A Marxist Muslim Alliance? A response to the Different Euphemisms For Power


Sahar's article the Different Euphemisms For Power, passionately rails against Western, "Orientalist" misrepresentations of Muslims as a homogenous group, either as demonic bloodthirsty terrorists or as victims to be pitied. However, she makes sweeping statements about the support socialists have given the anti imperialist struggles in the Lebanon, Palestine , Iraq and throughout the Arab and Muslim world, criticisms that Socialist Worker, as the only named group, would like to respond to.

1) All the left require is the token Muslim who will be mere background for their protest down Queen Street and the like - just in case their argument needs further reinforcement and legitimacy. Importantly, 'Muslim' is treated as homogenous.

First off, we do not see our Muslim brothers and sisters as homogenous tokens. The Muslim world, like the Western world, is divided into rich and poor, and the working classes of Cairo , Jakarta and Baghdad are some of the biggest in the world. These countries all have indigenous socialist and trade union movements, such as the Peoples Democratic Party of Indonesia, the Lebanese Communist Party and the Revolutionary Socialist Organisation of Egypt, who are involved in fights for human rights and huge strike movements in their predominantly Muslim societies.

(2) Furthermore, Western ideas like Marxism, Enlightenment principles and so on are portrayed as 'universal' and dictate the narrative. In the end, we have both perceptions depicting the struggles of Muslims in so called 'universal' concepts and norms which are inherently Eurocentric.

If it is a Universalistic concept to believe that the world is divided into poor workers and the tiny rich elite minority who benefit from their exploitation (whether that society is Muslim or Western), and that we need to organise to fight these elites for workers and human rights, then yes, socialists plead guilty!
The argument about how economy and society should be controlled democratically is one that rages within Muslim society itself. Salma Yaqoob, an eloquent young woman widely tipped to be the next MP in Birmingham for the radical socialist RESPECT coalition, spoke poignantly about this issue-
"The presentation of Muslims as one reactionary bloc has to be challenged. The Muslim community is a mosaic of different communities, experiences and viewpoints. When I stood as a RESPECT candidate in Birmingham, the bulk of my political opponents were Muslims. A Liberal Democrat Muslim candidate, an independent Muslim candidate and a Conservative Muslim candidate all stood against me. I was also the one most attacked by Muslim extremists going around with leaflets at the mosque and in vans with loudspeakers saying I was no longer a Muslim because I work with atheists and this is haram."
"So I find myself in the curious position of having more in common with atheist, socialist activists than my own Muslim brothers and sisters. But for me it's an expression of what I understand to be Islamic notions of justice. If you want to call it socialist internationalism and I call it Islamic notions of brotherhood and sisterhood, I don't care- as long as it means that we work in solidarity with those who are oppressed around the world. That's why I'm proud to be one of the founders of RESPECT. We stand for an alternative to the politics of imperialism and neo-liberalism."

(3) Additionally, the socialist left denigrate the struggles of the Muslim world to nothing but a class struggle. It sees the disenfranchised and impoverished as means to its own end. Therefore, the interdependency of history, political complexity, cultural dynamics and ongoing human struggle for liberation is reduced by being solely represented through a socialist ideological framework, simplified and made superficial - stripped of any narrative but a workers' struggle against capitalism. The different cultural context is removed, and so is the essence of identity for many of the region.

Socialists are not the crude reductionists that Sahar paints in her article. Socialists unconditionally support genuine anti imperialist movements throughout the world, be it Hizbollah's resistance to Israel's invasion of Lebanon last August, the Intifada in Palestine, the peoples of East Timor, Aceh and West Papua struggling against the Indonesian state, or the 800 year old struggle of the Irish people for self determination from England. None of these are class struggles- these are cases of small nations being oppressed by another imperial power, and socialists are opposed to all forms of oppression, not just in the workplace. We also believe that the defeat of our rulers armies abroad helps weaken their power at home- the Left launched massive social struggles for Civil Rights, Womens Rights and Trade Union rights on the back of the mass movement they built in solidarity with the Vietnamese people in the 1960s.

(4) Granted, the left-socialist agenda is not sinister like its counterpart.

Socialists would like to reclaim the word sinister, which comes from the Latin, Sinistra, meaning Left! But then again, just like the words Black, Muslim and Arab, dominant ruling class culture makes anything "left field" sinister! (LOL). However, it must be noted that not all socialists are homogenous either- Tony Blair and Stalin both laid claim to the name, but there are rivers of blood between the Stalinist dictatorships of Russia or the war loving Social Liberals of New Labour, and those of a genuine revolutionary socialist tradition. Even amongst revolutionary socialists, there is an argument, with Socialist Worker proudly on the side of Muslim people fighting Islamophobia in countries like Aotearoa and Britain, whilst other groups such as the LCR in France supporting the governments ban on the Hijab in schools and Universities. This meant that there was a gigantic anti war movement in the UK (with over two million people marching in London) that united Muslim and non Muslim in a new left movement, whilst immigrant youth in France saw the rise of Islamophobic far Right parties such as Le Pen's Front National, and fought on the streets whilst the radical left looked on impotently.

(5) However, both draw upon an Orientalist precedent that is seeping in racist and imperialist notions that disfigure representations of 'Muslim' in order to possess them. To own them. To direct them. To contain and therefore control them. Thereby both perceptions arrogantly assume they can speak for Muslims.

Sahar here draws on the work of world renowned writer Edward Said and his caricature of Marxism in his masterwork Orientalism. Among sections of the anti-imperialist movement there is still a degree of suspicion of Marxism, fed by the postmodernist, post-colonial academic currents of the 1980s and 1990s. The noted Indian historian Irfan Habib critiques this misrepresentation of Marx.-

On a preliminary page of his Orientalism, Edward Said puts two short quotations, the first of which is from Marx: "They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented." An innocent reader will surely assume that Marx is here implying that Oriental peoples are incapable of representing themselves, and so Europeans (better still, European Orientalists) must speak for them. And, indeed, on p21, quoting Marx's words in original German, Said explicitly furnishes this precise context for his words.

There is a double sense in which this use of the quotation is unethical and irresponsible. The quoted words are taken from a passage in Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where he speaks not of the position of Eastern peoples, but of the poverty-stricken smallholding peasants of France at a particular juncture in the mid-19th century. "Since these peasants could not unite, they were incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master" (K Marx and F Engels, Selected Works, Moscow, 1950, vol I, p303).
Not only does Said thus coolly substitute eastern peoples for French peasants; by a sleight of hand he also converts Marx's word "representation", meaning political representation, into "depiction" (The Oriental people cannot depict themselves, and so the Orientalists representation does the job p21).

(6) So in the left case, Muslims are represented as silent, oppressed and victimised. They do not speak for themselves, because they are represented as such; they therefore need to be spoken for.

We also do not see Muslims as victims who need us to represent them. The comrades of Hizbollah and the Lebanese Communist Party fought arm in arm together against the Israeli invasion without our help. They defeated the fifth strongest army in the world. Socialists, however, see it as our international duty to organise protests and solidarity whenever people are under attack. Throughout the Western world, from London to Washington to Auckland , we have been at the centre of building broad, inclusive anti war movements that have helped undermine the support for war. Socialist Worker comrades argued hardest throughout the world for the Muslim community to be centrally involved in these anti war coalitions, against many pure secularists who wanted to marginalise them. These movements claimed the scalp of Aznar in Spain , Berlusconi in Italy, and have seriously damaged both Bush and Blair. Comrades in the Middle East can point to the fact that millions of Westerners marched against war and invasion, thus defeating the myth that this war was a Clash of Civilisations.

And it's not just the socialists of a 'Eurocentric' ilk who extended this practical solidarity. The socialist President of revolutionary Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was the only head of state to expel the Israeli ambassador from his country at that time- no Arab or Muslim head of state did anything similar. His image hung beside Hizbollah's Nisrallah from thousands of lamp posts in Beirut and Southern Lebanon as the cluster bombs fell and the resistance raged. The emergence of the Bolivarian Revolution and the Latin American radical left demolishes the myth that socialism is the preserve of old, European white men. The Socialism of the 21st Century is currently led by a brown, indigenous Latin American from the Global South.

Here in Auckland, socialists such as Kane Forbes helped to form the Students for Justice in Palestine Chapter in Auckland Uni with Zaem Bakesh in the early days of the Intifada in 2000. Our members in the Residents Action Movement (RAM) are currently working with the Muslim community to respond against the despicable Islamphobia of Ian Wishart's Investigate magazine. We have marched together for Palestine , Lebanon and Iraq, and will be united on the streets if there are any attacks on Iran. We do not look on our Muslim comrades as victims, tokens, demons or others, but our brothers and sisters in the fight for peace and global justice.

Further reading:

The Prophet and the Proletariat by Chris Harman

Israel the Hijack State by John Rose

Critical Notes on Edward Said by Irfan Habib

La Haine Est Dans La Rue- Personal Thoughts on the French Autumn Intifada by Joe Carolan

The Rise of the Climaction Movement

Joe Carolan

Icebergs floating off

the coast of Dunedin. Serious skin burn time down to a matter of minutes. Freak storms, citywide power cuts, massive traffic jams. Welcome to Carmaggedon, Aotearoa 2007!

The horrors facing the world as a result of Climate Change are becoming all too apparent, through films like An Inconvenient Truth. John Darroch's blog Auckland's Burning has some frightening descriptions of how Climate Change and a Peak Oil Crisis could trigger a System Collapse in Aotearoa-

As people begin to experience record high levels of unemployment and food shortages the country experiences a swing towards the right, rampant nationalism and racism are openly expressed by both the public and politicians. A highly right wing government is initially elected and rapidly cuts back on personal freedoms in the name of security- racism becomes ingrained in public policy.


New Zealand enters into a strategic pact with Australia and America and every attempt is made to continue our current consumption levels both of oil and other material goods. As part of our agreements with the states our army is placed on the front line in Arab and African nations with significant oil reserves. Our coal supply is almost solely exported to members of this alliance. The Kyoto protocol and all other such agreements are scrapped in favour of coal power generation, nuclear is also widely adopted.

While some people do start growing some of their own food it only produces a tiny amount of people's daily requirements. When things get desperate this food is stolen by hungry neighbours and mobs of hungry unemployed start raiding those with resources. This isn't helped by attempts to prevent rioting by nationalising all resources.

By attempting to sustain growth we use up all those resources we could have used for a transition to a sustainable culture. Eventually Auckland is sacked by rioting youth, abandoned and weeds are left to grow through the pavement as office towers collapse. The country fragments into several warring factions with hundreds of thousands of boat people fleeing Australia and Asia forming raiding parties which move through the country looting and taking land.[1]

A Hobbesian war of all against all. Mad Max meets Sleeping Dogs. Barbarism, not Socialism…

The growing realisation that we need a fundamental system change, not just an electoral parliamentary party or a specialised direct action NGO focused on media stunts, is leading to the birth of a neo-eco movement. The problem with either parliamentary MPs or traditional eco-warrior models is that both rely on a small group of specialised professionals to incrementally lobby for change or reforms. Now you can lobby with a vote or lobby by lobbing a Molotov, but these approaches leave the system that is destroying the planet intact. There is room now for a new way, one that sees neither MPs nor specialised NGOs as saviours, but that looks to a mass people's movement to stop climate change. This was the impetus around the formation of the Climaction group in Auckland.

Climaction was formed in early October, about a month before the International Day of Action on Climate Change on November 4th. Some groups and individuals who attended the first meeting in the Methodist Mission had worked well together on previous campaigns, testament to the fact that the Auckland radical left is light years ahead of some of the other cities on the planet in terms of respecting each others ideological differences but uniting in action around issues like Lebanon and Palestine, Youth Rates, union drives, the Lockout etc. But what was noticeable about that first meeting was the plethora of new faces- Climate Change is an issue that hundreds if not thousands of people out there will take action on. The challenge after the foundation meet was how to find and involve them.

We agreed on two major demands, one global and one local in focus. The first was for Free and Frequent Public Transport in the city, an achievable reform that would cut carbon emissions drastically in Auckland as well as improve the quality of people's lives. This demand could be repeated in cities elsewhere. The second was to move Beyond Kyoto and to campaign for a 90% reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2030. Kyoto was never enough, merely a global parking ticket, but we were no longer going to waste our breath trying to get idiots like George Bush to ratify it. What was required was a mass movement committed to direct action- a Civil Rights Movement of our generation. Comrades like Martin Luther King had started small in the 60s, but by the end of that turbulent decade, had triggered a mighty force for racial equality that was unstoppable. With his example as an inspiration, we decided we would block Queen Street on November 4th, and went off to spread the word. It was time for the Carnival against Climate Change!

We had a wealth of experience in committed individual activists from organisations like Greenpeace, the Save Happy Valley campaign and the Green Party. Socialists from SW (and Andrew from the Workers Party) were joined by anarchists and autonomists from Radical Youth. We also looked to the trade union movement, and found some great Pasifika people around Fala Haulangi from the Service and Food Workers Union. Comrades from Unite, Solidarity, the Tramways Bus union and the NDU helped to build the Nov 4th Carnival. Radical Youth activists put up hundreds of posters around the city.

RECLAIMING QUEEN STREET

As Nov 4th approached, there was some increase in tensions around taking direct action. Some favoured a conspiratorial approach, thinking it a mistake to advertise where and when we would reclaim the streets. Others predicted that there would be a bloody riot and the whole thing would end in tears. Climaction, to its credit, held its nerve, and told people the time and place to get to. Hundreds of people turned up on the day, and the cops seeing their numbers and determination, conceded to Liaison steward Jo Mc Veagh about 5 minutes before we were due to reclaim the streets.

Those who favoured conspiratorial politics now accused organisers of making deals with the police, or being involved in purely symbolic politics. Jogrrl, a veteran of many's an arrest for direct action, answers the critics-

I had been elected as Police Liaison by ClimAction in the week before the Carnival. A few days before it was on I phoned up and told them where and when we would reclaim the street. I didn't ask permission – I simply told them what we were going to do. I made sure to emphasise that I wasn't 'in charge' of the group because we're pretty democratic, but that I had the role of police liaison on the day. Our plans were no secret to them, and they were pleased to have a contact point for the day.

So it was all out in the open, and everyone knew exactly what was going on. This meant that we got the hundreds of people out there on the day, and the police took a 'low-key approach' – those were their words!

Some people said that it was symbolic, and yeah it was - we weren't under any illusion that we would close the street indefinitely. But we did what we set out to do – we closed the street.

A lot of people there hadn't been involved in any sort of civil disobedience, so that's why we wanted something "soft" – so that we would include as many people as possible, and so that we didn't end up having a scuffle with the cops. People won't come back if it degenerates into fisticuffs, but I think that overall, with the Peoples Assembly, the ice, the stalls - people had a positive experience, and that gives us something to build on. Maybe we can do something 'harder' next time…?

Malcolm France, Climaction and Happy Valley super activist-

Police permission was never asked for; we were going to reclaim the streets with or without their consent. The next Climaction Carnival will be bigger, and that is the key, the numbers. They can't arrest us all! It was also important to involve ordinary people and have a family friendly atmosphere- not all of the people in a mass movement will fit the activist stereotype, whatever that is! This movement is for everybody.

The People's Assembly held around a ton of melting ice was also fantastically dynamic, with both Auckland Regional Councillor Robyn Hughes and Elaine West from RAM speaking strongly in support of Climaction's demands for Free and Frequent Transport and a 90% reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2030.

Climaction hegemonised the debate; challenging Councillor Christine Caughey (Action Hobson) and Auckland Regional Council transport committee chair Joel Cayford whether they both supported the free buses policy. Councillor Caughey said she did, with Joel Cayford saying yes in principle but how was it going to be funded? A later vote at the Assembly resolved by a huge deafening majority that it should be funded not by taxing ordinary workers, but taxing the rich and the corporations. RAM's free buses song "Moving On" sung by our own Roger Fowler went down a storm as it wrapped up the assembly.

The Union input into the People's Assembly was also something mainstream environmentalists had not seen before- there were banners and reps there from the SFWU, NDU, EPMU, Unite and Solidarity. Fala Hualangi, the SFWU organiser leading the CleanStart campaign in the city for cleaners, spoke eloquently about the fate of her native Tuvalu, which will be under water in a few decades unless there is major change. She also passionately supported the demand for free and frequent public transport- not only would it help save the planet, it would be a major benefit for the working poor-

As a Tuvaluan who lives in New Zealand, global warming has always been a concern for me and my people because Tuvalu and its people are going to be the first victim of global warming. In 50 years time Tuvalu is going to disappear from this planet. Not because of our choice. This makes me angry and very sad because we are going to be the first environmental refugees and are forced to go somewhere else which is not the same as HOME.

As a union organiser for Service & Food Workers Union / Clean Start campaign we support Climaction because we need free and frequent public transport in Auckland as an environmentally responsible policy that will have major benefits for the working poor who rely mainly on buses and cannot afford a car.

If we are serious about saving the environment, then it is time for the whole community to come together and do something. Talking time is over, it is time for Action Now.

Fala is now a key ally of Climaction, and is promoting the Climaction demands within her union, and other "new unionists" there pledged to do the same. Grassroots workers get it- VaeVae Pokino, introduced by Solidarity Union's secretary Grant Morgan, represented a delegation from the striking Independent Liquor Workers in Papakura, overcoming his shyness to speak at his first ever rally, in front of a banner from Independent Liquor striking Workers supporting System Change Not Climate Change!

The other noticeable thing about the People's Assembly was it's wholehearted support of the word "Revolution" as synonymous with the slogan "System Change not Climate Change"- Revolution was used as a political term unapologetically, confidentially and joyously by speakers as diverse as myself from SW, Simon Oostermann from NDU, John Darroch from Radical Youth, and a woman called Josie in her 70s who made a beautiful speech at the end of the Assembly, saying that climate change would effect everyone on the planet regardless of race, gender or age, and that she would support a revolution to stop it. This got a huge roar of joyous applause from an audience not really expecting this from a woman in her 70s, but revolution is an infectious thing. Not since the heady days of the early anti capitalist movement of 2000-2001 have I seen an openness on the left to discuss anti capitalism and revolution as openly as this.

The day was also a great carnival and celebration- the music was rocking, with anthems of struggle and resistance echoing across an occupied Queen Street-

Mick Jagger's "Street Fightin' Man", Public Enemy's "Shut em Down", John Lennon's "Power to the People", Lindon Kwesei Johnson's "War ina Babylon" and the Manic Street Preacher's "Masses Against the Classes" providing a backdrop for the snowball fights, tobogganing, chalking, dancing, football, break dancing, samba, sunbathing, picnicking and networking going on in the middle of the street. Andrew the Polar Bear sat on a ton of melting ice, Food Not Bombs fed the masses, colourful banners and flags flew in the sun, 45 people joined Climaction.

"AL Gore! What's the score? The System's Rotten to the Core!"

Ten days later, Al Gore paid a fleeting visit to Aotearoa, meeting with a handpicked audience of NZ's corporate and political elite at Auckland University's business school. Despite the fact that over 100,000 Kiwis have seen his film "An Inconvenient Truth", Mr Gore only spoke to those who could afford a 950 dollar ticket, and declined Climaction's offer to speak to the people outside.

Gore's film raises many of the problems we will face in the next 20 years, but is none too hot on possible solutions to the climate crisis. Climaction launched its petition for free and frequent public transport in Auckland as a tangible and achievable reform that will practically reduce carbon emissions, and invited Al to be the first signatory. But lost in the media scrum, he was ushered away by security guards to an awaiting gas guzzling limo, which sped off to the kerosene spewing airport. We would have bought him a bus ticket![2]

Instead, the first signatories of Climaction's Free and Frequent Public Transport Petition were Green Party Leader Jeanette Fitzsimmons, Residents Action Movement Councillor Robyn Hughes and Mayor of Auckland's Waitakare City Bob Harvey.

Thousands more signatures will be gathered by Climaction over the next year- you can add your moniker online at www.climaction.org.nz

Many members of the corporate and political elite present at the Al Gore presentation did NOT sign, however. John Keyes of National, Minister Benson-Pope of Labour and arch ozone offender Peter Dunne of United Future seemed content that listening to a lecture for an hour was enough to save the planet. Auckland Regional Council chairperson Mike Lee defended his policy of motorway building, saying he would never support free and frequent public transport because busses ran on diesel. So one bus carrying fifty people causes more pollution than 50 cars, then Mike? Very scientific.

The Carnival and the protest against the Corporate Greenwashers at the Gore hui gave Climaction a little bit of mana and goodwill that we can use to build bigger and louder Carnivals with in the future. These are key to breaking out of the activist ghetto and involving hundreds of "ordinary Kiwis", be they students, workers or pensioners. At time of writing, we plan to spotlight New Zealand's biggest greenhouse gas, the methane from meat agriculture, by targeting multi billion dollar corporation Fonterra, in early March. Methane accounts for over half of New Zealand's emissions, as opposed to over a quarter for carbon. The next Climaction Carnival will see a 30 foot high Trojan Cow, belching stinky green gas, being pulled on rope by hundreds of student 'slaves' from Auckland Uni's Quad, down Princes Street to Fonterra's HQ. Call it a mass Moovement if you like. We need as much creative, material and financial help as possible (any good carpenters, prop builders or designers out there?) and will be going hard building student groups in the weeks beforehand on all major campuses!

CONSOLIDATION

It is this outward focus, seeking to involve people in mass action that is Climaction's hope to effect system change. At the moment we can pull hundreds, maybe a thousand tops, to our actions. But if we want to break out of activist ghettos and create a true mass movement, we need to be constantly involving new people in the struggle. That means looking to building grassroots Climaction chapters everywhere- in the colleges, in the unions, in other towns and cities. Nascent groups in Northland, Hamilton and Rotorua are beginning to emerge.

SO in 2007 we will form campus groups. We will need people to put their hands up as college reps to help grow those groups with us. Stalls in Orientation week on Unis everywhere are key. We also need to bring the two main demands into New Zealand's largest democratic organisations, the trade unions, in a more systematic way. Free and Frequent Public Transport would be of huge benefit to the working poor, and we want to mobilise the working class around this fight. We need union resolutions moved and voted on. We want union banners and members mobilised for future events- maybe a big union march for Free and Frequent Public Transport endorsed by all the unions would be an event to build towards. Union organisers need to follow the lead given by activists like Fala Haulangi from the SFWU.

Laile Harre, National Secretary of the NDU, supported the Climaction Carnival-

As awareness of climate change grows, the kind of TINA (there is no alternative) thinking that gave neo-liberalism the upper hand in the 80s and 90s must not be allowed to shut down a debate among the worlds people around the fair and democratic management of limited resources. Economists and management consultants will tell us that only the market can tackle this crisis. After years of market-driven waste and inequality, giving the market the power to fairly allocate the atmosphere would be like getting the Managing Directors of Foodstuffs and Progressive to set the minimum wage.

Mike Treen, Auckland Secretary for the Unite Union and a leading activist with Global Peace and Justice Auckland, also pledged his support-

It is welcome that the need to confront global warming is becoming mainstream common sense. What is disturbing is that the solutions being offered - taxes and carbon trading - offer no way forward and will penalise the poor.

Carbon taxes will increase the price of petrol which will be paid for by those using company cars but hit workers who lack adequate public transport. The obvious start is to have a massive increase in public transport available at little or no cost to the user. When that is in place we can think of taxes to encourage greater use not before.

While the World Bank estimates the value of the global carbon market nearly doubled from $11 billion in 2005 to $21.5 billion in 2006, there was no equivalent global increase in carbon emission reductions. In fact, they argue, as the carbon market has soared, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise - a stark indication that a more pragmatic and direct approach to cutting emissions is urgently needed.

These "market-based" so-called solutions only entrench existing problems, enrich the already rich countries and individuals while discriminated against the poor. We need an alternative that penalised the corporate polluters while protecting the poor. That will require democratic social and economic planning on a national and international scale - the world can't be left to corporate markets to fix.

MOVEMENT BUILDING

There are lessons for how to build this movement in the movements that have gone before. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s shows how civil disobedience and direct action can be used in a mass, democratic way, and is a touchstone for us against seduction by either parliamentary or NGO dead ends. The mass anti war movements built earlier in this decade show how we can build coalitions that mobilise hundreds of thousands, even millions, in the end.[3]

We also need to involve Aotearoa's large Pacific Island community, many of who's home islands face aquatic extinction in a matter of decades. This community is a powerful force that we have seen step up to the front line in struggles like the Progressive Lockout and the Tongan Democratic Revolution. We need to answer capitalism's rising tide in the Pacific with the rising tide of a new people centred Pasifika, and the concentration of working people from the islands here in Auckland can help spread the Climaction movement ocean wide.

The high points of the Global Justice movement preceding the Iraq War, from Seattle in 1999 to Genoa in 2001, give us many examples of creativity and strategy that we can learn from. During that time I was with a group in Ireland called Globalise Resistance, and we organised a Nuclear Meltdown Drill in Dublin, complete with a Springfield style Nuclear reactor, a gasmask clad Ministry of Disasters and Montgomery Burns was the capitalist hate figure on the placards. Air raid sirens blared as we ran through the streets of Dublin in a simulated mass panic, before hundreds of us were body bagged in a mass die in on parliament's gates. Traditional paper selling leftists learned through groups like GR that a bit of pre planned imagination wasn't the enemy! If it had just been the standard march from A to B with speakers, we wouldn't have got a quarter of the people out there.[4]

But we should never just be a radical street theatre group or a core of uber-activists chasing the next media stunt. We also need to get serious about organising the hundreds of people who do turn out to protest, and that means getting emails and mobile numbers down on paper. The Climaction egroup and blog are great democratic resources- we need their addresses stickered, stencilled and linked everywhere. There are no specialists in movement building- all of us need to use these tools to their utmost. There is no reason why we couldn't be an organisation of a thousand members on AP within a year, with the capacity to mobilise many more than that for the next International Day of Action on Nov 4th. Could we mobilise 10,000 then? People were stunned by the amount of people who marched in Australia this year- 40,000 in Melbourne and 50,000 in Sydney. If we are serious about affecting system change, we need to get into this mode of mass movement building.

The upcoming local elections in Auckland in 2007 are another front we should look at in the battle for Free and Frequent Public Transport. From the start, Climaction has been supported by the city's Resident Action Movement, which won near 90,000 votes as part of the Rates Rebellion in 2004. RAM are now going to make Free and Frequent Public Transport their key demand, and have a proven track record in mobilising the grassroots vote. A big enough vote could make this reform a reality sooner than we hope, but this is the radical vision we need if we are to avert climate change. Breaking out of the habit of just protesting like glorious underdogs always doomed to heroically lose. Can we win one city before we win the world?

There are lessons in the movement against Genetic Engineering here in Aotearoa that we need to learn too. Electoral politics can be used as a weapon in the struggle, for getting a message across, building a mass movement, even creating the support for a tangible reform like free public transport. But if we get 50,000 people out like the GE march did, we do not want to restrain that movement within parliamentary committees, papers, coalitions or games. Mass direct action will be more powerful if done by 50,000 than by 1,000. Free fare days led by bus and rail unions, climate camps, a ring around the CBD or mass blockades of what urban warfare strategists call key system punkts – nodes of the system vital to its economic functioning such as motorways or the Huntly coal burning power station, become real possibilities with such numbers.

Parliamentary games are odious to our movement- Labour used the Greens callously in the 2005 elections to discard them in favour of United Future and NZ First, for god's sake. And the role of the German Greens in power spell a dire warning for us all- they allowed the system to continue with nuclear power, supported the war in Yugoslavia which used depleted uranium weapons, and joined the neo liberal attacks on German workers and trade unions. Many grassroots members left in disgust and are now activists with the new Left Party there.[5]

IN its short existence, Climaction has brought a breath of fresh air to the Auckland political scene. One of the main things I like about Climaction is its tolerance of political diversity- I saw Globalise Resistance rip itself apart in Ireland by the inability of reformists, autonomists and revolutionaries to work together. Socialists are learning from ecologists, vegans and permaculturalists debate about solutions to meat agriculture. Tuvaluans find solidarity in their islands struggle for survival. Trade unions begin to take up ecological demands. But also growing is the realisation that we need a fundamental alternative to infinite-growth, exploitative capitalism- an economic machine that cannot control its own addiction.

At the Climaction conference in late November 2006, we looked at widening our demands after researching George Monbiot's ten point programme. His programme reminds me a lot of what Leon Trotsky called transitional demands- in order to achieve these logical, life saving concrete changes, we are going to need a revolution. Capitalism will not concede then unless challenged by a mass movement.

The Inconvenient Truth is that Climate change poses all the terrors of the Day After Tomorrow, Mad Max and Waterworld combined. The Hollywood disaster movie became all too real after Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, which should be a wake up call to us all. But it can also see the rebirth of the audience for revolutionary politics in a way not seen since the 1960s. This time, we cannot fail.

[1] Read John's blog at http://www.aucklandsburning.blogspot.com/

[2] Audio at http://xtramsn.co.nz/news/0,,11964-6563186-300,00.html

[3] See the excellent history "Stop the War- the story of Britain's biggest mass movement" by Andrew Murray and Lindsey German, Bookmarks 2005.

[4] See "Meltdown Drill" at http://www.freewebs.com/globalise/thefireslasttime.htm

[5] The German result is one more advance for the radical left in Europe. It follows the performances in recent elections by Respect in Britain, the Left Bloc in Portugal, the Red-Green Alliance in Denmark, and the defeat of the European constitution in the French and Dutch referendums. Behind the rise of this new left is a rebellion against the neo-liberal consensus that reigns at the top of European society.

IRISH TIMES- Monday, January 5, 2004

Not everyone will be supporting the EU presidency. For some on the left, itis an opportunity for street protests against the EU's "privatisation,militarism and racism", reports Joe Humphreys .

Neo-liberalism is a concept we will all be more familiar with in six month's time if a coalition of mainly left-wing protesters to the European road show has its way. The "Another Europe is Possible Alliance", drawing together socialist activists, trade unionists and public sector workers, among others, is hoping to make the issue a major talking point of the EU presidency.

More specifically, says Alliance facilitator Mr Rory Hearne, "we want to raise awareness in Irish people's minds about the hidden neo-liberal aspects of the EU constitution".

Rallying points include public spending cutbacks, increased privatisation of public services, changes to pension rights and the proliferation of services charges - all measures opponents trace back to the neo-liberal politics of Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s.

"Every government in the world since has mimicked those policies, believing that public services should only play a minor role, and that the market should be left to sort things out.

"Charlie McCreevy is the best example. He doesn't question the theory that public is bad and private is good," says Mr Hearne, who is doing a PhD in "neo-liberalism and privatisation" at Trinity College, Dublin.

A member of the Socialist Workers' Party, who was spurred into activism by the 1999 World Trade Organisation "Battle of Seattle", he believes Irish people will turn out in their thousands to demonstrate during the presidency.

Among those to attend a meeting of the Alliance in mid-December were Green Party, Sinn Féin and Socialist politicians, members of community employment schemes affected by Government cutbacks, and representatives of the civil aviation branch of SIPTU and the ASTI teachers' union. Bus and rail workers affected by public transport privatisation plans are also due to join the coalition, which, according to Hearne, will target three aspects of the neo-liberal EU, "privatisation, militarism and racism".

A major demonstration is planned for Dublin on May 1st when the presidency is marking the enlargement of the union.

"This is the day all the EU heads of State are coming together to pat themselves on the back. They are taking a day which is traditionally used to uphold workers' rights, and defend people who are exploited, and they are turning it into a celebration of neo-liberalism.

"We are not opposed to expansion of Europe but we are calling for a different type of Europe. Bringing these countries into Europe is going to do nothing for their people. It is only going to empoverish them more," stresses Mr Hearne.

Those who interpret the protest as an objection to enlargement "want to avoid the argument about where Europe is going", he adds. "We are neither against Europe nor xenophobic."

Several other protests are planned to coincide with Ministerial meetings, starting next month in Galway and Dublin for the employment and justice summits.

February 20th will see protesters convening outside a scheduled meeting of the Article 133 Co-ordinating Group where European civil servants are due to discuss privatisation and competition law in the EU.

Anti-war demonstrations calling for an end to the "US occupation" of Iraq and Palestine are planned for March 20th, International Anti-War Day, while a left-wing "counter-summit" is scheduled for April 2nd and 3rd, when EU Finance ministers are meeting in Punchestown, Co Kildare. The protest summit is due to tie into a "European Day of Action Against Neo-Liberalism", which will be marked by affiliates of the left-wing European Social Forum throughout the EU.

Mr Hearne notes there has been "talk" of some public service unions taking industrial action to coincide with the protests, and already SIPTU-represented taxi drivers have signalled their intention to demonstrate.

SIPTU official Mr Jerry Brennan remarks: "We would be very remiss if we did not concentrate on the EU presidency. Is there any union or lobby group who won't be focusing on it?"

The anti-car environmental group Reclaim the Streets, whose May bank holiday street rally in 2002 led to clashes with gardaí, is also planning civil disobedience actions during the presidency.

Mr Hearne predicts most protesters at street events will come from Ireland. "If Bush had come it would definitely have attracted more people from abroad.

"The approach we are taking is mass peaceful demonstrations. We are not going out in any way to be confrontational to anyone but to show in terms of sheer numbers that we do not agree with Government policy."

As to whether there may be clashes, similar to those seen at previous EU summits in other countries, he says: "I don't envisage it happening but I wouldn't rule it out completely if the State or the gardaí try to harass people or use tactics of fear or intimidation."

His view is echoed by Mr Joe Carolan, spokesman for Globalise Resistance, which is also to play a part in the protests. "If there is a big security operation, with police officers coming out in full riot gear, there may be tension. But I don't think anyone will want to react to provocation."

Time will tell whether the movement against neo-liberalism will capture the imagination of the Irish public, or become an irrelevant side-show to the presidency.

The Alliance is nothing but optimistic, however. Of the May 1st demonstration, Mr Hearne says: "We hope it will be bigger than the anti-war protest in Dublin last February. There is huge anger over the Celtic Tiger, the Government, and the direction Europe is taking, and we believe we can direct that in a positive way."

IRISH TIMES- June 15 1999
By FRANK MCDONALD, Environment Correspondent

The Housing Action Campaign has vowed to maintain a vigil outside a privately-owned flats complex in Dublin "for however long it takes" to prevent any of its remaining tenants being evicted.

Equipped with several mobile phones and at least one video camera, HAC members and supporters started picketing the entrance to St Ultan's flats on Charlemont Street yesterday morning, when a man was due to have been evicted.

Mr Karl Byrne, who is in his 40s, had been served notice by O'Mahonys, a development company, to vacate his flat in one of the two blocks on the site. Most of the other flats are already vacant and have had their doors boarded up.

His elderly neighbour, Ms Essie Kealing (76), is facing an uncertain future even though she has a life tenancy. Because she is virtually housebound, she relies on Mr Byrne to get her messages and walk her dog, a Jack Russell terrier.

Although there have been numerous break-ins at the complex, Ms Kealing said she was not afraid, pointing to the dog as her security. She said she is determined to continue living in St Ultan's, despite several offers from the developers.

"I couldn't move into one of those private flats because they have rules about not keeping pets, and there's no way I'm going to have George (the dog) put down. I've been living here for nearly 40 years and this is where I intend to stay."

She recalled that St Ultan's - or Teach Ultain - was built by the adjoining hospital of the same name. In the 1970s the complex was taken over by the Eastern Health Board, but sold subsequently to an English company, Boston Manor.

After an eight-year rent strike in protest at its treatment of the tenants, Ms Kealing won a life tenancy at a rent of £2.38 per week. Another elderly woman who had secured a similar deal died last month after a heart attack.

The current owners want to secure vacant possession of all 33 flats so that the site can be redeveloped. No planning application has been lodged yet.

Mr Joe Carolan, of the Socialist Workers' Party, said the presence of the picket - which is being supported by residents of Dublin Corporation's Tom Kelly Flats next door - had deterred the owners from seeking to enforce the eviction of Mr Byrne yesterday.

The picketers, all carrying HAC placards, were also visited by Mr John Gormley TD and Ms Patricia McKenna MEP, of the Green Party. Sinn Fein members are also active in opposing the eviction.

Ms Grace Lally, secretary of the HAC, appealed to newly-elected city councillors to honour the promises they made to deal with the housing crisis by persuading Dublin Corporation to acquire St Ultan's by compulsory purchase order, if necessary.

Attempts to contact the owners of St Ultan's yesterday were unsuccessful.

Irish Times, Friday, May 10, 2002

..

By Nuala Haughey and Alison Healy


Calls for Garda reforms, a Garda Ombudsman and the dropping of charges against all protesters at Monday's Reclaim the Streets march were made at yesterday's protest outside Pearse Street Garda station.

More than 1,500 people attended the protest, which began at Pearse Street at 6 p.m. and finished two hours later at Dublin City Council's Wood Quay offices. The event passed off peacefully and the mood was good-natured, although some gardaí were taunted along the route.

The demonstrators had a brief sit-down protest at the scene of last Monday's clashes outside City Hall on Dame Street, where gardaí had beaten demonstrators with batons.

Forty uniformed gardaí from several stations and several plainclothes gardaí policed last evening's demonstration. Several gardaí on motorbikes and a Garda van took up the rear as traffic reverted to normal.

Some of the demonstrators were dressed as "peace police", with one young woman wearing a plastic British-style police helmet and carrying an over-sized sponge mallet. She re-enacted scenes from Monday's demonstration, theatrically beating a demonstrator.

Banners were carried bearing slogans such as: "Beat me - I'm political", "Hugs, not thugs", and "Sak Da Gardaí".

Speakers said the protest was the start of a new mass movement. Mr Joe Carolan, a Globalise Resistance spokesman, said this movement was "for civil rights, equality and justice for all".

Mr Kieran Allen of the Socialist Workers' Party said the mass movement was "beginning to threaten those who held a corrupt grip on Irish society and they want to break the movement".

The Socialist Party TD, Mr Joe Higgins, said Monday's events were part of a pattern of police violence in every recent EU demonstration.

"If this happens in full view of the public and the television cameras, what happens night after night and weekend after weekend in the privacy of Garda cells and in barracks up and down the country?"

To great cheers, he said "massive demonstrations" would be organised when Ireland next hosted the EU presidency.

Ms Ivana Bacik, Reid Professor of Law at Trinity College, said the events on Monday were "nothing less than police brutality".

Cllr Ciarán Cuffe, a Green Party spokesman, said Monday's events were "an attack on civil liberties, it was an attack on democracy, it was an attack on the people of Dublin".

Sinn Féin election candidate Mr Dáithí Doolan said people complained that youngsters were not interested in politics, yet when took to the streets, they were attacked by gardaí.

Mr Doolan said the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, should resign if he could not control his force.

Chief Supt William Donoghue from Pearse Street Garda Station said his members had been briefed in advance of last night's event about their functions in relation to policing protest marches.

"We have a good track record of policing marches and policing demonstrations. The odd one goes wrong from time to time," he said.

He declined to comment on last Monday's event as it was the subject of an internal Garda inquiry.

Three general election candidates joined a dozen demonstrators outside Waterford Garda Station in Ballybricken, in protest against what they described as the "unnecessary" force applied by the gardaí during a demonstration held by the Reclaim the Streets movement in Dublin this week.

Irish Times, Thursday, May 9, 2002

By Jim Cusack, Security Editor and Nuala Haughey

A rally tonight in Dublin city centre to protest at Garda brutality during Monday's anti-capitalist demonstration is expected to draw large crowds of protesters.

The organisers of the demonstration outside Pearse Street Garda station say it is aimed at defending the right to protest and will be "absolutely peaceful".

While organisers say the event will be rigorously stewarded, it will provide a difficult test for the Garda. Members of the force beat several demonstrators with truncheons at Monday's protest and arrested 24 people in all.

As an internal investigation into the Garda's handling of Monday's demonstration got under way, the Garda said last night a member from a north inner city station had been reassigned to indoor duties.

The Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, said he was "very disturbed" by footage of the violence and the internal Garda investigation would be thorough. "We will look at all aspects - the criminal aspects, the disciplinary aspects - and establish the facts," he told TV3 News.

The inquiry is being headed by Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey, head of the Dublin Metropolitan Region. A team of officers will prepare files, some of which will go to the Director of Public Prosecutions. This could result in criminal prosecution for assault.

Tonight's rally is organised by the anti-capitalist group, Globalise Resistance, which supported but did not organise Monday's Reclaim the Streets event.

Speakers will include representatives of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, trade unions, the Green Party, the Labour Party and the Socialist Workers' Party, according to Mr Joe Carolan of Globalise Resistance.

A debriefing chaired by Assistant Commissioner Hickey took place on Tuesday when an outline of the events leading to the violence in Dame Street was given by the senior officers involved in managing policing on Monday.

It heard that because the protesters had no elected spokepersons to liaise with gardaí, officers had to guess where the demonstration was heading. It made its way from O'Connell Street to the south quays, up to the Civic Offices and then down to Burgh Quay where a "street party" was held.

As the Burgh Quay event broke up, protesters moved up the south quays again and a large detachment of gardaí was then moved up towards the Civic Offices. However, as the main detachment of gardaí under the command of an inspector from Pearse Street station gathered, a group of agitators moved to Dame Street and began blocking the road.

At about this point a call went out for reinforcements from other stations. Gardaí from the North Central C Division arrived in Dame Street. Another van carrying gardaí from another station in the South Central B Division had an accident and did not arrive until after the trouble in Dame Street was over.

The group from the C Division included a number of young gardaí, including some who are still on their two-year probationary period.

Gardaí deny there was any call for gardaí to remove their identifying numbers from uniforms. However, a number of gardaí clearly did not have any district numbers, which should be displayed on tunics or shirt epaulettes.

Senior Garda sources say resources were stretched and the reinforcements arriving in the city centre might have been under the impression that the protest was beginning to get out of hand.

Meanwhile, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said he understood the gardaí. "The situation was quite difficult and there certainly were some heavy-handed actions."

He said at least one garda was "wielding a baton in a very indiscriminate way" and this was being investigated.

Gardaí at Pearse Street station said there were no plans to seal off streets for tonight's demonstration but if sufficient crowds gathered outside the premises, traffic would be ..ed down Tara Street.

Protest targets world press event
Irish Times: Monday, June 9, 2003

Kitty Holland

The mainstream media's "biased" coverage of the recent war in Iraq as well as its portrayal of anti-capitalist protesters were given as the reason for protests planned at the World Association of Newspapers congress in Dublin today.

Gardaí plan an increased security presence at the conference being attended by some 1,200 newspaper publishers, editors and executives, at the RDS in Ballsbridge.

The annual conference will discuss current trends and future strategies for the newspaper industry.

A number of organisations will take part in two protests today - at noon at the RDS and at 8 p.m. at the Guinness Storehouse in James's Street where delegates are due to have dinner.

The Irish Anti-War Movement, the Socialist Workers' Party and women's groups will take part in the protests being organised by the anti-capitalist movement, Globalise Resistance (GR).

Mr Joe Carolan, GR spokesman, said "media diversity" was being "crushed under the power of huge corporations", such as Time Warner and News International.

Corporate print media was not a free press, he said, and the mainstream media's coverage of the war amounted to it becoming a "weapon of mass deception".

Mr Richard Boyd Barrett, spokesman for the Irish Anti-War Movement, said coverage of the war had failed to question the images or the spin put forward by the Coalition forces.

"And we will all be protesting at the tendency of the media to present all demonstrators as mindless extremists," said Mr Barrett. "At any of the big protests the only thing the media wants to talk about is whether there'll be violence, rather than looking at the issues that have given rise to an enormous global movement."

Mr Carolan said today's protests were neither anti-journalist nor anti-printer. "We're on the side of the workers and free press," he said

commonalties and differences between the Great Irish Famine (1845-1852) and famines of the modern world.

INTRODUCTION

"During Ireland's famine of 1846-7, which killed a million people, large landowners routinely exported food to Britain as poor peasants dropped all around them. Substitute Ireland for developing countries, large landowners for transnational corporations, and Britain for the Western world, and little has changed. Food is still being exported from countries where there is gross hunger and people are dropping as a result". John Madeley, Hungry for Trade- How the poor pay for Free Trade, Zed Books 2000, p43

Over 150 years later, the Great Irish Famine is remembered world wide as one of the most brutal in human history. The experience of this calamity has left deep feelings of solidarity with peoples who face similar famines in the modern age, with many ordinary Irish people contributing what they can to the emergency appeals of NGOs like Concern, Goal or Trocaire. There are many similarities between what happened in Ireland and what is happening now in the Global South, with many of the myths used to justify or ignore the suffering of the Irish peasantry finding currency in modern political discourse. However, there are also important differences with modern famines that must be explored to understand why hunger continues to kill poor people in a world of plenty.

At the turn of the millennium, 790 million people did not have food security. By and large most of these people were living in the Global South, the so-called "Third World".

" South Asia contained 283.9 million hungry people, East and Southeast Asia 241.6 million, Sub-Saharan Africa 179.6 million, Latin America 53.4 million AND the Near East and North Africa 32.9 million. Over 20,000 people a day are dying from the effects of hunger." John Madeley, Hungry for Trade- p26.

Three years later, this situation has worsened. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations published the "State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003" report in December last year, to measure "progress towards the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals". It estimates that today around 842 million people are suffering chronic hunger.
FAO director-general Jacques Diouf writes in the report, "Why have we allowed hundreds of millions of people to go hungry in a world that produces more than enough food for every woman, man and child? Bluntly stated, the problem is not so much a lack of food as a lack of political will."
(The FAO report is available at http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/006/J0083E/J0083E00.HTM )

Indeed, this most striking similarity between the Irish famine and modern famines is that both take place in a world of plenty, and that it is not the lack of food that kills people but its unequal and unjust distribution. One of the most powerful condemnations of the capitalist economic system, then and now, is that it would rather dump food to keep prices and profits high, than give it to hungry people. Rather than see itself on trial, this economic system encourages certain myths to explain away famine, which were active in 1847 as much as they were today. The major ones worth focussing on are that famines are caused by (a) natural disasters, (b) lack of adequate food supply, (c) over population and (d) lack of economic development due to "corruption" or "Native backwardness".

(a) Famine as a Natural Disaster

An important difference between the Irish and modern famines lies in the natural factors that brought about the crisis. In 1845-1852, this was the Potato Blight, the fungus Phytophthora infestans which wiped out the staple food crop not only in Ireland, but in Canada, Cornwall, Devon and many other countries. In modern times, different natural factors such as drought are supposedly the root cause.
Whatever the natural causes, none of these factors can adequately explain why there was not mass starvation in Cornwall or Canada, or why drought is a regular occurrence in the South-western United States yet there are no major famines there. Yet drought in the Sahel region of Africa causes huge human suffering.

Every year in the West, old people and the homeless die during the winter of hypothermia, yet we do not blame the weather alone for causing these deaths. We realise that other factors such as housing, poverty and the ability to pay gas, electricity or heating bills are a major contributing factor. We look for social explanations to explain these deaths- the same logic should apply in the Global South.

Drought is not new to the region but the experience of famine on its present scale is.
"Throughout human history, human societies have worked to protect themselves against the vagaries of nature. Especially in large areas of Africa, periodic droughts have always challenged human survival. Precautions against their consequences have invariably been part of human culture"
World Hunger: 12 Myths, Francis Lappe and Joseph Collins, Earthscan 1988, p17

Drought impacts differently on different regions, depending on the resources available. A satellite photograph taken of the Sahel in 1975 showed a rich island of arable land surrounded by drought. During the Sudanese famine of 1985, huge amounts of water went to service the Gezira cotton plantation.

Traditionally the millet granaries of the Sahel region were designed to hold grain for four years and grain was only eaten in the third year of storage. This food reserve protected the population against the dangers of climatic change. Yet the impact of Western Imperialism changed the economies of this region, persisting economically after formal political independence was achieved. Doctor Tewolde Egziabher of the Ethiopian Environmental Protection Authority claims "the West has helped to prevent Ethiopia becoming self sufficient in food. Western governments and international financial institutions have insisted that the private sector must control the food supply. They have prevented the government building granaries and food depots that could store grain from one year to the next." Socialist Worker (UK), Jan 5th 2004 (www.swp.org.uk)

The impact of economic imperialism vastly exacerbated the role of natural factors such as drought or blight in causing famine. Ireland was one of the first nations colonised by Britain since 1169. The British Empire in Ireland developed its strategies that it would later use in the Global South- with various plantations removing land from tribal or clan control, replacing the ownership of land under British feudal system. By the time of Irish Famine, most Irish land was owned by a small class of Landlords, many absentee, living in Britain. The bulk of rural peasantry was forced to rent small holdings at huge cost-

"Karl Marx estimated that in 1836, £7 million was sent abroad to absentee landlords. As late as 1872, 774 landlords owned 10 million acres in Ireland-half the total surface of the country"-
Kieran Allen, Is Southern Ireland a Neo Colony? (Bookmarks Ireland, 1990), p12.

The new economic system forced poor farmers to grow "cash crops" to pay for land rent- making them artificially dependent on one major subsistence crop- the potato was cheap, nutritious and abundant. Here we see parallels with famines of the modern era- many nations now experiencing hunger are using huge tracts of arable land to grow cash crops such as cotton, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, and sugar for sale in the global market, to help pay IMF/World Bank loans. During the famine in Senegal, 55% of the arable land was growing peanuts for export.

The economy of Sudan was forced by British imperialism to produce coffee, tea and cotton for export on its most arable land. Farmers had to pay taxes in cash, forcing them to work on government farms and huge agricultural schemes like the two million acre cotton plantation scheme in Gezira, the most arable land in Sudan where the Blue and White Nile meet. After independence from Britain in 1956, the scheme was continued to provide hard currency to help service its debt.

The Act of Union in 1800 imposed huge taxes on Ireland which had to pay two-seventeenths the cost of maintaining the Empire- the impoverished colony was supposed to pay tax on equal basis with Britain. "Throughout the 19th Century, tax per head in Ireland increased by 140 per cent while it decreased by 25% in Britain"- K Allen, p12, Is Southern Ireland a Neo Colony?

In Ireland, huge resources went to pay absentee landlords their rent, in the Sudan huge resources went to pay IMF/World Bank debts, and in both the best land was used to produce cash crops for export, leaving the poorest people dangerously reliant on staple crops such as potato, rice or millet. If drought or disease strikes these crops, thousands will starve amidst plenty. Which leads to the second myth-

(b) There's not enough food
During the famine Ireland was an exporter of food. John Mitchell, the Young Irelander revolutionary, claimed that "During all the famine years Ireland was actually producing enough food, wool and flax to clothe not nine but eighteen million people, yet a ship sailing into a port with a cargo of famine relief grain was sure to meet six ships sailing out with the same cargo".

The Act of Union in 1800 transformed the Irish economy, making it an agricultural supplier for the British Empire. The Corn Laws created a virtual monopoly within the empire for Irish corn-
"In 1803, Ireland exported 146,000 barrels of wheat and 439,000 barrels of corn. By 1822 this had risen to 776,000 and 1,948,000 barrels respectively"
D A Chart, An Economic History of Ireland (Talbot Press, Dublin) p90

As the famine took hold, food continued to leave for Britain. "In the three months up to 5 February 1846, 258,000 quarters of wheat and 701,000 hundredweight of barley, worth about a million pounds had left with over a million quarters of oats and oatmeal. The head of the British treasury, Charles Trevelyan, refused to allow grain to be used as relief because it would destabilise the price" -Mark O Brien, Hope Amidst the Horror- the Socialist Answer to World Hunger, Socialist Workers Party 1992, p15.

Dr Abdullah El-Tom, in his paper Towards the Concept of Famine Criminals finds the same pattern at work in the modern famines of Africa- "The mid 1980s famine of Africa was not caused by food shortage as such either. At the very time Bob Geldof and his other Band Aid associates were airlifting food to the Sudan, Sudanese grain was being exported to feed the Saudi camel industry". He argues that many African governments had at their disposal enough grain to feed the starving- "Had the Sudanese government recirculated only 2.5% of its local grain production, famine would have been averted. Estimates for other African countries are higher, running at seven to eight per cent for Kenya and Tanzania".
(c)Overpopulation-
Thomas Malthus, the reactionary Scottish preacher, argued that population growth outstripped exponentially the ability of producers to increase food supply, and that famine was a necessary natural process of eliminating overpopulation. Malthus wrote about Ireland that "in order to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a greater part of its people should be swept from the soil". Christine Kineally, This Great Calamity, p8.

Ireland in 1840 had over 8 million people, by the Census of 1851 this had fallen by 2 million (1 Million deaths due to starvation and disease, 1 million emigrated). One major difference between the Irish famine and modern famines is the sheer number of people killed- one eighth of the population died. By comparison, the Sahel famine of 1973 killed perhaps one hundred thousand in an area inhabited by twenty-five million. In Ethiopia in 1972-4 about two hundred thousand are held to have died out of a population of twenty-seven million. Ireland's Famine is called Great for a reason.

Another major difference was the size of the Diaspora fleeing the country to Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States. Hundreds of thousands continued to leave Ireland every year after 1847, finding new homes in the slums of New York or London. Modern immigration controls preclude the poor of the Global South this ability to emigrate to richer lands. Very few Ethiopians or Sudanese were offered refuge by the Irish government during their famines.

Famine, whether in Ireland or in the Global South, predominantly impacts on rural areas. Few people on the eastern seaboard surrounding Dublin died in 1847, yet whole villages in Mayo were wiped out.
In the Sudan, the urban population of Khartoum largely survived whilst poor peasants in the rural provinces starved. "Paradoxically, famines take place in the countryside, where people do produce, or could produce food. Though towns may experience shortages and rationing, they are generally exempt from outright famine. Because city people are concentrated and therefore potentially dangerous, they are taken care of by the State, which is anxious to prevent upheavals and preserve its own power"- Susan George, Ill Fares the Land, Penguin 1990, p52

In modern times we are encouraged to think of the Global South as overpopulated, with huge cities such as Mexico City or Sao Paolo bursting at the seams. However, for the Malthuses of this world, the world always seems over populated with poor people of colour rather than Scottish preachers or British Imperialists! If population density is the cause of starvation, how come it's in the Sudan with 16 people per square kilometre and not the Netherlands with 363 per square kilometre? Population size has no relevance whatever in explaining hunger- behind the ideology of over population lie some deeply racist assumptions-

During the 19th century, British Imperialism used racist ideas to justify its colonisation of Ireland, India, and Africa. At the time of the Irish famine, many cartoons depicted Irish as simian, ape like creatures, drunken and violent, dressed in ragged clothes, with a propensity for laziness, brutality and ignorance. (Many of these have been documented by Liz Davis in her excellent book- Ireland, the Propaganda War.) Social Darwinists created racists ideas that whites were superior to black people, and that different races had innate, genetic characteristics. Imperialism needed to depict the people it colonised as "savage"- the role of the Imperialists was to take up "the White man's burden" and help civilise the natives. Here, the Irish can be blamed for their lack of development rather than an economic system that structurally imposed underdevelopment, and dismantled any independent Irish economic development. The same process happened when Europeans colonised the Global South.

(d) Lack of Development due to native backwardness or "corruption"
Nowadays such crude racism is politically unacceptable in much of Western political discourse, yet the process of blaming the victim for the crime continues. Famines continue to happen in the Global South because they are now ruled by corrupt national leaders whose policies have led to under development. One major difference between the 1847 famine and modern famines is the absence of significant conflict or war in Ireland in the 1840s. "Of the 31 drought affected countries in Sub Saharan Africa in the 1980s, only five have experienced famine. Each has occurred in the context of war: Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, Chad and Ethiopia" (Frances Lappe et al, World Hunger: 12 Myths, p17.) To this we can now add Somalia- however, this ignores the historical role that imperialism played in politically destabilising and economically retarding the development of these nations before independence.

In the 20th century many nationalist movements have succeeded in driving out colonial imperialism, but then have been forced to participate in unfair terms with the global economic system. This has led to what is referred to as "Dependency", with a Global economic core and periphery. The Core nations ( usually the old mother countries of Empire) sell industrial goods and commodities, whilst the Periphery nations (the ex colonies, now economic "neo colonies") provide raw materials at rock bottom prices, prevented by tariffs from selling their own manufactured goods. Corrupt nationalist politicians form what is called a "Comprador class"- the success of nationalism creates a new bourgeoisie within its own country, who continue to exploit the urban and rural poor with no real interest in development. The Brasilian sociologist F H Carduso claims that this led to the development of "Dependent capitalism" in the Global South.

The geographic location of Ireland is more problematic, and here again lies a major difference with modern famines. By and large, the nations that neighbour societies experiencing famine now are poor themselves- in contrast, Ireland was supposedly part of the Core- the United Kingdom of Great Britain AND Ireland. Communications and distance may be an excuse used by modern Famine Criminals- yet one million people starved only a few hundred miles west of the metropolis of London, then the centre of the most powerful economic Empire the world had ever seen.

Racist myths of "lazy, ignorant savages" justifying underdevelopment mask the role of Imperialism in retarding and stopping the emergence of native Irish industry. In the 1790s, Ireland's population and economic potential rivalled Britain's- the massive but unsuccessful revolution of 1798 wanted to repeat the example of the American and French revolutions. The leaders of the Revolutions wanted independent economic development in the former colonies. After 1798, the British Empire had huge fears of another rebellion- there followed a deliberate economic policy of de industrialisation (except in "Loyal" areas following plantation in Ulster) formulated by the Act of Union in 1800. Massively expanding British economy was allowed to destroy the Irish economy which lacked the protection of its own state

The Dublin Parliament was abolished and tariffs on imports were reduced to 10%. The revolutionary Wolfe Tone observed that "England chokes our rising commerce at every turn". In 1825, three million yards of woollen cloth were imported, by 1835 this had risen to eight million. By 1838, the Irish woollen Industry was only supplying 14% of its own domestic market. L M Cullen, The Economic History of Ireland since 1600 (Batsford, London 1972), p106.

After the famine, people were replaced by livestock. "The Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1847 saw a shift towards pasture. Ireland became a huge cattle ranch- by 1903, 81% of the country was under pasture. Kieran Allen, Is Southern Ireland a Neo-Colony?, p12.

So, rather than Ireland's underdevelopment being due to its population innate laziness or lack of a Protestant work ethic, it was caused by economic and political policies planned to keep it as an agricultural storehouse. Colonial powers enacted these same policies in the Global South, continuing to exclude commodities from their markets by prohibitive tariffs on Southern products. The role of these economies was to continue to provide the raw materials, leading to what was called "the development of underdevelopment" by Andre Gunder Frank in his seminal work Latin America, Underdevelopment or Revolution?

Famine, Globalisation and Resistance
Perhaps the most distressing similarity between the Irish and modern famines is the similar economic orthodoxy used to justify economic policies whilst people starve. In the 1840s, British politicians followed the laissez-faire model of classical political economy, as advanced by Adam Smith. This called for no interference or regulation of the free market, which would be guided by the "invisible hand" of economics through supply and demand. During the Irish Famine, the first editor of The Economist, James Wilson, answered Irish pleas for public assistance with the claim that 'it is no man's business to provide for another'. He asserted that official intervention would shift resources from the more to the less deserving, since 'if left to the natural law of distribution, those who deserved more would obtain it'. (BBC British History Timelines- at www.bbc.co.uk)

150 years later and these economic ideas are being revived by the Neo-Liberal governments of the West and their allies in the economic and political elites of the Global South. The landlords have been replaced by corporate led globalisation and the increased power of multinational companies. Yet throughout the world we have seen the emergence of a powerful movement for Global Justice, often called the anti globalisation or anti capitalist movement. Central to this movement's demands are fair trade between North and South, the cancellation and abolition of unjust Debt and the disbandment of the discredited Bretton Woods institutions- the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank

There is a myth that hungry people are too weak to change things, that they cannot rise up and change an unjust system. However, the Great Irish Famine created a powerful feeling of injustice that helped to fuel the growing Irish revolutionary movement. Famines, then as now, produce anger and resistance to Famine Criminals.

There has always been a realisation by a minority that famines are caused by capitalist or imperialist economic systems- this leads them to search for political, economic and social alternatives. In Ireland, this saw the rise of a nationalist movement, with an ideology of radical republicanism influenced by the French and American Revolutions. Central to its beliefs were the need for independent development and a just redistribution of land.

During the Irish famine there were many undocumented acts of resistance to the Famine Criminals. "Hundreds marched to the House of Lord Sligo in Westport, County Mayo. In Macroom and Killarney protests were held. Troops were sent to protect fields of crops and ports. Riots occurred outside food depots, troops were used to assist evictions. Seven landlords were shot ... Notices appeared urging people not to pay rent, while many landlords received threatening letters".- The Irish Famine, Vasco Purser, July 1995, Socialist Workers Party pamphlet, p20.

One year after the Famine, revolutions ignited across Europe, finding Irish expression in the Young Ireland movement. One of its leaders, James Fintan Lawlor stressed the importance of the land question- "To him, national independence was an abstract idea which by itself would never fire the rural masses of Ireland. What mattered to him were the immediate evils of the land system- the high rents, the lack of security"- T W Moody & F X Martin, the Course of Irish History, Mercier Press 1967, p262

He was to inspire Michael Davitt, the Chartist and socialist activist who led the Irish Land League in the "Land War" of the 1880s. The League was based around the Three F's- fair rent, fixity of tenure, and freedom of sale, and used the tactic of the Boycott amongst its political weapons. "Thirty years later a series of bad harvests and an agricultural slump in 1879 threatened many with another famine. This time the Land League were able to provide sufficient leadership to the protest movements and the Government was forced to introduce a Land Act".- Vasco Purser, The Irish Famine, p20

Dr Abdullah El-Tom, in his paper Towards the Concept of Famine Criminals notes similar movements of resistance in Africa. "In 1985, Numeiri of Sudan was ousted from power through a popular uprising led by his starving population. Eleven other governments in Sub-Saharan Africa also lost power following the mid 80s African famine".

Millions of ordinary people in the West want an end to the exploitation and impoverishment of their brothers and sisters in the Global South- the Jubilee 2000 campaign to abolish "Third World" debt has the biggest petition in human history with over 40 million signatures. The US has already spent nearly $100 billion on the war in Iraq. It has also spent around $30 billion on "homeland security". Yet, according to the UN, just $80 billion a year would provide universal access to basic social services, give everyone clean water and reduce poverty enough to eliminate malnutrition.

The Indian Eco-feminist, Vandana Shiva has argued that "Globalisation of food markets is an instant strategy for creating hunger". "The export of flowers took off in a number of African countries in the late 1990s, again raising questions about the impact on food security. In Kenya, for example, there has been a big expansion in horticulture, producing flowers for export on land around lake Naivasha that was previously ranching land and small farms. Kenya is already short of land for producing food, and there are conflicts between the schemes and Maasai cattle owners, who claim the land as theirs" p55 John Madeley, Hungry for Trade

Where there is a choice between using land to feed the people who live there or growing flowers for export, we must choose the first. The 21st century needs a global Land League, like the Movementa de les Trabjadores Sans Terra in Brasil (The Movement of the Landless Workers). Debts to the IMF and World Bank should be cancelled, and a fairer price for the Global South's commodities paid. These are the aims of the Global Justice Movement, the hope amidst the horror. Famine is not a natural disaster, but a human made process. If we are to stop it once and for all, we will need an international movement in both the Global North and South. This is one final major difference from the Irish famine- a nationalist revolution in an age of globalisation would merely replace the local elite. "Another World is Possible", but only with a renewed politics of internationalism.





Bibliography
John Madeley, Hungry for Trade, Zed Books London 2000
T W Moody & F X Martin, the Course of Irish History, Mercier Press 1967 Dr Abdullah El-Tom, class handout paper Towards the Concept of Famine Criminals
The Irish Famine, Vasco Purser, July 1995, Socialist Workers Party pamphlet
British History Timelines- at www.bbc.co.uk
M Cullen, The Economic History of Ireland since 1600 (Batsford, London 1972)
Susan George, Ill Fares the Land, Penguin 1990
M O Brien, Hope Amidst the Horror- the Socialist Answer to World Hunger, SWP 92
Kieran Allen, Is Southern Ireland a Neo Colony? (Bookmarks Ireland, 1990)
World Hunger: 12 Myths, Francis Lappe and Joseph Collins, Earthscan 1988
D A Chart, An Economic History of Ireland (Talbot Press, Dublin
FAO reprt 2003: http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/006/J0083E/J0083E00.HTM )

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