Bryan D. Palmer - Capitalism, Colonialism & Crises: The Remaking of Modern Canada 1960-2025

The third volume of Bryan D. Palmer's trilogy on the history of Canada brings the account right up to the present date. Indeed, so recent is some of the material that it covers 2025. It means that there's the slightly uncanny experience, for this reader at least, of reading a history book cover events that are part of your own experience.

Palmer opens his book by making a general point about the period covered. Before the 1960s he says, there was  "scan indication" that oppositional movements could unite together. As both the previous volumes have shown, there is a long and rich tradition of resistance and organisation from below in Canada. This includes movements such as Indigenous struggles, working class movements, including radical socialist and anarchist ideas, movements against war and movements for liberation. At times, particularly in the period covered in the first book, when those movements failed to unite. Had they done so, they was a potential for systemic and radical change. But Palmer says about the first decades covered in this volume:

In the 1960s, voices of anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism gew louder, amplified in many ways. There were also hints that the long-standing divide keeping those challenging the profit system and those opposing colonial thought and practice separate and consequently weakened was breaking down. This 1960s development was paralleled by a strengthening and increasing penchant for militancy among mainstream working-class trade unions and Indigenous organisations, groups and associations.

What these movements saw was a proliferation of radical groups, parties and organisations - a process that mirrored what was happening elsewhere in the world as the post-war boom turned to economic and political crisis, and the movement against US imperialism was fuelled by resistance on the ground. Revolutionary ideas inspired these movements. In Canada, "anti-capitalist and anti-colonial thought... captivated those drawn to the New Left" and "causes traversed one another". Palmer tells the story of an Abortion Caravan that left Vancouver in April 1970, but by the time it reached the capital, some of its participants were also raising demands as "Victory to the NLF" and "Smash Capitalism" was written on the outside.

The peculiarities of Canadian history however added new factors to the radicalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Quebec, there was an "upsurge of radical nationalism, supported by many Québécios workers" which built upon a movement for independence that had grown up in the 1950s and 1960s. The movement included many who saw colonialism and capitalism as the "enemy". Canada's 1968 moment, in the summer of that remarkable year, saw a massive protest at Dorval Airport near Montreal. Traffic was stopped, buses set afire and molotov cocktails thrown. Gunshots were heard. Palmer says:

New Left aspirations, anti-colonialist indépendantiste demands, and a militant class struggle and anti-capitalist politics thretaened to come together. This was a rare development in Canada... The often young and unusually militant Quebec sovereigntists situatied their struggle within the global anti-colonail mobillisations of the 1960s. They railed against the mainstream politicians and capitalist interests, both French and English-speaking. They held this rich elite responsible for deepening the subordination of oppressed and working-class Québécios.

These revolutionary and radical ideas "appeared to resonate with wider sectors of society" terrifying the ruling class. Here, as in the previous volumes, Palmer places the history of Indigenous people, and their resistance, central to his account. He shows how revolutionary ideas influenced "Red Power" movements, and these in turn, fed back into wider radicalisation. In 1969, the Government struck back, it appeared to offer concessions, but did so by arguing that the Indigneous peoples of Canada, where "burdened... with a historically constued paternalism" this required dismantling and an end to the allocation of "First Nations a plus status as an addition t their citizenship".  While superficially appearing radical, in reality this "would inevitably leave First Nations peoples without any possibility of successfully pursuing land claims or holding on to entitlements that shored up their traditional ways of life". The backlash, including the publication of the tremendously successful book The Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal, saw a retreat by the Canadian government, but it did see the "drift of Indigenous leadership into collaboration with the colonial state" and the decline of the revolutionary Red Power movement.

The radicalism of these movements was the context for a wider awaking of knowledge of Canada's colonial past. In the years after the 1960s Canada saw renewed attempts at control of radical movements and First Nations peoples, what Palmer calls "coercive continuities". If the 1960s had seen Red Power, revolutionary radicalism and "class war from below", including some spectacularly powerful trade union movements, 1975 onward saw "class struggle from above". The political and economic gains of the 1960s  that had been won by working class and First Nations struggles, were eroded as Canada turned toward neoliberalism and austerity to try and resolve the contradictions of its economic crisis. This period saw systematic and brutal deindustrialisation as thousands of workers lost their jobs. In Montreal, for instance, between 1976 and 1996, 27,000 jobs in the garment industry were lost. What strikes there were, were unable to significantly turn this tide. In the case of Montreal, a strike against job losses was sold out, a "scathing indictment of the cozy relationship between the union leadership and garment industry bosses".

The final chapters of this book are perhaps the most depressing. They paint a picture of Canada dominated by economic precarity, low levels of struggle and rampant capitalism - massive levels of homelessness, low wages and economic insecurity are one picture of the period. But Palmer is careful to note that there is resistance, including another rise in the level of organisation by First Nations peoples, often building links with the wider working class movements. This includes the struggles against oil infrastructure and the expose of the horrors of the Residential School system. A horrific chapter on the "murdered and missing Indigenous Women", the thousands of women who have lost their lives and disappeared, makes it clear that much more needs to be done. Indeed the racism at the heart of the Canadian state continues to be exposed by the lack of action on this.

The weakness of the trade union movement, Palmer argues, means that there is a tendency for the trade unions to respond to the current economic situation, including the pressures from the Trump administration, with nationalist answers rather than class struggle. As the labour movement lines up behind national demands, "working people and their interests were hitched to the cart of Canadian capital and the state". 

Palmer's book is, however, written in the spirit of the need to rebuild a new and radical left, that can shift the narrative. If the urgent need is there, so the crisis creates the potential. As Palmer says Canadian capitalism, like that around the world, is "increasingly riddled with contradictions and challenges". Understanding the history of Canada, and the interplay between class struggle, anti-colonial and Indigenous resistance, and updating that for the 21st century is an urgent need.

The final volume of such a series will be distorted by the narrowing of the writer's lens. If the first two books covered sweeping periods of history, this later book covers shorter periods in more detail. This reflects both the author's and the readers' experiences. Inevitably it means that things are missed. For instance I thought it would have been helpful to have more detail on the growth of Canadian fossil capitalism and the politics and economics of (say) the Tar Sands. But this is a minor complaint against a powerful book and a wonderful series. Everyone who is interested in the fight for liberation and the struggle against capitalism today ought to read these three books.

If Bryan D. Palmer's book teaches us anything it is that the history of Canada shows that ordinary people have frequently resisted oppression and exploitation, and they have often done so in the most militant and inspiring ways. The knowledge of that history will be immeasurably helpful in rebuilding the sort of radical left we need to face the challenges of 21st century capitalism. Palmer is owed a huge vote of thanks.

Related Reviews

Palmer - Colonialism & Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890
Palmer - Capitalism & Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890-1960

Vine Deloria Jr - Custer Died for your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

When Custer Died for your Sins was first published in 1969 it came out in the midst of the growing and radicalising Civil Rights movement. It is an angry read, a rage against the American system that condemns Native Americans to poverty, disease and racism and offers a powerful manifesto to alter the imbalance of power and wealth. As such it is also a very contempory book. If many of the demands of the manifesto are now dated or too specific, the framing of the book and the context of which it sets itself remains highly relevant. The source of the book's infamous title is a bumper sticker produced by the organisation that Vine Deloria organised through - one that parodies and rejects the politics and actions of the Christian Churches that are tasked with "helping" the Indians. The title also reflects the humour and rage that makes this such a powerful read nearly sixty years after first publication.

Running through the book is the influence of the US Civil Rights movement. Deloria writes

Indian Affairs today suffers from an intellectual stagnation that is astounding. Creative thought is sparse. Where the younger black students were the trigger to the Civil Rights movements with sit-ings in the South, young Indians have become unwitting missionaries spreading ancient anthropological doctrines which hardly relate to either anthropology or to Indians. The young blacks invented Black Power and pushed the whole society to consider the implications of discrimination which in turn created racial nationalism. Young Indians  have barely been able to parody some black slogans and have created none of their own.

If this seems, in hindsight, a little unfair, it is a reflection of the author's frustration. Timing was everything. As Deloria was writing the book the American Indian Movement which famously took control of Wounded Knee in 1973 was just being formed. Movements take time to grow and generate politics and ideas of their own. The Civil Rights movement was clearly an impetous that would grow over time. Nonetheless there are some important insights that Deloria offers, centred on one of his great hates - anthropologists. He writes positively of the Apaches, who "don't worry about what type of Indianism is 'real'" and counters this other young Native Americans who

attend workshops over and over again. Folk theories pronounced by authoritative anthropologists become opportunities to escape responsbility. If, by definition, the Indian is hopelessly caught between two cultures, why struggle? Why not blame all one's lack of success on this tremendous gulf between two opposing cultures? Workshops have beomce therefore, summer retreats for non-thought rather than strategy sessions of leadership enhancement.

But, this was not unique to the Native American movement. It was also true of those whose response to US imperialism, inequality and racism was to "tune in and drop out" and form hippy communes. But Deloria is making a point about the need for a movement that struggles for demands and poltiics. Indeed he argues that it is not enough to "talk of Civil Rights", because this "lessens our chances of understanding the forces involved in the rights of human beings... we should begin talking about actual econoic problems; and in realistic terms we are talking about land".

Deloria argues that 1968 represented a crisis for the Native Americans and the Civil Rights movement. The murder of Martin Luther King and the explosion of riots, Deloria says, meant simply taking a colour TV. "America, rioters seemed to be saying, is a colour TV and this is what we want from here". This is a crude analysis that mirrors what the mainstream were saying, but it arises, Deloria argues out of a contradiction about what was wanted from "Civil Rights":

When the black seeks to change his role by adjusting the laws of the nation, he merely raises the hope that progress is being made. But for the majority of blacks progress is not being made. Simply because a middle-class black can eat at the Holiday Inn is not a gain. People who can afford the best generally get it. A socio-economic rather than legal adjustment must consequently be the goal.

Indeed, Deloria is frustrated that while King made a turn in 1968 toward economic issues he lumped "all minority communities [together] on the basis of their economic status." But the "real issue for Indians - tribal existence within the homeland reservation - appeared to have been completely ignored". Native American poverty was awful, but alieviating it required a more radical approach.

Deloria ends the book hopeful. While his manifesto contains much in the way of detailed suggestions about politics, land control and the US government, he has as an amibition a wider aim - the protection of Indian space within US society. Here he celebrates the story of the Tiguas, a tribe in Texas that won recognition as an Indian tribe after having seen a steep social and economic decline. The fact that they had protected their culture meant that a campaign was able to win a protected reservation and recognition for them and "a chance to build a sound economic base for the future". Deloria says:

Ever since Indians began to be shunted to reservations it has been assumed by both Indians and whites that the eventual destiny of the Indian people was to silently merge into the mainstream of American society and disappear. The thought of a tribe being able to maintain traditions, socio-political structure, and basic identity within an expanding modern American city would have been so preposterous an idea had it been advanced prior to the discover of the Tiguas, that the person expounding the thesis would have been laughed out of the room. 

Deloria hoped this would lead to a great revival of Native American culture and life. Ultimately however, he wants the "recolonisation" of "the unsettled areas of the nation by groups of Indian colonists".  With this Deloria hoped/expected that "traditional Indian customs will come to predominate" within the communities. Indeed there is a hope that this would go further and lead to the rejection of capitalism:

Where ordinary white corporations serve to produce income from capital invested, corporations will not do so in the new Indian scheme. Rather they will serve to coordinate community life. Earnings will be used to provide services ordinarily received from various governmental agencies. As economic independence becomes greater, independence in other areas of life will follow. Indians can thereby achieve a prosperity not seen since the landing of the white man.

Sixty years later this has not happened. Indeed Native American reservations remain some of the poorest parts of the United States. Racism, imperialism and the politics of settler colonialism continue to divde and rule and keep the Native Americans in poverty. Part, perhaps of the problem, was that the Native American movement was too separated from wider Civil Rights struggles. Deloria himself repeatedly seems to reject radical and revolutionary (he says "violent") struggles. But it was Wounded Knee in 1973 when Native Americans literarily took up arms and fought of the US state which helped shift the narrative (and the occupation of Alcatraz). Nonetheless his agenda is assuredly against the system. Nick Estes has written recently that "Deloria's calls for peoplehood... were a step toward national self-determination: Black and Indigenous peoples taking charge of their own lives and destinies. To do so first required the restoration of Indigenous governmnce and territories, a project long in the making, as well as the abolition of the colonial system". It is an inherently revolutionary project.

Is the prospect of Native American reemergence within wider "white" society possible still? I would suggest it is, but it will require the dismantling of US capitalism. In winning this Native Americans will surely fight alongside all the poor and oppressed people of America. 

Custer Died for your Sins was enormously influential (not least among shamefaced anthropologists). It forms the base for much later theoretical and revolutionary work and those interested in Settler Colonialism, as well as Native American struggles, will get much from reading it. I found it hard to get hold of a copy in the UK, but I recommend that you try.

Related Reviews

Estes - Our History is the Future
King - The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
Miller - Custer's Fall: The Native American Side of the Story
Marshall III - The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History
Wooster - The Military & United States Indian Policy 1865-1903
Nerburn - Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce
Englert - Settler Colonialism: An Introduction
Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power

Nigel Harris & John Palmer (eds) World Crisis: Essays in Revolutionary Socialism

That World Crisis exists at all seems remarkable from this standpoint. Published in 1971 by a well known mainstream publisher, it is essentially a theoretical statement of the politics of the then, very small, International Socialists group. The IS was to become the Socialist Worker's Party, having grown significantly during and after the 1968 rebellion. But it was nontheless still a relatively small organisation. More importantly its socialist politics were minority one - even if they were thought through and clear. The rejection of the State Capitalism of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc by the IS put them at odds with almost all the radical left at the time. For this book to come out seems quite extraordinary.

Over fifty years after World Crisis was published how does it stand up? Is it worth reading? I would argue that it is worth reading, and that it has much to offer beyond just historical curisosity for those interested in the history of the British left and the origins of the SWP. While some chapters are necessarily dated, there are others that are fascinating and retain their use today.

In the introduction Jim Higgins and John Palmer restate some orthodox Marxist ideas. The main reason for this is to highlight how much of the left, under the pressure of the existence of the Soviet Union, had abandoned central tenets of Marx's concept of workers' self-emancipation. They write:

And implicit in the struggle of a group of workers against a single employer is the struggle of all labour aginst all capital. The rise of working-class parties based on trade unions, directly or indirectly, is not accidental. Nor is it an accident that in times of fierce economic struggle workers are more receptive to political ideas. It is because of these structural and necessary features of capitalism that Marxists have identified the working class as the revolutionary class par excellence; not because it has some mystical quality of goodness, but because the nature of capitalist production and the relations within it make it so. 

Writing this in 1971 is also a polemic directed at new layers of radicals, aiming to win them to a Marxist view that places working class self-activity at the heart of organisation. This book certainly does this. But the book also asks, what is changing in the world. The opening chapter is "A Day in the Life of the 'Fifties" by Peter Sedgwick and is an amusing, and insightful look at a demonstration "against German rearmament" in Parliament square. The protest is attacked by the police, and Sedgwick uses it as a way to contrast the staid life of the old left: "Almost without exception all the elements which came togehter so hopefully on that late day in January [1955], a decade and a half ago, have been probed, stripped, revealed as nothing by the merciless challenge of the years." Later however Sedgewick notes that at the time of writing workers were less likely to be on the streets, and protests are more often by groups of middle-class radicals in their "brief hour of rebellion". The workers he points out "cannot graduate... but its consciousness is slower to ignite tha that of the Instant Left." Written in a time before student life became something that masses of workers engaged in, this comes across as somewhat sectarian, especially in the aftermath of 1968. But there is a point. The workers did need to link up and develop their struggles. The limitations of this in Britain in 1968 was the weakeness of the whole movement.

Chapter two is somewhat depressingly called "The Decline of the Welfare State". Reading it one is tempted to shout out to the author Jim Kincaid, "you ain't seen nothing yet!". But Kincaid does trace the way that attacks on welfare are rooted in a capitalist approach to the economy. It's must have been a depressing read then. Now it feels like fortune telling. But Marxism as a tool is nothing if insightful, and some of the chapters here give a real sense of debates to come. Here, for instance, is Nigel Harris pointing out that capitalist development does not benefit everyone, and early discussion of topics that would become central to degrowth theory in the 21st century:

But 'growth' may not mean 'development'. The statistics may show a rising national income, even a rising average income per head, at the same time as unemployment is increasing, there is no change int he distribution of the occupied population between agricultural and non-agricultural employment and in the distribution of non-agricultural employment between manufactuing and other sectors. In human terms nothing very much may have happened, and things for the majority may even have got worse.

Paul Foot's chapter on the origins and limitations of the Labour Party is fascinating, beginning as it does with the early betrayals. Written at a time when Labour still had mass membership and considered itself a socialist organisation it is clearly a polemic designed to arm readers for individuals breaking from Labour. But it has some fascinating material that readers today who want to argue against a Parliamentary Road to Socialism will find useful. Similarly Chris Harman's brilliant essay traces the limitations of these countries as "socialist" and puts a clear argument for the importance of State Capitalism as a theory. Its importance, as Harman writes, is in clarifying the left's politics:

A clear analysis of these regimes is a necessary precondition for renewed growth of the Left in the West. Only a theory which centres on the basic problem for the rulers of these countries - that of accumulating capital - and sees this as forcing them into collision with each other and with the working class can comprehend the forms their rule takes and the policies they pursue at each historical point.

Such an analysis proved important for both building a new revolutionary left in the 1970s and developing a critique of the limitations of Stalinist parties in the same period. It also helped ensure that the SWP survived the collapse of State Capitalism in 1989. Characteristically, Tony Cliff's chapter "The Class Struggle in Britain" is an argument about what socialists should do. A couple of things stand out. One is his comment that "a declining interest in the traditional reformist organisations (the Labour Party, Communist Party, etc) does not mean the overcoming of reformist ideology." This is true, though while Cliff probably overestimated the declining interest, he was right that even when this comes, it does not necessarily mean reformism is also dispensed with. However one part of his chapter could very well be written today for socialists in Britain:

The weakness of revolutionaries in Britain at present is quite obvious. Small in number, often isolated because of their social composition - white collar and student - from the main sections of the working class, split into a number of groups, and above all lacking experience in leading mass struggles. But these weaknesses can be overcome. Readiness to learn, readiness to experiment systematically, above all readiness to try and translate the general theories into practical activities - this is what is necessary. In a complex and rapidly changing situation, readiness to move from simple tasks to more difficult ones, above all readiness to overcome one's own mistakes is crucial.

For some socialists reading World Crisis would be an act of navel gazing. Dreaming of past battles. I'm not sure of the value of that. But the clarity of the theory its authors have, their determination to root this theory in struggles, and learn and develop the theory offers much. Some of the chapters are reminders of central revolutionary ideas. Michael Kidron's article on Imperialism and the permanent arms economy is perhaps the most useful in this regard. Foot's chapter on Labour and Harman's on East Europe also offer insights and ideas that remain useful. But standing out all of them display a Marxist method essential to furthering the basis of our theory today. As Cliff reminds us:

The greatest defect of revolutionaries who have been isolated for years from the mass movement is their inclination to make a virtue out of necessity, and concentrate on theories to the exclusion of practice, forgetting that above all the duty of a revolutionary is to raise theory to the level of practice.

Related Reviews

Birchall - Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time
Harman - The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After
Harman - Selected Writings
Harman - Class Struggles in Eastern Europe 1945-83

Chris Harman - Selected Writings

Regular readers might know that British socialist Chris Harman was a key influence on my (and many others) development as a Marxist activist. After Harman's untimely death in 2009 Colin Barker edited this collection of writings which has brought together many important works. Most of these are available on the internet, however bringing them together allows the reader to see connections between different areas of Harman's work as well as his central stress on the need to build revolutionary organisation in order to overthrow capitalism. 

Some of the essays here are well known. One of Harman's most important works The Prophet and the Proletariat (1994) is a detailed study of the rise of Islamic movements and the approach revolutionary socialists should take towards them. Harman argues that incorrect to see these movements as backward or fascistic, but that it is also incorrect to only celebrate their anti-imperialist character. Socialists that do these either cut themselves off from the mass movements that the forces within them, or find themselves unable to understand the potential reactionary turns. It's a masterful analysis that demonstrates how Harman's deep knowledge of the history of the Middle East combines with his Marxist analysis and brings the reader to a clear understanding of the tasks for socialists. Harman never looks for short-cuts, or hides reality - so there are no easy answers here. But the pieces' importance was demonstrated a few years after his death with the outbreak of the Arab Spring and the work of revolutionaries with in it.

Another key work for the IS tradition was Harman's 1984 piece Women’s Liberation and Revolutionary Socialism. Here again Harman demonstrates the importance of historical research as he shows how women's oppression arises with class society but takes on a central role for the ruling class under capitalism. It is a brilliant essay that stands the test of time. While some of it is focused on internal debates within the Marxist movement readers today will find it offers much food for thought as debates on the origins of women's oppression continue in the aftermath of Me Too and other movements. It is also the source of the longest foot note I think I have ever found, as Harman devotes almost 1800 words in the first reference to countering the critique "that anthropology had, in fact, shown that male supremacy and women’s oppression exists in all societies". This footnote alone deserves a read!

Another collected article that was influential for me when I read it as a young socialist and remains crucial today is his Party and Class (1968).As the International Socialists to which Harman belonged saw a huge burst of growth in the middle of that year of international radicalism, this polemic is part of a debate about what sort of socialist organisation was needed. It is simultaneously a critique of Labour Party style broad church organisation and Marxist propaganda groups. Today it feels like a breath of fresh air in the aftermath of left excitement over Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. 

Harman's economic writings were always important, and several of them are included here. In his The Crisis of Bourgeois Economics (1996) he takes apart mainstream understandings of capitalism, in particular a critique of Keynes' ideas. Personally I found this hard to follow as it demonstrated Harman's familiarity with debates in mainstream economics and authors I hadn't read. I've know doubt to those better read in economics than me it will be superb. I was however refreshed by his article on The Rate of Profit and the World Today (2007) which provided a superb explanation (and prediction) of the economic crisis that would hit global capital one year later. It's a brilliant use of Marx's key concept of the falling rate of profit to demonstrate the problems inherent to 21st century capitalism. 

Another impressive key work that is collected here is Harman's essential The Summer of 1981: a post-Riot Analysis (1981). Written to explain the wave of riots that swept the UK in the context of Thatcherism, unemployment and police racism it feels like it could be written today during the Black Lives Matter movement. Harman skilfully studies the riots to draw out issues of race and class, at the same time as exploring the differences between UK riots and similar ones in the US. He places the riots in the context of a long tradition of riots by the British working class - arguing that in part these take place when more traditional struggles (such as the trade unions) have proved ineffective. If readers of this review only read one piece this year by Harman, I'd suggest it's this one. Though why only read one? Another interesting thing about this article is that it's based in part of reports sent in by SWP branches about the riots - allowing Harman to look beyond mainstream media headlines to examine who took part, and why. 

Finally its worth mentioning that several essays here deal with Harman's analysis of the Eastern Bloc and State Capitalism in Russia. One of these How the Revolution Was Lost (1967) is a detailed exploration of how the inspirational revolution of 1917 became the Stalinist Monolith of the 1930s. It's a powerful piece that I highly recommend.

The pieces I've highlighted above are some of Harman's key works and are often of significant length. However Harman also wrote regular popular columns in the SWP's newspaper and magazine. These are, disappointingly, under-represented in this collection and I think the book would have been much better if it had dropped at least one major length work and included some shorter pieces by Harman. A hint of the material missed is an article by Harman on the author B. Traven who wrote radical novels from South America. There is also a surprising bit of repetition, particular in the selection on Eastern Europe. Finally the essays feel very weighted towards Harman's earlier revolutionary life. Perhaps this reflects slightly the editor who was also an early student activist in the organisation. One excellent exception to this is Harman's Climate Change and Class Conflict (2007) a piece that is remarkably prescient in its analysis of capitalism, the environment and the social movements that will result. 

My criticisms of the collection aside, there is not a single article in here that isn't worth reading. In fact many of them feel they are written for events today. His 1977 article The Workers' Government written with Tim Potter is an intervention into debates on the revolutionary left about what sort of governments can bring about socialism. It feels like a contemporary critique of SYRIZA or Podemos.

But I would recommend getting the book, as reading the essays in order you get a real sense of how Harman placed the key dynamic of capitalist accumulation at the centre of his analysis. Time and again he makes the point that the subject he is studying results from the nature of the system that we live in and thus there must be revolutionary conclusions. But Chris Harman also knew there were practical conclusions too, in the need for organisation. As he wrote in Party and Class:

The need is still to build an organisation of revolutionary Marxists that will subject their situation and that of the class as a whole to scientific scrutiny, will ruthlessly criticise their own mistakes, and will, while engaging in the everyday struggles of the mass of workers, attempt to increase their independent self-activity by unremittingly opposing their ideological and practical subservience to the old society. 

Related Reviews

Harman - Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis & The Relevance of Marx
Harman - The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After
Harman - Revolution in the 21st Century
Harman - Marxism and History
Harman - Class Struggles in Eastern Europe 1945-83

Shirin Hirsch - In the Shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, Locality & Resistance

The 50th anniversary of 1968 has led me to read a number of books marking that year's great struggles. But not everything that took place was progressive. In the UK an infamous speech by a leading Tory MP, Enoch Powell quickly became known by its most famous idiom, "Rivers of Blood" after Powell's prediction that Britain would be engulfed in racial conflict caused by immigration.

Powell's speech has long since become a rallying cry of the far right in Britain. Just a few weeks before I read Shirin Hirsch's new book a fascists poured red dye into a fountain in Bristol and played Powell's words over a speaker system. That they were immediately countered by a strong anti-racist response is, in part, a result of events that began in 1968.

Since his death in 1998 many people have tried to rehabilitate Enoch Powell. They note his military career, his devotion to the British Empire and his supposedly principled positions on many issues. Mainstream obituary writers tended to gloss over his racism, suggesting that it was a one-off, or some eccentric view that rarely got heard. But Powell was a racist, and his racism was rooted in his belief in the supremacy of the British nation and the progressive nature of its Empire. Hirsch shows Powell's rhetoric was not simply the speech of a isolated racist, rather they reflected wider social circumstances.

For Powell the Empire was a source of wealth for the Britain, and its people were merely resources. As Minister of Health he recruited oversees workers to work in the NHS, yet in the early 1960s as the post-war boom turned to decline, Powell turned on those he had championed. He looked at America and was terrified by the Civil Rights movement.

Powell was also ambitious. In 1965 he'd stood for the Tory leadership and been defeated so, as Hirsch explains,

Powell's shift towards a new anti-immigrant politics was made within this context of individual ambition as well as national crisis. In the late 1960s British capitalism was forced to cut real living standards, being to increase unemployment and raise rents and prices. David Widgery recalled how a real fear had begun to spread within ruling class circles that the rule of law was no longer guaranteed.... Powell's speech was born out of this class conflict.

Yet one of the contradictions of this was that Powell, the arch capitalist, found his words had a real resonance with large sections, of the working class. Hirsch says:

For Powell's new racism to resonate with working class lives, his words had also to speak to the fears and disillusionment with established politics which had emerged in 1968, connecting with new material anxieties within sections of the working class who had lost faith in the succession of leaders who betrayed their trust.

The impact of Powell's speech was immediate. He'd released the text early to ensure that there was maximum coverage and quickly it made headlines across the country. Powell was sacked, probably to his great pleasure, and sections of workers took action (most notably a big strike by dockers in the East of London). In Wolverhampton where Powell was MP quotes from local black residents speak of their fear in the aftermath as racists grew in confidence.

Hirsch's book is a close study of Wolverhampton at the time of Powell's speech. He was a master of rhetoric and his speech portrayed a white British culture being destroyed by immigrant outsiders. Hirsch notes that immigrant in this context was code for black, as Powell was not concerned with the Polish or Italian immigrants to the city. Hirsch also points out that in the aftermath of Powell's speech, as racism rose, the black community of Wolverhampton was ignored by the media who descended on the city, and one of the great things about her book is that she gives a voice to some of them.

Most of the response locally was pro-Powell. Despite some critical statements from local figures and trade unionists, there was nothing that could "provide a direction for how to challenge the racism taking hold... however, new forms of resistance were taking place in Wolverhampton, actions and ways of living that challenged Powell's words not yet in a direct form, but instead taking place on an everyday level."

In the context of the wider radicalisation of 1968, left-wingers, anti-racists and campaigners challenged Powell's racism. But Hirsch argues that Wolverhampton's black population was central too the growth of the movement against Powell and racism in general. She shows how the city's history of struggle which had seen black and Asian people engaged in important fights over their own rights, helped shape a response. The wider context mattered too. It was also notable that black people took inspiration from international struggles (particularly the Civil Rights movement in the US) and mobilised themselves. Hirsch writes:

Blackness then became a way of resisting Powell's racial impositions, drawing guidance and inspiration from the politics of Black Power in the United States... The [newly formed] Black People's Alliance went on to organise a [London] demonstration of 4,000 people a few months later... An effigy of Enoch Powell taken from a coffin was set alight with chants of 'Disembowel Enoch Powell'.

Hirsch describes how Wolverhampton's black and Asian communities were placing themselves at the heart of new movements that both challenged racism but also fought for the right to be a conscious part of the working class. These movements took time to make themselves heard. The 1970s were simultaneously a period of growth for the far-right and fascists, but also eventually became a period of a mass anti-racist movement that involved Black and White people fighting together to turn the tide of racism.

Today we desperately need a mass anti-racist movement. I was struck while reading Hirsch's book at the close similarities between Powell and some far-right figures today. Powell was very much a creature of the capitalist class, but he also was skilled at "carefully positioning himself as at odds with government policy, standing up for the little, local man against the pro-migration liberal establishment reigning in London." Readers can make their own parallels with contemporary racists.

The racist forces that were encouraged and called into being by Powell's racist speech were eventually turned back. But the anti-racist movements did not appear automatically, rather they had to be consciously built and Shirin Hirsch's book is a fantastic study of what took place in Wolverhampton which was at the epicentre of the racist storm. As such her book isn't simply of academic interest - it is a tool to help understand how we can turn the tide again today. I highly recommend it.

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Brian W. Lavery - The Headscarf Revolutionaries: Lillian Bilocca & the Hull Triple-Trawler Disaster

2018 is the 50th anniversary of 1968 and among all the mass movements and great upheavals seen in that year, there were countless other events that year that made their mark on history. One of these is the struggle of the women of Hull to improve the safety of the fishing trawlers that their husbands, fathers and sons crewed in the dangerous northern waters around Iceland. The beginning of 1968 saw three trawlers sink in one of the most powerful storms that fishers had ever seen. 58 men lost their lives and there was only one survivor.

The tragedy hit the close-knit working class community hard and in the aftermath of the sinking one woman, Lillian Bilocca, launched a petition that rapidly became a national movement demanding improved safety equipment aboard the ships. Mrs Bilocca's son was one a trawler at the time (though not one that sank) and she knew, as did many other women, that it could easily have been her son. One key demand, and it seems incredible today that it wasn't a legal requirement, was to have a qualified radio operator on board each ship. Another was against the use of "Christmas Cracker" crews - inexperienced crews sent out over the winter when more experienced crew members wanted to remain at home with their families.

Author Brian W. Lavery has a long association with Hull, and describes this book as being the result of a promise that he would "set the record straight" about Mrs Bilocca. The book begins with an account of life for fishers on the trawlers. This was an incredibly hard job;  the work required huge physical effort, long hours and often took place in appalling conditions. The ships themselves were frequently dangerous with safety equipment damaged or missing. Lavery points out that at the time ships from European fleets had better equipment and sailed with a command ship that helped look out for the smaller vessels as well as providing support. Crew members were handsomely rewarded for their dangerous work, though the real profits were made by the owners.

Venturing out in the depths of winter into appalling weather was not done out of greed on the part of the crews, but by the ship-owners knowledge that they could make a fortune from a successful return. The short-cuts, dangerous voyages and lack of equipment helped improve the profit margins, but it was the workers on the boats who paid the price. If one anecdote demonstrates this, it is that in the aftermath of the disaster as fishers who had been rescued from a Grimsby trawler were recovering in Iceland, listening to the news of the women's campaign on the radio, their skipper interrupted them.

'You are not going to believe this, lads... but they are only telling us to go back out fishing.' The men were agog but even further astonished by the skippers' next words. 'If I were you lads I wouldn't go. I'll have to get back to them with an answer. Shall I just tell them you are refusing to go? After all, we can hardly blame you.'

Not surprisingly the men said no, the first time a "company command" was refused. Nor is it a surprise that Mrs Bilocca's petition was instantly supported by thousands of locals. Together with several other outspoken women they proceeded to launch a mass campaign for safety. Brushed off by the ship-owners, and in the midst of a media storm the women took their campaign to parliament and, together with the trade union movement, were able to win promises of significant improvements.

Lillian Bilocca inspects ships for safety equipment

Mrs Bilocca found herself at the centre of a national media storm. The tragedy was just the sort of thing the national presses loved and there was a fine angle involving the grieving families and the women's campaign. Unfortunately the media was then, as now, a fickle friend, and was quite capable of turning on those it had held up a few days previously. Mrs Bilocca's working class accent and plain language was turned on her, and some sections of the media erroneously suggested that she had called for a sex strike until their men joined the campaign. Such slurs undermined the campaign and seriously upset Mrs Bilocca, as did the vicious letters sent to her accusing her of interfering in men's work and hitting the community in the pockets. Her campaign was a challenge not just to the bosses, but to many in the community itself.

Lillian Bilocca's campaign had forced the government to introduce a moratorium on fishing in the dangerous area and grant an official inquest into the disasters. Ship owners were forced to make major improvements to safety and politicians made to act. These gains were won extraordinarily quickly - and there is no doubt that this was the result of Mrs Bilocca's personal bravery and commitment. What is also clear is that while a minority of the community disliked her interference, most were of the opinion that "something had to be done" and despite the vicious threats from a small number, Mrs Bilocca's actions led to victory.

Despite the personal tragedies, and the sadness that clearly dogged Lillian Bilocca after the events (she lost her job as a result of her campaigning and never worked in the fishing industry again, having to take cleaning jobs to make ends met) this is a remarkable book that demonstrates that ordinary people can win. Lavery suggests that Lilian Bilocca and her comrades' "Headscarf Revolution" might have been a "naive" one. There is no doubt that she and the others underestimated the power of the media to make and break heroes. But struggles that explode onto the historical stage are usually led by ordinary people who have never played such a role before. In many ways it is precisely their naivety that means they are free of the chains that hold back many seasoned activists.

It is worth highlighting that this book has relevance to today's world. Lavery highlights the limitations of the official union movement in both building among fishers and winning change. The workers might have been considered impossible to organise - much like the fast food workers or other "precarious" workers of the 21st century. Fishers were home for a few days before disappearing for weeks. Yet Lillian Bilocca's campaign proved that the community and the workers could win change. Fishers were also limited by the Merchant Shipping Acts that prevented strikes (though it didn't stop the refusal mentioned above!) Secondly I was struck by how radical movements can explode out of nowhere and rapidly win real change. As one of the union officials said, it is a shame that such a tragedy had to happen before changes were made. But this book is a fitting tribute to Lillian Bilocca and her comrades who, when the time came, stood up and refused to back down.

I'd like to take this opportunity to also highlight a new album about Hull's Fishing Community by Joe Solo. Due out in January 2019 it's title track is about the disaster and is very moving.

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Harman - The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After

Chris Harman - The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After

Rather like 2017, 2018 is proving to be a year of reading books associated with various anniversaries. But most importantly it is fifty years since 1968, a year of global rebellion, and Chris Harman's Fire Last Time is an excellent introduction to the period. I first read this as a student when I was a new recruit to the socialist movement and the accounts of massive student rebellion linking together with workers rising was extremely inspiring. Re-reading it today I was struck by Harman's ability to contextualise these struggles and highlight the dynamic of student and workers' revolt.

1968 saw the May events in France when the outbreak of student protest against de Gualle's government led to massive street fighting in Paris and, until then, the biggest General Strike in history. It also saw the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia to stop the Prague Spring, huge radicalism in the United States against the Vietnam War and an escalation in the Civil Rights movement. 1968 was the year Martin Luther King was assassinated and the Black Panther's became mainstream. It was also the year of student revolt (and massacre) in Mexico, and in Britain (where Harman was himself active) student radicalism, leading within a few years to workers struggle.

Within a few years, military juntas and fascist dictators in Greece, Portugal and Spain had also fallen, with movements that shared many similarities to those of 1968. Italy saw an explosion of workers struggle and in Portugal the spectre of revolution in Europe was raised for the first time since the 1920s.

Harman is brilliant at showing the dynamics of these movements, how they arose out of changes within the system but where also limited by existing organisations. In particular the role of the Communist Party in Western Europe was to limit struggle, redirect it and often to conciously protect the system in exchange for a seat at the Capitalist table. Take, for example, Harman's comments on the end of the French revolt. de Gaulle had described the situation as a choice between elections and civil war. But Harman points out that there was another way forward,

This would have meant encouraging forms of strike organisation that involved all workers, the most 'backward' as well as the most advanced, in shaping their own destinies - strike committees, regular mass meetings in the occupied plants, picketing and occupation rotas involving the widest numbers of people, delegations to other plants and to other sections of society involved int eh struggle. Everyone would then have had an opportunity to take part directly i the struggle and to discuss its political lessons. It would also have meant generalising the demands of the struggle, so that no section of workers would return to work before a settlement of the vital questions worrying other sections.

In other words, what was needed was a deepening of the struggle. No organisation existed that was willing to do this, and it wasn't certain that it would have been successful. But the Communist Party didn't try - it was to concerned with events getting out of control and threatening its own position. Instead they did the opposite - preventing student protesters meeting workers on strike for instance. The result was the defeat of the movement and de Gaulle winning the election.

1968 saw rebellion grow on a mass scale, and we get a real sense of the way that this transforms ordinary people. For example, this account, quoted by Harman, by a worker who was also a part time student, of a meeting in their factory in the midst of the Yugoslavian student movement.

I proposed the workers first familiarise themselves with the demands and problems presented by the students... The leaders of the meeting did not allow me to continue speaking. But with the loud support of the workers I climbed on a chair and read an 'appeal' to all workers written by the students... I would have to be a poet to describe the excited reaction of the workers as they learned of the students's demands.

There are countless other examples in this book, and while Harman apologises for focusing on key movements (particularly Western Europe) he does highlight many struggles that are not usually associated with 1968.

But his analysis stands out also for his ability to locate 1968 in wider contexts.

1968 was itself a product... of the way the pattern of capital accumulation on a world scale had caused a crisis of US hegemony, of the fragmentation of the Stalinist bloc, and of the fusing together of formerly submissive rural populations into powerful new groups of workers. Likewise objective economic changes had led to the creation of the vast new student populations, forced to try to learn sets of ideas which no longer made sense of a world that seemed to be cracking up.

He continues that without these changes, the

student movement along would have ended as it began, as a pressure group committed to university reform. The anti-war movement... would have been trapped in the politics of pacifist protest and moral indignation. Revulsion at the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia would merely have strengthened liberal ideas in East Europe and built Eurocommunist reformism in Western Europe. Even the strikes in France might have been experienced just as economic protests, without any great ideological significance.

This is important because it illustrates that 1968 was not a unique event but arose out of the internal contradictions of capitalism. While events will not repeat themselves, the contradictions have not gone away, and so 1968s lessons remain important. Crucial to this is the experience of the newly formed revolutionary, anti-Stalinist, socialist organisations. Harman devotes space to showing why many of these failed to grow and why others were successful. But he points out how, at key points, particularly in the aftermath of 1968 some of these groups were able to play important roles in the struggles that took place. Chris Harman devoted his life to building revolutionary socialist organisation. The First Last Time was an important contribution that helped a new generation understand that vital need. In 2018, as capitalism once again offers us war, racism, poverty and now environmental disaster, the book deserves to be read by a new generation of anti-capitalists.

The Fire Last Time has just been republished by Bookmarks Publications, with a new introduction by Joseph Choonara.

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