On Vacation!

Apologies to readers about the recent lack of posts.

I am, quite frankly, on a vacation of sorts.

I have been on island since Bermuda Day, and will be for a little while yet, before returning to fun-filled fieldwork back in Scotland.

While it was my intention to canvass Constituency 20 during this time, I have to admit I haven’t done as much canvassing as I would have liked so far.

Productive Meetings

Instead of canvassing I have instead been holding a series of meetings with various MPs, civil servants and NGOs on a variety of issues which I feel are either relevant to the constituency or of general political relevance.  My intention being to be more informed while conversing with constituents.

The bulk of these meetings so far have been on seniors and health issues, municipal reform, political reform and PATI.  I’ve found the meetings so far to be quite informative and constructive, and I believe the remaining ones will be also.

In addition to these meetings I’ve also been able to attend some sessions of parliament, and to speak to some party members of both parties, which has also been quite informative and constructive.

I will be resuming formal canvassing soon however, but if anyone has a particular issue that they would like to me to address, please let me know, and I will do my best to do so.

BeachLime’s Return

I would however like to give a ‘shout out’ to BeachLime who has recently resumed to some active blogging, and is a welcome return to the blogging scene.

New Onion, 21 Square and Politics.bm, despite a brief flurry of postings, all appear to have lapsed into a degree of dormancy, although Vexed continues on quite regularly.

I’ll try and post somewhat more regularly, on current events and thoughts on various issues (including Syria, the UK and the current rupture in Turkey).

For a Secular Bermuda

Society for a Secular Bermuda

Several years ago, in 2004, I set up a small group called the ‘Society for a Secular Bermuda’ (SSB). 

This group originated within the Regiment, largely as a result of reaction towards what I can only describe as Christian chauvinism at Warwick Camp. 

Camoflaged covered New Testaments were being handed out, the Ten Commandments were being put up in barracks, soldiers were marched in full military parade to Church services and soldiers in the canteen or at muster in the parade square were subject to forced prayer.

Myself, a strong advocate of secularism, and a number of other soldiers, some Christian, but also including non-theists, Muslims and other faiths, protested this, to the point of engaging in non-violent ‘civil’ (to the degree one can call it civil in a military setting) disobedience.

This later merged with other issues internal to the Regiment, relating to pay, training and so forth, but as regards the Christian chauvinism itself, I think I can safely say we got the Ten Commandments removed from the barracks, effectively ended Church Parades, got rid of camo-Bibles and won the right to ‘fall-out’ from prayers (we were pushing for minutes of silence, but still, baby-steps).

Beyond Warwick Camp?

We established communication with the UK National Secular Society with the objective of formal affiliation as a UKOTs chapter, and briefly engaged with non-Regiment issues.

Primarily, we handed out some leaflets at one of the first demonstrations relating to amending the Human Rights Act (in reaction to Church interference on this issue), and waged a campaign to get a large six-foot cross removed from the General Post Office.

I can’t say the groups active members were very large, and it fizzled out as I directed my focus instead on fighting for socialism within the PLP from 2006 on. 

I had hoped other members would continue, but as we left the Regiment the energy kind of deflated.

Time for a ‘Resurrection’ of the SSB?

In light of the recent National Day of Prayer, I wonder if it may be time to revisit this initiative, to re-launch it?

If anyone is interested in working with me on this, please get in touch.

Comments in the RG

I think it was the long-memory of the RG, about my involvement with the SSB, as their main leader and spokesperson, that they contacted me about the National Day of Prayer that was held yesterday.

My full comments, of which most was printed in the RG, are as follows:

Premier Cannonier may be right that without spirituality we are all doomed, but I find it disappointing that our society has yet to see a proper division of Church and State.

Such a separation of Church and State is, I believe, an essential element for promoting equality between all citizens.

We are an island of many spiritualities, denominations and religions or philosophies.  Religious individuals have a right to attend religious gatherings, but our elected officials should only attend these in their private capacity, rather than blurring the line between spirituality and State privileging of one religion over another.

If people want to pray, go ahead.  But leave that to the Churches or other religious groups, and keep the State separate.

I am particularly concerned about the de facto forced indoctrination of school children through this.  There is no place for religion in our education system.

If parents wish their children to attend particular religious education they should do that on their own time, not in the formal school system.

I’m pretty shocked at the comments though (by Premier Cannonier).  I’m a militant secularist, pretty much, and find his comments offensive to be honest.

He doesn’t speak in my name, of the non-religious (up to a fifth of the country, I think, in the last census), nor the Muslims, Jews, Bahai’s, Hindus or other religious groups.

Representatives of State should not be attending this in an official capacity, and they most certainly shouldn’t be making such Christian-centric/chauvinistic comments like that, in my honest opinion.

And the school children were there?  Public school?  Why would they be taken out of school for such an event?  The private religious schools (BI, MSA – even BHS & Saltus, as officially Anglican) I can maybe understand, but not the public schools.

The Inappropriateness of Mr Bloomberg

This is just a quick note, as I’m a little buried with work at the moment.

I just wanted to comment briefly on the recent comments of Mr Bloomberg, the current Mayor of NYC and sometimes resident of Bermuda.

Speaking, in his official capacity, at the christening of the Norwegian Breakaway cruise ship in NYC, in attendance with the Bahamian Prime Minister Christie and Premier Cannonier, Mr Bloomberg said:

“Premier Cannonier is a new Premier.  They have a new government in Bermuda.  And I can tell you it’s like night and day.”

“This has always been a wonderful island and today it is an awful lot better than before.  It keeps getting better every time.  People love this new government.  And tourists will as well.”

Now, I don’t have a problem with Mr Bloomberg speaking well of Bermuda, talking about how he loves visiting and assuring potential visitors that they will enjoy Bermuda too.

I don’t even mind him noting that Bermuda has a new government and Premier.

That’s all well and good.

What I do have issue with is when he goes beyond this and actively takes sides in Bermuda’s internal politics.

By describing the difference between the PLP and OBA government as being ‘like night and day’ and that Bermuda is ‘an awful lot better than before’, he is actively taking a side in Bermuda’s politics, that of the OBA.

I don’t care if non-Bermudians have an opinion on our politics.

I do care when a political representative, especially one as powerful as the Mayor of NYC, voices his opinion publicly.

If he was a private citizen – not a powerful politician – it wouldn’t matter.  But due to his public position he has no right whatsoever to interfere with our internal affairs – which is exactly what he has done with those statements.

Mr Bloomberg, stick to US and NYC municipal politics.

You may have a house in Bermuda, but that does not qualify you to interfere in our politics.

One even doubts if you have sufficient knowledge of our people to even form a judgement, your house in Tuckers Town being a general gated community for ultra-rich foreigners.

Your new Secretary of State, John Kerry, may still voice the imperialist mentality that the Americas are the US’s ‘backyard’, but that mentality is rejected outside of your new Rome.

We are not your backyard, and you, sir, have no right to interfere in our politics.

May Day 2013

Yeah, I’ve been a bit quiet lately. I’ve been busy, and not able to focus on the blog.  I actually spent May Day itself sat at my desk writing, rather than joining in with a May Day parade.  

Happy May Day!

Workers in Greece, marking May Day 2013

May Day

The first day of May is one of the most important dates on the socialist/revolutionary calendar.  I’ve written about the history of May Day itself elsewhere, and I’m not going to go over it again here.  Anyone interested may find this article of use there.

From a Bermudian perspective, I have long called for May Day to be a public holiday, and so it should come as no surprise that I fully back the call of the various union leaders for the same.

That the PLP, which first brought the proposal to parliament in the 1980s, only for it to be hijacked by the UBP who adopted the North American September holiday (itself a calculated plot on the part of the USA initially, and Bermuda latterly), but for the PLP to have failed to make it a holiday between 1998 and 2012 remains a distinct mark of shame for the PLP.

Indeed, the failure of the PLP to truly push for this, making May Day a public holiday, was one of the key reasons that I eventually, effectively, ‘gave up’ on the PLP.  True, they made a rather half-hearted attempt in their last year or so, but fundamentally missed the point by going out to consultation and retreating in the face of business opposition.

Not that this was exactly unexpected.  The complete abdication on the part of the PLP to advance even minimum wage (let alone living wage) or overtime legislation (both times in the face of business opposition) set precedents, and the failure of the PLP to build on their constituency boundary changes with additional political reform (campaign financing, the Senate and proportional representation) betrayed both a lack of vision and backbone.

Quite frankly, the PLP have long since ceased to have the ambition of transforming capitalism – and by extension Bermudian society – and have no more vision beyond a limited managed capitalism and oligarchy.  They are no longer a viable vehicle for anti-capitalist politics.

Taking Stock

May Day is a day to both look back at the history of the working class and attempts to build a better world.  But it is not just about remembering past struggles (as important as this is for future struggles).  It is also about taking stock of the current situation and making plans for the future.

We are now into about the fifth year of the first great depression of the 21st Century.  While some areas are more affected than others (Europe, especially southern Europe, being particularly under attack), on a global level, the economic crisis continues, even if certain local factors mask it here and there (such as the USA).

I don’t think it is much of an exaggeration to say that the logic of neo-liberalism has been found wanting, and that capitalism remains in a prolonged economic crisis.

And yet, despite this economic crisis, capitalism remains politically secure.  There is no real threat of a sudden revolutionary rupture.

If anything, it is the right-wing which is benefiting the most from the crisis, politically.  Throughout Europe, and also the Middle East and North Africa, the spectre of some sort of neo-fascism is looming, not socialism.

Neoliberalism continues, zombie-like, but in Italy and Greece, as well as throughout the European continent (including the UK, with the current ‘rise of UKIP’ – which has largely absorbed the collapsed BNP vote) neo-fascist tendencies or potentials appear to be stirring.

What’s Left? 

The Left is not exactly absent, however.

In Greece there is the example of SYRIZIA, and in Spain the Indignados, are providing useful examples of a new Left.  And in Latin America, despite the death of Hugo Chavez, the general project of 21st Century Socialism continues, with the newly elected Maduro calling for a deepening of the revolution.

[It should be noted here though that, at least in Venezuela, but also Bolivia, it appears the the US is ratcheting up its attempts to reverse the Left there.]

The collapse of the Soviets and the counter-revolution in China, combined with the Third Way shift of social democracy, have essentially discredited the socialist project, even if many (myself included) would take issue with accepting either as being truly socialist, beyond the superficiality of rhetoric.

And yet, the notion of class and socialism is gradually re-asserting itself in popular consciousness.

The failed Occupy! movements helped reintroduce the notion of class-warfare, right in the heart of the capitalist centers, and the Arab Spring (despite being subsequently hijacked) held open the possibility of a new center-periphery dynamic, not unlike the hope that the national liberation movements of the 20th Century offered.

While both the Occupy! and Arab Spring movements have, effectively failed (at least for now), they did serve as a momentary revolutionary rupture, and have helped breathe new life into a new Left.

The sparks of revolution remain.

2007 Notes on ‘Progressive Labour’ – Part Two

Below are some notes I drafted in in the weeks after the 2007 election, as an analysis of the PLP’s decade of power.

At the time I was a member of the PLP, and involved with the youth wing and on the Central Committee.

A Decade of Power

When considering the outcomes in socio-economic terms that the past decade has seen, and the cost, in terms of widespread popular passivity and cynicism, along with growing skepticism and renewed resistance, I see no strong reasons to alter my perceptions of the new PLP hegemony.

The two elections since the 1998 victory have seen little of the passion for change that swept the PLP to victory.

Bermudian democracy, as seen in the passive 2003 and 2007 elections, has failed to deepen the movement for human liberation.  Rather, we have seen our democracy become a ‘disillusioned’ democracy, not unlike those seen elsewhere.

To a degree, then, the 1998 election saw the ‘normalisation’ of our democracy in terms of liberal conceptions of democracy, but it also saw a betrayal of the desire for popular democracy.

The Political Landscape

Although the continued existence of the relic UBP still retards the development of new, critical, oppositional voices, in spite of this new voices are beginning to be heard.

The rich in Bermuda continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer.  It is clear that the PLP is pushing a neo-liberal capitalist agenda, co-opting Black wannabes into the charmed circles of the ruling elite.

A decade of PLP hegemony has enabled some Black Bermudians to profit immeasurably while simultaneously failing to alter the economic structure that disempowers the majority of the population.

This in itself is not surprising in retrospect (or even before) in that the dominant faction of the PLP was – and continues – to be a Black middle-class, along with an aristocracy of labour bureaucrats.  Their political aspirations were, and are, limited to the first stage of revolution, of expanded liberal democracy, and not substantial radical change.

Despite the PLP’s decade of failure, there remains many workers who still believe in the PLP as both their liberator and guarantor of a better life now and in the future.

What are the prospects?  One would predict an increasing demoralisation of the PLP base with the continued PLP failure to meet their aspirations of a progressive and labour party.  While the UBP remains moribund it leaves the PLP subject to a slow decline, where the UBP may benefit (if it does not decay further and instead maintains its current, albeit limited, support) more by default than active victory.

That is, the PLP risks a passive decline and sleepwalking away from power.  At what rate this will be realised is hard to answer, being subject to multiple external and internal factors.

What does seem clear now though is that the probability of radical change from within the PLP is unlikely without a significant event.  And even then it would depend on the balance of forces and the rate of ideological decay within the party to determine whether such an event would really lead to anything beyond a cosmetic change.

Despite the internal euphoria from the recent election result, the decline is evident and, all things remaining equal, terminal, even if the tempo is unclear.

It is increasingly unlikely that the radical resurgence can be initiated from within.  The options remaining then are continue within on a doomed path, forge a new direction outside (with the hope of articulating and inspiring change within from outside) or opting out altogether.

2007 Notes on ‘Progressive Labour’ – Part One

As the PLP engages in a thorough post-election self-analysis and restructuring, I thought it may be useful to revisit some of my old writings on the subject.  

I made these notes in the weeks after the 2007 election, as part of my ongoing analysis of Bermudian politics.  At the time I had been a rejoined the PLP (in late 2005 or early 2006) and was involved with the youth wing, Progressive Minds.

One wonders, how accurate where they?  And what relevance are they for today?

The Crisis of Progressive Labour

Progressive Labour’s crisis today is a crisis in the meaning of ‘progressive labour’.

There are today a lot of people who call themselves pro-PLP, but there has perhaps never been a time when the label was less informative.

The nearest thing to a common content of the various ‘progressive labours’ is a negative – anti-UBPism.  On the positive side, the range of conflicting and incompatible ideas that call themselves progressive labour is quite diverse.

In very real terms, for many in the progressive labour spectrum, they have eliminated any specifically socialist demands from the program.

Democratic Socialism, Social Democracy & Stalinism

My conception of progressive labour is perhaps better known as democratic socialism.  This differs from the social democracy/Blairism that has eliminated virtually all socialist positions in that I stand for a socialist society, for social revolution.  It differs from the Stalinist model in that it is based on ‘socialism-from-below’ – on grassroots direct democracy and not on authoritarian centralisation and bureaucratism of power.

Though the social democratic (of which the PLP generally represents, historically) and Stalinist model are very different, they share the concept of ‘socialism-from-above’.  Social democracy  dreams of ‘socialising capitalism from above’, in this case.

What unites the many different forms of ‘emancipation-from-above’ is the conception that emancipation must be handed down to the masses by a ruling elite; that only a centralised organisation would be successful.

My view, of ‘emancipation-from-below’ is the view that emancipation can only be realised through the self-emancipation of the masses in motion, mobilised ‘from below’ in a struggle to take charge of their own destiny, as actors – not merely subjects – on the stage of history.

Post-1998 Transition

Just what has the transition from the old UBP Bermuda to the ascendant PLP ‘New Bermuda’ achieved?

The whimper that the ‘New Bermuda’ vision of 1998 has become today constitutes a setback not only for domestic Bermudian progressive and socialist development, but also on a Caribbean regional perspective.

While there are still some within the organised labour movements who still think and speak of an alternative development, this is relegated to a minority subversive current.

Even those critical of post-1998 developments are often resigned to the Thatcherite mantra of ‘there is no alternative’.

Long before November 1998 it was clear that the PLP was in ascendance, a process accelerated by the fracturing of the UBP in the mid-1990′s.  But as the picture of what kind of PLP would come to assume power became clearer, it was increasingly obvious that the result of its ascendancy would not prove to be so great a triumph for ordinary Bermudians as originally hoped.

Looking back over the last decade of PLP governance, its trajectory away from its popular perception of its founding goals is particularly striking.

To Critique & To Be Critiqued

Interestingly, my criticisms of the post-1998 developments have been both well received and strongly opposed by various militants in the struggle.  In general, those who have been formerly prominent in the struggle and now intimately linked to the new PLP hegemony – those who benefit most from the new PLP status quo – perhaps unsurprisingly are the most opposed to these criticisms.  But among what may be considered the rank-and-file grassroots, the criticism is readily received and welcomed.

This speaks to the co-optation of the former leaders of the struggle, who have forgotten the struggle in exchange for the trinkets of power.  They squabble over position, over titles of prestige, over the trappings of power and in so doing they squander the point of being in power, and use their power to oppose those who maintain the struggle.

And why?  Partly because they fear, in a ‘king of the hill’ mentality, that these others seek only to replace them in the seats of power and prestige.  And partly because they fear being exposed as traitors to the struggle, and that the struggle would do away with the colonial mentality that they express in their co-optation and trinkets.

Amongst the grassroots, the benefits of the new PLP status quo are marginal.  Life remains as it was under the UBP, only the face of management has changed.  They see but the swapping of one oligarchy with a new one, albeit an oligarchy in the making.  As the conditions of life remain unchanged, so does the conditions of the struggle.  And so the critique of the new PLP status quo cuts through the rhetoric of the co-opted leadership and speaks to the need for continued struggle.

The co-opted leadership resists this, and struggles to suppress such critique, both formally and informally.  And in so doing they risk losing all, even the marginal gains that 1998 has achieved for progressive labour.

2004 Notes on the PLP – Part Three

Some more notes from 2004, during a period when I had left the PLP but was analysing the current situation and potential options.

Against Factionalism

The PLP would be unable to discharge the historic mission of ‘progressive labour’ if it dissolves into factions.

It can prevent the dangers of factionalism only be developing and consolidating the new course towards workers democracy – democracy of the grassroots.

Bureaucratism of the party apparatus is precisely one of the principal causes of factionalism.  It ruthlessly suppresses criticism and drives the discontent into the depths of the organisation, either through formal penalties or by bureaucratic stifling.

Mechanical centralism is necessarily complemented by factionalism, which is at once a malicious caricature of democracy and a potential political danger, both in terms of open civil warfare leading to self-destruction, or the pig-headed plowing into the rocks by stopping up the ears to criticism of the captain with his hand on the wheel.

A Crisis of Democracy

Only through ruthless criticism will we avoid potential pitfalls, and thus the party must encourage critical thought always.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does politics.  If decisions are not made by the people, for the people, they will be made instead by default, by bureaucrats, the rich or opportunists, for their own interests, regardless of how they try to fool the people into thinking otherwise.

The main crisis for our nation today is one of conceptions of leadership and democracy.

The retreat away from democracy, particularly within the PLP, has seen a de facto coup of careerist apparatchiks whose interests are more that of the UBP than the PLP.

Democratic participation in society, be it PTAs, workers councils, union locals or parish groups, are all speed-bumps in the path of outright oligarchic bureaucratism.

It is time now for the party rank-and-file to reclaim progressive labour and replace the top-down democracy of the leadership with the bottom-up democracy of the workers, and dissolve the colonial-induced conceptions of leaders and led.

On Losing Power? [2006 Notes]

Even should the UBP return to power, it would be a mistake to equate this with the defeat of progressive labour.

A defeat of the Progressive Labour Party, for sure, but this would be but a defeat of arrogance, of social and racial chauvinism, of cronyism.  In short, it would be a defeat of Bermudian politics as we have known it for the majority of its existence; but it would not be a defeat of progressive labour.

1998-2006/7 may well go down as a watershed moment in Bermuda’s history.  For once and for all it will be no longer possible to uphold the myth that race is the sole problem with our socio-economic system.  Rather, race in Bermuda is a result of our historic and continuing class system – a function of political economy, past and present.

The loss of the PLP would be the defeat of UBP-lite, in as much as the leadership of the party has caricatured the UBP in its actions.  It would open the potential for the idea of progressive labour to reassert itself within the party that bears its name, and exorcise the demons that have perverted it.

In many ways, as much as the return of the UBP would see a revenge of Whitness, and all that represents, it also opens the door for the PLP to reclaim itself, to face its failures and be returned to its senses, as well as the benefit of the opportunists, those parasites of power, leaving (why stay when there is no power to suckle on?) and the grassroots once more taking power.

The question is, would they learn from such a defeat?