All has gone rather quiet on the Corbyn front. The rather shambolic beginning to his leadership, as demonstrated by the u-turn on Labour's attitude towards the Tories' ludicrous bill to make it obligatory to run a surplus "in normal times" (who is going to prosecute a government that refuses to do this?), immediately raises the question of why the Labour party ever even considered supporting it in the first place. The change of policy at least suggests a recognition that the opposition's job is to oppose. It's a happy coincidence that only a few days later the Canadian general election has returned a government with a healthy majority committed to running a deficit as its main financial policy in order to stimulate growth through infrastructure spending. And when interest rates are around zero, this makes perfect sense. I have a feeling that if Mr. Corbyn can begin to assert his own beliefs more purposefully as a leader with an overwhelming mandate for change, there is a growing groundswell of opinion in the country at large that will respond positively to his unorthodox leadership style. We can see that informed opposition to the austerity programme - really just an ideological drive to reduce the size of the state and increase the growth of privatisation - is gathering visible global support.  If Mr. Corbyn continues to try to lead through consensus within the PLP, he will look ineffectual. The gulf between the Blairites and the constituency that the Labour Party traditionally represented, but abandoned under Blair, cannot be bridged. There is an excellent analysis of the media's representation of Mr. Corbyn in the current 'London Review of Books' which takes to task not just the obvious culprits of the right -wing press, but the appallingly partisan approach of the BBC. At a time when the BBC needs all the friends it can get, its news coverage has become little more than the mouthpiece of the establishment. Anything critical of the neo-liberal orthodoxy is treated as a kind of madness by BBC reporters and interviewers.They remain uncritical apologists for the West's continuing imperial policies abroad ( witness the unquestioning acceptance in its reporting of the American explanation for its bombing of a Medecins sans Frontieres hospital in Kanduz, Afghanistan, killing twelve medical staff and ten patients, three being children. This attack lasted for over an hour and was described by the Americans as an 'accident', 'unfortunate collateral damage', 'allied forces under fire from Taliban gunmen' etc. Even though the explanation changed four times in three days, all were unquestioningly accepted by BBC journalists with no hint that the American version is a hotly disputed view, both by MSF itself, who regard the attack as quite deliberate, and the many witnesses to this massacre). BBC news coverage, in its bulletins and 'analysis' programmes, is now a national disgrace. The LRB article can be found here, though you may have to copy and paste: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n20/paul-myerscough/corbyn-in-the-media

Imperial powers have, of course, always used terror to advance their national / strategic interests and, had I not been a young child, I could have found examples of British atrocities inflicted on indigenous peoples in many of its 1950's colonies - Malaya and Kenya being two obvious examples. I would also have found the media of the day equally supine before authority and equally as anxious to represent the world according to the version authorised by the Imperial powers as the media is today. But I was a child, and, like most children, my memories are bound by the familiar parameters of my council estate, my school and my family. Some memories are still very potent, though I could not place them accurately in time beyond belonging in the period I was at Junior School.
 One was being very cold in the front room of our flat during a particularly bitter Winter. We had no coal or wood for a fire and, of course, central heating did not exist. My mother suddenly said, "Oh, I'm fed up with this" and she got up, went into the kitchen and returned with one of our kitchen chairs. She proceeded to break this into pieces (it already had a weakened back due to me falling backwards on it when tipping it at the table), put paper and bits of the chair into the fire, and set it alight. After a moment of uncertainty, the dry, painted wood of the chair began to spring into bright yellow flames. More wood was thrown on top; it died down momentarily, then once more sprang into life. Soon we felt the fierce heat of a fire burning with an almost frightening intensity. We were warm - no hot - and I was caught up in its brilliant beauty, holding out my hands as close as I could get them to the flames. It lasted only a few minutes. The chair was all too quickly consumed and we were soon back to smouldering cinders, and more cold than we had been before.

Another was the sight I chanced upon when looking out of the window of our front room one afternoon of two grown women physically fighting on the pavement outside. Street fights were a commonplace for us kids, but adults seldom figured, though on one occasion when Georgie Burton - yes, it was him again - was in the midst of a fierce fight with another boy on the green his dad emerged from their flat, not to break the fight up, but to stand on the side-lines offering Georgie useful instructions on where to hit his opponent to do most damage. "In 'is face, Georgie, NOW! Now kick 'im 'ard where it 'urts" and so on. Another victory to what was now team GB. The sight of two women fighting was immediately fascinating. They weren't just playing at it either. They were grabbing each other by the throat, the hair and the arms each trying to wrestle the other to the ground. I was transfixed. One of the opponents I didn't know, but the other was immediately recognisable and very familiar to me. Yes, you guessed it - Georgie's mum! She was an amazing sight at all times. She was tall, always wore a leather pencil skirt so tight that she walked like a duck out of water, black blouses with plunging neck-lines that revealed a great deal of breasts that Marilyn Monroe would have envied and a mass of brown hair that would either be bouffaned up several feet above her head, or flung down her back and wrapped around her waist. The effect was completed with stiletto heels that seemed to defy the laws of physics in keeping her upright, if not steady. However, now, in this conflict situation, the stilettos came into their own. While one arm was wrapped around her opponent's neck, the other whipped off a shoe, raised it high, and brought the sharp point down on her opponent's head. She had clearly absorbed, with admirable diligence, every aspect of the Burton strategies for dealing with hostile situations. The other woman collapsed to the floor, struggled to her feet with blood trickling from a small wound on her head and slowly made her way back to the next block of flats. What the fight was about, I never found out, but as entertainment value for small boys, this was hard to beat.  

I said in an earlier post that I would come back to my grandfather on my father's side - Bromley's only entrepreneurial communist who had seen how a capitalist system could bring him clear benefits if he simply totally ignored his core beliefs. (This was fairly typical of his whole approach to life. I have never forgotten him pointing a fork at me when I was a child, a fork with a large sausage impaled  on the end, and solemnly telling me that being a vegetarian was the only healthy way to live). I'm away for a few days in an internet free zone, so shall come back to this curious character next post.

to be continued.......