Thursday, 31 October 2013

Harry Ratner and Lionel Cliffe

Sad news about the recent passing of two socialists:

Harry Ratner, author of Reluctant Revolutionary and supporter of the London Socialist Historians Group, died peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of Wednesday morning 23rd October. His funeral will take place on Thursday 7th November at Markeaton Crematorium, Main Chapel at 2.00pm.  As was his wish there will be a non-religious celebration of his life. His wife, Olive has asked that in lieu of flowers, a donation can be made, if you choose, to Breast Cancer Awareness. Donations can be made through the undertakers. A.W. Lymn at the Ilkeston office, 01159 444 121 where Scot will take your call. Or at Markeaton on the day.
 
Lionel Cliffe, Emeritus Professor at Leeds University, also passed away on 23 October. Lionel had international stature for his teaching, research and policy analysis of African political economy.   He was the founder of the first centre of development studies in Dar es Salaam that developed among other things new and radical analysis of Tanzania's socialist development.  Since retiring in 2001 he  continued to be generous with his time and support for colleagues working within the sphere of African political economy and African politics. He was working on an analysis of land reform in Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa.  He was also a supporter of Yorkshire cricket club, and wrote about its history and the question of racism  for the recent collection Capitalism and Sport.  Lionel will be cremated at Grenoside Crematorium, 5 Skew Hill Lane, Grenoside, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S35 8RZ  on Monday 4th November at 12.30, followed by a celebration of his life, with reflections from friends and family, at Wortley Hall, Wortley Village, Wortley S35 7DB  from 1.30pm.  All those who knew Lionel are welcome to both or either event.
Family flowers only.  Donations in Lionel's memory may be given to the 'Lionel Cliffe Memorial Research Scholarship', (mark donations accordingly please) to Co-operative Bank, sort code 089075, account no. 50181461.  Plates for donations will be available at both venues.

Troubled Island

Taster perfomances of Troubled Island in London tonight and 5 nights in November
 
For a couple of years now Thee Black Swan Theatre & Opera Company has been working towards making the sound of William Grant Still's opera Troubled Island live again. This opera, written in 1936 in collaboration with Langston Hughes, chronicles the life of Dessalines, leader of the Haitian Revolution alongside Toussaint L'Ouverture, who went on to lead the newly independent nation of Haiti after 1804. The opera itself has a troubled past, with writer and composer falling foul of both racism and McCarthyism.
 
A taster of this grand opera is being performed in London on six occassions on the last day of October and five nights into November, as follows:
Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate, 7.30pm
Thursday,  31st October, Friday, 1st November and Saturday 2nd November
 
Catford Broadway,  8pm
Friday, 8th November and Saturday 9th November
The Wilberforce Theatre, The Museum of London, Docklands E14 4AL,  7.30pm
Sunday, November 10th

With support from Judith Anne Still and Arts Council (England).

Monday, 14 October 2013

CfP: Manchester Social Movements Conference - April 2014

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS CONFERENCE  - CALL FOR PAPERS

From 1995 to 2013, Manchester Metropolitan University hosted a series of very successful annual international conferences on 'ALTERNATIVE FUTURES and POPULAR PROTEST'.

We're very happy to announce that the Nineteenth AF&PP Conference will be held, between Monday 14th April and Wednesday 16th April 2014.

The Conference rubric remains as in previous years. The aim is to explore the dynamics of popular movements, along with the ideas which animate their activists and supporters and which contribute to shaping their fate. Given the significance of the mass movements in numbers of countries during the early years of this decade, we especially welcome papers discussing these – while no less welcoming suggestions on other topics.

Reflecting the inherent cross-disciplinary nature of the issues, previous participants (from over 60 countries) have come from such specialisms as sociology, politics, cultural studies, social psychology, economics,  history and geography.  The Manchester conferences have also been notable for discovering a fruitful and friendly meeting ground between activism and academia.

CALL FOR PAPERS

We invite offers of papers relevant to the conference themes.  Papers should address such matters as: 

* contemporary and historical social movements and popular protests

* social movement theory

* utopias and experiments

* ideologies of collective action

* etc.

To offer a paper, please contact either of the conference convenors with a brief abstract:  

EITHER Colin Barker, Dept. of Sociology  
OR Mike Tyldesley, Dept. of Politics and Philosophy  
Manchester Metropolitan University  
Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond Street West  
Manchester M15 6LL, England  
email: c.barker@mmu.ac.uk  
Tel: M. Tyldesley  0161 247 3460   
email: m.tyldesley@mmu.ac.uk  
Fax: 0161 247 6769 (+44 161 247 6769)  
(Wherever possible, please use email, especially as Colin Barker is a retired gent. Surface mail and faxes should only be addressed to Mike Tyldesley)  

Sunday, 6 October 2013

Talk with Keith Flett on independent working class education before the Plebs

News from Nowhere Club

8pm Saturday 12 October


Keith Flett
on

Before the Plebs
Independent Working Class Education
in the Nineteenth Century
They sought not the useful knowledge of a conventional education but really useful knowledge to take on capital. We look at this lost tradition of radical education in the working class and reflect on what it might mean for today.

News from Nowhere Club
The Epicentre,
Leytonstone,
E11 4LJ
0208 555 5248
07443 480 509

Friday, 4 October 2013

Ford Maguire society events in Leeds

Ford Maguire Society forthcoming events

Cyril Pearce (University of Leeds), author of Comrades in Conscience is speaking about War Resisters in the First World War on Wednesday, Oct 9th October at 6pm Broadcasting Place (next to Old Friends' Meeting House, Woodhouse Lane), Leeds Metropolitan University (BPAG10)

Toussaint Louverture - book launch of C.L.R. James's 1934 play about the Haitian Revolution Toussaint Louverture with various speakers including editor Christian Høgsbjerg, Joe Williams (who will read an extract from the play) and Arthur France - Wednesday, 23rd October 2013 at 7pm Leeds West Indian Centre

Tuesday, 1 October 2013

Global EP Thompson conference - follow live broadcast

We invite you to participate in the upcoming conference at Harvard, Oct. 3-5, "The Global E. P. Thompson: Reflections on the Making of the English Working Class after Fifty Years." We will be hosting a truly global conversation among scholars, and we invite you to join us, either in person or online.
 We will be broadcasting live; please spread the word and tune-in, October 3-5th. The Broadcast will start at 4 PM EST on Thursday, October 3rd, and conclude on Saturday October 5th at 1 PM, EST. ( http://www.ustream.tv/channel/global-e-p-thompson-conference-harvard-university-october-3-5-2013 ) Broadcast viewers will be able to submit questions and participate via the Ustream Channel.
 Full Program: http://studyofcapitalism.harvard.edu/global-thompson-program< http://studyofcapitalism.harvard.edu/global-thompson-program#.UjpSucabMas> Follow the live broadcast ustream channel: http://bit.ly/18cpE73
We look forward to your participation!

Fifty years ago E. P. Thompson published The Making of the English Working Class, one of the most influential social history works ever. Its approach to the history of common people, its arguments and its methods came to influence several generations of historians and others all over the world. To trace Thompson’s influences, and with it the larger story of the varied approaches to social history that have come out of them, the Program on the Study of Capitalism and the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University seek to initiate a global conversation among researchers across the humanities and social sciences to reflect critically on Thompson's impact on the writing of history and his enduring significance for future research. At a time of global economic crises, as scholarship returns to themes of class, inequality and political economy with renewed interest, urgency, and moral purpose, the fiftieth anniversary of the Making of the English Working Class offers a welcome opportunity to both critically reflect on Thompson's scholarship and consider the ways in which his ideas, methods and commitments can still inspire intellectual frameworks and research programs that speak to present global problems.

 Edited to add:

Celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class- Sat 16 November 2013, Halifax

by Fiona Cosson
Join the Society for the Study of Labour History at Halifax Square Chapel for a lecture and discussion on the life and work of E. P. Thompson (1924-1993), leading radical historian and author of the seminal The Making of the English Working Class (1963) on Saturday 16 November 2013. Professor Bryan D. Palmer (Trent University, Ontario) will deliver a key note lecture on ‘History as Argument: The Contrarian Analytics of The Making of the English Working Class’ followed by a roundtable discussion chaired by Professor Neville Kirk. Panelists will include: Professor John Belchem, Professor Malcolm Chase, Professor Joe White, Professor Paul Pickering, Dr Peter Gurney, Professor D. Palmer and Dr Matthew Roberts. In the afternoon Dr John Hargreaves will lead a local history walk to the house where the Thompsons lived where a plaque will be unveiled.

LSHG Newsletter #50 now online

Featuring Keith Flett on the 1913 Dublin Lock Out and Neil Faulkner's A Marxist History of the World, Ian Birchall on the importance of socialist history and James Heartfield's Unpatriotic History of World War II, Steve Cushion on the continuing debate around how socialists should characterise and remember that war, an obituary of Terry Burton and a reminder of our forthcoming seminars.  The deadline for the next issue is 1 December - contributions to Keith Flett at the usual address.

LSHG seminars Autumn Term

London Socialist Historians Group Seminars Autumn 2013
Please note the changes in venues etc from the previous posting (now also updated)
__________________________________________________________________________________
Venue: Bloomsbury Room G35, Ground floor, Senate House unless otherwise stated
Time: Monday, 5.30pm, unless otherwise mentioned in the programme, below.
 
7 October
Shane C. Nagle (Royal Holloway)
Socialist intellectuals and National(ist) Historiography: The Cases of James Connolly and Franz Mehring
Venue: Room STB5, Stewart House, Basement
 
21 October
Book launch with Gareth Edwards (Portsmouth), Keith Flett, Hazel Potter, David Renton
Capitalism and Sport- some histories
Venue: Bloomsbury Room G35, Ground floor, Senate House
 
4 November
John Issit (York)
Agents of Reason, Jeremiah Joyce & Tom Paine in the 1790s
Venue: Room STB2, Basement, Stewart House
 
18 November
Ian Birchall
UKIP's Forbears? Poujade and the French left
Venue: Bloomsbury Room G35, Ground floor, Senate House
 
30 November
Roundtable discussion with Logie Barrow (Bremen), Pete Dwyer (Ruskin), respondent, Keith Flett
Remake, Remodel : the Making of the English Working Class at 50
Please note: this session takes place from 12:00-17:00 on a Saturday, in Room 246, 2nd floor, Senate House
 
16 December
Vaughan Melzer
Commitment, Stories from the Left. A Photographic project
Venue: Room G21A, ground floor, Senate House

A Riveting World History Lesson on Stage

A Riveting World History Lesson on Stage - The Life of Paul Robeson. Covent Garden, London, October 16 and 23. Schools Offer‏

"...According to my sister and friends YOU WERE SUPERB and her friend asked "Why is he not going round schools teaching history that way - no one will ever forget history lessons taught like that". E M, Liverpool

Greetings,

In the heart of London's West End this October, the award-winning Call Mr. Robeson is being performed as part of the Paul Robeson Art Is A Weapon Festival, which celebrates Robeson's life, and much else involving Black, British, African and International History. Two special schools' matinees have been scheduled, for Wednesday 16th and Wednesday 23rd October at 11.30am, to which school parties are invited, at a cost of only £7 per head. The performance is suitable for KS3 and older.
Youtube image
Click image to view trailer
Paul Robeson's life covers so much - apart from being the most famous Othello of modern times, he was also the forerunner of the American Civil Rights Movement, encompassed the battle between socialism and capitalism, and excelled in sports, law, music, film and theater. The play also introduces students to American, British, Welsh and African History - all in the life of one truly extraordinary man!! A teacher in Oxford who has now seen the play four times prepared a policy and curriclum links document, summarising the benefits to both teachers and students. You can download it here
If you click on the image above, you will see a very short trailer, and as the photo below indicates, a Q&A session follows every performance, which will further enlighten members of the audience.
Thaddeus's Philly Fringe Photo Q&A
Join us in Covent Garden and give your students a history lesson they won't forget in a long time!
Additional plays of interest
Also in the festival, The Spirit of Harriet Tubman is being performed at 2.30pm on Wednesday 16th October, and Mother to Mother at 2.30pm on Wednesday 23rd October. Both will be of interest to school students, and can also be offered for the same price. A schools pack for Harriet Tubman (written for the Canadian system) can be downloaded here.
Tayo Aluko
p.s. Please forward to colleagues you think may be interested.

Booking

What: Call Mr. Robeson. A Life, with Songs. Written and performed by Tayo Aluko, with piano accompaniment by Michael Conliffe
Web listing here:
When: Weds 16 October, 11.30am; Weds 23 October, 11.30am (schools)
Show length: 80 minutes (no interval) followed by Q&A session
Where: Tristan Bates Theatre at the Actors Centre, 1A Tower Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9NP
Ticket Price: £7 (school parties)
Suitable for KS3 and older
Box Office: 020 7 240 6283
Ticket orders for school groups by telephone only.

Book Review: More on WWII

(From LSHG Newsletter # 50, Autumn 2013)

Unpatriotic History of the Second World War
By James Heartfield
Zero Books, Winchester 2012 557pp
ISBN 9781780993782

One problem we shall encounter during the forthcoming commemoration of World War I is that even among those who recognise the First World War as an imperialist slaughter, there will be quite a few who still see the Second World War as a “good war” – some, perhaps from patriotism or antifascism, while others fall victim to nostalgia for the days of a “progressive Soviet bloc”, something increasingly prevalent in parts of a demoralised left.

Donny Gluckstein’s valuable People’s History of the Second World War has provoked an interesting debate (see here and here).  James Heartfields’s book, coming from a rather different angle, makes a further contribution to understanding. It is an impressive piece of research: 472 pages of text contain a wealth of information, and the 76 pages of notes reveal the huge range of sources that have been consulted (though unfortunately all are English-language).

My sole reservation is that the argument could have been more tightly structured, and that a fuller index would have made it more useful as a work of reference.

The book covers the whole course of the war and its impact on the shape of the post-war world. Everything is packed in, from major atrocities to minor absurdities. (One of my earliest memories is the removal of railings from the local park to make armaments; I was amused to learn that the metal was never used, but stayed in a warehouse in Durham till the 1970s. [66]) A fascinating chapter entitled “Love and War” deals with the family, prostitution and homosexuality. An excellent final section deals with the historiography of the war – the orthodox myths and the various heretics who dissented, from AJP Taylor to Gabriel Kolko.

Heartfield, as his title suggests, is very much a heretic. He will have nothing to do with the claim that the war was, at least in part, a “people’s war”. As he argues, a war that killed 2.5 per cent of the world’s population was “a war against the people”.[2] Its ultimate cause was the “drive to war” that is a “special feature of capitalist societies”.[463] Anti-fascism was quite low on the list of priorities of the allied ruling classes; as one of Churchill’s ministers put it in 1942: “smashing Hitler is only a means to the essential end of preserving the British Empire”.[55] And that Empire was based on white supremacy which could be just as murderous as Nazi anti-Semitism.

Since it was an imperialist war, Heartfield devotes a good deal of attention to Asia. Brutal as the Japanese regime was, the British ruling class approved Japanese imperialism - until its interests clashed with those of the British Empire. And the impact of the war in Asia was to spark off national liberation struggles which transformed the region after 1945.

Heartfield’s basic method is to take a series of themes, and to illustrate them with parallels from the main combatant countries. He does not ignore the very real differences between fascism and bourgeois democracy, but shows that often they were a matter of quantity rather than quality. In Britain and the US, as in Germany and Italy, “business and government worked together to hold down …. wages”. [21] Nazi Germany relied on slave labour – but the British colony of Rhodesia had a “Compulsory Native Labour Act”. [60] Gay soldiers in Germany were executed; in the US they were confined to psychiatric cells.

Everywhere the realities of class persisted. When German prisoners were landed in Canada, British privates carried the officers’ luggage because officers could not be expected to carry their own bags. In the brutal Japanese prisoner of war camps, British officers disciplined the labour of British common soldiers. Nor was support for the war anything like as solid as is often believed. 100,000 British troops deserted in the course of the war, and there were mutinies and strikes during and after the war. Contrary to myth substantial working-class areas of London were depopulated by the blitz.

While recognising the particular barbarity of the Holocaust, Heartfield insists on the danger of “isolating the Final Solution from the wider conflict”. [455] He is perhaps a little complacent in his discussion of Holocaust Denial. While he is right to point out the “weight of evidence is in no danger of being overturned”, Holocaust Denial could enhance the credibility of far right groupings who pose a real threat to working-class unity.

In more general terms, however, Heartfield is right to situate the Holocaust in the total context of the
war. Before the war Nazis had proposed deporting Jews to Madagascar – a clearly racist measure, but one that fell short of extermination. “The plan failed because Britain blocked the expulsion of German Jews – out of fear that they would come to Britain.” [301]

Heartfield gives much detail on the repressive nature of Stalin’s rule, and of the reactionary policies of Moscow-oriented Communist Parties. He tells us that the USSR was “a non-capitalist power” [54] , yet also that it was “not socialism”. [158] Perhaps, but if so what was it - and if it did not have a “drive to exploit other lands” what made it so “rapacious”? [54]

Heartfield’s work will certainly be controversial. But his accumulation of material will be an asset to all socialists, and it deserves a wide readership.

Ian Birchall

Obituary: Terry Burton (1939-2013)

My friend and colleague over many years Terry Burton, who died on August 4th aged 74, was a veteran socialist and trade unionist activist, in the last generation who did not get the chance to go to University but instead picked up his huge range of knowledge from reading books and political activism.

Born in Tunbridge Wells, Terry was in the last cohort to do national service — in the RAF from 1958-59. Terry embarked on a life of political activism. He was a member of CND in its first wave and also active in the Committee of 100. In the 1960s he was associated with the left-wing libertarian group Solidarity.  He worked in a range of jobs including a British Rail ticket clerk, but eventually settled in the NHS. He worked at the Prince of Wales hospital in Tottenham in the 1980s and when that closed transferred to the nearby St Ann’s Hospital.

A trade union activist, Terry was involved with NALGO and later UNISON. In 1990 he found himself elected as Secretary of Haringey Trades Union Council as Communist Party activists withdrew following the collapse of the Eastern Europe states.I worked with Terry as Chair of Haringey TUC over two decades and found him to be a most efficient and diligent officer, qualities not so readily available as all that in any area of society.

Terry was usually a Labour voter until the New Labour period. In 2001 he stood unsuccessfully for Haringey Council as a candidate for the short-lived Socialist Alliance. He later joined the Green Party. He often attended LSHG seminars. He was a long-time resident of the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, having already been there for some years at the time of the 1985 riot. Visitors to his flat found a scene rather different to media images of the area. Stacked with books and papers, Terry would frequently be immersed in a detail of the progress, or otherwise, of a left-wing party in an election in some part of the world.

Beset in recent years by poor health, Terry had Parkinson’s disease and typically became active in the Parkinson’s Society. Terry however continued to get out to such events and meetings as he could, and was present at a recent Trades Council public meeting with Owen Jones in Tottenham, with the speaker assisting him in his wheelchair. He is survived by his wife and long-time friend Inga.

Keith Flett

Polemic: Parallel Wars - A reply to Leandros Bolaris

By Steve Cushion - Secretary UCU London Retired Members branch
(From LSHG Newsletter # 50 Autumn 2013)

Leandros Bolaris's attack on Donny Gluckstein's People's History of the Second World War (See Two in One in International Socialism 138, 2013), misses the point on a number of issues. The argument that there were two parallel wars, a "People's War" and an "Imperialist War" is not, as Bolaris asserts, going round in circles and does not necessarily end up accepting that the Second Word War was solely an "anti-fascist" war"(1). We surely do not judge a war by the perceptions of the participants or the public statements of the leaders; if we did this, we would see the English Civil War as merely a religious conflict and ignore the revolutionary implications. In the context of the times, a mere twenty years after First World War, any attempt to raise an army in Britain based on "King and Country" or any similar imperialist slogan would have been an abject failure and the ruling class was shrewd enough to recognise this. Therefore, the fact that most participants thought that the Allies were fighting an anti-fascist war is a tribute to skilful government propaganda and the confusion caused by the class-collaborationist politics of the "Popular Front". What people think they are doing is often at odds with material reality.

Donny Gluckstein does indeed "follow a long line of left-wing historians" with good reason: France's rulers were indeed more afraid of the Popular Front than the Germans.(2) The Popular Front was, in one sense, a corpse before it was even born, but this does not mean that the events of 1934- 36 had not badly scared the French bourgeoisie; the French working class were not crushed, but had merely suffered a setback. The Munich Agreement, Roosevelt's election promise to stay out of any European conflict and the Hitler-Stalin Pact show the reluctance of the ruling elites of all the major future Allied powers to go to war, in part because they well remembered the revolutionary situation in which the First World War ended. I would argue that the collapse of the French Army was more than just a tactical blunder by the French High Command, it rather reflected an ambivalence about the war in the minds of a ruling class whose attitude may be summed up by a 1941 letter from a Lille factory owner to his trade newspaper: 'I would rather see my country occupied by the Germans than my factory occupied by the workers'.(3) A careful reading of quote from Trotsky in Leandros Bolaris's article reveals that it was principally an attack on the folly of the Popular Front rather than an explanation of the Fall of France.

The French and British governments were forced to go to war in defence of Poland because they saw, and saw very much more clearly than Stalin, that the invasion of Poland was a prelude to the invasion of Russia. If the German army had managed to conquer Russia, that country's vast natural resources, when combined with German industrial strength, would have meant that Germany could have dominated the world economy and won any future war with any or all of the Allies. So the Allied rulers had a difficult balancing act to perform, to persuade their citizens to fight an imperialist war and to avoid that war ending in a revolutionary situation in the manner of 1914-1918. Declaring it an antifascist war was an effective way of doing this; class-conscious workers were rightly appalled at the way fascism was rolling out over Europe, smashing trade unions and workers' parties, cutting wages and putting the bourgeoisie firmly in the saddle. This fear of fascism was completely justified, however unconditional support for Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt and De Gaulle, which was advocated by the trade union bureaucracy and the Social Democrat and Stalinist leaders, was not the way to defeat fascism. These reformist workers' leaders also helped the Allies fight the war in such a way as to avoid independent working class activity: advocating no-strike agreements and promoting increased production in Britain and the USA, while urging the resistance to subordinate its activities to the needs of the Allied High Command in the occupied countries. However, given the nature of underground resistance movements, this latter aim was only partially successful.

Leandros Bolaris is absolutely correct to say that the FTP-MOI was not fighting for a return of the pre-war capitalist French Republic that had persecuted them. This was not only true for immigrant workers. Within the the French Communist Party, there was a difference of emphasis between Paris and the Pas-de-Calais. Guided by the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Paris leadership thought that they had to organise within the context of a German victory. Taking a position of neutrality between what they saw as the rival imperialisms of Germany and Britain, the official publications ignored the German occupation and concentrated their attacks on the Vichy government and French capitalism.(4) Many of their comrades in the mining basin of Northern France were convinced, however, that the war would end in revolution, as had happened in Russia after the war of 1914, and that revolution would spring from the ashes of the defeat of German fascism. French capitalism was weak, they argued, the war would weaken it still further until it became merely an adjunct of German capitalism. Julien Hapiot, head of the Young Communists in the Pas-de-Calais and a veteran of the International Brigades in Spain thought that: 'It is much better to shoot the master rather than the dog'.(5)

I am not in a position to discuss the situation in Greece, but as a contribution to the debate on the Second World War, it may be useful to look in some detail at the situation in Northern France following the German invasion. This area formed part of a Paris, August 1945.  An unarmed crowd captures a German tank "Forbidden Zone", run directly by the German authorities in Brussels and effectively cut off from the rest of France, allowing the resistance to develop with greater independence. In particular the communist party in the mining basin of the Pas-de-Calais entered into active resistance much earlier than the national organisation, many believing that the war would end in a revolution similar to 1917. While the PCF leadership in Paris was attempting to negotiate the legal appearance of Humanité, on the strength of their support for the Hitler-Stalin pact, their comrades in the North were gathering as much of the weaponry abandoned by the fleeing French soldiers as they could.(6)

A group of communist miners, succeeded in organising a mass strike against increased workloads in June 1941, involving 100,000 miners, 85% of the workforce in the region. They held out impressively for 10 days, but eventually the sheer weight of German Army repression forced a return to work. In organising a strike to resist the employers' offensive in the mines, rather as they might have done in times of peace, but coming up against the reality of the Nazi occupation, the local communists concluded that the defeat of the occupying forces was an essential prerequisite for any social progress and that this required armed action. Although they were unhappy with the national line of the party which accepted the German occupation, they had tried to ignore the problem as far as possible. Being so forcibly confronted with the German Army, they realised that they could not duck the issue and so, as the strike went on, one can see that the link between opposition to the occupation and social liberation becoming more evident in their propaganda.(7)

The employers of the region collaborated completely with the Germans and the mine owners gave the police the names of those they considered to be ringleaders.(8) As a result, 450 arrests were made, of whom 270 were deported to concentration camps in Germany and 130 never returned. The repression led many other militants to go into hiding. Emboldened and politically radicalised by the strike, many of these began a campaign of sabotage with the aim of encouraging the local population and sapping the moral of the occupying forces and their collaborationist allies. These militants armed themselves, initially for self-defence, and, from their base of support in the mining communities, started blowing up electricity pylons, derailing trains etc. This led to a need for more explosives and these were obtained by raids on the dynamite stores in the mines, which in turn produced violent confrontations with the security forces. In the North of France, the first attacks on individual German soldiers were in large part motivated by the need to obtain more weapons.

Much ink has been spilt about the wisdom of attacking individual soldiers, but less has been said about the practicalities. The first two attacks in the North turned to farce when the old pistols misfired and the assassination attempts degenerated into fist fights.(9) This inexperience could only be overcome by practice and demonstrates a major practical problem with attentism(10); when the time comes to fight, political correctness is no substitute for experience. The main political outcome of the strike was to provide the French Resistance with its most solid base. The traditional solidarity of the close knit mining communities and the anti-German, anti-Vichy and anti-employer sentiments generated by the strike enabled these urban guerrillas an unparalleled freedom of movement and support networks. In 1942 and 1943 over half the armed attacks and sabotage in France happened in the Nord/Pas-de-Calais.(11)

When the employers are seen as traitors, the class struggle appears patriotic. Overcoming this contradiction requires skilful political work by socialists, stressing the class nature of resistance. In France the reverse happened, as the tactic of the Popular Front played down the class struggle to ensure collaboration with Anglo-American imperialism. By the end of 1942, all of the original leaders of the 1941 miners' strike were either dead, in prison awaiting execution or fled to remote parts where they were not known. This allowed the national leadership of the PCF to impose its
class collaborationist, nationalist policies on newly emerging, inexperienced militants.(12)

A major objection to attacks on German soldiers is that this would hinder the appeal to mutiny or desertion. This argument ignores the fact that mutinous situations and collaboration with erstwhile enemies rarely come when their army is victorious: Russia 1917, Germany 1918, the US in Vietnam. The largest group of German soldiers who changed sides in WW2 were recruited into the Red Army after the battle of Stalingrad.(13) While German soldiers could treat France as a holiday camp, there was little incentive to rebel or even think about it. The insecurity caused by attacks on German soldiers was more likely to produce an atmosphere receptive to anti-fascist propaganda than when they were living the high life in the "City of Light". In the North of France, the tactic of individual assassinations became largely replaced by the derailing of troop trains; why kill or injure one when you can get them 500 at a time? The most famous transfer of allegiance was that of the Paris Police, who had loyally carried out the commands of their Fascist hierarchy, including being responsible for rounding up the Jews of Paris. However, in 1944, with German and Vichy France facing defeat, they saved their bacon by joining the uprising. Less well known, 300 German soldiers also joined the Paris uprising. German-speaking communists in the MOI, an immigrant workers' organisation, published a paper called Soldat im Western, at the same time as other immigrant communists were engaged in armed resistance.(14)

The two tactics, the carrot and the stick, were, I would argue, correctly seen as complementary; the real problem with the MOI approach was the Popular Front politics of that propaganda, not the tactic itself. When seen from the perspective of the MOI, armed attacks on German soldiers take on a different perspective. Many were refugees from the Spanish Civil War, both Spanish Republicans and International Brigade volunteers, others were Jews who had watched their families and neighbours being deported. During 1942 and the first half of 1943, they provided the principal active armed groups in Paris, treated as expendable by the PCF leadership.(15) It is unlikely that these fighters risked their lives for "la France"; a socialist explanation of their motivation is much more plausible and is consistent with the surviving evidence.

The French Trotskyists also had some success in spreading propaganda amongst the German soldiers and sailors in Brest, but were reluctant to take part in the armed struggle, although some, like André Calvès, a Trotskyist from Brest, did join the communist-led armed resistance group, the FTP, long before the half-hearted recognition by the European Secretariat of the Fourth International of the importance of the resistance as a mass movement, as contained in the 1943 "resolution on the partisan movement".(16) This resolution is effectively attentiste, despite its revolutionary rhetoric.(17) Had the French Trotskyists armed themselves earlier, they would have been in a much better position to implement a united front policy with other resistance groups, as well as to defend themselves from Stalinist sectarian aggression.

Donny Gluckstein's formulation of "Imperialist War" and "People's War" is a step forward in the analysis of the Second World War. He is correct to start his history of the Second World War with a discussion of the Spanish Civil War because the political question was the same: should socialists moderate their demands, play down the possibility of socialism and collaborate with an anti-fascist bourgeoisie, or should they argue that workers self-activity is the best way to defeat fascism and try to turn war into revolution. We do not expect the state to defeat the EDL on the streets of Walthamstow, neither should workers have relied on the Anglo-Americans to defeat Fascism in the 1940s. The Allies fought the war in such a way as to ensure that there would not be a revolutionary situation at the end, as there had been at the end of the previous war. Mass aerial bombardment and the insistence of unconditional surrender are examples of this approach.

Leandros Bolaris's description of the situation in Greece shows the importance the Allied governments placed on avoiding any element of socialism in the final settlement and were prepared to divert resources from the fight against Nazi Germany to ensure such an outcome. "Neither Washington nor Berlin" seems to be the correct approach to the imperialist aspects of the war. On the other hand, describing the resistance as part of a "People's War" is useful . It indicates that it was a rebellion seeking social improvements, but recognises that it was a cross class movement involving workers, peasants and elements of the petite-bourgeoisie. There was not the revolutionary leadership to turn this into a revolution, but the fear of such a revolution was still enough to win considerable social reforms.

Notes
1 Bolaris, 2013, p.148-149
2 Bolaris, 2013, p.151
3 Revue du Nord, L'Occupation en France et en Belgique 1940-44 , No 2 (hors série), Lille, 1988, p746
4 For more on the national position of the PCF at the start of the occupation: Noguères, Henri, Histoire de la Résistance en France, Laffont, Paris, 1967 ( Volume 1) Courtois, Stéphane, Le PCF dans la Guerre, Editions Ramsay, Paris 1980 Tillon, Charles, On Chantait Rouge, Laffont, Paris, 1977
5 Pannequin, Roger, Ami si tu tombes, Le Sagittaire, Paris, 1976 p90
6 Rémy, La Résistance dans le Nord, Famot, Genève, 1974 p122
7 Cushion, Steve, The 1941 miners' strike in northern France: from a dispute over soap to armed resistance. Socialist History 29, 2006 pp. 41-55
8 Michel, Joël, La mine, Gallimard, Paris, 1993 p84
9 "Carnets de Charles Debarge" Charles Debarge, a miner who became a resistence leader in the Pas-de-Calais, kept a journal up until the last days before his death at the hands of the French police. A copy may be seen in the Musée Municipal de Denain.
10 attentism was the name given to the policy adopted by the Gaullist resistence of waiting until the Allied invasion before moving to the offensive
11 Pierrart, André & Rousseau, Michel, Eusabio Ferrari, Editions Syros, Paris, 1980 p.146
12 Noguères, Henri, Histoire de la Résistance en France, Laffont, Paris, 1967 tome 2 p.229
13 Veyrier, Marcel, La Wehrmacht Rouge, Paris: Juillard, 1970
14 Collin, Claude , "Le Travail Allemand : origines et filiations", Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains n°230 2008/2
15 Courtois, Stéphane, Peschanski, Denis, Rayski, Adam, Le sang de l’étrange - les immigrés de la MOI dans la Résistance,Paris, Fayard, 1989 Manouchian, Mélinée, Manouchian, Paris, Éditeurs français réunis, 1977
16 Mandel, Ernest, Trotskyists and World War Two, 1976 -http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1976/xx/trotsww2.htm Calves, Andre, J’ai essayé de comprendre, Mémoires: 1920-1950, http://andre-calves.org
17 Prager, Rodolphe, L’Internationale dans la guerre 1940-1946, Editions La Brêche, 1981(English translation by John Archer in Revolutionary History http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol1/no3/prager.html