Life in the Faslane

Glasgow poet Eamonn Coyle speaks on truth and nuclear weapons in Scotland.

The Chance for Peace

As you must have noticed, if you've been following the Streetlamp from the beginning, we've not been bringing you quite the same indiepop outout recently as he have in the past. The main reason for this is that we've been rather diverted on the political front. Scotland, at the time of writing, stands on the brink of a momentous, game-changing decision, which will have repercussions far beyond these shores.

One of the repercussions of Scotish independence is that, if the people of Scotland vote Yes, we will effectively be able to force the UK state into unilateral nuclear disarmamnet. This is quite an attractive outcome for some of us!

Inspired by this opportunity, our own resident film-maker, Ray, has made the following video, which has been given official endorsement from the Scrap Trident campaign. The video in question uses excerpts from the Chance for Peace speech, an address given by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 16, 1953. Eisenhower is, of course, the man who famously warned the world of the growing power of the Military–industrial complex and uttered the immortal lines:

"I think that people want peace so much that, one of these days, government had better get out of their way and let them have it."

We here at the Stretlamp think that, for the people of Scotland, that day is coming soon. Here's Ray's video on the subject:



For more information on the subject, please visit Scrap Trident.

The music used in the video is the 2nd movement, Largo, from Dvorak's "New World" Symphony reorded in 1963 by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Otto Klemperer/ This can be downloaded for free 'here'.

The Streetlamp Team

If you love indiepop, clap your hands!

Hello everyone. No, we haven't died, you'll be glad to know, it's just that we've all been very busy doing other things and have had to neglect the poor old Streetlamp for a bit. Anyway, we're going to make that up to you tonight with a compilation from Frigopop! of the very best in indie-pop. And we really mean the best, we're talking Jens Lekman, The Drums, Liechtenstein and Belle and Sebastian here.

Frigopop! was started in February 2008 by a group of Roman girls with a love for pop music and, as well as a webzine, it is also a netlabel and a festival. Their latest release Nastrone Handclapping was released on March 1st and contains 13 songs, which all include that indie-pop staple, handclapping. The compilation is intended to wake you up from hibernation and get you in the mood for Spring.It is available as a free download 'here'.

Here are a few sample tracks. First off is Jens Lekman with I Saw Her In The Anti War Demostration.



We had to include this as, right now, all Griff's time is being taken up by, well, helping to organise an April anti-war demonstration, believe it or not.

Now here's Architecture in Helsinki with It'5!



And we''ll finish off with Pelle Carlberg with Clever Girls Like Clever Boys Much More Than Clever Boys Like Clever Girls
Sadly, probably true.

The Streetlampers
xx

Scrap Trident - Scotland's April 15 moment!

Most people with an active interest in Scottish politics will now be aware that this April we will see an unprecedented weekend of protest and action in this country, demonstrating the opposition of the ordinary people of Scotland to nuclear weapons.
There have been protests in the past, of course, but I deliberately suggest that this particular weekend of action, from the 13th to the 15th of April, is unprecedented for two reasons.

Firstly, in responding to the fact that the Scottish independence movement has put Trident in the forefront of political debate in Scotland and beyond, the Scrap Trident protest is being organised by a broad and diverse coalition movement that brings together virtually all of Scotland's radical, grassroots, political activists into one united movement. Some of the organisations currently involved include:

Scottish CND,
Trident Ploughshares,
Faslane Peace Camp,
Edinburgh Peace & Justice Centre,
Stop the War Scotland, (Edinburgh site), (Glasgow site),
Radical Independence Campaign,
Scottish Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom,
Scottish Greens,
Scottish Socialist Party,
Socialist Workers Party, and the
International Socialist Group (Scotland)  

The second and, to my mind, more important reason that this weekend is unprecedented is that this weekend of action has been deliberately designed to demonstrate to the people of Scotland the power that currently lies with them, and not the politicians, in deciding the future of nuclear weapons in Scotland and, beyond that, throughout the world. 

The people of Scotland are in a privileged position right now as they have the ability to create an extra-parliamentary, mass movement, that can not only act definitively on Trident removal but can decide, away from the corrosive influence of self-interested party politics, on their own vision for the future of this country. 

And they don't have to wait until next year's referendum, they can start to show, as soon as this April, that power resides with the people and not the parliamentary institutions by, not just attending the national demonstration in Glasgow on April 13th, but by signing up for the workshops, meetings and direct action training on April 14th and then the mass blockade of the Trident base at Faslane on Monday 15th.

In this writer's opinion, it is this aspect of the weekend which holds the greatest promise. For here, is an opportunity to solidify our message in the most positive and empowering way. Those people who, as a very first experience of direct people power, take part in this blockade will never be the same again. For with participation will come the realisation that they can begin to write their own political agendas, that they can find a nurturing, encouraging place that gives voice to their concerns and, that they never need seek the permissions of unyielding self-serving elites again. Only with that sort of entitlement can the people of Scotland, and the people of the whole world, begin to make the changes that allow us to become a society united in trust, compassion, hope and generosity rather than one riven apart by fear, greed and deceit. 

So, Scotland stands on the brink of great change and this small country can seize the opportunity to lead the whole world in nuclear disarmament. That in itself is momentous and significant. But, as students of the global anti-war movement may know, there is an extra significance to the date of the blockade - April 15th. By accident or design the choice of that particular date ties our anti-war struggle firmly into the rich, world-wide anti-war tradition. I'd like to take you now on a little trip, illustrated throughout by some of the iconography of the past, that highlight the connotations of the April 15th date.

April 15th 1967, in the US saw the first mass burning of draft cards as 400,000 anti-war activists marched in New York City and 80,000 marched in San Francisco to oppose the Vietnam War. These mass marches were the culmination of the Spring Mobilization Committee's April 10-15th Vietnam Week of protest. This protest saw draft card burnings and turn-ins and anti-draft recruiter demonstrations all over the country. In New York, the speakers at the rally included Martin Luther King, Jr., Floyd McKissick, Stokely Carmichael and Benjamin Spock.

The preparations and plans for the historic April 15th demonstration brought many new organizations and forces into action and the student wing of the antiwar movement really blossomed into a powerful force for change and radicalisation. Moreover, the April 15th action had a tremendous impact on American opinion. Half a million Americans, from all walks of life, made dissent from the war and opposition to the government legitimate. April 15 was a demonstration by the antiwar movement of the breadth of mass opposition to the war and the possibility of organizing it. Furthermore, it convinced previously uninvolved groups, tendencies and individuals to participate in and build the antiwar movement.

Once the antiwar movement had helped to make dissent legitimate, public confidence in the government was shaken. The precedent for aggressively disagreeing with and challenging the government had been established. That there now existed in the country a large movement, encouraging, even demanding, that people speak out and act in a radical manner, had a profound effect on the political consciousness of the American people. Indeed, it had the potential of preparing and promoting a mass radicalisation of almost the entire populace. 

The Spring Mobilisation Committee, and associated groups, held further mass demonstrations on April 15th almost every year subsequently, right up until 1972 where, between April 15-28, the US experienced a wave of antiwar protests on campuses and outside military and defense-industry installations resulting in hundreds of arrests across the country.

And it isn't just in the US that April 15th carries no little significance for the anti-war movement. In the 1980s, Australia experienced a significant growth of nuclear disarmament activism. On April 15th 1984, 250,000 protesters attended nuclear disarmament rallies all across the country. That same year, The Nuclear Disarmament Party was formed and won a Senate seat.

Unfortunately, the Australians rather missed a trick on the old iconography front by failing to include the date on their badges. Ah well, here are a couple of examples from the period anyway:

So, where stands Scotland now?  Can we build a mass anti-war movement that will bring thousands on to the street? Yes, I believe we can, and we will, this April. What is more, we can do something that the protesters, unfortunately, couldn't achieve despite their heroic efforts in the US and Australia - we can unilaterally disarm a nuclear power.

The menace of Trident has been with us for too long. We now have a unique and unmissable opportunity to end our complicity in the active deployment of these abhorrent weapons. To that end, ordinary people who hope for a peaceful world have to keep the pressure up and ensure that this issue is at the forefront of everyone's mind as they decide on the future of Scotland.

We now need to be be mobilising for this event in every corner of Scotland to create a mass movement, extra-parliamentary, insurance policy to ensure that Holyrood has the impetus to act definitively on Trident removal, whether we get independence or not. Together, we can make the Scrap Trident weekend shake the very foundations of the establishment and, together, we can make our very own April 15th moment echo long and proudly down through the ages of history. 

And here's a little something I put together to inspire us:

Supporting the weekend:

You can add your name or the name of your organisation to the list of individuals and groups supporting this demonstration at the Scrap Trident website or by contacting info@scraptrident.org.

If you have a blog or website, you can show your support by getting a blog badge like the one above by visiting 'here' to get the code you need.Even better, you could write a blog in support of the Scrap Trident weekend.

Getting involved:
Please get in touch to find out more or get involved. Come to the Plenary Meeting in Glasgow in the STUC Building, between 7-9pm, on Tuesday 12^th February or help mobilise for the event at stalls in town centres across Scotland this Saturday, 16^th February.

If you want to take part in the blockade, you can request free direct action training any time between now and the event. Also, everything you need to know for the blockade will be covered during the workshops on Sunday 14^th and there will be a detailed blockade briefing pack available on the Scrap Trident website. 

Basic accommodation and catering will be provided in Glasgow for all three days of this event, for the price of a donation. There will also be transport arranged to Faslane for the blockade for a small fixed price. If you are planning to come, you need to register for the accommodation and transport. Please see the contact details below to request a registration form.

Contact:

info@scraptrident.org

Leonna O'Neill Faslane Peace Camp 07511793227

Keir McKechnie Stop The War 07773815073

Donations:

Mobilising to create this mass movement and action against nuclear weapons is an expensive operation and every little helps! If you wish to contribute financially, please send donations to: 

Edinburgh Peace & Justice Centre,
 St. John's Church, 
Princes Street, 
Edinburgh, 
EH21 2DP. 

Please indicate clearly that your donation is for the “Scrap Trident” event and make cheques payable to “Trident Ploughshares”. You could even hold a fundraiser or do a collection in your work place or amongst friends.


Griff

Get your own Scrap Trident blog button!

You may have noticed that the Streetlamp now comes decorously fitted out with its very own Scrap Trident hyperlink button (see our sidebar, to the right). Naturally, if you have your own blog, you'll want to show that you too support 2013's most important radical event - a chance over three days in April for the people of Scotland to demonstrate what they really think about the weapons of mass destruction parked on our doorstep. Well, now you can. Below, is a rather nice 125 pixel square badge for your own use. The code you need to display it is provided right alongside. Just copy and paste it into your own HTML editor and Hey Presto! Clicking the button will take you right on to the ScrapTrident home page where your webpage visitors can sign in to show their support or donate to the cause.

If you have a webpage, make sure it has its Scrap Trident button in place this Spring. It's what all the best websites are wearing!

If you have any bother with the HTML code provided, please get in touch with me at the sadpanda email adress above and I'll see if I can help.

Griff

 <a href="http://scraptrident.org/" target="_self"><img src="http://i1308.photobucket.com/albums/s603/scraptrident/scraptridentbadge_zpsf947d82f.jpg" alt="ScrapTrident" width="125" height="125" /></a>

Endings and Beginnings - Alle Macht den Räten!

And so, we come to the final blog post of the year and, as custom dictates, take a moment to reflect on what has slipped into the past and what lies before us. I was interested to look back at a blog I posted at the end of last year (see 'here') where I spoke about 2011 being imbued with the spirit of change and optimism via the events of  the Arab Spring, the Occcupy movement, Los Indignados in Spain, and the Europe wide anti-austerity protests. At that time, I was still heavily involved in the public sector unions' attempt to co-ordinate a concerted riposte to the government's attack on workers' terms and conditions. Unfortunately, as outlined in this excellent, detailed piece by Steven John's on libcom.org, we - meaning the ordinary union members - were soon to find ourselves being led into a dead-end by the union 'leaders'. Plus ça change, and all that.

So, in terms of generating a spirit of change amongst the mass of the population, 2012 has felt like a bit of a damp squib to some extent - and 2011 can be written off as just another false dawn. And yet, and yet...

Here in Scotland in 2012 there was something happening which seemed to offer the genuine possibility of a chance for radical change, in this country at least. I'm referring to the Radical Independence Campaign, which I've covered previously on these pages 'here'. Right now, some of the things we promised would happen at the conference in November are already being planned, not least of which was a commitment to a mass blockade of Faslane nuclear submarine base. I can promise Streetlamp readers that this will definitely happen next year over the 3 days of 13th to 15th of April. The event will be called Scrap Trident and as the date approaches we will keep you up to date with ways that you can participate.

Despite this positive attempt to unite left radicals in this country, there remains within libertarian socialist circles a lingering suspicion of the Radical Independence Campaign and where it may lead. This is understandable, I am not going to deny that history shows that the more authoritarian elements of the radical left have manipulated and betrayed anarchists in the past. And yet, and yet...

Recently I was alerted via another article on the wonderful libcom.org site (please do check it out) to the release of a new book by PM Press called All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919. Edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn, and drawing on newly uncovered material uncovered through meticulous archival historical research, this new documentary collection gathers eyewitness accounts and revolutionary voices from Germany’s 1918–1919 worker-soldier-council revolution. Unlike most of the histories of this period, which are written from a strongly communist perspective and focus almost exclusively on the role of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg,and the Communist Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), this book shows that there were other equally important radical left and anti-military traditions involved. In particular, Kuhn presents documents from Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam, the famous Munich anarchists who took part in the struggle for a councils´ republic in Bavaria. He also exhibits documentary evidence from Bremen, Brunswick, Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. All of these German cities were taken over by workers´ uprisings or sailors and soldiers in mutiny. Kuhn's sources demonstrate that the German Revolution was not orchestrated by a Marxist political vanguard, but by a spontaneous eruption of the whole population. Many very different groups were involved,  from centrist social democrats to trade unions, syndicalists and radical anarchists. Many ordinary workers only got radicalised during the events themselves.

One of the most interesting groups involved, formed during WWI, were the Revolutionary Stewards, a group of rank and file unionists independent from the official unions. Starting out by striking for better wages in the war industry, they ended up being one of the most radical advocates of a councils´ republic in Germany. Kuhn shows that when the Revolution unfolded in November 1918 this group was far more influential then Liebknecht and the Spartacists, because unlike them it had a wide network of supporters in the factories and workshops. In organizing three mass strikes between 1916 and 1918, the Revolutionary Stewards were decisive in bringing about the Revolution.

OK, history shows that the centrist social democrats’collaboration with reactionary counter-revolutionary and military forces paved the way to the Weimar Republic, and from there to Nazi Germany, but one can not but help wonder if, had the anarchist influence been more central, coherent and convincing, and tied closely to the mass, independent union movement, could the revolutionaries have created a less bureaucratic and centralist socialist model?

Is there anything that can we learn from these events that is pertinent to our position here in Scotland today? The anarchists, notably Landauer and Mühsam, were strong champions of federalism and formulated a strong critique of what they saw as the centralist tendencies of the Spartacists. That they were involved and embedded in the revolution from the start meant that they were able to do so. Had they more support within the ranks of the Revolutionary Stewards movement might they have been more effective?

All Power to the Councils! raises other questions too that all movements who promote radical change must face. For example; What are the actual demands, needs, and interests of the people? How do we best secure democratic and social progress? How do we facilitate a true transition of power? How do we establish political and economic institutions that really alter the forms of government and production?  How do we prevent powerful political forces, on the left and the right, from using the situation for their own ends? How do we go from being a mass protest movement to organising the mass effort of building a new society?

How do we turn a radical moment into longlasting radicalism?

Another question for some might be - can the libertarian left work effectively with the wider left? Perhaps it can, it is worth remembering that, despite the tensions between the different radical traditions in the German revolution, the various factions continued to defend each other in the face of social democratic and counter-revolutionary attacks. Landauer, for example, gave the Munich eulogy to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg after they were murdered in January 1919. Mühsam called Luxemburg “the flame of the revolution” in an obituary published in his journal Kain. It is worth noting that, at the outset of the revolution, all of the radical factions were also united in their commitment to a council system and in their opposition to bourgeois parliamentarism.

Reading this book, I found myself wondering where they went wrong, how they organised together originally to form this co-ordinated vision and how they might have organised subsequently to protect that vision. During the revolutionary period, all of the radicals shared a single rallying cry - Alle Macht den Räten! (All Power to the Councils). How could they have protected that ideal - how could we?

These are interesting questions to ponder as we look forward into 2013.If you want to read All Power to the Councils! you can order it from PM Press. While you are on their site please take some time to check out their stimulating collection of fiction and nonfiction books, pamphlets, t-shirts, visual and audio materials. Alternatively, for those financially embarrassed, you can download a free pdf copy 'here'.

As usual, I'd like to end the blog, and the year, with a song that, I hope, demonstrates something of the reflective mood I'm in - facing more questions than answers. The song, fittingly for this time of year, is called 'Hogmanay' and was written several years ago by the current writer, so let me offer profound apologies for the shameless self-publicity. I do hope you'll forgive my self-indulgence and, hopefully, enjoy it in the spirit in which it is offered.




Griff
xx