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Weekly Worker 607 Thursday January 12 2006
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Worker
Less than gorgeous
Don't be shy!
Communist Party members have been picking themselves up after the recent festival of pagan excess and slowly - a tad too slowly in the view of this columnist - easing back into political work. An important immediate task facing many of them is that of contacting sympathetic readers of our paper to ask them either to take out a standing order or up their existing one. Despite the inevitable indolence of the holiday period, I am pleased to report a reasonable start to the campaign. Standing orders have swelled by just under £100 per month. (For the purposes of the campaign, we are counting both those comrades who increase/initiate SOs direct to the Weekly Worker and those who are responding to the campaign by contributing regularly to the CPGB, the organisation that carries the main burden of sustaining this paper financially). In particular, thanks to Cardiff party supporter GD, for the very fine 150% increase in his quarterly contribution to the paper; to comrade JD for his extra £5; to the critically minded SWP comrade, TM, for showing his appreciation of the contribution our paper makes to his work with a new £15-per-quarter donation; to newcomer CM for his useful tenner and to BP - already one of our top hitters - for his stout £30 extra per month. Well done to all these comrades and to the others who, without being badgered, have taken the initiative to front up. Plenty more party members and closer sympathisers are making reassuring noises about increasing existing standing orders - as soon as the season of good will to all humans and GBH to all credit cards recedes. We are confident they will come through for us. But what will make the qualitative difference is a real increase in the number of sympathetic readers starting to make regular donations. As we are starting to engage with these comrades, we are noticing a degree of shyness. Comrades are actually a little reticent about taking standing orders for small regular amounts - it almost seems they believe they have to commit 50% of their gross income plus four pints of blood before we take them seriously. Our paper is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the advanced, organised section of our class in the UK. The overwhelming majority of the comrades who read our paper still disagree, perhaps strongly, with many of the programmatic positions of the CPGB. Yet they still appreciate our press’s openness and commitment to principle. They have to understand that they are precisely the type of comrades who can make a difference. They must start contributing. Trust me - there are enough of you out there to make a qualitative difference to this paper’s financial position if you all did your bit. If that happened, our paper’s ability to intervene, to be an effective organiser for what could be broadly called the revolutionary democratic trend in the workers’ movement, would be greatly enhanced. Naturally, alongside this special appeal to raise standing orders, we are running our nuts ’n’ bolts monthly fighting fund to keep the paper on the road. Special thanks go to comrade TD - a CPGB veteran of many years who is a constant source of inspiration - for his monthly £60. Also thanks to comrades NJ (£15) and CR (£10) for showing the way with donations via PayPal on the web (they were two among 13,289 e-readers last week). With their help, plus gifts from YF, BJ, CS and RT, our basic monthly fund now stands at £185 - slightly lagging behind the rate needed to meet our £600 target. More news and feedback on our standing order campaign
next week. In the meantime, don’t wait. There are SO forms available
to download from our website or to order from our box number. Don’t
hang around for our overworked cadre to phone you. Now’s not the
time to be shy - make a commitment today. Robbie Rix
|
Our
organisation needs to raise £1,000 extra per month in standing orders
by the end of February. This is to stabilise the finances of the
Weekly Worker and - crucially - to give us the opportunity
to enhance our paper’s print quality, content, associated web presence
and circulation.
Is it possible for working class politicians to utilise an established cultural form, designed for a completely different purpose, in order to bolster an oppositional message? Lawrence Parker takes a look at Galloway in the Big brother house
The only remotely entertaining thing about George Galloway’s stay in the Celebrity big brother house was the look on Michael Barrymore’s face when the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow made his entrance. Predictably, Galloway is in the first batch of nominees up for eviction this week, although Jodie Marsh’s personality meltdown may yet save him.
Galloway’s appearance on the show does throw up an interesting question. Is it possible for working class politicians to utilise an established cultural form, designed for a completely different purpose, in order to bolster an oppositional message?
Celebrity big brother enforces a message about the process of celebrity itself, in that cutting off these people from the outside world tallies with the mainstream view that never allies ‘stars’ to any social formation or group. Rather, celebrities are sold to us as being interesting in and of themselves and not because of what they represent.
As Galloway has found, this is barren territory for someone who has thrived off the success of the anti-war movement. Thus, in the episode where the nominations were announced, some of the younger members of the house basically came to the conclusion that Galloway was an MP, so what the hell was he doing in the Big brother house? In nominating him for eviction, the aforementioned Jodie Marsh said: “He’s old enough to be my dad, but I feel bullied by him and what he said to Chantelle [another house member] about her being uneducated. I don’t think George is a very nice person.”
I’m not sure that Galloway has actually been bullying, but these responses suggest the incomprehension he has encountered as a serious politician in an environment designed to pick over individual foibles and nothing else.
Also, in suggesting Galloway has been a dull house member I am well aware that this reflects my own ideological conditioning and expectations. I am turning on to see if anyone can top Les Dennis talking to the chickens about his wife having affairs (on a previous year’s Celebrity big brother). I want entertainment and am not necessarily interested in watching George talking to Rula Lenska about meeting Saddam Hussein.
This should be an object lesson to those on the left who inform us that reflecting and getting our hands dirty in what ‘normal’ people are involved with will automatically lead to gains. Simply put, there is no ‘neutral’ set of ideological forms in capitalist society. Everything has been corrupted in the same way that Celebrity big brother has been corrupted. Of course, such forms have to be engaged with, but Galloway’s experience here should maybe indicate that we need to be a bit more savvy in the way we approach them.
But in a sense perhaps Galloway thought he would be on home ground. The current political scene is marked by a thorough absence of any meaningful popular participation and democratic debate. Organised politics today is thoroughly ‘managerial’: stage-managed conferences being the most obvious signifier. And, of course, Respect is no different to any of the more established political parties on this score. Indeed, the whole process of ‘celebritisation’ in regards to Galloway in Respect tells a certain tale.
Celebrity big brother (erroneously referred to as ‘reality’ television) is itself a completely ‘managed’ and manipulated environment. This is shown by the placing of the non-celebrity, Chantelle, in order to fool the other members that she was famous. It didn’t work, but the manipulative intention is clear. Indeed, the organisation of the whole Big brother experience is like an SWP central committee wet dream.
Perhaps they should adopt it for this year’s Respect conference.
