Don't worry it's fine

I bought a postcard today by the brilliant David Shrigley. It looked like this:

Cannabis, the state, and our freedom to choose

The latest British Crime Survey revealed a few weeks ago that drug use generally is falling, and that cannabis use in particular is at its lowest level for a decade. So much for the idea that reclassifying cannabis from a class B to a class C drug would encourage its consumption. But as we know from the Brand-and-Ross affair, on some issues the UK is governed by the baying hounds of the Daily Mail, and this is one of those issues. Thus January will see a reversion from class C back to class B, presumably sending the 'right message' about its use to the thereby infantilised population.

Back in 1995, the argument for complete legalisation seemed to be gathering pace. The Independent said in an editorial on 31 October of that year that it “has long argued for the legalisation and licensing of those drugs that have little or no ill-effect on health if used in moderation, like alcohol, like cannabis and (in all probability) like the dance drug Ecstasy.” In 1997, under the editorship of Rosie Boycott, the Independent on Sunday launched a campaign for the legalisation of cannabis.

Then last year, on the back of scare stories about the claimed increase in potency of the drug and links to psychosis, it melodramtically reversed its position. “If only we had known then what we can reveal today” wailed its editorial, managing to simultaneously bemoan its foolishness and crow about how its 'landmark' campaign “culminated in a 16,000-strong pro-cannabis march to London's Hyde Park - and was credited with forcing the Government to downgrade the legal status of cannabis to class C.”

Rosie Boycott herself is still in favour of legalisation, though she accepted both that 'skunk' is 30 times stronger than ten years previous and that smoking it has strong links to psychosis, looking back nostalgically to the days of harmless joints in the summer of love. In fact, as Ben Goldacre has shown, the 30-times-stronger figure confirms that old adage that you can prove anything with statistics. There have always been a variety of strengths available and shock increases that sell newspapers are the result of not comparing like with like.

As far as mental illness goes, a proper review of the evidence shows a distinctly more complex picture. The actual number of scientific studies which have been done are small, and most of these have found no clear evidence that cannabis taken even in quite large quantities causes mental illness. In fact, the causal relationship may be the other way round with those suffering from mental illnesses taking cannabis because it helps them in some way. There is even some suggestion that in some circumstances cannabis may have antipsychotic properties.

In any case, as Baroness Molly Meacher (who is a life peer-type Baroness and a social worker rather than a member of the aristocracy) points out today, the reduction in cannabis use since 2004 is most likely to be down to the public education campaign launched around the time it was downgraded from class B to class C. And of course, if we were to ignore this and conclude anything simple about the link between penalty and drug use on recent evidence, it would have to be that reducing the penalty reduces use, not the other way around.

There is a wider point here too. Why should the state be allowed to tell us what we can and can't consume where that effects no-one but ourselves? Yes there is a role for education, but not for criminalising the estimated 30 per cent of the population who have taken cannabis at some point in their lives. Unfortunately the libertarians in the Labour party can virtually be counted on one hand.

Thus a socially conservative agenda from the right dovetails with paternalism from the authoritarian centre-left, with the poorest sections of society as the biggest victims. Yes, drug problems affect poor communities worst, but so does the criminalisation of drugs. As Meacher points out “Arrests and convictions make it more difficult for those involved to find and hold a job; more likely that relationships break down; more likely they will have housing problems.”

Meacher is tabling a motion in the House of Lords, calling on the government to halt reclassification pending a new review of drugs policy. I hope they do, though I'm not optimistic. What we need more, however, is a broader debate about the role of the state in determining how we live, and how we can move towards a society of equal and empowered adults.

Underneath the arches

My theatre-going is usually restricted to the National Theatre when they have £10 tickets for classics like Checkov, Lorca or Brecht; except, that is, when a friend of mine is in a play (that's just one friend who's in plays, not many...). That was why I was at the Southwark Playhouse last night, watching Presumption, a play about two people coming to terms with the fact that after seven years, their feelings are best described as they "don't not love" each other.

Its an engaging play, a simple concept which is thoroughly and sometimes wittily explored by actors who give excellent performances. Its odd watching someone you know well play a character. You notice which expressions, affectations and gestures have been imported from the actor's own character, and which haven't, in a way that the rest of the audience clearly won't. Yet I have to say that for most of the time I was able to suspend my disbelief effectively and was entertained all the way through.

Southwark Playhouse, incidentally is also quite engaging itself. Situated underneath the railway arches near London Bridge, it has a trendy little bar complete which has unmatched second-hand chairs, tea lights and a stage for acoustic music, yet manages to avoid pretentiousness. Presumption runs for another two weeks and tickets are pretty cheap, so consider this my November theatre recommendation!

The National Gallery, the Duke, his Titian and its lovers

The latest furore in the British art world revolves around a work by Titian, 'Diana and Actaeon'. Current owner the Duke of Sutherland wants to sell the painting and is prepared to 'accept' £50million for it from the National Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland. If he doesn't get it by the end of the year, he'll sell it on the private market, possibly to that current bête noir of British taste and decency, a 'Russian oligarch'.

I don't want to dwell on the inherent value of the painting itself. I don't much rate it, but clearly much of the art establishment does. Artists including Lucien Freud, Damien Hirst and David Hockney have supported the campaign to buy it. Tracey Emin presented an artists' petition to Downing Street, saying “We are building an Olympics that we can't afford and can't maintain afterwards. This country seems hell-bent on supporting a war which is so ugly. Why can't we celebrate things that are really beautiful?”

I can identify with this sentiment to some extent, but I think its more complicated than that. There are a lot of calls by progressives on the money that shouldn't be spent on war, or indeed on the Olympics, and buying a Titian painting may not rank above, say, tackling child poverty or a Green New Deal. That isn't to say we shouldn't spend anything on art and heritage, but there isn't, and neither should there be, an unlimited budget for such things. The National National Heritage Memorial Fund has pledged £10 million for 'Diana and Actaeon', but admits on its website that it normally has a “difficult task ... to decide what should be saved within the limited resources”. £50 million is a lot of money, no matter how irresponsibly large sums have been spent elsewhere.

Then there's the Duke of Sutherland himself. The current Duke is a descendent of the 1st Duke of Sutherland, George Leveson-Gower, who is best known for his role in the highland clearances. I mention this not to imply that the wealth of any member of the aristocracy is particularly legitimate, but to illustrate that it isn't. Giving him £50 million from public funds would be redistribution of wealth from ordinary people to a very rich man.

Hugh Kerr, a former MEP who was expelled from the Labour party for being too left-wing (or something) has a better idea: “We have had these paintings since 1945. We have looked after them, we have insured them, and they are part of Scotland's national heritage. Frankly, we should just nationalise them and take them into public ownership.” In the likely event that this doesn't happen however, should the government find a way of buying the paintings?

Absolutely not. The Duke is holding the country to ransom, and if we aren't paying up to Somalian pirates to save the lives of their hostages, we certainly shouldn't be paying him. Its up to the Duke if he wants to deny the country a historic piece of art for private gain. Perhaps the assorted ranks of the art establishment should be petitioning the Duke not to be so selfish, not asking the government to pay him out of the public purse. Either that or the likes of super-rich Damien Hirst could try dipping into their own pockets.

Networks, nodes and hubs

I've been reading a rather obscure libertarian anti-capitalist publication recently called Turbulence. I found some articles more interesting and useful than others, but one that stuck out was Network Organisation for the 21st Century by Harry Halpin and Kay Summer. In it they suggest an alternative to both the 'horizontal' and 'vertical' models of political organisation current on the anti-capitalist left, something I've been trying to work out in a very untheoretical way for a number of years.

Their argument goes something like this:

• Questions of political organisation have traditionally revolved around two poles of attraction, the centralised structure with clear leadership and common ideology, and the loose decentralised network with no coherent agreement on politics. Many organisations mix aspects of these two, but the debate is viewed through this lens.
• Both structures have benefits and problems – the ability to act quickly can be contrasted with the benefits of wider participation for instance. Organisations using both models were involved in the post-Seattle alter-globalisation movement, and neither managed to sustain that movement with the vibrancy it once had.
• We can start to move beyond this dichotomy of political models by looking at what principles define a well-functioning network, whether this be political networks, ecosystems or the internet.
• A network consists of connections between otherwise disparate elements which are called nodes. In the context of a social movement these could be people, groups, a social centre, a website, social forums and so on.
• In a successful network, some nodes have more connections, and are connected with more distant nodes than others. These supernodes can be called 'hubs'. This model can be contrasted with both a centralised network and a completely decentralised one. For example, in a postal network, centralised system would see all post being routed through a single hub, which would be vulnerable to overloading. A decentralised network would see long-distance mail routed through a series of local connections since it has no hubs. By contrast, a system with multiple hubs and many nodes is more efficient, even if some of the hubs replicate each others' functions.
• Advocates of 'horizontality' have sometimes been suspicious of any hubs as signs of centralisation. Those in control of a hub may well want to sabotage other emerging hubs as competitors – a tendency visible in the anti-war movement in the UK for instance.
• The emergence of hubs appears to be a sign of maturity in long-lasting networks. However, they must never be allowed to become static, and must remain partially redundant so that the movement as a whole doesn't depend on one hub.
• Existing hubs should also encourage the development of new hubs and dense local connections between nodes. This often involves re-inventing the wheel with people learning new skills, knowledge and information, but this is necessary and useful for making the network resilient.

Of course they make other points too, and the article itself has far more illustrative examples than I can give in a summary, so it worth reading the original if you're interested in this sort of thing. What's interesting to me is that some of the ideas here have also emerged through the common sense of activism I've been involved in, trying to organise in an efficient but non-authoritarian way - but what the article does is thinks the implications through, puts them in a slightly more theoretical framework and feeds them back to people like me to help with organisational problems.

No doubt this is not a definitive answer, and the authors don't make any such claims, but they do offer a potentially useful approach for social movements at the moment when we need to renew the radical challenge to an unjust and unsustainable system.

The once and future mayor?

A political maverick who failed to get elected this year, but is already planning for a run in 2012? Not Sarah Palin this time, but our very own Ken Livingstone. Having run out of political steam in the recent mayoral election, but determined to win his crown back from Boris the next time round, Ken and his allies appear to have been looking for a new strategy. This week, with the launch of Progressive London, we get to see more of what that will look like.

"Progressive politics offer the best approach to dealing with the new economic and political situation" Ken tells us, hence his new coalition, which will advocate "public investment in areas like transport, housing and the environment" as well as "promoting the city's international openness and multicultural dynamism." With a conference planned in January, Progressive London is clearly seeking to provide a more weighty opposition to Boris Johnson's plans for the city than either a free-ranging Ken or Labour members of the London Assembly can. But is this something progressive Londoners should take an interest in?

The best chance that Ken had to establish a progressive coalition in London was eight years ago in the wake of his first mayoral election victory as an independent. Having pulled both the Labour left and many other activists into his election campaign, and proved it was possible for the left to win outside the Labour party, Ken had all to play for. A 'progressive coalition' for London (rather than a new political party) would have fitted the mood exactly and would have been more conducive to grassroots-led innovation in local government.

It didn't happen though, and a few of the reasons why not are fairly easy to pinpoint. They are worth mentioning because, as far as I can tell, they also appear to dog this latest attempt at progressive coalition building.

The first was that it was all about Ken. Livingstone is undoubtedly charismatic and still relatively well liked, but like many such political leaders has a strong belief in having himself in power as the solution. According to the Guardian's Dave Hill, Livingstone has taken to referring to himself as the "once and future mayor", a testament both to his characteristic wit and his problematic attitude to political power.

The Progressive London website uses as its primary colour the same purple that Livingstone first used in his 2000 mayoral campaign, and which he revived on his billboard adverts this year in an effort to distance himself from an unpopular Labour government. Other visual clues include a logo which incorporates the annoying LONDON logo he introduced while in office, the stylised London cityscape used by Transport for London, and a campaign for low fares featuring the oyster card design which he views as one of his triumphs. The website says nothing about re-electing Ken in 2012 as such, but on another level its the main thing it says.

The second problem has to do with the Labour party. Livingstone never meant to leave the Labour party - he was forced to do so because it was preventing him from being elected. Once he'd done that, he sought to rejoin at the first opportunity that wasn't too embarassing for him or it. Thus there was no rationale for any political organistion that could challenge the position of Labour.

Although Livingstone says that the January conference will have speakers "from the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, trade union leaders, intellectuals, artists, cultural practitioners, community activists and city government experts", the list of Progressive London supporters on the website looks decidedly more Labour-oriented. Apart from Labour politicians and Labour-affiliated trade unionists, the list consists only of CND chair Kate Hudson, a member of the Communist party which barely distinguishes itself from the Labour left, and Green AM Jenny Jones.

Jones is no surprise here either. Since she was Livingstone's Deputy Mayor in his first term, and through her tenure as the distinctly less important Mayor's Cycling Ambassador, Jones has always seemed closer to Livingstone than her fellow Green AM Darren Johnson. Indeed, she voted against a motion to sack Met Commissioner and Livingstone ally Ian Blair over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes when Johnson did not. Her inclusion here is no guarantee that the Green party is fully behind this coalition, and it has good reason to be wary.

So is Progressive London simply designed to revive the flagging Labour party? Despite the evidence so far we might be tempted to give it the benefit of the doubt, but the chances of building a dynamic and pluralistic coalition are somewhat limited by a third factor: the involvement of Socialist Action, Livingstone's neo-Stalinist praetorian guard. For those who haven't come across this unpleasant little bunch, I think Oscar Reyes summed it up best in Red Pepper when he said in response to Martin Bright's 'expose' of Livingstone in April:

"the real scandal is not that a left-wing mayor has left-wing advisors or that they oppose racism. The problem, as any left or anti-racist activist who has encountered Livingstone’s guard dogs will tell you, is that they have consistently denigrated community struggles, grassroots activism and anything that veers from whatever they deem politically correct or opportune."

Progressive London's articles page features a variety of articles by Livingstone and a link to his Socialist Economic Bulletin, which although published in his name is almost entirely made up of articles by John Ross, Ken's economics advisor whilst mayor and Socialist Action's main theoretician. Based on their track record, a Progressive London coalition with Socialist Action at its heart may have a veneer of pluralism, but when it comes to decision-making internally, it will brook no dissent.

I would love to be proved wrong about all this. The left surely needs new formations, and local or regional coalitions seem far more feasible for achieving this. But my misgivings can perhaps be best summed up like this: Livingstone's politics in the last eight years have not been about building a progressive movement, but instead about creating an hegemony for himself amongst progressives in London. I have yet to see any evidence that he's changed his approach.

Of poppies and the peace movement

When I was 14, I and a couple of friends were asked by the deputy headteacher to sell Remembrance Day poppies around the school. Even at that age, we were aware of the uncritical militaristic culture surrounding Remembrance Day and were a little uncomfortable in doing so. Yet we were not confident enough to argue the case not to do it at all. Luckily, with a mother who was a member of the local branch of CND, I was not only aware of an actual peace movement, but also of their alternative - the white poppy.

My friends and I offered a compromise. We would sell red poppies around the school, but only if we could also sell white poppies. I forget how many we sold. I think it was mainly teachers who bought the white poppies (usually as well as a red one), since few schoolkids had ever heard of them before. The woodwork teacher offered us our first taste of right-wing backlash, getting angry that our white poppies somehow sullied the sacrifice soldiers had made, even though we offered them simply as an addition to state-approved remembrance.

Today the white poppy is rarer than it ever was, the victim of the gradual disappearance of the traditional peace movement. The British Legion's red poppies no longer say 'Haig Fund' in the centre as they did until 1994, collecting money for ex-servicemen in the name of the man who sent millions of them to their deaths in the trenches of the First World War. But they are intrinsically linked to Remembrance Sunday's solemn affirmation of the valour of dying for one's country. The terms in which today's soldiers think may have shifted with the times a little, but the basic sentiment is still the one lambasted by Wilfred Owen, "The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est/ Pro patria mori."

Wearing a poppy is pretty much compulsory for politicians and television presenters, but I won't be wearing one. Its not that I don't think ex-servicemen deserve a decent pension and medical care. Everyone does, which is the sentiment that demobbed soldiers brought back from the Second World War, voting in the most radical Labour government in British history, which then constructed the modern welfare state. Defending that, and opposing the wars the UK still fights today seems a more fitting way to remember those who died.

In a way, the fact that Remembrance Sunday is always the closest Sunday to Armistice Day when the First World War ended probably does encourage some critical examination of the ceremony. The history books now universally conclude that the Great War was a war of entirely needless slaughter and military incompetence, conducted on both sides by aristocrats who cared little for how many working class men died in defence of their empires. The nature of war has changed dramatically since then, and so has opposition to war. Millions marched against the war in Iraq, though motivated not by blanket pacifism but often by a feeling that this war was unjust.

Like me, those at the core of the anti-war movement today may not call themselves pacifists, but are opposed to militarism, and to wars in a general way, rather than on a case-by-case basis. So there is the common basis for rebuilding a culture of peace, infused with a common-sense anti-imperialism for a fuller understanding of the world. Rituals and events are an important part of our social organisation (which is why Remembrance Sunday happens), so I wonder if one of the things that could be done is to organise an alternative Remembrance Sunday, a solemn occassion to remember the dead on both sides and celebrate our common humanity.

It would surely attract opprobrium, just like I did from the woodwork teacher, but to win the contest of ideas, the left and the peace movement can't afford to cede national culture entirely to the institutions of state violence. Opposing wars will always be the busiest part of our activism, but we will oppose them more effectively if we are fortified by a real counter-culture of radical ideas and practice.

Democracy Now: Independent media done well

Watching some of the coverage of the US election, there are some common themes that the Republicans are using to explain to themselves and others why McCain lost. One is that Obama had a lot more money, but you have to ask why - it wasn't just that he rejected public funding, but that he raised a lot through many relatively small donations. A second theme is the supposed 'liberal' bias of the US media.

The New York Times is often singled out as an example, as well as comedy shows like John Stewart's The Daily Show. The reality, however, is that the US left is rather badly served by the mainstream corporate media, reflecting as it does the fight between two overwhelmingly corporate parties. This is the main reason why the Guardian took off in the US once it went fully online, such that it recently launched Guardian America, a US-focussed sub-site with its own high profile editor.

There are also a variety of independent and left-wing media, though much of this represents comment rather than news, or has a specialist appeal only to self-defined activists (among the best in this category in my opinion is Left Turn, unfortunately unavailable in the UK in print form). The only independent television news, however, is Democracy Now! As it streams online, I've caught it ocassionally before, but watching it now for its election coverage, I have to say how good it is. In depth analysis from the likes of Manning Marable, the leftwing black academic, is exactly what I was looking for today.

Broadcasting rules are different in the US - in the UK radio and television has to be politically balanced - and we certainly don't have the network of hundreds of local public TV stations which is where Democracy Now!'s daily news hour is syndicated. But what Democracy Now! does so well, I think, is to present a professionally-produced news programme that through the issues covered and its choice of pundits appeals to a leftist audience, but also potentially to a casual watcher with at least some interest in politics. To do this it manages to neither assume too much prior knowledge without patronising the more specialist section of its audience.

In other words, it fills the rather large gap between the 'liberal' New York Times and activist publications, and seeks to both serve and influence a large group of broadly progressive people. So I just wanted to say, well done to Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now! team. Even taking into account the different media landscape, those seeking to build independent media in the UK could surely learn some lessons here.

Casino capitalism and change we can believe in

As it looks increasingly certain that the US will elect its first black president, so-called Obamamania is reaching apotheosis everywhere from the pages of Facebook to the streets of Kibera, the slum around Nairobi where tshirts bearing the legend “Ndio Tunaweza” (“Yes we can” in Swahili) are making a tidy sum for those selling them.

This has certainly been an historic election, for many reasons. Obama's campaign appears to have turned around the dominance the Republicans have had at the grassroots through their Christian evangelist base, mobilising young liberals as never before. Britain's young liberal lefties have even been getting in on the act, taking time off to go over to the States and take part in the campaign. They're living the West Wing dream as the Bush era of war comes to a crescendo with a financial crisis that looks like being as bad as that of the 1930s.

There's no doubt that the crisis of casino capitalism has helped Obama's campaign. Despite his protestations McCain looks like nothing but Bush with the trimmings changed when it comes to the economy. Obama, on the other hand, has been able to make the right noises as public opinion falls out of love with the free market. (This is happening across the rich world – a poll in Germany found a clear majority in favour of nationalisations and major government intervention, with 40 percent wanting extensive nationalisation.)

Which brings me to a very pertinent article by the excellent Mike Davis. There's been an argument on the left over how much change Obama really represents, how excited we should get about him, and whether that matters so much as the fact that he's mobilised black communities politically in a way that hasn't happened before (see Red Pepper for one bit of that debate). One theme that's emerged more recently, as the financial crisis hit, has been Obama as a letter day Roosevelt, offering a New Deal to America.

What Davis questions is not so much Obama's intentions, as his ability to offer any such strategy, and the wisdom of using the 1930s as a template for today's crisis. The balance of class forces in America and the world today rather militate against serious government intervention in favour of the millions (as opposed to the millionaires), even if the grassroots momentum that looks likely to get Obama into office can be maintained – and you can rest assured the Democratic party machine will do its best to close it down after the election.

Davis ends without offering any particular solution, but one point is clear. On foreign policy Obama by no means repudiates the American Empire, aiming to get out of the Iraqi disaster but threatening to attack Pakistan in search of Al Qaeda and increase troops in Afghanistan. And whilst at home his agenda is potentially progressive (see Jim at The Daily (Maybe) for one aspect of this), the chances of any progressive outcomes to the financial crisis, in the US or anywhere, depend on social mobilisation.

Don't get me wrong, if the war criminal and his evangelical pitbull fail to get elected tomorrow, I may not be dancing a jig with the over-excited liberals, but I'll certainly breathe a sigh of relief. But unless we resuscitate some meaningful left, in fact anti-capitalist, organisation, the future will still look rather bleak.

• An initial response from social movements and some of the more radical NGOs to the financial crisis can be found on the casino crash website – its being called the 'Beijing Declaration' as it was put together at the Asia Europe People's Forum in Beijing in October.
• Call time on global greed: Don’t make the world’s poor pay for big business’ crash. Protest as Gordon Brown meets business leaders at the Lord Mayor's dinner. Monday 10th November, 6.15pm, corner of Gresham St and King St, near Guildhall Yard, London.

The poet's eye obscenely seeing

This year marks 50 years since the publication of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind, possibly my favourite book of poetry. Ferlinghetti is a poet associated with the beat writers. His bookshop in San Francisco, City Lights, was a hangout for them in the 50s, and still today represents a radical, alternative hub in the city.

I first visited City Lights in late 2002. The outside walls of its building at Columbus and Broadway were hung with banners proclaiming opposition to the imminent war on Iraq. Its shelves feature an extensive literature section, books on radical politics and social sciences, and unsurprisingly a large beat writer collection upstairs. It instantly became, and remains, by favourite bookstore.

Ferlinghetti himself has long been associated with anarchist and anti-authoritarian politics, and more recently has opposed the gentrification of San Francisco. Some of his poems in A Coney Island of the Mind also have a political edge, though this is no didactic tract. Rather it gathers together fragments of America's post-war reality and presents them in critical juxtopostion.

The second part of the book, 'Oral messages', is seven pieces written to accompany jazz. The first, 'I am waiting', in particular recalls for me the later rhythms of Gil Scott-Heron's proto hip-hop.

Anyway, here's an entirely unauthorised reproduction of the third, untitled, poem in the book. A 50th anniversary edition has just been published, which I recommend you buy from your local independent bookshop, or get your library to order or something nice and non-consumerist like that...

The poets eye obscenely seeing
sees the surface of the round world
          with its drunk rooftops
          and wooden oiseaux on clothesliens
          and its clay males and females
          with hot legs and rosebud breasts
          in roll away beds
and its trees full of mysteries
and its Sunday parks and speechless statues
and its America
         with its ghost towns and empty Ellis Islands
and it's surrealist landscape of
                          mindless prairies
                          supermarket suburbs
                          steamheated cemeteries
                          cinerama holy days
                          and protesting cathedrals
a kissproof world of plastic toiletseats tampax and taxis
         drugged store cowboys and las vegas virgins
         disowned indians and cinemad matrons
         unroman senators and conscientious non-objectors
and all other fatal shorn-up fragments
of the immigrant's dream come too true
    and mislaid
               among the sunbathers