restricted]’. The warden of Angola and Hunt prisons, Burl Cain, repeatedly suggested that Woodfox and Wallace had to be held in solitary because they subscribed to ‘Black Pantherism’.
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Tragically, when eventually released from prison on 1 October 2013, 71-year-old Herman Wallace, who had advanced liver cancer, was reindicted in ugly vengeful righteousness on 3 October 2013. He died on 4 October 2013, before he could be re-arrested – so, in theory, he died a free, but destroyed, man. Meanwhile Woodfox was still running the gauntlet of US injustice. On 20 November 2014, Woodfox had his conviction overturned by the US Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel found unanimously that the selection of the grand-jury foreperson in the 1993 trial formed part of a discriminatory pattern in that area of Louisiana. Concluding that it amounted to a violation of the US Constitution, the judges struck down Woodfox’s conviction. The state of Louisiana refused to release him, however, and his guards refused to unshackle him or release him from solitary confinement. On 12 February 2015, Woodfox was re-indicted. On 8 June 2015, U.S. District Judge James Brady ordered the release of Woodfox and overturned the second conviction for the killing of the guard.
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The order also barred a third trial from taking place, shockingly four days later, a federal appeals court overturned Brady’s decision and ordered that Woodfox would remain in prison until the matter was resolved. Albert Woodfox was eventually released on 19 February 2016, after the prosecution agreed to drop the push for a retrial and accept his plea of no contest to lesser charges of burglary and manslaughter. The cases of the Angola Three have gained increased interest over the last few years. Since his release, Robert King Wilkerson has worked to build international recognition for the Angola 3. He has spoken before the parliaments of the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Indonesia, Brazil and United Kingdom about the case, and about political prisoners in the United States. King Wilkerson was received as a guest and dignitary by the African National Congress in South Africa, and has spoken with Desmond Tutu. Amnesty International has added them to their watch list of ‘political prisoners’/’prisoners of conscience’.
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JUSTICE: MAYBE? Justice is long overdue for the widows of South African mineworkers. It is vital the court of appeal upholds a ruling that makes South Africa’s gold mining industry accountable to women whose husbands died from silicosis From an article by Dean Peacock and Emily Nagisa Keehn The authors are respectively current and former members of Sonke Gender Justice For decades, women in rural South Africa have shouldered the burden of caring for mineworkers who return home with silicosis contracted in South Africa’s gold mines. These women do the back-breaking and emotionally taxing work of caring for men who are dying slow and painful deaths, their lungs irreparably scarred by the silica dust they breathe in underground.
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Testimony from women in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province reveals the brutal toll silicosis has taken on families. ‘My husband was the sole breadwinner,’ recalled one woman. ‘If we had money, he had sent it. During his last days, he lost his strength and his chest closed up. It was difficult for him to cover himself with blankets, so I would cover him up. He could not go outside to relieve himself, so he would do it right there in the bed. I would have to throw it away. On his last day his chest closed up completely. I am left with almost nothing.’
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From village to village, such stories were a recurring refrain. ‘I used to carry [my husband] around,’ said another woman. ‘I used to go from house to house asking for food, we had children going to school. At times I would get piece jobs so we could eat.’ Eventually, this woman’s husband became unable to breathe. He died before he could even get in a car to go to hospital.
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These conditions are the predictable outcome of deliberate mining policies started in the 1880s, when gold was first discovered. Gold mining houses colluded with British colonial governments to put in place a range of taxes and legislation that forced black men to leave their land to work in the mines. Once there, these men were forced to do dangerous jobs. Their work exposed them to malnutrition, tuberculosis and dangerous levels of silica dust. Many developed silicosis, which scars the lungs, makes breathing difficult, increases vulnerability to tuberculosis and can ultimately cause asphyxiation. Black women, on the other hand, were required to remain in rural areas, where they carried out the work of raising workers and, often, caring for them when they later returned home desperately ill. This exploitation remained entrenched for most of the 20th century. The mining industry corrupted the medical examination boards ostensibly in charge of mineworkers’ health. The boards then underreported cases of silicosis, decreasing workers’ eligibility for compensation. Together with
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the apartheid government, the industry set up a distinct and difficult to use compensation scheme. One study by Deloitte found that less than 1.5% of claims had been paid out to eligible miners. The consequences of this arrangement were predictable. A 2009 report revealed that almost all miners interviewed in the former republic of Transkei, the largest provider of mining labour, had symptoms of respiratory illness. None were formally employed. About 92% said they went without food or experienced hunger on a monthly basis. South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution has allowed human rights lawyers and mineworkers to begin to hold mines accountable. In 2011, South Africa’s constitutional court issued a landmark ruling allowing Thembekile Mankayi, who had contracted silicosis working underground, to sue AngloGold Ashanti for full loss of wages, damages and medical expenses, regardless of what was already available to him under the miner-specific compensation scheme.
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Human rights lawyers subsequently petitioned the courts to allow a class action lawsuit; potentially, hundreds of thousands of miners would join together to sue for as much as 20-40bn rand (roughly £1.2bn-£2.3bn). Two South African non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an Aids activist group, and Sonke Gender Justice, a gender equality organisation – applied to join the case as amici curiae (impartial advisers to the court), introducing evidence on the social costs of silicosis.
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TAC drew attention to the relationship between silicosis and tuberculosis (TB). Sonke offered evidence on the gendered impact of silicosis, particularly the financial, emotional and physical burden borne by women and girls who care for sick mineworkers when they return home, often foregoing their own income and education. The amici argued for the authorisation of the class action, and the transmission of claims to widows and dependents.
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A century of damage caused by the South African gold mining industry requires remedy ... so refreshingly on a positive note, and despite opposition by the mining houses, the court admitted them as amici. Sonke’s affidavit on the gendered impact of silicosis was also admitted into the proceedings. In May this year, the Johannesburg high court granted its historic ruling. It amended existing common law to allow general damages to be transmitted to the widows and dependents of miners who died in the early stages of litigation. Prior to this ruling, if plaintiffs died before pleadings had closed their claims would become void. The ruling sets an important precedent that affirms women’s rights and the imperative to remedy the gendered harms imposed by the mining industry. However, predictably, in an industry that puts profits before people’s lives, a morally reprehensible and disgraceful action by the mining companies has them appealing the decision (fuckers!).
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As the case unfolds, it is critical to remember what is at stake. More than a century of damage caused by the South African gold mining industry requires urgent remedy. The mining companies must pay long overdue compensation to the workers, widows, children, and communities they have impoverished. Dean Peacock is executive director of Sonke Gender Justice. Emily Nagisa Keehn, formerly Sonke’s manager for policy development and advocacy, is an associate director of the academic programme at Harvard Law School’s human rights programme. A non-governmental organization (NGO) is any non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group which is organized on a local, national or international level.
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REBELIOUS
BADGES 1978-1986
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DISCUSSION A BASIC INCOME? Some Reasons to Support a Basic/Universal Income A Basic Income will help us rethink how and why we work, it can help you do other work and reconsider old choices: It will enable you to retrain, safe in the knowledge that you’ll have enough money to maintain a decent standard of living while you do. It will therefore help each of us to decide what it is we truly want to do.
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A Basic Income will release Trade Unions from defending ‘dead’ trades, it will free them to argue against such uglies in the world, like dangerous trades, exploitation of migrant workers, time-wasting jobs that can be replaced by new technology, armaments factories, and wasteful follies like Trident’s replacement, and so forth. A Basic Income will contribute to better working conditions as with the insurance of having unconditional basic income as a safety net, workers can challenge their employers if they find their conditions of work unfair or degrading. A Basic Income will downsize bureaucracy because a basic income scheme is one of the most simple tax / benefits models, it will reduce all the bureaucracy surrounding the welfare state thus making it less complex and costly, while being fairer and more emancipatory.
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A Basic income will make benefit fraud obsolete, it will vanish as a possibility because no one needs to commit fraud to get a basic income: it is granted automatically. Moreover, an unconditional basic income will fix the threshold and poverty trap effects induced by the current means-tested schemes. A Basic income will help reducing inequalities because it is also a means for sharing out the wealth produced by a society to all people thereby reducing the growing inequalities across the world.
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It will provide a more secure and substantial safety net for all people. Most existing means-tested anti-poverty schemes exclude people because of their complexity, or because people don’t even know how to apply or whether they qualify. With a basic income, people currently excluded from benefit allowances will automatically have their rights guaranteed. A Basic Income will contribute to less working hours and better distribution of jobs, people will have the option to reduce their working hours without sacrificing their income. They will therefore be able to spend more time doing other things they find meaningful. At the macroeconomic level, this will induce a better distribution of jobs because people reducing their hours will increase the jobs opportunities for those currently excluded from the labor market. A Basic Income will reward unpaid contributions to society. A huge number of unpaid activities are currently not recognized as economic contributions. Yet, our economy increasingly relies on these free contributions (think about wikipedia as well as the work parents do). A Basic Income would recognise and reward theses activities.
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A Basic Income will strengthen our Democracy as with a minimum level of security guaranteed to all citizens and less time in work or worrying about work, innovation in political, social, economic and technological terms would be a more lively part of everyday life and its concerns. A Basic Income is a fair redistribution of technological advancement and, thanks to massive advancements in our technological and productive capacities, the world of work is changing. Yet most of our wealth and technology is as a consequence of our ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’: We are wealthier not as a result of our own efforts and merits but those of our ancestors. Basic income is a way to civilize and redistribute the advantages of that on-going advancement. A Basic Income will end extreme financial poverty. Because we now live in a world where we have the means (and one hopes, the will) to end the kinds of suffering we see as a supposedly constant feature of our surroundings, a Basic income is a way to join together the means and the will.
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Interfered with, and Edited from Basic Income UK And from Courtenay Inchbald (whoever he is?): ‘The basic income will be at the expense of the tax-payer, i.e. rich people, and it will be very costly, so it is important to ensure that the culture created by a basic income policy is positive to the rich as well as the poor and makes the rich willing to pay more tax rather than to leave. [‘fuck them!’ Ed.] Basic income is the simple element that allows the best parts of socialism and capitalism to be combined. It allows government to concentrate on making its territory a place where everyone, rich and poor, wants to live and where poor citizens can afford to live.’
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NO WATER CLEAN FOR MILLIONS IN THISDOWN CRAZY UPSIDE WORLD ... WHAT THE FUCK!
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WEST AFRICA NOTES WHILE THE WEST LOOKS THE OTHER WAY 1. CRUEL SEA: ANOTHER MIGRANT-REFUGEE SAGA From an article by Saeed Taji Farouky, 2007 [and still happening] The photographer, Juan Medina, based in the Canary Islands, has been documenting one of the world’s busiest and deadliest illegal immigration routes. Up to 1,000 immigrants a week leave Africa’s west coast hoping to reach the Canary Islands and EU territiry. Hundreds are detained every week in Spanish centres and dozens more drown in unseaworthy, overcrowded boats.
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Medina’s images tell of a man who has been following this story for years. His most striking photographs avoid the obvious dramatic moments – the pile of dead, anonymous bodies on an otherwise pristine beach – that have become symbolic of this endlessly repeating tragedy. Instead, his impact lies in looking at what happens when the world of the illegal immigrant collides with the world of the coast guard, the Red Cross worker or the tourist. In one image, a crowd of tourists, camped on one of the island’s famous beaches stares, motionless, at a pair of dead bodies. In another image, a group of tourists – ageing and naked except for swimming trunks – carries the body of an immigrant on a stretcher.
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Another photograph shows a family cowering on the boardwalk as a pair of disorientated recent arrivals, still dripping wet, stumble along the pavement. One of the most disturbing images though shows the hands of a cemetry worker hammering a plaque inot place on a concrete coffin. The plaque simply reads. ‘Immigrant No. 3’. It is true that some of Medina’s images are little more than piles of dead bodies on the Canary Islands’ rocky shore. But the photographs that really define his style are more biting confrontations, which seem to ask the viewer, ‘What would you do in this situation?’ They make their audience wonder what role we might unwittingly play in this mass exodus.
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Medina looks closely at what happens when the immigrants are caught and ‘processed’. He asks questions about who handles them – the military or an aid agency – and if they are taken to mainland Spain or a holding centre in West Africa and how they are treated. The route from Mauritania’s coast to the Canary Islands is a relatively new one (in 2007, ed.) for illegal African migration. The traditional passage has been to cross the narrow Straits of Gibraltar between Tangier and the coastal cities of southern Spain. However, as security steadily increases along that border much of Africa’s illegal traffic has moved to the Mauritanian coast. Many of Medina’s images illustrate the number of deadly obstacles plaguing the trip. there are bodies strewn against the sharp volcanic rocks that define the Canary Islands’ coastline and migrants struggling to escape their capsized and overcrowded boats.
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In trying to understand the migrants determination despite the obvious dangers, just what would compel someone to risk his/her life for an uncertain, and often unrealistic, future? Some will be convinced by the mythology of success and riches to be had in Europe, bravado stories from those who have managed to ‘disappear’ in Europe’s ghettos trickle back – but many others will live or die making this hazardous journey, hoping to escape intolerance, poverty and war ... even slavery!
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2. A MAURITANIAN MORATORIUM? From an article by Kate Hodal, 2016 Two brothers who say they were regularly beaten and forced to work as child slaves in Mauritania have taken their case to a regional African child rights body, where they are testifying against their abuser and the Mauritanian government. The move has been heralded by human rights groups as hugely significant for the abolitionist movement in the west African republic, where modern-day slavery is more prevalent than anywhere else in the world. Said Ould Salem, now 16, and his brother Yarg, 13, became slaves at birth to the wealthy El Hassine family due to a highly rigid caste system and the practice, entrenched over the course of centuries, of passing down slave status from mother to child.
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Considered the property of the El Hassine family, the boys were working full days by the age of five, running errands and cleaning the house until they were able to perform harder tasks such as manual labour and shepherding camel. ‘We weren’t allowed to eat the same food as the rest of the family, or eat at the same time as them, or sleep in the same rooms, or wear the same clothes,’ said Said speaking from Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital.
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‘We were not equal to the rest of the family, that was made obvious. They would beat us for any reason, sometimes we didn’t even know the reason.’ The brothers managed to escape five years ago, aged just eight and 11, with the help of an aunt and a local anti-slavery group. A few months after their escape, the criminal court of Nouakchott found Ahmed Ould El Hassine guilty of holding them captive and denying them education.
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In the first – and only – successful prosecution under Mauritania’s 2007 anti-slavery legislation, El Hassine was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay $4,700 (£3,866) in compensation. Although the boys’ lawyer appealed the sentence, arguing it was far too lenient, the supreme court released El Hassine on bail a few months later, in clear breach of the verdict. Five years on, with the help of lawyers and activists, the boys have taken their case to the regional court of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, a body of the African Union. Rights groups representing the brothers are arguing that Mauritania has failed to prosecute those responsible for enslaving them effectively. They point out that the boys have been denied an education and physically abused, in breach of Mauritania’s obligations under the African charter on children’s rights and welfare. Minority Rights Group International (MRG), which along with Mauritanian human rights group SOS Esclaves is acting on behalf of the brothers, said it was a good sign the regional court had declared the case admissible nine months after it was opened.
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‘We can now hope that these two boys will finally receive the justice they deserve, following a complete failure of the justice system in Mauritania to protect them and to challenge the current system of impunity favouring slave owners,’ said Ruth Barry, MRG’s legal officer. Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981, the last country in the world to do so, and only made it a crime in 2007. Yet rights groups claim slavery is hugely pervasive, with chattel slavery alone accounting for roughly 800,000 people out of a population of 3.5 million. Hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of members of one family can be beholden to another, anti-slavery activists in Mauritania claim, treated as the property of their masters and forced to work for years without pay or a single day off.
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Slaves tend to be predominantly Haratine – descendants of black ethnic groups who have historically been enslaved by the Moor and Berber majority – with male slaves herding cattle or working on farms. Women usually carry out domestic tasks around the house, including raising the children of the families to whom they are enslaved. Forced marriage is common – as is physical abuse and rape – and any child born of such a marriage becomes another slave, by default. Despite current legislation criminalising slavery, laws are rarely enforced, said Sarah Mathewson, Africa programme manager at Anti-Slavery International, which helped take the original case to the Mauritanian court in 2011. A regional court ruling in favour of the boys is likely to have a significant impact on Nouakchott’s current approach to slavery, she added.
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‘The president still continues to deny the existence of slavery, saying that it’s only the ‘legacy’ of slavery that exists. Police refuse to investigate, judges throw cases out, or they often change the charges so it’s not a slavery charge, but ‘exploitation of a minor’ or ‘non-payment of wages’. There’s blanket denial at every stage,’ Mathewson said. ‘If we get a favourable decision against the Mauritanian government, although it would be non-binding, they can still put a huge amount of pressure on the Mauritanian government to do whatever they say has to happen – it’s another avenue to put pressure on them to act.’
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The regional court hearing has already hurried Mauritania into action. The country has agreed a date next week for the brothers’ appeal against the lenient 2011 sentence. As for Said and Yarg, who are both in secondary school and respectively dream of becoming a human rights defender and a lawyer, the possibility of closure brings them great hope. ‘We are very happy the case is back in court and look forward to a good result,’ said Said. ‘We’ve been waiting a long time, and our lives are very different. We are proud because we are free. We feel like we are people now.’
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LABOUR The English economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) developed what is known as the ‘labour theory of value’. This holds that the exchange-value of a good or service is determined solely by the amount of labour involved in its production. Karl Marx developed this idea, arguing that the capitalist pays his workers less than the value their labour has added to the goods, and that the ‘surplus labour’, after all costs are accounted for [including the capitalist’s fat salary and provision for future development] ... yes yes, this ‘surplus labour value’, that he obtains for free, creates – the capitalist’s profit ... which he trousers with a smile.
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Artwork: Laura Knight – Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring
The word ‘labour’ denotes both the workforce as a whole, especially wageearning employees, and any paid-for service supplied by workers in the production of wealth. In a totally unregulated labour market, according to the laws of supply and demand, workers must compete against each other by offering to work more for less pay. As a defence, and to counter this, workers formed trade unions, which engage in collective bargaining with employers in an attempt to ensure equal pay for equal work. ‘Equal pay for equal work’ hmmm ... despite the Equal Pay Act 45 years ago, women still earn less than men in Britain today. Overall, women can expect to earn significantly less than men over their entire careers as a result of ... differences in caring responsibilities; clustering in low skilled and low paid work, the qualifications and skills women acquire; and just outright discrimination.
During World War II women showed they were equal to men by successfully taking over workplaces while the men were away ...
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THE NORMAN CONQUEST 2016 Deceit, Myths and Lies are the new currency of a political discourse where the simplicity of the small man defeats his social betters for the worse. Brexit, Trump, what next wee man? SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 17
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TRUMP
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never mind ... every president rewards us so
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right, the people have spoken, we’re going to take back our country
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oh dear
well, errm might have a problem, the country is now owned by russian oligarchs, arab sheikhs, chinese communists, american shit-kickers, indian fraudsters ... gulp!
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If you think the High Court is interfering in DEMOCRACY, then you don’t understand how Britain works [gulp] If our own Government can be so woefully ignorant of British history, perhaps it is time to adopt a written constitution to serve as a reminder [for goodness sake!] Geoffrey Robertson QC The Lord Chief Justice of England has stopped the UK’s Prime Minister from trying to overturn the result of the Civil War. That war, from 1642 to 1646 and which left one in 10 Englishmen dead in muddy fields, established the sovereignty of Parliament, which Theresa May’s Attorney General sought to circumvent by using an arcane power called the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50.
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As he should have known, this power cannot be used to repeal an existing law; the 1972 statute by which Parliament took us into the common market can only be repealed by Parliament itself. [why wasn’t this mentioned before?] If the Government can be so woefully ignorant of our constitutional history, perhaps it is time to adopt a written constitution to serve as a reminder.
Artwork: Hans Holbein – adapted
The Attorney General was forced in court to concede that the EU referendum was merely advisory – it placed no obligation whatever on the Government to accept and act upon the very close result in which only 37 per cent of eligible voters wanted to leave, against 35 per cent of remainers and 28 per cent who did not bother to vote (perhaps because they believed, as opinion polls had indicated, that remain would carry the day). Now that they have seen the economic and social damage that the
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referendum result has wrought, even before negotiations for exit have begun, MPs and peers must be given the opportunity to vote against any notice under Article 50, or else vote for a second referendum – perhaps one that, like most referendums in sensible democracies, is binding only if carried by a two-thirds majority.
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Some Brexiteers angrily proclaim that the judges decision that Article 50 should be referred to Parliament for ratification, is to defy the will of the people, in a democracy? Despite the fact that they would be defying the will of only 37 per cent of the people, it has to be pointed out that these objectors do not know the true meaning of democracy. Our forebears have not fought and died for government by opinion poll, but for a representative democracy. That means, as the great conservative philosopher Edmund Burke pointed out in his Letter to the Electors of Bristol (one of the crucial documents in our unwritten constitution), that as their MP, he had a duty to do everything he could for them, but when it came to a vote in Parliament his duty as their MP was to vote as his conscience dictated, for what he believed to be the best interests of the nation. Stop complaining about the legal challenge to Brexit – it’s democracy So the simple fact is that, whatever the views of their constituents, our MPs are fully entitled to reject the bill that the Government will now have to bring forward to begin the process of departing from Europe. (The Government may, of course, appeal to the Supreme Court, although it is unlikely to succeed).
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Thursday, 3 November’s judgment was unforeseen – other than by a few lawyers familiar with the conventions and traditions of our ‘unwritten constitution’, a form of nudge-and-wink governance we have the distinction of sharing in the world only with Saudi Arabia. It is the latest and perhaps the best example of why we really need to write our political bible, so that everyone from school children to the Attorney General can study and understand it. It could include (most constitutions do) a bill of rights which would be genuinely British, for example protecting the right to trial by jury. This would fulfil an election promise recently repeated by the Lord Chancellor. It is anomalous that the nation of Milton, Shakespeare, Bentham and Mill cannot put into words the way in which its government must work. No doubt it would take time to agree a draft, which would have to be amended by a constitutional convention and then submitted (how ironic) to a referendum. But it would be worth the effort for the educational value of helping people to understand, and actually take pride in how our rights were won.
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These rights include the power of our courts to stop the executive (ministers and their civil servants) from using the royal prerogative to subvert our right to live in a representative democracy where Parliament is sovereign. from The Independent
CIVIL WAR? NOVEMBER 2016
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THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN PICTURES Sally Campbell spoke to artist Tim Sanders and historian John Newsinger about creating a graphic representation of Russia 1917 Two and a half years ago Tim Sanders, regular cartoonist for Socialist Worker, approached Bookmarks the socialist publisher with a proposal for a graphic history of the Russian Revolution. This month the result, 1917: Russia’s Red Year, will hit the shelves.
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‘For the first time in my life I thought about something before it was too late,’ says Tim. ‘I figured either the centenary will be pretty much ignored by mainstream media or there’ll be tonnes and tonnes of books saying what a terrible thing the revolution was and thank god the workers didn’t take control – all the usual stuff. ‘So I thought I’d try to make a tiny little contribution to a counter-current and the best way for me to do it would be to draw pictures.’ Bookmarks put Tim in touch with socialist historian – and graphic novel fan – John Newsinger, who eagerly agreed to work on the script. Rather than a straight retelling of the history, says John, ‘we wanted to show how the events of 1917 impacted on two ordinary Russians, a man and a woman. We created Peter and Natalia.
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‘We wanted to put on display the self-activity of the working class. From that point of view we looked at the taking over of the factory, the taking over of the posh restaurant, the mansion, regulating food prices – that this was what was driving the revolutionary process.’ There has been an explosion in graphic fiction over the past couple of decades, though it is a new departure for Bookmarks – and for Tim and John. How did they feel this project could fit into the wider trend?
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‘A lot of graphic fiction is radical in the broader sense,’ says John. ‘Much of the stuff that Pat Mills has done over the years, for example, has been incredibly radical.’ Pat Mills is one of the most prominent British comics writers and editors, creator of the 2000AD comics and of the Charley’s War series of graphic novels about the First World War. He has written a foreword for Russia’s Red Year, which he describes as ‘a gem of a book that celebrates the people’s victory over their oppressors. It’s exciting, informative, emotional, funny, beautifully painted and so relevant to our own times. It’s a work of truth.’ As John makes clear, ‘At a time when the ideas of the revolution are going to be hotly contested, we felt it would be a good idea to put a particular interpretation of these events forward in a graphic form that could reach an audience that might otherwise not read anything about the Russian Revolution.’ The process of working on the book was challenging for both authors.
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Tim talks about how much he learned about the graphic novel form: ‘Comic books are very much like films; it’s all angles and close ups and long shots and building atmospheres. It takes some getting used to reading them – you can’t read a graphic book at all like you read a novel.’ For John, the joy was in the research: ‘There’s a scene with a Jewish geezer drowning in the canal and the only way he can get the onlooking police to rescue him is to shout ‘Down with the Tsar!’ so they’ll arrest him. Apparently that really was a joke of the time. Coming across stuff like that in the first-hand accounts was a revelation.’ The authors hope the graphic novel will connect to new audiences, as well as providing a fresh view for those who already know the history. They chose to focus just on the year 1917 so that they could best express the hope and potential of the revolution.
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‘A lot of people I know are slightly sceptical about the project,’ says Tim, ‘like ‘why do you want to write about that?’ That reflects the dominant opinion at the moment. I have learnt that we have an enormous challenge in convincing people that revolution is a good idea because it’s a big risk, as the story shows. ‘Ultimately the ending isn’t very happy, but potentially and briefly it was a beacon to the world and still is. ‘We’re trying to connect people with the successful part of the revolution – the part which was a beacon.’ 1917: Russia’s Red Year is published this month by Bookmarks, £14.99 https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk
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A cartoon after the Jallianwala massacre of Indian civilians at Amritsar by British troops on 13 April 1919. Captioned ‘Progress to Liberty - Amritsar style’. Cartoonist: David Low Published: The Star, 16 Dec 1919
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CUP IN HAND Theresa May has some cheek going cap in hand to India, an ex-British colony, for a post-Brexit deal The Government’s position seems to involve the hope that India will sign a cushy deal with us, while we crack down on Indians in Britain who’ve outstayed their frosty welcome Words borrowed from Harriet Williamson and Mirza Waheed Theresa May is visiting India this week cup in hand, to ask for a favourable post-Brexit trade deal. There’s arrogance in May’s return to Britain’s former colony, expectant that India will come up with the goods, but ultimately, the move shows how much the tables have turned. Many people, particularly in my grandparents’ generation, still view British imperialism and empire with a dewy-eyed longing. The reality is, of course, that British rule in India caused the deaths of millions of people through administrative failure and imperialist cruelty. Numerous famines, outbreaks of cholera, the arbitrary and rushed drawing of the border between India and the newly-created Pakistan, mass-displacement, and the destruction of India’s cottage industries left the country impoverished and unstable.
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The lethal legacy Britain presented to the Indian sub-continent as it staggered away in 1947, begrudgingly conceding independence to India and Pakistan, has left the 2 countries on a war-footing with each other ever since. In the past few weeks, the two nuclear states have, between them, killed two dozen civilians and injured scores of others in exchanges of artillery fire across the disputed border – known as the ‘line of control’ – that divides Kashmir into parts controlled by India and Pakistan.
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The latest flare-up in the long-running war of attrition between the two countries comes on the heels of a bloody summer of protest and repression in Kashmir that has now been erased from memory by the banging of war drums in Delhi and Islamabad. Since July, when the killing of a young militant leader sparked a furious civilian uprising across the Kashmir valley, the Indian state has responded with singular ruthlessness, killing more than 90 people. Most shocking of all has been the breaking up of demonstrations with ‘non-lethal’ pellet ammunition, which has resulted in a mass-blinding of hundreds of Kashmiri civilians. In four months, 17,000 adults and children have been injured, nearly five thousand have been arrested, and an entire population spent the summer under the longest curfew in the history of curfews in Kashmir. Imperialism set India up as both Britain’s workhouse and convenient marketplace, and when India finally gained independence, it was reduced to one of the world’s poorest economies. For Britain to come begging now that we’ve made such a mess of things with our
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yet-undefined Brexit, opposed by 48.1 per cent of the electorate, is laughable. Although a number of the more vehemently right-wing newspapers chose to focus on May’s ‘hardball’ stance on immigration during her visit, they didn’t pick up on the incongruity of the Prime Minister haggling over ‘Indians with no right to remain in the UK’ whilst hankering after a lucrative trade deal. At a tech summit in Delhi, May was pressured by business leaders including Sir James Dyson and Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra beer, to welcome more skilled Indian workers and students to Britain. The Government’s current position seems to involve the hope that India will still sign a cushy deal with us, while we crack down on Indians in Britain who’ve outstayed their frosty welcome.
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The political conversation in Britain has, despite the influence of Corbyn, shifted perceptibly to the right. May knows that to keep the would-beUkippers and Brexit-devotees onside, she must act ‘tough on those foreign people’ despite surely recognising that she cannot turn back the clock on globalization. The isolationist, shut-the-door sentiments that brought us Brexit are not going to serve Britain well when it comes to making international trade agreements, and to belief otherwise is a self-important indulgence that we can no longer afford. We live, for better or worse, in an interconnected world, and the issue of migration cannot be wiped off the table during trade discussions.
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India wants access to the UK labour market for skilled workers, and the UK government wants to pander to the narrative that immigrants are an unnecessary scourge on our increasingly less green and pleasant land. On the basis of this impasse, a free trade agreement seems like a childish fantasy. I wouldn’t blame India for putting up two fingers to Theresa May and Britain. From Independent and Guardian
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MAYBE MORE CHEEK THAN A BABOON’S ARSE
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THE WHITE POPPY White Poppies are worn in the run-up to Remembrance Day every year by thousands of people in the UK and beyond. White Poppies have been worn in this way for over eighty years. They are distributed by the Peace Pledge Union (PPU). There are three elements to the meaning of White Poppies: they represent remembrance for all victims of war, a commitment to peace and a challenge to attempts to glamourise or celebrate war. White Poppies recall all victims of all wars, including victims of wars that are still being fought. This includes people of all nationalities. It includes both civilians and members of armed forces. Today, over 90% of people killed in warfare are civilians.
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In wearing White Poppies, we remember all those killed in war, all those wounded in body or mind, the millions who have been made sick or homeless by war and the families and communities torn apart. We also remember those killed or imprisoned for refusing to fight and for resisting war. We differ from the Royal British Legion, who produce Red Poppies. The Legion says that Red Poppies are to remember only British armed forces and those who fought alongside them.
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We want to remember British military dead, but they are not the only victims of war. We also remember, for example, civilians killed in the bombings of London, Coventry and Belfast, and in the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima, Baghdad and Kabul. White Poppies symbolise the conviction that there are better ways to resolve conflict than through the use of violence. They embody values that reject killing fellow human beings for whatever reason. Nearly 100 years after the end of the ‘war to end all wars’ we still have a long way to go to put an end to a social institution that even in the last decade has contributed to the killing of millions.
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From economic reliance on arms sales to renewing and updating all types of weapons, the UK government contributes significantly to international instability. The outcome of recent military adventures highlights their ineffectiveness and grim consequences. The best way to respect the victims of war is to work to prevent war in the present and future. Violence only begets more violence. We need to tackle the underlying causes of warfare, such as poverty, inequality and competition over resources. A temporary absence of violence is not enough. Peace is much deeper and broader than that, requiring major social changes to allow us to live more co-operatively. A message originally associated with Remembrance Day, after the first world war, was ‘NEVER AGAIN’. This message slipped away. In response, White Poppies were developed in 1933 by the Co-operative Women’s Guild to affirm the message of ‘NO MORE WAR’.
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Many of the activities around Remembrance Day are detached from any meaningful attempt to learn the lessons of war. Arms companies allow their staff to pause work for the two minutes’ silence. Politicians who plough billions into nuclear weapons lay wreaths at the cenotaph. Arms dealers sponsor Remembrance events even while their work makes war more likely. In 2014 for example, the British Legion Young Professionals’ ball was sponsored by Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest arms companies. Lockheed Martin plays a major role in manufacturing the Trident nuclear weapons system. Each Trident missile is capable of killing far more people than the 888,000 people represented by the Red Poppies that were displayed at the Tower of London at the time.
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Working for peace is the natural consequence of remembering the victims of war. If, for example, we were remembering the victims of road accidents, we might well do so by working to prevent further road accidents. This logic, which would apply in other areas of life, is rejected by those who seek to misuse Remembrance Day to promote militarist values that only make war more likely. from http://www.ppu.org.uk
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Crickey ... a virtual keyboard, use it at your own peril SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 14
hey, beware, capitalism, war, brexit and trump go together like slugs and lettuce ... and there are some arseholes tossing off in this salad, ffs!
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Artwork: Alan Rutherford
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Writing worth reading Photos worth seeing
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http://www.coldtype.net
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Artwork: still unknown
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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? [is this the only letter we have? ... (‘yes’, ed.)] 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 President Donald Trump and his campaign to trumptrump-trumpety-trump all over the world. As Britain’s government is a happy lapdog of US mischief in the world ... and a blindly loyal follower of US foreign policy, what will our May government do now as Trump begins his Term of Ignorance?
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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 circus and their trumping flunkies – will come up with anything remotely of benefit to anyone other than the rampantly corrupt ruling class wankers intent on fucking us all. NOVEMBER 2016
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SHEEP IN THE ROAD Vol. 2 Alan Rutherford 2015
SHEEP IN THE ROAD Vol. 1 Alan Rutherford 2014
KAPUTALA The Diary of Arthur Beagle & The East Africa Campaign, 1916-1918 Alan Rutherford Updated 2nd edn: 2014
IRISH GRAFFITI some murals in the North, 1986 Alan Rutherford 2014
NICETO DE LARRINAGA a voyage, 1966 Alan Rutherford 2014
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SHEEP
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 have 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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