Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx Economic & Philosophic Science Review	
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No 1029 February 02 2000                                                                                                                                   10p 

Reactionary petty-bourgeois political correctness in a panic to save Blairism from total collapse. Bogus 'radicalism' on single-issue nonsense being aggressively boosted to cover-up the reality that all 'reform' amounts to under New Labour is more and worse capitalist privatisation.

The backlash against New Labour's "politically correct" posturing, -  plus the dog-in-the-manger stubbornness with which some Blair groupies try to brazen out their exposed shallowness, reveals more than ever how bankrupt is the administration of the dying British imperialist system.

Intensively spin-doctored soundbites are still effectively the only real 'philosophy' that Blair & Co are trying to 'govern' with. This insane farce remains a steadily worsening catastrophe as far as national strategic guidance of the country's monopoly-capitalist 'interests' are concerned.

Personal debt, the national debt, and the current international payments-balance for Britain are all rapidly swelling into huge burdens. New Labour's supposed "brilliant economics management" is in fact all empty hype and fantasy, just like everything else the Blair regime has touched.

And as the world trade-war crisis of the 'free-market' system rapidly deteriorates in the coming period, the complete hollowness of the London contribution to the non-existent 'New World Order' will become more and more painfully apparent.

As the Review wrote immediately in the New Year, the Dome Experience, - as trivial and arbitrary as it is as a reflection of anything, let alone as a reflection of British imperialism's contemporary strength, - has nonetheless developed into a very appropriate horror-symbol for the complete vacuum that Blairism in reality only adds up to.

The politically opportunist and big business circles which have begun now to openly and proudly dominate the Labour Party (having stayed more modestly concealed throughout the last 100 years) can be seen as the final triumph of capitalist freemarket forces on earth as far as the Blairite mentality sees things.

Fully believing the nonsense that "the West has won the battle of history", these New Labour stooges for brash commercial confidence have inevitably translated this into something not very far removed from the notion that "Coca Cola has won the battle of history". A customer focus group, a brand image, and relentless soundbite propaganda are then easily assumed to be all that is really required for running a really smart "government" operation, - the capitalist free-market taking care of everything else, it is fondly imagined.

The Marxist-Leninist science of the EPSR has obviously always explained for 20 years that when this postwar greatest-ever imperialist-system boom did finally peter out, the whole fraud of "benign democratic government" and "welfare-state concern for all", etc, would come quickly crashing down into its sordid reality of firm and unrelenting CLASS RULE, - ever more blatantly vicious and unjust as the inflationary credit-creation gravy train dried up.

It has also been generally described by the Review over the years that the brainwashing pretences that the capitalist 	system survives on, - 'democratic' government; listening to public opinion; a 'free press'; etc, etc; - would also be part of how the private enterprise exploitation racket finally trips up, - unable to conceal or prevent serious splits in the bourgeoisie's own ranks, and unable to continue pulling the wool over the eyes of EVERYONE for ALL OF THE TIME. 

Playing the strictly limited 'democracy' and 'freedom of information' games will nevertheless eventually reveal enough of what is really going on to make it possible for increasing millions to conclude that the whole Western 'free world' game is nothing but a gigantic con-trick and hypocritical racket which is in fact threatening everyone with nothing but death and destruction ultimately. 

The amazing and not-exactly-foreseeable details of chaotic decay and come-uppance that the actual 1997-2001 Blair regime has finally supplied, and which could only appear for analysis RIGHT NOW, - show capitalism's "government" openly reducing itself to profiteering commerce's own flimsiest and most desperate advertising routines. This now-massive Downing Street 'executive' machinery would seem to be almost insanely out-of-control rather like the Sorcerer s Apprentice in Fantasia, incapable of stopping what turns out to be mindless manipulation for its own sake.

It would seem that the Blairite corporate control-freaks' dream of giving a certain on-message liveried gloss to everything the government does, rather like a private company's 'house-style' of the right 'look' about presenting things, the right way to address things, etc, - has now degenerated into a more and more frantic wish to whip everyone and everything into line, - but with increasingly little idea of where the whole enterprise is going, or the faintest notion of how to solve a single one of the steadily mounting and growingly intractable and more threatening problems.

These Blairite lunatics give all the appearance of having actually started to believe their own barmy propaganda, and now that style and spin can no longer cope with ANYTHING, - this "amazing success" of New Labour government ("no regime in history so popular for so long", etc) is beginning to look like the Emperor's New clothes in the fairy story, - a complete figment of the imagination. 

It is still early days in New Labour's decline and fall, but what a remarkable paradox is looming of the whole market system of capitalist huckstering suffering one fatal trip-up towards the end through choking on its own advertising hype.

A suspicion of how bad things are for New Labour is raised by asking why the eventual inevitable backlash against previously unrestrained proselytising for homosexual lifestyles to be officially classified as 'normal' - has arisen now? 

This particular worm might have turned at any time, given the continuing widespread instinctive homophobic prejudice in society, and given the barmy excesses of 'gay liberation' campaigning and the ignored demand for greater scientific, psychological, and sociological understanding of the phenomenon of homosexuality by a healthy majority of ordinary sceptical people. 

The challenge comes now on this particular issue because everything that Blairism stands for overall is also now raising grave doubts.

The dramatic resignation announced this week of Peter Kilfoyle, an outstanding Labour leadership supporter, from his role as a Government junior minister spells this out. The Times reported:

"Friends of the 53-year-old MP say he has been angered by the Government's obsession with 'irrelevant London chattering class disputes' such as the plan to revoke the Section 28 law on promoting homosexuality in schools". 

A sincere resignation or not (a Liverpool mayor run is mooted), just the fact that distance from Blairism is needed either way, speaks volumes.

Another key figure in the overall Blair regime, Chris Woodhead, who masterminds the Government's controversial hardline schools inspection programme, has also chosen now and this issue to demonstrate doubt that 'blind Blair loyalism' on a programme of even blinder "politically correct" mindlessness, makes much sense. He denied that the law, as it currently stands, really does prevent schools education from touching on the subjects of homosexuality or anti-gay bullying, which is the PC lobby's excuse for getting rid of Clause 28 which bans the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Woodhead pointedly told the Sunday Telegraph:

My own experience is that there is no evidence that Clause 28 has had a negative influence on teachers' ability to deal with homophobic bullying. No headteacher has raised with me, in all the many school visits I have made, Clause 28 as a cause of concern. 

He added that inspections around the country had given no indication that children were not getting appropriate information or help about homosexuality.

In a rational world, nothing more could be wanted. It is the irrationalism of Blair's world which is being challenged, although not remotely just because of its identification with Gay Rights or with any other single-issue, self-righteous, subjective mania such as banning fox-hunting, Animal Lib, or extreme feminism. 

Their politically-correct embrace by Blairism is merely a symptom of the much more profound unstable nonsense at the heart of New Labour's fantasy world, - the blind faith that the West's "triumph" with freemarket imperialism is the best possible of all possible ways forward for civilisation, but brand-imaged and moronically dressed up as the Third Way, which has even less reality than Utopia.

Kilfoyle, Woodhead, & Co, and the former pro-Blair fanaticism in the capitalist press which is now becoming very dubious and cynical about the whole New Labour-New Britain exercise, - are not even distantly challenging the capitalist reality of 'government' itself, a premature notion at this stage, - but merely how the bizarre novelty of Blairism's all-dancing, all-singing style of 'government' via total propaganda blitzkrieg is actually getting on.

Some equally-seriously pro-capitalist critics are also beginning to wonder just how much damage to the bourgeoisie's pro-market private enterprise cause which this Blairism might start doing in its increasingly loony instability, thrashing around mindlessly for the next public-relations or advertising gimmick with which to keep popularity ratings up, rather than actually concentrating fully on what the next real government needs are as far as big business is concerned.

The hysterical lunacy of the whole ill-fated Dome Experience once again looms large as a symbol of everything politically philistine, Third Rate, and contemptible about the whole Blair phenomenon. This disgusting shallow opportunism is incapable of embracing even any notion of 'failure' or 'bad idea', and is now insisting on wasting even more tens of millions of public sector funds, desperately needed elsewhere, on this monumental folly to petty-bourgeois 'celebrity' conceit, where the Blair groupies posture like the show business and flashier commerce types they love to mingle with, - and ape - in 'bold extravagant gestures', etc. 

What a nauseating spectacle, utterly humiliating to ordinary human intelligence. It is against all this brash shallowness, with its nastier and more vicious Jorg Haider-type fascist undertones, - that a handful of former pro-Blair cheerleaders in press and public are beginning to turn. And that could mean a very rapid collapse indeed of the whole Blair phenomenon because there is no more to New Labourism than this ludicrous attempt at 'government' by nothing other than empty propaganda promises and spin-doctoring, but blasted out with maximum razamatazz and hype. 

This cold-water shock of recovering from the brief historical interlude of Blairite nonsense might even have signs in it of a real revival of serious thinking about further rational progress for the world, within which general historically-conditioned climate the re-emergence of Marxist Leninist science can once more become dominant on the strength of proletarian revolutions to come.

All single-issue reformist self-righteousness is beginning to be questioned, and by no means from exclusively conservative or reactionary standpoints. The Sunday Times has printed the following from Melanie Phillips:

Prejudice does exist against black people and homosexuals. There are true victims here and that is a blot on our society. Some men are also still hostile to women at work. However, attempts to codify and eradicate prejudice may create unfairness or cause resentment that can exacerbate the problem.

Even worse, the law will now require the promotion of racial equality, which means setting quotas and targets. All this is likely to build up more resentment of black people, not less, and a vicious cycle of demand and reaction. Look at America, after all, where a battery of laws banning racial prejudice and promoting positive discrimination has not prevented a racially polarised society with appalling hostility between white and black people.

The worst muddle here, however, is over the repeal of section 28. The government, stunned by the sudden outpouring of opposition, is trying to defuse the row by promising guidance to schools not to promote homosexuality. Yet promoting homosexuality is precisely what section 28 seeks to prevent. So why repeal the law in favour of "guidance", which will almost certainly be ignored?

It is the proselytising for homosexuality that has got parents so worked up.

People are more tolerant of homosexuality than they used to be, which is a great advance. They are tolerant, however, of what they think should be private activity between adults. Understandably, they object to their children, whose developing sexuality is often confused, being targeted by propaganda for a gay lifestyle.

There is ample evidence already that this is happening. A "health promotion" video in Avon aimed at children as young as 13 advises "experimenting with other boys and girls and see who you feel most comfortable with". A document from Camden and Islington, in north London, advises teachers how to persuade children that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle.

As for the claim that section 28 stops teachers from dealing with the bullying of gay children, this is a complete red herring. All bullying is wrong and should be stopped. Yet there is no evidence that the law prevents teachers from doing so if gay children are the victims. The Secondary Heads Association says it has received not one single call on the issue and that teachers can teach pupils about homosexuality with no legal problem at all.

Moreover, repealing section 28 is likely to lead to more bullying of gay children, not less, since the type of boy likely to attack gay children tends to be most worried about his own sexual identity. The more he feels threatened by propaganda extolling homosexuality, the more he is likely to hit out.

It is also based on a false claim of equality. Some homosexuals themselves concede that their lifestyle involves more of an emphasis on public sex and promiscuity than heterosexuality.

Baroness Young, leader of the opposition to the gay rights agenda in the Lords, says she has received letters of support from homosexuals making this point. These responsible-minded gays have voiced their hostility to that agenda, as well they might, because it is likely to bring more prejudice and attacks on them.

Yet the actual effect on individuals seems to be the last thing that activists are concerned about. In a society that is largely tolerant, a reverse intolerance seems to operate in which minority activity is promoted as normal. To uphold conventional behaviour, on the other hand, is deemed to be intolerant and oppressive.

The result is vicious bullying of the majority. So, fantastically, parents are frightened to protest against the use of public parks for gay sex for fear of being damned with the illiterate insult of "homophobe".

Legislation is surely a clumsy blunderbuss when used on either side of these great debates. Section 28 was a heavy-handed and ill-advised response to gay propaganda in schools. It would be better to remove all sex education from the classroom, as it is invariably a Trojan horse for sexual propaganda, gay or straight.

Violent prejudice is rooted in fear and insecurity. More advances towards racial harmony are achieved by educating black and white children alongside one another than by any laws; and more homosexuals would lead less threatened lives without the ferocious amplification of the gay rights agenda.

Such sources are obviously light-years distant from a revolutionary communist understanding of civilisation's advance towards the triumph of reason, but it is an excellent widely publicised sample of how even bourgeois ideology can tilt against the complete barminess of political correctness. Once again, the roles of the fake-'left' in politics in still being the most servile followers of all petty-bourgeois single-issue 'reformist' posturing, prove themselves to be not any kind of misplaced or faltering step towards a genuine communist mentality, but only, on the contrary, a stooge-like cover for the most reactionary diversions for boosting anti-communist middle-class thinking.

The mounting of the 'Keep Clause 28' bandwagon by all the religious leaders and such 'modern' capitalists as Brian Souter of Stagecoach, are all obviously potentially more reactionary influences in the arguments, but their greatest importance for now is in prominently NOT being available as Blairite political bedfellows. The wheels are falling off that bandwagon.

This dramatic collapse of New Labour euphoria is having other unanticipated benefits. It is instructive to see the 'liberal press freedom' posturing of the Guardian, for example, reduced in panic to unconcealed brain-washing bias in favour of its new 'hope of the Western world' Blair as the New Labour apparatchiks struggle to rig the selection for the party's London-mayor candidate. After a lifetime of slightly more cleverly-concealed anti-communist lies, distortions and brainwashing, it will cause some of the thinking gullible to pause through seeing the same one-sided treatment meted out to Ken Livingstone of all people (why bother?). Some 'Red menace', some threat to the Western way of life!!

Such ill-advised stunts might just start one or two people thinking about the 'free press' brainwashing bias in general, such as the latest demented propaganda blitzkrieg against the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, boosting the credentials of the newest CIA-masterminded stunt against what is left of ZANU's planned socialist economy perspectives, the dollar-financed middle-class Movement for Democratic Change.

From Solidarnosc and the Afghan Mojahedin onwards, the CIA's broad counter-revolutionary masterplans do not vary much, making use of the maximum of local, ethnic, religious or class differences for manufacturing a rival propaganda vehicle for anti-communist agitation.

Once again in Zimbabwe, some leading 'trade union' opportunists are in the van, bringing together "a potentially potent mix of supporters from Zimbabwe's unions, the church, students, women's groups, human rights organisations, and professional groups," as the Guardian helpfully itemises this Langley-formula front for the attempted disruption of Mugabe's socialist aspirations and Zimbabwe's efforts to help the Kabila regime resist reactionary counter-revolution in the Congo. 

Are there no other petty bourgeois-minded individualist pursuits to add to this manufactured anti-communist list? Pigeon-fanciers? The Zimbabwe Ladies Darts League? Harare unicyclists? "We are for a market economy" the MDC 'elected' president unsurprisingly made as his opening announcement. 

Mugabe promptly called a real mass rally to denounce this latest miserable anti-communist farce (claiming a half-page spread in the Guardian in Britain) as "a puppet of the country's former white rulers". More power to Mugabe's mass rallies. ZANU defeated the Western capitalist media's anti-communist meddling to win revolutionary power in the first place. It should do so again to keep it. 

The rapid degeneration of the Blairite phenomenon could eventually disrupt all this anti-communism too, indirectly. Outspoken Blair groupies in the middle-class media have already started back-tracking in embarrassment over the Dome fiasco. There will be much more humiliation to come. 

The disruption (of self-righteous, single-issue individualism conveniently coinciding with the new belief 'reformist' government of the day, the Blair regime with all those Quango public positions and life peerages to hand out) has merely shamed some Labour luvvies into even more strident PC posturing than ever before by way of cover-up and added self-assertive self-righteousness. 

Jeremy Hardy of pro-Labour SWP connections is typical. The way that Brixton and Manchester New Labour leaders, plus London mayor candidates Dobson and Jackson, and thousands more 'progressive' posturers, made complete fools of themselves by denouncing Mike Tyson at the same time as the genuine socialist minded working class were deliberately going out of their way to put two fingers up to the racist Establishment in Britain and the USA by giving the phenomenal fighter from the New York black ghetto a hero's welcome, meant nothing to the 'socialist man of the people' Hardy. 

Tyson's deliberately-prominent Che Guevara and Mao Tsetung tattoos meant nothing to this fake-'left' anti-communist stooge either, nor Tyson's intelligent pointed remarks advising critical charity mongers to get onto their government to provide better funding for impoverished areas of life and impoverished regions in this (or any) country. 

His revolt-conscious statement that he wanted to pay his respects to black battling Brixton just as he would pay them to Gerry Adams if he were an Irish-American visiting Ireland, equally went ignored.

Instead of apologising for his reactionary political stupidity for joining the racist and vindictively self-righteous campaign to persecute Tyson because the US imperialist Establishment first turned him out as a violent and embittered child of the black ghetto, and subsequently victimised him with a deliberately whipped-up and embellished (not to say completely framed-up) reputation as a demonic black devil-rapist, etc, - Hardy plonkingly insisted on vindicating his own snivelling subjective ego in a second go at Tyson in his weekly Guardian column.

Not one single doubt that the all-white jury in the Fundamentalist-Christian-spooked Indianopolis (which ordered the demonic Tyson to be locked away for six years for what on their own accounts was nothing more than a dubious 'date-rape') was an integral part of a white imperialist cultural superpower which had already arranged the cold-blooded butchery (and cover-up) of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and countless more rebellious blacks, either assassinated or imprisoned on trumped-up charges.

Instead, the fake-'left' Hardy tries to bluster through the stinking confusion his own ignorance and conceit have landed him in by an aggressive display of 'logic'. 

Total British-university-philosophy-department-trained gobshite, as far removed from the class-war reason of communist science as it is possible for anti-Leninists to get, is certainly about to be served up.

First he tries some non-feminist feminism by defending Desiree Washington from an unspoken attack on her for originally attracting Tyson's attention at a beauty pageant meat-market, the most blatantly cheesy kind of capitalist exploitation racket that 'nice' women have ever yet fallen for:

"Undoubtedly, stereotyping attaches itself to her: not very bright or dignified these beauty queens, parading around in swim suits" 

he comments with intended comic irony but managing to sound only grossly prejudiced and flippant in such a monstrously notoriously dubious case of international racist bias as the Tyson 'conviction'.

Then Hardy gets into his 'pure logic' idiotic stride, as divorced from the real world as it is possible to be:

"Consenting to follow a man to his hotel room represents consent to that alone," 

he asserts. What, not even the least expression of enjoyment or interest in one's date? Not even representing a wish to find out more about a newly-dated man? Not even a willingness for a chat and a coffee maybe, or a drink or two? Just an interest in the interior of an Indianopolis hotel room? At 2 o'clock in the morning? On a date with the most macho black stud in the world, Mike Tyson?

None of which remotely excuses Tyson for forcing himself on Desiree, - IF THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED, - but there can be a million and one misunderstandings in such situations, - without even considering the possibilities of deliberate entrapment because of Tyson's wealth, or deliberately false accusations of rape for the same reason.

But bourgeois ideology has no place for such considerations when the possibility of castigating an anarchic black 'personal terrorist' is in view.

So Hardy persists with his rotten 'logic', based entirely on the infallibility of an all-white Indianopolis jury in the superpower home of racist genocide, the USA, which wiped out the entire aboriginal people of North America to colonise the place, and then exploited black slaves for 300 years to build its wealth.

Did Desiree lead Tyson on? "Is an aroused man unable to stop", Hardy pretends to ask fairly. His 'logic' provides an unbelievable answer:

"So, then, any man reading this who awoke with an erection this morning was justified in trying to sodomise the postman. After all, he came to your door. What were you to think?".

At this point, no one can be any longer in doubt that this is someone talking who is floundering in his own rotten confusion and stupidity, but arrogantly blustering like mad to distract attention from it. It is subjective-idealist self justification gone absolutely rancid.

And why the fantasy about sodomising the postMAN? Why not a fantasy about groping the nice Jehovah's Witness lady who calls, or the nice lady LibDem canvasser? Is this Hardy's strangled cry for help?

After outrageously dragging in utterly irrelevant smokescreen analogies, - libellously insulting to Tyson, about any number of women-beating, racist British sportsmen giving comfort to South African apartheid, and currently committing racist assaults in Leeds, etc, etc, likening Tyson to a fascist, - Hardy ends lamely but disgustingly:

"Yes, rank hypocrisy abounds. But Tyson is still a rapist".

And Jeremy Hardy is a reactionary little pustule, eaten up with his own unhappy subjectivism, and compensating with sick, single-issue self-righteousness to make himself feel better. Typical SWP fake-'left', in fact. Communists will continue to denounce the anti-Tyson claque and express solidarity with the black proletariat who correctly gave a massive warm spontaneous welcome to the rebellious street fighter from the New York black ghetto who is still facing racist persecution from the imperialist establishment, not necessarily excusing any bad or backward culture Tyson might be limited by, but aware that criminal violence is first and foremost the indictment of the society that has bred it, not of the individuals who are dragged down by it, who are ALL victims of the completely amoral capitalist system in one way, or another (see last 2 weeks' Reviews).

Communist venom, ridicule, and persecution, on the other hand, is a CLASS question, reserved for representatives of an entire petty-bourgeois ideology, (like Hardy) who do the worst kind of damage conceivable to the working class by posing as 'lefts' but spreading the most divisive subjective-individualist moralising by sanctimoniously condemning a 'bad personality', fogging things in a hopelessly reformist way by demanding 'personal improvement' or atonement. They are mini-Blairite vicars, taking the easy route to saintliness by loud moral posturing against easy targets like the framed Mike Tyson. What despicable victimisation, and what a criminal betrayal of the real interests of the working class.

And what rank hypocrisy indeed over the grotesque subjectivist diversionary claim that "the personal is political". Which innocent working-class woman (as opposed to hysterical single-issue petty-bourgeois posturer) has really been damaged or threatened by Tyson's sojourn here for one fight in Manchester? The only pain or inconvenience any individual has suffered is that of the fake-'lefts' from standing on their own heads to make a 'case' against Tyson's visit.

Meanwhile a real personal tragedy is taking place in the world, which really is political in the extreme, - the plight of the little 6-year-old Cuban boy Elián González who has been monstrously abducted by Cuban fascist émigré political forces in Miami, aided and abetted by the very worst reactionary elements in US imperialism's hate-filled murderous vendetta against the Cuban socialist revolution. A little six-year-old boy is being held and brainwashed like a circus freak captive and kept from his father and grandparents in Cuba in order that bribes, toys, and total confusion and exhaustion will eventually get him to say that he likes it in Miami and wants to stay, etc. 

What utter barbaric cynicism. And what a marvellous subject for a weekly 'left' newspaper column, - and, as it happens, something that Tyson himself would conceivably speak out about, denouncing the same US imperialist hypocrisy and victimisation that has stitched Tyson himself up. 

For a fake-'left' and a fake anti-imperialist however, it is much easier to go on kicking Mike Tyson for a dubious 'date-rape' he was framed for nearly 10 years ago and which he has in fact SERVED his prison sentence for already. Sick, or what?

Another defiant defence of single-issue posturing, deliberately missing the anti-Blairism in the backlash against it, came unsurprisingly from the former Guardian editor Peter Preston.

In a ludicrously emotional rant, he demands the repeal of 'Section 28' although he admits that a law change will not stop prejudice or playground bullying. But he claims:

"The fight, for all that, has a momentous symbolism attached. It forces every one of us to look into ourselves and decide what is right. It allows no political weaselings. No hiding place."

This incoherent conscience-mongering splutters forth because Preston has twin daughters, one reportedly happily married, and one reportedly happily lesbian. He goes on:

"My daughter isn't some notional stereotype invented to scare elderly cardinals. Nor is she a visitor from an alien place. She is like millions more in the world around, - and we in turn are like millions of other parents. This is our flesh and blood; part of us, a reflection of us. We don't have to say she is equal. She IS equal. And no drizzle of incomprehension, no fear fostered in ignorance, no puny section, can alter that. It isn't tolerance we need. It is knowing what makes our hearts beat."

All of which blackmailing hysterical blather completely misses the point, twice.

Preston should be locked up if he DIDN'T love his lesbian daughter as much as the straight one. Most parents will recognise a natural tendency to feel even more deeply caring for and vulnerable about a child who has had great difficulties in life compared to others who have sailed through it more easily.

And he smartly picks on the sillier part of Clause 28 to pour scorn on, - the section ordering no promotion of "homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". His lesbian daughter and partner are as lovingly-accepted a part of 'happy families', getting together at Christmas, as the married daughter with child and husband, and the rest of the Prestons themselves.

Naturally and inevitably so, one would hope.

But the problem being grappled with by the deserving-of-ridicule legal drafting, and the even more deserving-of-ridicule religious leaders' pronouncements, condemning repeal of Clause 28, is the obviously scientific nonsense that homosexuality is the SAME THING as heterosexuality, which is what gay proselytising wishes to establish.

And far more is at stake than just a semantic pedantic quibble, and it is glaringly posed in Preston's own words, although he is too subjectively fraught, too taken in by Blairite politically-correct 'reform' fraud, and too ideologically petty-bourgeois to even grasp it, let alone come down on the really humane side.

He explains that his lesbian daughter, 

"troubled and uncertain from the age of 13 on, found nothing to help or to guide her at school, - merely an RE teacher the cardinal would have embraced. She did not, to our subsequent chagrin, confide in her parents until her mind was clear. She had damn-all in the way of information, let alone the illusion of town hall propaganda. She was left alone to struggle through the most difficult years. Where is there the least hint of Christianity in that? When did Christ, abandoning any mention of love, inveigh against 'pretended family relationships'? (which the Daily Mail, for its own reasons, defines as an 'equal alternative to marriage')? Why does it sometimes seem that Robert Mugabe must be the natural leader of this panic stricken crusade?".

"The repeal of section 28 won't transform society," 

he immediately goes on. 

"There will still be vicious playground bullying of the kind copiously documented by teachers themselves. There will still be prejudice and fear," 

etc, etc.

But it is precisely because of this complex rotten reality of growing up under the fag-end of the utterly confused and dying capitalist system that the backlash against politically-correct Blairism and all its works is occurring. 

Is Preston so smugly self-centred in his Blairite bourgeois circles that he thinks that the tiny minority of children at puberty whose biggest problem is a failure to develop the normal reproductive urge, is really the sum total of teenage uncertainty and difficulty in present day Britain? Is the tiny minority, puzzling over their homosexual tendencies, really the biggest failure of government and town hall policies to make educational, vocational, or cultural sense at all for the overwhelming majority of today's teenagers? Is the almost universal youth despair of not knowing what to make of the utterly hypocritical, lying, and death-dealing capitalist-imperialist system really all to be set aside so that a ludicrously biased single-issue campaign of blatantly subjective self-interest for a tiny minority of the population can have it officially acknowledged that black is white and that heterosexuality is the same thing as homosexuality? Is the real problem of still teaching God to children in school (more than 600 years after the start of the scientific era made such nonsense utterly unnecessary and criminally confusing) just a little local difficulty of an RE disseminator being predictably useless at clearing up a tiny minority's difficulties with the normal reproductive urges?

It is increasingly clear that where Preston's emotional blitzkrieg is coming from, whether be realises it or not, is straight out of his Islington set drawing rooms where panic is mounting that the whole Blairite bandwagon is about to dramatically crash off the rails. This disgusting attempt at emotional blackmail to protect this fabulous New Labour bourgeois gravy-train will know full well that the bogus 'reform' element in Blairism is entirely exhausted by just this PC posturing, its only (and bogus) 'radicalism'. 

And if the empty nonsense of political correctness is backlashed out of contention, all that then remains is New Labour's vicious privatisation campaign and international stoogery for US imperialism, both conducted far more savagely and, shamelessly than even the Tories would ever dream of doing. So all hands to the pump and browbeat the nation into PC-compatible mindlessness quick, is Preston's real petty-bourgeois class message. 

The disgustingly complacent swipe at Robert Mugabe, struggling heroically in ZANU to rescue Zimbabwe from a century of utterly barbaric Third World colonial exploitation and poverty (which the Guardian managed to live right through and even grow fat on without choking on its own Liberal progressive humbug), and still struggling even worse now because of the West's relentless campaign of anti-socialist vilification (to which Mugabe has responded satirically because of Western petty-bourgeois ideology's self-indulgent concentration on PC stupidities), - really gives Preston's game away. Do the starving and frightened millions in Africa, brutalised and exploited by BRITISH colonialism (among others), for whose right to any kind of life at all ZANU fought a magnificent national-liberation war, despite all the suffering and against all the odds, really deserve nothing more from 'enlightened' Western people than a sneering lecture on political correctness which the idiots of Islington do not understand the first thing about anyway????

BLAIR AND AFTER

But what to do about all this? Where does the fight for real communist understanding go next at this interesting juncture? The EPSR supporters' aggregate agreed that continuing and expanding the fight for a rational understanding of the worldwide class and national struggle, - past, present, and future, - in the light of Marxist-Leninist scientific understanding of imperialist system crisis, remained 99.99% of the battle.

On the other 00.01% of the struggle, which is turning the understanding of the movement of class forces into practical organisational and tactical leadership of spontaneously erupting expressions of class conflict; the verdict remains that in their successful engagement in such developments as the SLP, Leninists erred if anything in imposing too little of their EPSR revolutionary understanding, and in giving too much credibility to the potential for philosophical transformation of such trained and hardened petty-bourgeois trade-union bureaucrats and anti-revolutionary Revisionist opportunists as the philistine Scargill and his NUM mafia.

In the end, the world needs to be heading for a fully CONSCIOUS fight for Marxist-Leninist science, that being the largest part of its whole point. In the very long run, making the revolution in order to allow Marxist-Leninist scientific reason to become the world's philosophy is infinitely more important than mugging up Marxism-Leninism in order to make the revolution, - a weakness in understanding which the Soviet bureaucracy finally never recovered from. 

Engaging in the SLP development, the key interest is what will such an involvement do for Marxist-Leninist understanding, not what can Leninist cadres do for the SLP. Priceless hands-on experience was gained in predicting and exposing the appalling obstacle to successful class struggle that social-chauvinist opportunism can and will present, and in establishing the absolute humbug of trade-union 'constitutional democracy', the worthily rotten bedfellow of parliamentary cretinism. The complex, fear-laden, and class-biased (petty-bourgeois trade unionism) extent of anti-communist philistinism was also well exposed by briefly running with the SLP dreams, as was the panic-stricken response of formally expelling the EPSR via openly corrupt bureaucratic skulduggery as soon as its unchallenged Marxist-Leninist appeal to the membership had proved to be so influential.

Tactically, in the light of weakness and confusion among a tiny segment of EPSR supporters, it still seems to have been the best course to have bent over backwards to demonstrate that it was Scargill's rotten and determined anti-communism which was deliberately hounding-out EPSR influence, rather than communists in any way refusing to be good SLP members.

On possible future centrist developments, the fight for Marxist-Leninist understanding will face exactly the same obligations as were successfully carried out over the SLP phenomenon, if comparable circumstances prevail. Build Leninism. Royston Bull

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Anti-imperialist resistance as determined as ever in Cuba despite continuing lethal blockade & new kidnap provocation.

CUBA is a defiant country. Not only defiant of the United States but defiant of the New World Order. Defiant of capitalism. Defiant in the protection of its sovereignty. Defiant to ensure the continuation and improvement of the welfare of its people. Defiant in its protection of socialism.

As Cuba enters the 41st year of its Revolution, the confidence of the Cuban people in their future is unshakeable despite the difficulties that continue to face them. This confidence arises from the fact that they have survived the devastating collapse of their trading arrangements with the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe in the early 1990s and the deliberate intensification of the US blockade in 1992 and 1996.

At that time, there was a widespread belief (outside Cuba) that Cuba would collapse within the sandwich of the loss of trade and the effects of the intensified blockade. The fact that Cuba survived is a tribute to the will of the Cuban people to preserve the gains of their Revolution and explains the confidence with which they now face the future. Last year, the economy grew by about 6.5% - a much higher rate than any other country in the Caribbean.

However, while infant mortality and life expectancy rates continue to improve, life is still very difficult for the Cuban people. There are shortages of most of the basic necessities of life and they endure a continuous struggle to provide for their needs. And while not a single public facility was closed down and no teachers, medical staff or other public service workers were laid off, many supplies necessary for the provision of social services are in short supply or are simply not available.

Despite US propaganda to the contrary, there is no indication that there is any sign of a relaxation of the blockade. In the face of worldwide revulsion towards the inclusion of food and medicine in the blockade legislation, the US responded with a propaganda campaign which appeared to soften the blockade but which allowed almost no practical benefit to Cuba.

US hostility towards Cuba is vented at any and every opportunity. The most recent act of hostility relates to the virtual state kidnapping of Elián Gonzales, the six-year-old boy who was picked from the sea by the US Coastguard after his mother and step-father attempted to reach the US illegally, having taken the boy without the permission of his father.

Under international law 	and under the terms of the current migration agreement between the US and Cuba, the boy should have been returned immediately to his father in 	Cuba. Instead, the boy was kept in the US and used as a propaganda weapon 	against Cuba. The boy was 	picked up on 25 November and at the time of going to print the child has still not 	been returned to his father in Cuba. Any other child 	from any other country in the world would have been returned to his family within 48 hours.

Whatever about individual attacks on Cuba such as in the case of Elián Gonzáles, US hostility towards Cuba must still be measured by the terms and intensity of the continuing blockade. The blockade is intended to smash the economy and break the will of the Cuban people. But while the US can claim 'success' in causing massive damage to the Cuban economy and untold hardship to the civilian population, the war to break the will of the people has been a complete failure.

Remarkably, the Cuban people do not harbour 	generalised ill-feelings against the US or against the American people. 	Reports of "anti-American" demonstrations in Cuba 	over the Elían Gonzales case are false: the demonstrations are very focused on the particular policies being applied by the US Government. Anti-Americanism and opposition to US foreign policies are two distinct matters - matters between which the Cuban population have no problem distinguishing.

Cuba has shown that the countries of Latin America need not be condemned to poverty and backwardness, that progress can be made and the highest standard of health care and social welfare achieved. Cuba is now struggling valiantly to defend the gains of its Revolution - there is no time to waste in supporting that struggle.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

The demise of the RUC will not be a victory for republicans at the expense of unionists. The RUC has been the architect of its own destiny and it has been shown to be partial and corrupt

Mandelson's curt proposals on the RUC were accompanied by a speech which purposefully ignored the suffering and bloodshed inflicted by the RUC, while expounding their supposed virtues with a plethora of laudatory remarks. Indeed, the reasons for which the Patten Commission on the RUC was founded did not even feature in Mandelson's speech in the House of Commons. No mention was made of the victims of RUC intimidation, collusion at the highest levels with loyalist forces, interrogation and cold-blooded assassination. No mention of the killings of Robert Hamill, Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson and the stark indictment they pose of the RUC's record. No mention either, of any intentions but to leave the questions surrounding these deaths unresolved.

The British proposals met with a swift reaction from the Relatives for Justice Campaign: 'We are totally appalled at the announcement by Peter Mandelson that the current RUC boss, Ronnie Flanagan is to have responsibility for overseeing the implementation of human rights within the new policing structures," said the organisation's spokesperson Jim McCabe.

'Flanagan in charge of human rights is a real case of contradiction in terms and certainly does not augur well for the future', he said.

Sinn Féin is withholding a definitive response on Mandelson's announcements pending the introduction of planned legislation. 'Sinn Féin's position on the RUC is clear. So is our position on the need to establish a new policing service,' party spokesperson on policing Gerry Kelly stated.

'Obviously, we need to see the legislation before making a definitive response to the proposals on the future of policing. It must be remembered that the final judgement on these proposals will be whether or not young nationalists will want to or be able to join the policing service', he said.

The failure of the proposals to map out the manner and timescale in which they are intended to be imposed was an ominous omission, he believed. 'We have today only received a broad outline of the British Government's intentions. I am concerned that political threats from the UUP and others to collapse the entire Agreement over the Patten proposals are tied up with this', said Kelly.

UUP security spokesperson Ken Maginnis was aggrieved that what he termed 'the scum of parochial politics' (that's Sinn Féin), in particular Tyrone Assembly member Barry McElduff, could be holding two seats on the proposed Policing Board. Mandelson retorted, accusing Maginnis of clandestine support for British policies on the RUC: 'I am therefore surprised that he chooses to say differently in public what he says in private.'

The monotonous unionist demand for decommissioning again reared its ugly head throughout the media this past week. It was not enough that their champions of decommissioning, the LVF, have bloodily re-asserted the destabilising threat they pose. Unionists, amongst others, continued unabated to enthuse their fervour for the issue.

That arch-weaver of UUP spin, John Taylor, was predictably at it again: 'If they start decommissioning, then that's great news, and of course, the whole situation would have been transformed, but if they don't, then of course the whole executive will fail.'

Adding to the pessimistic stubbornness of this unionist soothsayer were the unhelpful comments from Bertie Ahern. He said that, in the event that decommissioning of weaponry by May 2000 does not happen, "the entire thing will fall apart... Whatever happens after that..." Surely this forecasting of total collapse only plays into the hands of those who detract from the process. And Ahern must know this only too well.

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams addressed this issue while on a visit to Washington this week. He said that issuing "deadlines and ultimatums" was the wrong way of approaching the decommissioning issue and that worldwide experiences had shown this to be the case. He also reiterated the provisions of the Agreement, which have relegated the issue to the de Chastelain Commission, where it should stay, and not as a political football and obstacle to progress.

Martin McGuinness pointed to the real source of unionist frustration: Citing the response from unionists to his appointment as Six-County Minister for Education, he explained that they simply didn't want "a Catholic or a Fenian about the place". 

"Our message is very clear," he said. "We are now about the place." 

While we digest the bones of the British announcements on the RUC and their likely impact, or lack thereat, it is apt that we should consider the memory of Tom Williams.

He lightly gave his young life in pursuit of freedom and justice. The RUC that he fought remains today a unionist force for a unionist people. Williams, like many other Volunteers before and after, was a respected protector of his people. We look to the day when young nationalists and republicans like him can pledge their allegiance to a policing service founded on the principles of justice, equality and accountability.

The demise of the RUC will not be a victory for republicans at the expense of unionists. The RUC has been the architect of its own destiny and it has been shown to be partial and corrupt. Today, there have been endless eulogies to the RUC, led by Mandelson and the unionists. Do they not understand how unpalatable nationalists and republicans find this behaviour? We can stomach it, however, as long as we get real and lasting change in policing, which must encompass far more than names and symbols.