Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

When drawing from academic work that traces forgotten histories, we can learn much about Brightons past.

But as we build a picture of the town 200 years ago we should strive for accuracy and remember the extraordinary part played by its people.

Brighton was an abolition town. Archive copies of the Brighton Gazette and the Brighton Guardian offer a glimpse of the anti-slavery attitudes of its people.

In the 1820s and 1830s it seems that the Old Ship Hotel, in Ship Street, hosted numerous public meetings on the issue of abolition.

A short distance away, at the Friends Meeting House, Quakers hosted similar gatherings.

George Faithfull, a non-conformist preacher at the Ship Street Chapel (later renamed Holy Trinity Church), was resolute in his anti-slavery campaigning.

Propelling the abolitionist views was an 1824 pamphlet called Immediate not Gradual Emancipation by Elizabeth Heyrick.

Her call for a nationwide boycott of West Indian sugar had spurred Brighton grocery stores to lead the way by refusing to stock it.

The Gazette reported that on Tuesday 16 November 1830, at 6.30pm, despite the tempestuous state of the weather, an anti-slavery public meeting took place at the Old Ship.

It was agreed that a petition would be submitted to the legislature resolving that slavery was repugnant to justice, humanity and sound policy (and) to the principles of the British constitution and to the spirit of the Christian religion.

The meeting voted to form the Brighton Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and decided that demand in the town and its vicinity was sufficient for the formation of an anti-slavery ladies society. Brighton grocer Isaac Bass proposed the motion.

As fascinating and uplifting as these historical snippets are, they feel eerily relevant to the city in 2020.

In early June, council leaders were quoted in the press suggesting that the city was built on the profits of slavery.

Some stretched the historical record to imply Brighton and Hoves Georgian buildings owe their very existence to the slave trade.

The integrity of the historical record depends on facts. It is certainly a fact that in 1836 the British government began paying out 20 million (about 16 billion today) in compensation to 46,000 British slave owner claimants (or beneficiaries of slave owners listed in a will) as recompense for losing their property.

Many had already grown rich on the profits of the trade and now grew obscenely richer as a consequence of abolition.

Of those compensated, a search of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership database set up at University College London (UCL) reveals 19 people receiving a combined total of 153,422 (about 17 million today) as having an actual Brighton address.

It goes without saying that 19 out of 46,000 British nationals compensated is a tiny number.

As for the wealth that built Brighton, local historian Peter Crowhurst points out that there is no consensus among historians on the extent of the impact of slave trade profits on the British economy.

There is, though, no doubt that the nations increasing dependence on sugar and cotton meant the nation benefited enormously from slavery.

Certainly, the initial wave of Brightons development, which took place between 1790 and 1820, occurred too early to have benefited from any finance derived from the compensation payments.

Royal Crescent in Brighton

More broadly, if we were to trace the links between the nations historic buildings, the money that built them, the wealthy people who once lived or worked inside them and the capital accrued from Britains imperial conquests, it would result in a crime-map covering the length and breadth of the land.

In the case of Brightons links with any slavery profiteer developers, historians identify just one a Mr JB Otto, who owned a West Indies plantation and built Royal Crescent in Kemp Town from 1799 to 1801.

Otto doesnt appear on the UCL database (by 1836 he had either died or sold his interests).

However, academics at Brighton University seem to imply a far greater complicity between the citys built environment and the profits of West Indies slavery.

Pondering the significance of the Royal Pavilions Orientalist architecture (and its architectural references throughout the city), the Brighton University academics argue that this colonially derived exoticism obscures the wealth derived from slavery.

This wealth, extracted from the other side of the Atlantic, also congealed, say the academics in the citys brick and flint.

Their essay does uncover fascinating and moving stories. The sections on the 1831 Tortola rebellion and Brighton resident and plantation owner Caroline Anderson, on Elizabeth Heyrick, Isaac Bass and the Old Ship abolitionists all make essential reading. But it offers no further detail on its brick and flint assertion. This is a shame.

Brighton Pavilion by Duncan Harris on Flickr

The essays utilisation of the UCL database and its focus on Brighton is indeed the source of those comments made by council leaders in June.

As such, the stance taken by council leaders was inaccurate and unnecessarily divisive.

Perhaps, in 2020, a more unifying message would be to note that living amid a Georgian town (developed courtesy of a range of wealthy investors) were actual, living citizens who contributed heart and soul to the fight against slavery.

When they met in the Old Ship, the Friends Meeting House, the Ship Street Chapel and in many other locations they demonstrated the decency of ordinary people.

Arguably it was Britains imperial interests that lay behind the abolition movement. By the early 1800s the slave trade was less important and so, through the role given to William Wilberforce, taking the moral high ground served those needs far better.

But in Brighton the radical mood appears far closer to Heyricks militant demand for immediate emancipation and influenced by the likes of former slave turned abolition campaigner Ottobah Cugoano.

Some might say Brightons Ship Street radicals were small in number that, really, a more apt characterisation of the town would centre on wealthy slave traders and an indifferent or complicit mass of townsfolk (that, collectively, the city of today should be ashamed of its past).

The front page of the Brighton Gazette carried the December 1832 election results

However, another historical snippet suggests such a characterisation would be wrong.

On Thursday 13 December 1832, the people of Brighton elected their own Members of Parliament for the first time.

In fact, the two MPs they elected were radicals persons known to the town as holders of extremely liberal ideals.

They supported, among other things, the abolition of unmerited pensions and sinecures, the further widening of the right to vote and you guessed it, the abolition of slavery.

One was Isaac Newton Wigney, son of a local banker. The other was the non-conformist preacher of Ship Street, George Faithfull.

In 1832 the right to vote was still highly limited. Nonetheless, those who lent their vote to the anti-slavery, pro-democracy radicals Wigney and Faithfull were just the tip of the iceberg.

It was a voter turnout that spearheaded the hunger for social justice and universal suffrage that would soon animate the Chartist period to come.

George Faithfull MP was a non-conformist preacher and solicitor to Thomas Read Kemp who developed Kemp Town

For Brightons citizenry, the fact that Britains ruling elite had profited from slavery and now resisted extending the franchise to every man and woman was indeed repugnant.

Reminding ourselves of any links Brighton had with the transatlantic slave trade is no bad thing. But too often the past is selectively plundered to make a political point (however well-intentioned that point might be).

When tracing forgotten histories lets be sure to tell the stories of everyday citizens who lived and worked here, who held extraordinarily liberal views for their time and who campaigned tirelessly for the immediate abolition of slavery.

Adrian Hart is a neighbourhood activist living in east Brighton. He is author of Thats Racist! How the regulation of speech and thought divides us all.

This article first appeared on the Brighton Society website where the original can be read with footnotes. It is reproduced with the permission of the Brighton Society and the author.

Read more:

As 'anti-racist' politicians selectively plunder our past, here's the truth about Brighton's attitude to the transatlantic slave trade - Brighton and...

This is an extract from Terrell Carvers book Engels Before Marx (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

Friedrich Engels took his observational powers to Manchester in December 1842, having just turned twenty-two the month before. In November, en route from Barmen to London, Engels stopped at the newspaper offices of the Rheinische Zeitung, meeting with the newly installed editor, Herr Karl Marx.

Marx had fallen into the editorship somewhat by default, and certainly not by experience. At that point Engels had contributed around twice as many articles to the paper as Marx, and Marx had placed only a couple of articles elsewhere at all.

Many years later Engels recalled this meeting between the two of them, saying it was notably cool on Marxs side, given that Marx disapproved of the overly philosophical Berlin set of Young Hegelians. But in his recollections Engels says nothing about the other editors, or indeed how he himself felt about Marx at the time. It must have been clear, though, that Engels was by far the more accomplished writer and indeed publicist for free thinking and liberalizing political progress.

And he was the one embarking on a breathtaking adventure to the worlds major economic and military power. Engels had been to England before, his English was fluent, and he was off out of the German states to the wider world of imperial Britain. This was all rather beyond Marxs imagination at the time.

The news from England was already of some interest in the German-speaking public. Or rather it would be of topical and political interest, unless your interests lay elsewhere as was certainly the case with the ruling elites namely in keeping any notion of social change and political innovation firmly at bay. In that case, the less news about England, the better.

Engels was evidently commissioned to continue his career with the Rheinische Zeitung with news of liberalizing modernity. These were the themes bannered up under the papers name: politics, trade, and industry. Writing acutely from sources in the realm of ideas, for people interested in ideas, was a form of political communication at which Engels was adept.

As a stringer for a liberalizing newspaper young Friedrich was quite a gift, and of course he was remarkably cheap, probably gratis, or nearly so. He was not only externally funded by trade and industry but employed at a major metropolitan center. With that background and that kind of knowledge, and resident at that kind of location, he could add a unique dimension to their ongoing reportage. His politics were progressive and liberalizing, but not apparently utopian and visionary.

In the journalism of the time in the German states, someone who could write from this modernizing perspective which was the milieu of the papers businessmen-editors was a really valuable asset. And even for those readers perhaps not quite so interested in the conflictual politics of social change, travel writing could certainly be enjoyable, and doubtless help to sell papers. Travel as far as England was rare, and emigrants publishing their experiences as polished journalism even rarer.

Engelss first dispatch, The English View of the Internal Crises, observes English politics for his readers from an experiential perspective, namely his experience of the English ruling classes, whether middle class or aristocracy. His experiences of the aristocracy would have been minimal and from hearsay, since he had no connections to such exclusive realms. But for him the middle classes are clearly commercial and obviously of interest, and he singularizes this ideal type for his readers as the practical Englishman.

This typical businessman sees politics as a matter of arithmetic or even a commercial affair. In Engelss view, this indifference to the larger world of ideas, or even to the precarious state of the country, underpins the calm assurance and confidence amidst the hustle and bustle of English life, as he put it that seems odd.

Clearly, Engels finds English commercialism an impressive social force, certainly compared with the reactionary medievalisms in the German states, and quite different from Prussian bureaucratized authoritarianism. In that context, modernizing changes if any were to be carefully determined and controlled within the non-constitutional monarchical and Christian confessional state.

The political explosion of Chartism in English life, and at the time, very much in the streets of the major cities, was a movement for legal progress and universal suffrage the article, as edited through the censorship, doesnt explain Engelss scare quotes on legal progress. The key contradiction, for Engels here, is the one between mass agitation for universal (male) suffrage, and the middle-class and aristocratic beneficiaries of the status quo.

From 1832 a barely reformed and thus highly unrepresentative parliament, arising from a tiny, privileged (male) electorate and peerage, was firmly in control, whether Whigs or Tories. Writing analytically, Engels comments that universal (male) suffrage, as promoted through a decade of Chartist agitation, would put an end to this complacency and inevitably result in a revolution.

Barely two years later, just turning twenty-four, Engels embarked on a full-length book to be published under his own name. He was contracted to a publisher in Leipzig in the Kingdom of Saxony, where censorship and political conditions were sometimes easier than in Prussia. The book-length volume, Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (The Condition of the Working Class in England) is subtitled From personal observation. But the author also adds that he is writing from authentic sources.

Engels finished the manuscript in the spring of 1845, and, dispatching it to the publishers, he left town for Brussels, to join a coterie of literary radicals who had decamped there to escape the threats and frustrations of neo-medieval repression in Prussia. The book appeared in the summer.

Addressing the working men of Great Britain, Engels presents his book as a picture of their sufferings and struggles so that his German Countrymen will have a faithful picture of their condition. The seriousness of his intentions, he says, can be seen in his use of official and non-official documents, a discursive practice that readers today would recognize.

However, he also writes that he isnt satisfied with a mere abstract knowledge of my subject. In the first person he says:

I wanted to see you in your own homes, to observe you in your everyday life, to chat with you on your condition and grievances, to witness your struggles against the social and political powers of your oppressors.

This experiential knowledge, Engels relates, also works the opposite way around politically. Alluding to his experiences of dinner parties, port wine, and champagne among the propertied well-off, which his working-class readership would not have had, he draws from his ample opportunity to watch the middle classes in order to justify his conclusion: You [British workers] are right, perfectly right in expecting no support whatever from them. There follows a tirade of rhetorical questions exposing the hypocrisy of the comfortable classes.

His evident intention was to go beyond the news and reflections of the day to something much more synoptic and in methodological terms eclectic. For German-language readers the genre of the book is something aligned to dark tourism, that is, travel writing that takes the reader somewhere shocking. And as Engels says, for English-language readers its a wake-up call. He makes it clear that the English should consider the situation a national disgrace requiring transformative political action by the state.

The historical opening chapters are necessarily written up from published sources in English history and landscape geography, after which the reader journeys to The Great Towns, principally London and Manchester. This is where personal observation comes convincingly into its own.

On the one hand, the author-observer gives us a panorama of the port of London: giant docks, thousands of vessels, countless ships, hundreds of steamers. A man cannot collect himself but is lost in the marvel of Englands greatness. But how great is it? Londoners there have been forced to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, treating each other with brutal indifference, an unfeeling isolation in private interest, shamelessly barefaced and self-conscious. The only agreement is a tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement.

That is clearly observational. The following is experiential: People regard each other only as useful objects. Here his further comment is abstractly philosophical: mankind is dissolved into monads, of which each one has a separate principle, there is a social war, the war of each against all, and the stronger treads the weaker under foot. Of course, these were commonplaces, at least in liberalizing circles, rather than philosophical references or philosophizing. But then that was the point ready intelligibility and effective persuasion.

The message was that, irrespective of class and rank, in these crowds, all are human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy. Set against the hierarchical medievalisms of the German states, this is an incendiary notion of equalization, and an abolition of birth and rank and thus of the whole social order.

Sometimes observation and citation work in tandem. Engels identifies Portman Square in Londons West End as very respectable, but he picks up, by report, a coroners inquest that illustrates the close proximity of rich and wretched in residential districts.

When Engels and his readers arrive at the towns surrounding Manchester, the central city of south Lancashire, the classic soil of English manufacture, observational detail in the narrative becomes explicit. Taking us into Stockport, Engels says, I do not remember to have seen so many cellars used as dwellings in any other town of this district. And in Ashton-under-Lyne, he says that he saw streets in which cottages are getting bad, where the bricks in the house-corners are no longer firm but shift about, in which the walls have cracks and will not hold the chalk whitewash inside.

In these discussions Engels includes his own line-drawings that illustrate the disorderly, irrational, unplanned patterns of development in Manchester Old Town; the construction of airless courts in among buildings that were built in regular lines; purpose-built back-to-back dwellings; even cost-cutting methods of shoddy brickwork; and his own detailed guide-map of districts, artery-like thoroughfares, canals, rivers, and railways.

But all is not squalor. For contrast we are toured round to see fine large gardens with superb villa-like houses in their midst. These are built usually in the Elizabethan, that is, mock Tudor style, which, Engels says, is to the Gothic precisely what the Anglican Church is to the Apostolic Roman Catholic. What interests Engels particularly, and what his observational sensibility looks out for, is hypocrisy. This time, it is in the built environment, rather than just in speech or attitude:

The town is peculiarly built so that a person may live in it for years, and go in and out daily without coming into contact with a working-peoples quarter or even with workers.

The working peoples quarters are either sharply separated from sections reserved for the middle class, or concealed among higher-class dwellings and shops. The upper and middle bourgeoisie live outside the girdle of working-class quarters in regular streets or breezy heights. Omnibus routes lined with shops keep squalor out of sight:

And the finest part of the arrangement is this, that the members of this money aristocracy can take the shortest road through the middle of all the labouring districts to their places of business.

They can do this without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and the left.

Analytically, the striking thing about this narration is that Engels makes the reader understand that everything which here arouses horror and indignation is of recent origin, [and] belongs to the industrial epoch. The book attracted notice and notoriety at the time in the German-language press but also much more widely and eastward to tsarist Russia. A review of a foreign-language work on such a faraway place, and on such a recondite subject as industrialization, could pass the harshly strict but rather literal-minded censorships of the time.

A scheme to organize society in some other way is not present in the text; the closest that the author gets to such a transformative vision is the lengthy chapter on labor movements, Chartism, and socialism. For Engels, the Chartists are indifferent to the essentially class character of their movement which was for universal (male) suffrage and parliamentary reform. In that way, and in Engelss view, they would miss the knife and fork question posed by industrial precarity and working-class suffering.

As a political critic, he explains that socialists are dogmatic in their principles and so miss the progressive character of industrial development and working-class immiseration. True proletarian socialism must pass through Chartism, he says, purified of its bourgeois elements, thus arriving at a union.

Almost no one, in English or German, could really connect with Engelss critique of industrial modernity. This was because it nowhere expounds religious or utopian visions, which were a readily intelligible genre at the time. Nor does it presume that liberalizing democracy will itself resolve modern poverty through progressive reform. Thus it touched dangerously on revolutionary treason.

His writing balances the human touch of observation, even if not his own, with the geographers overview of physical systems of production and distribution, and the political economists parsing of society into working-class producers and middle-class consumers. Class-conscious urban geography is to some extent his invention, though he rarely gets the credit.

Rather than producing further enlightenment on the facts of English social conditions, the tack next pursued by Engels was to summarize English (though more properly British, to include the Scots) political economy. At the time political economy, as a French and British science of national economic policy, was not unknown in German intellectual circles, but was rather in the process of reception.

The chief authority on the subject was Friedrich List, a liberal-minded political writer who supported a German customs union or Zollverein, and thus free trade within a national state framework. In his Kritik der Nationalkonomie (Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy), Engels necessarily alluded to Lists Das nationale System der politischen konomie (National System of Political Economy), though in two ways: by subject matter, and then by philosophical critique.

Kritik in the title signalled this familiar Germanic approach. Of course, what Engelss title didnt say was that it was a communist critique. The Outlines piece is drafted as an essay, evidently for inclusion in a communist publication. Engelss opening shot in his Outlines was not merely a forthright expression of communism/socialism probably echoing the lectures he had heard in Manchester from socialist agitators and organizers but also a direct swipe at Lists advocacy of nation-state-centric mercantilism:

Political economy came into being as ... a developed system of licensed fraud ... born of the merchants mutual envy and greed ... The nations faced each other like misers ... eyeing his neighbours with envy and distrust.

The modern system of free trade, based on Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations, reveals itself via Engelss analytical and critical skills as hypocritical, inconsistent, and immoral. Just as theology must either regress to blind faith or progress towards free philosophy, he writes, free trade must produce the restoration of monopolies on the one hand and the abolition of private property on the other. Moreover, he concludes, the nearer to his own time these modern economists are, the further they depart from honesty and the more they descend to sophistry.

The only positive advance which liberal economics has made, he avers, is the elaboration of the laws of private property. These have not been fully worked out and clearly expressed, hence his critique. He says that in a question of deciding which is the shortest road to wealth, the political economists have right on their side. What they dont do, and what he promises to do, is to uncover the contradiction introduced by the free-trade system.

Engels previews this by explaining that political economists are writing from the perspective of consumers, rather than producers. From that vantage point, they have proclaimed trade to be a bond of friendship and union among nations as among individuals. But in contrast to this sham philanthropy, the premises of political economy, founded in private property, reassert themselves in the facts of industrialization: Malthusian population theory and the modern slavery of the factory system.

The project in the Outlines is to dispel the fog of obfuscation, hypocritical self-interest, and moralizing displacement that underlies the theorizations of political economy. To do that Engels examines the basic categories they are as right as they are contradictory, he says. Yet they are consequential for his readers, and, as he predicts, for humanity.

Pithily he rejects the previous framing terms for the science: national wealth (as in mercantilism), national economy (as with Lists liberal but still nationalist economics), even political or public economy. In a snappy summary he re-christens the whole study private economy because its public connections exist only for the sake of private property.

The Outlines then take the reader through this modern politico-economic study, category-by-category: trade, value, rent, capital, wages. Engels concludes, pro tem, that we have two elements of production in operation. These are nature and man, with man again active physically and mentally. Human activity, in turn, is dissolved into labour and capital. Private property fragments each of these of these elements.

In other words, he concludes, because private property isolates everyone in his own crude solitariness, and because, nevertheless, everyone has the same interest as his neighbour, one landowner stands antagonistically confronted by another, one capitalist by another, one worker by another. So in this discord of identical interests is consummated the immorality of mankinds condition hitherto. And this consummation is competition. Competition presupposes its opposite, monopoly, which is constituted through private property, because only from that basis can it exist. What a pitiful half-measure, therefore, to attack the small monopolies, and to leave untouched the basic monopoly!

After that Engels takes up demand, supply, and prices. This descriptive account, and moralized critique, derive from his commercial experiences in Bremen and Manchester, and do not sound particularly strange today: The speculator always counts on disasters . . . he utilizes everything, even disasters and catastrophes. Thus immoralitys culminating point is the speculation on the Stock Exchange because that is where mankind is demoted to a means of gratifying the avarice of the calculating or gambling speculator. And let not the honest respectable merchant rise above the gambling on the Stock Exchange, Engels orates ever the one to pounce on self-serving hypocrisies he is as bad as the speculators in stocks and shares.

In common with the political economics of the day, Engels writes that the competitive system of commodity production will result in periodic crises of over-production and under-consumption. In that case some people will starve amidst unsold, stockpiled goods and underused productive capacity, while others will get richer or maintain their wealth by taking advantage of scarcity.

This inhuman situation, he writes, will not be resolved through policies designed to reduce the working and consuming populations, as Malthusians were recommending. Those ideas were then current as the nostrum for curing poverty, and so topically of interest to Engelss readership. But there are also chords in Engelss text with more contemporary appeal. He writes a litany:

No capital can stand the competition of another if it is not brought to the highest pitch of activity.

No piece of land can be profitably cultivated if it does not continuously increase its productivity.

No worker can hold his own against his competitors if he does not devote all his energy to labour.

No one at all who enters into the struggle of competition can weather it.

His conclusion is that survival in this realm of inhuman competition defeats every truly human purpose.

Engels then promises his readers a tour through the British factory system at present and a historical account of its development, obviously intended to forewarn his German readers of their fate. And as is evident from his comments over the years he aims to anticipate and prevent the social catastrophes that will arise within circumstances already present.

Karl Marx was electrified. He immediately drafted a Summary of Engelss critique, following closely his presentation of the economic categories. When Engels passed through Paris on his return from his posting in Manchester to the family HQ in Barmen, he called again to revisit the former Rheinische Zeitung collective. In conversations there it seems that Marx took the initiative in proposing a collaboration between the two.

His plan was for a polemical attack on the critical critics, who within these Young Hegelian circles were for him insufficiently radical. Their political confusions followed from their philosophical confusions, and their failure to take Ludwig Feuerbachs critique of religion to the logical and thoroughly political conclusion of atheism. Engels kicked off with three chapters, followed by a fourth with separately authored sections.

After that, and with Engels absent, having gone back home to Barmen, Marxs able pen ran away with the remainder of the planned pamphlet, and made it into an over-length book. In correspondence Engels complained that he was rather nonplussed by this. However, it is clear from the title page that he was the lead author, as was certainly right by reputation and experience. Marx was miles behind: just a couple of dozen genuinely published items, mostly in his own newspaper, and all quite brief, nothing even so long as a pamphlet.

The modern editions of collected works pad out this period in Marxs list of works with posthumously published manuscript materials, so the contrast is less obvious. And these editions also generally disguise the lead-author situation by presenting The Holy Family as a book by Marx and Engels. This minor falsification follows teleologically from a much later

narrative about the originary and enduring character of their partnership. Engels was certainly unaware of this narrative at the time, because everyone else was, too.

But we have already had a sign that young Friedrich is disappearing himself into the shadow of the more dominating intellect, though far less successful writer, in terms of publications and reputation. Writing to Marx in a letter dated 22 February7 March 1845, Engels exclaims from Barmen: The Critical Criticism has still not arrived! This is the pamphlet that they had agreed to publish together, though evidently not to write together. They were each contributing separately authored and signed chapter sections.

Engels continues: Its new title, Die heilige Familie (The Holy Family), will probably get me into hot water with my pious and already highly incensed parent, though you, of course, could not have known that. That remark seems unduly deferential. After all, Marx could surely have known or guessed what the family consequences would be for his co-author in a repressively Christian state and locality, even if some enlightened members of his own family circle would have found such blasphemy amusingly inconsequential.

Engels then says, I see from the announcement that you have put my name first. That seems, again, deferential and faux-naf for Marx, the reasoning would have been obvious. Why? Engels asks. I contributed practically nothing to it and anyone can identify your style. Marx had indeed run away with the project, and Engels is giving him license to do so, and to take the lead.

Others departed Marxs company, in one way or another. Engels did not. Aufwiedersehen dem Jngling. Farewell to Engels before Marx.

View original post here:

What Engels Gave To Marx and Marxism - Jacobin magazine

*Eurokinissi

Commuters are advised that there will be a public transport strike in Athens on Thursday 26 November.

The 24 hour strike will include buses, ferries, the tram and metro.

Workers are protesting the governments proposals for the abolition of the eight-hour day, the unpaid overtime, additional restrictions of strike action, the weakening the possibility for labor disputes and the reduced benefits for the unemployed.

STASY (Urban Rail Transport) workers union in its announcement said that the employees of STASY. SA, from the first moment of the manifestation of the Covid-19 pandemic, we stood, responsibly, in the face of unprecedented conditions and with claims and proposals, we managed, under difficult conditions and despite adversity, to keep stable transport and to provide safe transport.

STASY employees said that they were not willing to accept the use of the pandemic as a tool for passing anti-labor legislation to trample decades of rights.

Air traffic controllers are also joining the strike. In response, Aegean airways and Olympic Air announced that they cancelled all flights on Thursday. Another two dozen international and domestic flights are rescheduled on Wednesday, when air traffic controllers will be holding a six-hour work stoppage.

The tram service to and from Syntagma Square recommenced on Friday, November 20.

It is recalled the trams service between Kasomouli Street in the Athens neighbourhood of Neos Kosmos and central Syntagma, was suspended in October 2018 amid concerns that the ground beneath the tracks, over the old Ilissos riverbed, was at risk of subsiding.

Excerpt from:

General Strike In Greece On Thursday Will Disrupt Public Transport - Greek City Times - GreekCityTimes.com

To current Connecticut residents, Wilbur Cross is known for a landscaped parkway and for a building on the University of Connecticuts Storrs campus, both of which bear his name.

Older residents of the state know him for the eloquent Thanksgiving Proclamation he issued as governor of the state in 1936 and which many generations of school children either heard read in class or were required to memorize.

Proclamation issued by Gov. Wilbur Cross on Nov. 12, 1936.Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year. In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of Public Thanksgiving for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved State with the favored regions of earth for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken mans faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.Given under my hand and seal of the State at the Capitol, in Hartford, this twelfth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and thirty six and of the independence of the United State [sic] the one hundred and sixty-first.Wilbur L. Cross

Cross, a four-term governor of Connecticut, was born in 1862, in the Gurleyville section of Mansfield. After graduating from high school in nearby Willimantic, Cross attended Yale, earning his bachelors degree in 1885 and a doctoral degree in the new discipline of English literature in 1889. Cross joined the Yale faculty in 1894, and from 1916 to 1930 was the first dean of the Yale graduate school.

He was well known as a literary critic, and served as editor of the Yale Review for almost 30 years. He also wrote The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne (1909), The History of Henry Fielding (1918), and several books on the English novel.

After retiring from Yale in 1930, Cross turned to politics, and was elected to four two-year terms. During his tenure, he was credited with much reform legislation, particularly relating to the abolition of child labor; governmental reorganization; and improved factory laws. He took an active interest in the fledgling Connecticut Agricultural College, which became Connecticut State College in 1933, and would become the University of Connecticut in 1939, the year he left office.

Cross recommended Albert N. Jorgensen to become president of Connecticut State College in 1935. And he supported Jorgensens request to the legislature in 1937 that resulted in a $2.7 million bond authorization to rebuild the college. Included in the funding was an appropriation for building the first campus library. Opened in 1939, it was named for Cross during a building dedication ceremony in 1942.

Defeated in his campaign for a fifth term as governor, Cross retired. His autobiography, Connecticut Yankee, was published in 1943. He died on Oct. 5, 1948, at the age of 86.

This article was first published in the UConn Advance.

The Connecticut State Library has posteda video of Cross reading his 1938 Thanksgiving Proclamation on the librarys You Tube channel. The video marked the first time that a Connecticut governor appeared in a sound film. Digital images of all eight of Crosss official Thanksgiving Proclamations are also available in the librarys Flickr collection.

Read more:

A Connecticut Classic: The 1936 Thanksgiving Proclamation of Wilbur Cross - UConn Today

Described as one of the worlds greatest neoclassical buildings, St Georges Hall stands out for its grandeur and beauty even in a world heritage city.

But a controversial history lies in the empty, triangular pediment which once housed a stone sculpture - visible above the south entrance of the building when it opened in 1854.

One summer's afternoon in August 1950, large chunks of stone - some weighing around 50lb - fell more than 100ft from the sculpture to the ground below.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt and steeplejacks were called in from other work across the city to make the area safe.

The original plan was to have the sculpture restored in time for the Festival of Britain the following year but was not to be.

The stonework was found to be in such a state of decay after years of exposure to the elements that it was deemed beyond restoration while still situated at the top of the building.

The sculpture was removed with the intention of repairing the damage before being installed back in place.

Later inspections of the piece, however, judged it to be irreparable and the classical frieze was broken up and used as hardcore road-fill - a decision which has since been deemed an unforgivable act of sacrilege.

In 2005, Fred O'Brien, a trustee of the Merseyside Forum for Sculpture, Painting & Allied Crafts said: "St George's Hall is simply incomplete without it."

The pediment, or tympanum as it was referred to in records from the 1950s, showed Britannia seated with a lion at her side and the Mersey at her feet.

She was surrounded by figures symbolising America, Europe, Africa and the gods Mercury, Bacchus and Apollo. It bore a Latin inscription meaning: "Freemen have established a place for arts, laws and councils."

Over the years, attempts have been made to replace the sculpture, designed by Prof Charles Cockerell, although these have all failed, mainly for financial reasons.

However, in the 1990s, it was the representation of the subject matter of the piece itself that was deemed controversial when arguments for recreating the original piece were again made.

Anti-racist groups said one of the figures depicted in the original design was a black slave kneeling before Britannia, and claimed Liverpools black community would be offended if it was ever recreated.

At the time, John Haymes Hogg, one of three members of the Merseyside Sculptors Guild who wanted to replace the pediment, argued that the frieze represented the abolition of slavery.

He said: "The figure on his knees is giving thanks to Britannia for his liberty because of the decision by Britain to abolish the horror of the slave trade."

Keep up to date with coronavirus cases in your local area by entering your postcode below.

A later campaign to recreate the carving was taken up by Terance McGunigle, the then executive manager of the Merseyside Forum for Sculpture, Painting & Allied Crafts.

A story in the Liverpool Daily Post in 2005 documenting the history of the sculpture, reported on Terances project to create a redesigned version of the original carving after consulting representatives of Liverpools black community.

A new design was submitted and a fundraising campaign started to raise the 3m needed to create the new frieze.

It's never been more important to stay in touch with the news, so subscribe now to the Liverpool Echo newsletter. Twice a day, seven days a week, we'll deliver the biggest stories straight to your inbox.

We'll also send special breaking news emails too for the latest stories that matter. You won't miss a thing.

It's free, easy and takes no time at all.

Despite attempts to raise the capital needed, funding was never formally agreed and put in place with Liverpool City Council and the project failed and soon forgotten.

This week, to discover any plans for reinstalling a sculpture in the south side pediment of St George's Hall, the ECHO spoke to Terance about his history, trying to get a new sculpture put in place years after the original was destroyed.

Terance McGunigle, 57, is a classically trained artist and sculptor from Hunts Cross who has worked for The Pope on sculptures in the Vatican City.

He showed us an image of the design he and fellow sculptor, Terry Macdonald, created in the 1990s to replace the controversial original.

Terance argued that the original figure central to the sculpture may never have been Britannia but Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, arts, trade, and strategy.

He said: "Was it Minerva or was it Britannia? There was a lion there but the actual symbolism of Britannia wasn't there. There was no shield."

A statue of Minerva already sits at the top of down at Liverpool Town Hall and has gazed down on the city streets since 1799.

Terance said after a conversation he had with representatives from the black community at the time they were happy with the inclusion of a figure being emancipated from slavery.

He said: They were happy if we took the chains off him. Ironically, the original chains were broken. The figure wasn't shackled.

Asked if he was given the opportunity again to create a new sculpture for the pediment, Terance said he would jump at the chance, adding: I would do it next week.

The ECHO approached Liverpool City Council to ask if there are any plans to commission a new sculpture to be put in place, but they said: As it stands currently, the city council has no plans in place to replace the frieze.

See the rest here:

'Unforgivable act of sacrilege' on St George's Hall 70 years ago - Liverpool Echo

Indian PM Manmohan Singh, after the visit of Minister Basil Rajapaksa (November 2008), informed President Mahinda Rajapaksa that Colombo must create conditions for meeting legitimate political aspirations of the Tamils under the devolution package (13A). Irrespective of domestic politics, Indians were consistent in demands; Sri Lankans were consistent in declaringunfulfilled hopes!

I recently read a speech by Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Leader R. Sampanthan, delivered in 2017. This excellent presentation supported the 13th Amendment (13A) to the Constitution. In appreciation of his intelligent arguments, I share his thinking not to canvass for 13A but to broaden the discussion with forgotten overlapping references that need to be factored in.

Status of 13A

Devolution was thrust upon us, consequent to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987. Then, certain groups rejected this pact as well as 13A. Their position remains unchanged.

At the outset, we must remind ourselves that devolution was introduced to facilitate conflict resolution. Someone may argue that 13A was legalised at a time when terrorists held sway, and, therefore, the incumbent government need not stick to the beaten track. TNA politicians may argue that the reasons for, and the outcomes of, the conflict remain although terrorism is no more.

The performance of the Provincial Councils (PCs) is barely satisfactory in many respects. Some critics have dubbed them white elephants. I do not subscribe to such extreme criticisms because one reason for the weakness of the PCs is the lack of centre-periphery cooperation. Decades ago, Professor G.L. Peiris emphasised that the PCs needed empowerment for financing, establishment management, and statute making. To date, these matters remain as issues.

Some others who see intrinsic fault lines in devolution oppose PCs based on concept, content, and politics. They contend that devolving police and land powers, the amalgamation of provinces, etc., trespass the sovereignty and endanger national security.

The vehement call for abolishing the 13A has originated from politicians, supported by media personnel, and a section of the Buddhist monks. Another alternative proposition is to withdraw certain functions (e.g. land and police powers) to impede PCs when drafting a new Constitution.

Indians and 13A

Concurrently, there are some predicting that India will take up cudgels if the 13A is tampered with. Arguments are submitted against Indian interventions on devolution.

One reason adduced is that India failed to adhere to the Accord (e.g. disarming the LTTE) and therefore, its demand that we fully implement the devolution of power is unfair.

Secondly, they argue that foreign interference with our constitutional processes is inappropriate. They point out that the Indian Government repealed Article 370 with Article 35A in 2019, affecting Jammu-Kashmiri laws, including citizenship, property ownership, and fundamental rights, and silenced critics by stating it was an Indian internal affair. Hence, they argue that Sri Lanka should follow suit if India objects to abolishing the 13A.

Thirdly, they contend that the Indian Government changed Jammu Kashmir rules to allow the Union Government to release lands to Indians to attract development/investment and hence India cannot object if we centralise land administration.

Fourthly, they argue that Indians perform asymmetrical administration in Himachal and Uttarkhand States, as against centralised Jammu-Kashmir, and therefore, by amending 13A, we could do similarly in selected provinces.

India stands for sovereignty, independence, and the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, as repeatedly mentioned by Indian leaders. Additionally, there have been commitments made by Indian and Sri Lankan leaders and internationals to promote equal treatment to minorities.

My attempt is to refer to some such, extracted from the quoted speech, add a few more experiences to demonstrate that abolishing 13A will be considered a negative action in resolving conflict-related issues and there could be other solutions.

Probing Indo-Lanka interactions

Let us turn to the TNA Leaders speech.

In November 2006, Indian Foreign Secretary Shivashankar Menon has expressed to President Mahinda Rajapaksa: India looks forward to an early comprehensive political settlement of the ethnic issue. It must take into account the aspirations of all sections, including the Tamils.

This was nearly twenty years after the Accord and while the conflict was ongoing. Responding, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has detailed the work by the All-Party Representatives Committee (APRC) and the Committee of Experts. But it is well-known that these outputs did not matter to his government. It can be likened to the Indian expectations to implement the 13A during the conflict.

At one stage, President Mahinda Rajapaksa was excessively supportive of power-sharing. Addressing the inaugural Meeting of the APRC and the Experts Committee, he said: The unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty of our country must be preserved and added, Our objective must be to develop a just settlement within an undivided Sri Lanka. Great. This is the common aspiration of people, TNA, and India. While identifying the roadblocks, he expected the people in their localities must take charge of their destiny and control their politico-economic environment. This is the Principle of Subsidiarity in action.

He said: Any solution must be seen as one that stretches to the maximum possible devolution, without sacrificing the sovereignty of the country. Given the ground situation, given the background to the conflict, it, therefore, behooves on particularly the majority community to be proactive in striving for peace .... This must have been an elixir to Indians and TNA!

Next, Minister Basil Rajapaksa went to India (October 2008) and a statement said: Both sides discussed the need to move towards a peacefully negotiated political settlement on the island including the North . The Indian side called for the implementation of the 13A and greater devolution of powers to the Provinces. Minister Basil Rajapaksa emphasised that the President of Sri Lanka and his Government were committed to a political process that should lead to a sustainable solution. Elixir again!

His message to India was that we had passionately committed to a political process. He is expected to be in the Cabinet soon and knowing the Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Jaishankars ways personally, I may expect a reminder of his message.

PM Manmohan Singh, after this visit of Minister Basil Rajapaksa (November 2008), informed President Mahinda Rajapaksa that Colombo must create conditions for meeting legitimate political aspirations of the Tamils under the devolution package (13A). Irrespective of domestic politics Indians were consistent in demands; Sri Lankans were consistent in declaring unfulfilled hopes!

Prof. Peiris visited India (May 2011) and mentioned A devolution package building upon the 13th Amendment would contribute towards creating the necessary conditions for such reconciliation. Further, he referred to the work of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), which made extremely attractive, pro-peace, and reconciliation-oriented recommendations. No wonder when Foreign Minister Peiris spoke so favourably on the 13A, Indians continuously and without reservations harped on its implementation.

PM Singh (June 2011) said in Lok Sabha: The decimation of the LTTE was something good. But the Tamil problem does not disappear, with the defeat of the LTTE. The Tamil population has legitimate grievances. They feel they are reduced to second-class citizens. And our emphasis has been to persuade the Sri Lankan Government that we must move towards a new system of institutional reforms, where the Tamil people will have a feeling that they are equal citizens of Sri Lanka, and they can lead a life of dignity and self-respect. It is not easy.

Nevertheless, reverting to 2019, one may question whether the Indian politicians minds were responsive to the grievances/inequalities their Muslim brethren complained of when the Citizenship Amendment Act, National Register of Citizens, and National Population Register laws were launched.

Two months after PM Singhs statement, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said in Lok Sabha: The Government has also articulated its position that the end of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka created a historic opportunity to address all outstanding issues relating to minority communities in Sri Lanka, including Tamils. The Joint Press Release of May 17, 2011 states that all such outstanding issues had to be settled in a spirit of understanding and mutual accommodation imbued with a political vision to work towards genuine national reconciliation. The External Affairs Minister of Sri Lanka affirmed his Governments commitment to ensuring expeditious and concrete progress in the ongoing dialogue between the Government of Sri Lanka and representatives of Tamil parties and that a devolution package building upon the 13th Amendment would contribute towards creating the necessary conditions for such reconciliation. Sensibly we may agree.

The Indian Official Spokesman made a statement after the LRRC Report: In this context, we have been assured by the Government of Sri Lanka on several occasions in the past, of its commitment towards pursuit of a political process, through a broader dialogue with all parties, including the TNA, leading to the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, and to go beyond, so as to achieve meaningful devolution of powers and genuine national reconciliation. Thus, Indian expectation rightly settled on an assurance beyond 13A.

When even the easily implementable LRRC recommendations were not executed by the Government that appointed it, whether India could await further contributions to reconciliation was an issue. Indians may comment that every Sri Lankan government has only kindled hopes, but not delivered. The post-LLRC-UNHRC Resolution (2012) demanded the implementation of constructive LLRC recommendations and strengthening devolution, but we failed to do so.

The Indian Minister of External Affairs made a statement (January 2012) in the presence of our Minister of Foreign Affairs, from which I quote: The government of Sri Lanka has on many occasions conveyed to us its commitment to move towards a political settlement based upon the full implementation of the 13A to the Sri Lankan Constitution and building on it so as to achieve meaningful devolution of powers. The Indian Minister has echoed the stark reality.

Then again, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that India was inclined to vote in favour of a resolution on promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka at the 19th session of the UNHRC. His inclination was adopted by voting against us. According to PM Singh, its objective was not wanting to infringe our sovereignty, . but concerns should be expressed so that Tamil people can get justice and lead a life of dignity. In almost all Indian statements a few buzz words equality, dignity, justice, self-respect, political process, peace appear.

There could be many more statements by Indian and Sri Lankan politicians and bureaucrats, unknown to us, confirming the need and commitment to implement the 13A to resolve the Tamils difficulties. But since our President was not in active politics per se in 2017 like his brothers and other Ministers, some of these statements may be new to him. However, I may remind two recent relevant statements, most probably known to him, worthy of consideration to understand the Indian attitudes on 13A.

PM Narendra Modi during President Gotabaya Rajapaksas State Visit, like other interlocutors, said: I am confident that the Government of Sri Lanka will carry forward the process of reconciliation, to fulfil the aspirations of the Tamils for equality, justice, peace, and respect. It also includes the implementation of the 13th Amendment. Note the buzz words. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, without responding directly kept aloof, imaging him the President of all Sri Lankans, irrespective of ethnicity or religion or voting choices.

Joint Secretary Amit Narangs quote on India Sri Lanka Virtual Bilateral Summit 26 October 2020 stated that PM Modi has insisted on PM Mahinda Rajapaksa that Sri Lanka must implement its 13th Constitutional Amendment to achieve peace and reconciliation. PM Modi called on the new Government in Sri Lanka to work towards realising the expectations of Tamils for equality, justice, peace, and dignity. Buzz words: setting apart political ethics, it is must implement its 13A and not may. With so many positive quotes stated above I am not surprised of this insistence.

These are oven-fresh statements (latter only a fortnight old) and thoughts well embedded in PM Modis memory. We should not dupe ourselves into believing that PM Modi forgets easily and will give up demands or forgive when one repeatedly frustrates India! Whether it is Modi or Singh or Krishna or Menon, the buzz words are the same.

Here, PM Modi, like PM Singh (in 2012) expressed his concerns. I wish he will refrain from acting like PM Singh as regards the UNCHR 2021. We must remember that irrespective of political divides, for political expediency, Indian politicians capitalise on the Tamil aspirations.

Against this background, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has withdrawn from promoting national integration and reconciliation by repealing Article 33(1)(b) under the mandated presidential duties in 19A. If it seriously conveys his unwillingness to undertake these two duties, abolishing 13A will surely lead to an undesirable reaction.

International commitments

Besides Indians, Sri Lanka has been under the international microscope regarding peacemaking and power-sharing, commencing from Thimpu, extending to Peace Talks, with Ban Ki-Moon, and UNHRC, etc.

A notable event during the Peace Talks was the declaration of the Oslo Communique. Prof. Peiris led the government delegation, and I witnessed his excellent exposition with clarity, resonating factual arguments, and vast knowledge to convince Anton Balasingham, that LTTE should agree to power-sharing, without separation. In a lighter vein, I am reminded how with Professor Peiriss unmatched academic onslaught (which I adored), Anton Balasingham cut-short the discussion and retreated for external consultationsprobably with Prabhakaran.

It was Prof. Peiris the Man of the Day who pushed for the Oslo Communique. The parties agreed to explore a solution founded on the principle of internal self-determination in areas of historical habitation of the Tamil-speaking people, based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka.

At the media conference, Prof. Peiris praised extensive power-sharing within a one-county framework, sans cessation, and added, Now if we believe in a political solution if we are renouncing war. there could not be any other rural tribal except power-sharing except the basis, the character of a federal solution.

The 13A is less devolutionary and federalist in content than the Oslo Communique that spoke of historical habitation and federal structure. Therefore, Prof. Peiris could now forget Oslo and take the lead in calming down protesters against 13A. Without any disrespect to Minister Ali Sabry, I may say that Prof. GL Peiris is the best bet to deal with 13A with his experience (especially with Indians). Paradoxically, it is also his disqualification, for his past stance is not in line with calls for abolishing 13A!

After defeating the LTTE, President Mahinda Rajapaksa stated to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that his firm resolve was to proceed with the implementation of the 13th Amendment, as well as, to begin a broader dialogue with all parties, including the Tamil parties in the new circumstances, to further enhance this process and to bring about lasting peace and development in Sri Lanka. After three days, a resolution was submitted at the UNHRC, Geneva confirming his stances with Ban Ki-Moon. It was a commitment to implementing the 13A. For the first time, he made 13A a multilateral commitment.

The President Sirisena-PM Wickremesinghe Government went a step further by incorporating it in October 2015 UNHRC Cosponsored Resolution. They failed to pass a new Constitution or move on with 13A. More international attention was drawn to 13A.

Potential political manipulations

In the late 1990s, there were Government proposals to create Regional Councils (RCs) i.e. North-Eastern and South-Eastern RCs and even to create a centre-controlled Ampara Electorate, to enable the establishment of the latter RC. Non-contiguous Muslim RC was another concept floated. SLMC Leader Ashroff was one keen supporter of those proposals.

The abolition of 13A will create a void. Muslim Parliamentarians who supported the 20A may expect Minister Ali Sabry and Romesh de Silva Committee to incorporate the said RCs proposal in the proposed Constitution, sometimes with revisions more favourable to the Muslims. This is a hypothetical situation, but those who call for abolishing 13A should take careful note of. They must be alert to political manipulations because the wrong judgment will cause more trouble than 13A.

Conclusion

In summary, the opponents of 13A, who demand its abolition had better heed the domestic constitutional, political, institutional formations, bilateral agreement with India, many commitments made especially to India and international stakeholders in multilateral agencies, etc. If the decision is not to abolish, the government will be answerable to nationalistic elements who predict political, security, economic, and political organisational risks.

Since the country is faced with a severe economic crisis, the international dimensions thereof are extremely important. As Dr. Jehan Perera writes: In dealing with international governments, it is equally, if not more, important to keep commitments. The international community of governments is not as gullible as the voting public often is. This was written during the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime. Now, it is the Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime. But irrespective of government changes, the thinking of the international community remains the same as for Sri Lankas commitments.

Policies of the political parties that have been in power in India have been consistent with regard to 13A and the issues Tamils are faced with. Nevertheless, Indias focus has shifted from devolution to Indo-Pacific, Chinese threats, free trade, investments, etc. and the possibility may exist of settling outstanding issues to mutual benefit (as Minister Krishna has said) in a spirit of understanding and mutual accommodation imbued with a political vision.

Abolishing 13A may entail a price payable geopolitically, politically, economically, diplomatically, security-wise, etc. Those who push for abolishing 13A must evaluate the potential balance sheet, weigh alternatives through negotiations and compromises. Forgetting these available options and to be overenthusiastic about their two-thirds majority, which can be used to abolish 13A may not mean happy hunting or a happy ending.

Read more here:

Crisscrossing 13th Amendment abolition - ft.lk

Iolo Morganwg. A portrait from the Welsh Portrait Collection at the National Library of Wales.

The founder of the Gorsedd of the Bards, Iolo Morganwg is among the names listed as requiring examination in a review of Wales links with the slave trade ordered by First Minister Mark Drakeford.

The review found that Wales has 209 streets, buildings, portraits or monuments commemorating people directly involved with the slave trade or who opposed its abolition.

The report names a number of historical figures in Wales who were part of the slave trade, supported it or opposed it abolition.

Among those celebrated in Wales who took part in the slave trade named in the report are the privateer Henry Morgan, Goronwy Owen and Thomas Picton.

It also includes several historical figures who do not fit any of the above categories have been raised by campaigners, including Iolo Morganwg.

However, the report notes Morgannwg as one individual who might be exonerated following further research.

For example, while Iolo Morgannwgs inheritance from a sugar plantation requires examination, the plantation was free of enslaved people and he had campaigned against slavery throughout his adult life, the report says.

Other individuals on this list include William Ewart Gladstone and Winston Churchill.

Their reputations may be contested, with valid views held on either side. While the culpability or otherwise of most is far from clear-cut, they are addressed in the audit to allow a fair and open discussion of their reputations and commemoration, the report says.

The individuals are diverse in roles and records, ranging from the fifteenth century to the twentieth. Many had complex personal histories embodying significant changes of circumstances or views through their lifetimes.

Learning

The audit, led by Gaynor Legall, found commemorations of people connected with the slave trade were often shown without any accompanying interpretation to address matters of contention, so the figures were presented solely as role models rather than representatives of challenging aspects of the past.

The First Minister Mark Drakeford said that the audit provides important evidence which helps us establish an honest picture of our history.

While the tragic killing of George Floyd happened almost 4,000 miles away, it sparked global action that shone a light on racial inequality in society today, he said.

That inequality exists in Welsh society too and we must work towards a Wales which is more equal.

This is not about rewriting our past or naming and shaming. It is about learning from the events of the past.

He said the audit was the first stage of a much bigger piece of work to consider how we move forward with this information as we seek to honour and celebrate our diverse communities.

The audit also unearthed commemorations to anti-slavery activists across Wales, such as Henry Richard in Tregaron, Ceredigion, street names for Samuel Romilly and the Pantycelyn halls of residence at Aberystwyth University, Ceredigion.

Link:

Gorsedd founder Iolo Morganwg named as 'requiring examination' in government slavery audit - Nation.Cymru

Build, build, build, promised the prime minister in the summer. But for that, you need builders. Since time immemorial, Latin- and Greek-speaking Etonian prime ministers who cant follow the science or evidence, clueless about skills, bemoan Britains lack of vocational education. At every spending review they talk up the need for skills but contribute token sums to achieve them. It happened again this week: yes, a bit more money, but not much, as further education colleges remain threadbare.

Meanwhile, here comes a great crescendo of unemployment, surging to 2.6 million people when furloughing ends. People are tumbling out of all manner of jobs, high and low, from industries not likely to rehire soon. They need retraining fast. But thats not on offer.

Heres what people will find: crash-landing on to universal credit, they will be barred from starting a serious course to retrain. They will waste soul-destroying time forced to prove they are applying for scores of non-existent jobs. They are allowed to train for part of the week, but not enough. Extensive research by Kathleen Henehan of the Resolution Foundation shows a strong association between training and returning to work, particularly among non-graduates, and for people to change industry, only full-time education has a substantial relationship with the likelihood of a 25- to 59-year-old making a career change. Crucially, but ignored by the government: Longer and qualification-bearing training is strongly associated with job re-entry among non-graduates.

The governments apprenticeship programme was already in freefall pre-pandemic, creating only a fraction of its target of 3 million apprentices. On top of that, the figures for April and May this year are down 85% on 2019, FE Week has found. It was a good idea to make large employers pay a levy, to be reclaimed for apprenticeships but as in so many previous training schemes, employers gamed it. Fewer than a quarter of apprenticeships went to under-19s, for whom it was intended. Money was spent instead on existing in-house training that was so minimal workers didnt even know they had been designated apprentices. Many firms were so resistant to training, they preferred to let the Treasury take the levy, so the chancellors extra 2,000 to employers to take apprentices in this crisis hasnt worked.

Training and work schemes using private providers have often been gamed and sometimes defrauded: Labours shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds warns of them cherry-picking easy cases in the Restart scheme. David Hughes, the head of the Association of Colleges, says: There is no indication Restart includes any training. And nor does it create jobs, which is whats most needed.

FE colleges have been flooded with applicants, as 16-year-olds escape the empty jobs market, but the extra FE funding doesnt replace the cuts of the recent years. Total spending on adult skills dropped by 45% between 2010 and 2018, says the rightwing thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies. Believe no political homilies on parity of esteem for vocational education, until FE gets the same level of funding as universities. Why do 16-19s get less than under-16 school students, despite the higher cost of specialist staff and materials for engineering, construction, hairdressing and myriad practical courses? The collapse of apprenticeships means colleges have been stripped of funds from those day-release courses. Despite the government promising 50,000 new nurses, FE colleges have been barred from offering nursing courses, their degree-awarding rights abolished out of sheer snobbery. The governments Kickstart scheme, which pays employers to take in young workers for six months, shortsightedly includes no training ingredient.

In a vindictive political act of pure stupidity, the government just axed the Union Learning Fund programme which trained 200,000 people last year. For the small sum of 12m from the DfE, 40,000 union reps help those in the workplace with low skills to take basic courses in IT, maths and literacy. Since the Labour government launched it in 1998, 2.5 million people, union and non-union members alike, have been through the scheme. One simple side-effect was the fostering of more German-style good relations between unions and employers, as they worked together to upskill the workforce. Less intimidating, union reps are better at persuading staff into training. Exeter University research shows the ULF not only helped people to improve their jobs and pay, but also every 1 spent gained the economy 12.87. No reason was given for its abolition.

With high unemployment on the way, and a generation at risk of being out of work, the government has done the bare minimum. Brexit is still to come, too, and the governor of the Bank of England warns that it will do more longer-term harm than Covid. The governments Shared Prosperity Fund was supposed to compensate for the loss of EU structural funds for poor areas, but the 1.5bn announced by Rishi Sunak in his spending review is far less than the EU sum, and a bare 220m is all that will be released next year.

Elsewhere, Tony Wilson, head of the Employment Studies Institute, says the 100bn allocated for infrastructure will take years not months to come on stream. Whats needed urgently then is a quick boost to local public service jobs to compensate for the lack of hiring in the private sector. Time and again employment experts call for a rapid programme to train and hire social and health care workers. There are repeated demands for a green employment programme to train people to retrofit every home with insulation. But the government seems incapable of an FDR-style imaginative leap into nationwide job creation.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Continued here:

How are unemployed people supposed to retrain when the Tories cut training? - The Guardian

Political scandals make for great TV.

And the unfolding corruption scheme involving utility giant Commonwealth Edison seems ready-made for a dramatically scored Netflix documentary. Theres the all-knowing political boss, wiretaps, bribes and a massive, faceless corporation reaping the benefits at the cost of the regular Joe.

But actual legal cases can be pretty boring.

The indictment unveiled last week against four former top ComEd executives and lobbyists is a slog for even the most earnest citizen. Weighing in at 50 pages, the charging document is leaden with legalese and less-than-clever nicknames for its cast of anonymous players. (Try not to confuse Individual 13W-3 with Individual 23W-1 or Individual BM-1.)

TLDR: The feds say the four defendants orchestrated a scheme to influence the man who has long been Springfields most powerful politician House Speaker and state Democratic Party Chair Michael Madigan. He has not been charged and vehemently denies wrongdoing. The four defendants also say theyve done nothing wrong.

But ComEd has already admitted to hiring Madigans political allies and paying them to do little or no work. Whats more, the company admits it did that all to please the speaker, so hed back lucrative Springfield legislation benefiting ComEd, including electricity rate hikes.

Alas, this isnt fiction, and it has real-world consequences. Heres how this larger-than-life scandal has directly touched your lives and your pocketbooks.

ComEd is a state-regulated utility, which means lawmakers and bureaucrats decide how much the power company is allowed to charge for delivering your electricity. Thanks to ComEds state-granted near-monopoly, more than 4 million homes and businesses 70% of Illinois population largely dont have a choice when it comes to paying a monthly bill to the company.

ComEd has long employed an army of influential lobbyists to advance its interests in Springfield many of them with ties to Madigan. The feds say the utilitys agents arranged the bribery scheme to influence Madigan from 2011 until 2019, when agents raided the homes and offices of several people with ties to the speaker.

During that stretch, ComEd also had some big legislative wins in the statehouse. They were wins that increased the utilitys profits and your monthly costs. Now federal prosecutors are highlighting those measures in their corruption cases against ComEd, its former executives and its lobbyists.

If you want to see how all of this can impact you, just take a look at your ComEd bill.

In 2011, state lawmakers approved so-called Smart Grid legislation. ComEd says that has increased reliability and service, and expanded energy efficiency programs. It also baked in rate increases for customers, which affects the customer charge line item on page 2 of your ComEd bill, circled above in green.

Not coincidentally, the state-approved revenue that ComEd gets from providing electricity to you has risen dramatically in the past decade. The feds said as much in the new indictment, noting that the law helped improve ComEds financial stability.

Then in 2016, ComEd won approval for another piece of lucrative Springfield legislation called the Future Energy Jobs Act, or FEJA. According to the power companys July 17 agreement with the feds and Wednesdays indictment, FEJA represented a renewal of the regulatory process that was beneficial to ComEd.

It also let ComEds parent company, Exelon, take in another $235 million a year from customers to bail out its financially ailing nuclear power plants in downstate Illinois. The subsidy from rate-payers is supposed to last for a decade and will provide more than $2 billion to Exelon.

You can find that line-item on your monthly bill, labeled Zero Emission Standard, circled above in red.

In this weeks indictment, prosecutors allege ComEds point-person on ushering FEJA through the legislature also was told to help ensure the utility renewed its contract with a law firm run by a Madigan political ally.

Both bills were passed at the same time ComEds long-running bribery scheme was going on a scheme ComEd itself has admitted was an effort to influence and reward [Madigans] efforts, as Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, to assist ComEd with respect to legislation concerning ComEd and its business.

So how exactly are you, a normal Illinoisan, paying for this scheme?

In a few ways.

First off, public officials get paid with your tax dollars. House Speaker Michael Madigan who, it bears repeating, has not been charged, denies wrongdoing and says he knew nothing about ComEds scheme to influence him makes nearly $97,000 a year for being a state representative and legislative leader, according to the state comptrollers office. The base salary for Illinois state lawmakers is a little less than $70,000 a year.

Secondly, ComEd has admitted to paying big money to politically-connected subcontractors with ties to Madigan, even though they performed little or no work for ComEd. While its illegal to use ratepayer money for political expenses, such as lobbying, its not illegal to use ratepayer money to hire contractors.

To cover up the scheme and make it look like these payments were for legit contracts (not political bribery), the feds allege that ComEd funneled the money to Madigans allies through a consultancy run by a prominent Chicagoan former City Club President Jay Doherty sometimes to the tune of nearly $70,000 a month. Last weeks indictment alleges some of that money was allotted to two unnamed former Chicago aldermen, whom WBEZ has identified as Frank Olivo and Michael R. Zalewski. Neither have been charged; Doherty denies wrongdoing.

Finally, political corruption schemes like the one ComEd copped to come with a third, invaluable cost: your trust. Thats supposed to be the foundation of government in America. Sure, that sounds sappy, but think about it: Once enough people stop trusting in our system of government, theyll stop abiding by it. And a government ignored is no government at all.

Its hard to overstate the mythology thats grown around Madigan in Illinois political circles.

As speaker of the Illinois House, Madigan has the tremendous power to decide what bills do or do not get voted on. And as the chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois, hes wielded authority over who can or cant get elected in our deeply blue state.

Hes been able to work both of those levers in concert to exert extraordinary (but not total) control over the government of Americas sixth-most-populous state.

And so, warranted or not, Madigan has attained an Oz-like status in Springfield. With nearly four decades gripping the gavel, hes the longest-serving speaker of any House state or federal in American history. Love him or hate him, hes someone youve had to do business with.

Think of the towering milestones Illinois has passed while Madigan has been in power, some of which he helped construct. The abolition of the death penalty. The advent of casino gambling. The gargantuan pension crisis. The legalization of marijuana. The impeachment and conviction of corrupt ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. These are all things that have touched the lives or wallets of every Illinoisan.

So consider: How might your life be different if such an influential figure as Michael J. Madigan had not been in power at such pivotal moments? What might have happened differently?

Or perhaps, as Madigan faces the very real prospect of losing the speakership hes held for decades, the question may be: What happens next?

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that it was an Exelon company that received benefits from the 2016 FEJA legislation to bolster its nuclear power plants.

Alex Keefe is an editor on WBEZs Government & Politics Team. Follow him @akeefe. Investigative reporter Dan Mihalopoulos contributed.

Go here to see the original:

Why Illinois Should Care About The ComEd Scandal - WBEZ

During the TCU special elections tomorrow, we in Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) have a referendum on the ballot as a part of our campaign to End the Deadly Exchange at Tufts. The question, as approved by the TCU Judiciary and the Committee on Student Life, will read on the ballot as follows:

Do you support Tufts University administration 1) apologizing for sending the former Tufts police chief to an intensive week-long course led by senior commanders in the Israel National Police, experts from Israels intelligence and security services, and the Israeli Defense Force, 2) prohibiting TUPD officers from attending programs based on military strategies and/or similar international trips in the future, and 3) refining the vetting process to prevent prior program attendees from being hired, not including veterans who may have been stationed or trained abroad during their service?

In this piece, we will walk through each component of this referendum to explain the urgency of voting in favor on Nov. 24.

Our campaign to end the Deadly Exchange began when it came to light that Tufts sent the now-retired chief of the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD), Kevin Maguire, on a military training trip to Israel in 2017. Since 2004, hundreds of American law enforcement officials have gone on these exchange trips, during which they have trained with Israeli police, military and the Shin Bet, Israels internal intelligence agency. Under the guise of counterterrorism, participants have learned Israeli military tactics for intelligence gathering, border security and forceful suppression of protest. Further, these trips normalize the U.S. and Israels shared security model of mass surveillance and criminalization that gives grounds for human and civil rights violations. This is the Deadly Exchange, the mutual advancement of the United States and Israels discriminatory and repressive policing, which is part of a larger exchange between the two countries of arms and money (the U.S. sends Israel $3.8 billion in military aid every year) as well as military tactics. Our campaign at Tufts stems from a national movement to end the Deadly Exchange led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a grassroots organization that advocates for Palestinian self-determination and an end to the Israeli occupation. The Deadly Exchange campaign, focused on ending U.S.-Israel exchanges, fits into broader calls to end all such police exchanges around the world and to end U.S. funding for Israels brutal military occupation of Palestinians.

When considering the Deadly Exchange, it is necessary to acknowledge that American policing has always been racist. Police surveillance of communities of color and quelling of protest, especially Black-led organizing and resistance, has been inherent to the institution since its founding in this country. Further, the process of militarizing American police is primarily rooted in U.S. imperialism and its military industrial complex. However, the Deadly Exchange between the U.S. and Israel solidifies and augments both countries methods and equipment for state violence and control, including mass surveillance, racial profiling and suppression of protest and dissent. In that vein, our referendum essentially calls for the end of TUPDs involvement in military training trips abroad through three distinct points, which are explained and contextualized below.

The first point of the referendum calls on Tufts University administration to apologize for sending Kevin Maguire on the trip. When Kevin Maguire attended this seminar, the University did not inform or consult the Tufts community. Rather, this incident was first reported by a Tufts Daily article, not by the Tufts administration. The universitys clandestine approach itself is damning, and it also demonstrates a blatant disregard for transparency and accountability. Kevin Maguires attendance constitutes a serious breach of our communitys trust. TUPD is a campus police force: It should not train with any military or intelligence forces, especially not those currently engaged in an illegal occupation of Palestine. Under Occupation, Palestinians live under a regime of constant surveillance, regulated movement, racial profiling and Apartheid and militarized state violence against dissent. TUPD should not be exposed to these tactics and technologies; they have no place on our campus. We must hold the university accountable for bringing these destructive and toxic policing methods to our campus and for implicating all of us in the occupation of Palestine. We must require recognition of their wrongs in the form of a written apology.

The referendum also demands that Tufts University administration bar TUPD from attending any military training trips abroad. While this incident occurred in Israel, TUPD should not be allowed to attend any training seminar led by military officials abroad. Such trips will without doubt contribute to the ongoing militarization of TUPD, which has followed in step with the militarization of our countrys police. TUPD began training officers to use semi-automatic rifles in case of an emergency, and, this year, TUPDs presence has been expanded as a means of ensuring that COVID-19 guidelines are followed on campus. However, TUPDs increased presence and new technologies do not make our community safer. Rather, they augment an already threatening environment for Palestinian students as well as other BIPOC. We therefore must end these trips that normalize and encourage the militarization of TUPD.

Finally, the referendum dictates that no former attendee of these military training trips should be permitted to join TUPD. The Tufts University administration must review and reevaluate its hiring criteria to ensure that participants of the Deadly Exchange are not responsible for the safety of our community. The tactics and practices encouraged by the Deadly Exchange are particularly harmful to Black and brown students. Police violence is not the result of lack of training: rather, its the result of a system doing exactly what it was built to do. More training for police deepens the power and scope of policing, and therefore does nothing to reduce the harms. As the Black Lives Matter movement brings demilitarization and abolition to the forefront of national discussion, we must force Tufts to reckon with its own methods and forces of policing.

On Nov. 24, we as the Tufts student body must declare ourselves opposed to our administrations involvement in the Deadly Exchange and complicity in the occupation of Palestine. Demilitarizing our Tufts community is crucial for creating a safer campus and building a police-free world, and ending police exchanges is a key step in demilitarization. This demilitarization means ending these harmful exchanges alongside other changes: ending programs that distribute military equipment to police departments, disarming law enforcement, ending surveillance technologies and repealing laws that enable police violence. Just as SJPs campaign will continue long after the referendum to ensure these measures are enacted and continue to urge accountability and transparency from our university, the work to demilitarize and abolish TUPD and other American police forces will continue as well. SJPs referendum and campaign are merely a part of this larger reckoning, but they are an essential piece of this work.

View original post here:

Op-ed: Vote YES to End the Deadly Exchange at Tufts - Tufts Daily