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Labour Party Purges Ken Loach, Keeping British Capitalism Safe

Film director’s expulsion is part of plan to silence left-wing voices


17/08/2021

Ken Loach’s reputation as a film-maker is extraordinary. From his breakthrough TV piece Cathy Come Home, shot verité style and focusing on the housing crisis tearing poorer families apart in 1966, up to his two most recent works of cinema, I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You, exposing the life-threatening cruelty in both the 2010’s UK benefits system and the bogus self-employment offered in gig-economy Britain. His candid view of systemic injustice and its impact on ordinary people is unstintingly truthful, compassionate and condemnatory. Loach’s lengthy career has seen him not only present international struggles such as the Spanish Civil War (Land and Freedom) and that for Irish independence (The Wind that Shakes the Barley) but has returned again and again to depict the dangerous erosion of labour rights in films like Riff-Raff, The Navigators and Bread and Roses. These stories often follow characters with whom we readily identify, the political points arising naturally in the protagonists’ attempts to overcome systemic obstacles that block or destroy their simple aims of having a decent life.

Very, very few film-directors portray characters and predicaments such as this, and to do so consistently for almost seven decades, shows an astonishing dedication to telling it like it is for those at the bottom of the capitalist heap. This commitment, together with the humanity of his stories and characters has earned Loach the love and gratitude of huge numbers in the UK and abroad, especially for his ability to so precisely portray the contemporary inequities besetting people via housing deficiencies, welfare bureaucracy or employment exploitation. Somebody cares enough to show this! Audiences watch in thanks as truth is told movingly and eloquently to power, shaming the legislators. Fêted internationally, Loach is the only director to have twice won the Palme d’Or at Cannes as well as having been lauded with honours such as university doctorates, a BAFTA and an Honorary Golden Bear in Berlin for his lifetime achievement.

He easily fits then, into categories of both national treasure and people’s champion. In addition to producing works of fiction that rigorously represent facts, he has authored a number of superb documentaries, not least the most recent The Spirit of ’45 made in 2013, about the triumphant post-war Labour government that went on to create the NHS and other aspects of social provision. For a 21st century Britain endlessly pumped with militaristic nostalgia by the media, this was a people’s history seen shockingly rarely but instantly and lovingly celebrated. It provided a stark contrast with the austerity people had been experiencing since 1979 at the hands of governments who had long since torn up the social contract and sounded urgent warning bells about how the health service could be lost through stealth privatisation. It also offered a sobering compare and contrast exercise between the pioneering socialist spirit of Labour in 1945 and the bland, ineffectual opposition nominally led by Ed Miliband, who went on to lose the general election two years later.

After Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour party leader in 2015, Loach not only rejoined the party, but also shot and directed election broadcasts such as Let’s do it differently in 2017 for no fee. Watching it now, one can see how Corbyn’s message – “to give everybody a decent chance” – is the longed-for antidote to the plight of people suffering like Loach’s characters. The surge of relief and gratitude seen on the streets and workplaces in the broadcast conveys the poignant sense of the possibility of an oppressive spell being lifted and that Corbyn, like Loach, is someone who has not only listened and seen what is wrong but is determined to put things right. In #We Demand, again in 2017, Loach lets the people themselves speak to camera. Young, old, black and white, their message summed up by the young woman who looks into camera at the end and says “We demand a chance to be all that we can.” Labour was tantalisingly close to winning that election. Murkier deeds may have played a role in the result being short of a victory, but more of that later.

Of course there had been attempts to remove Corbyn as leader from within by disgruntled MPs who hadn’t signed up to serve these kinds of socialist principles. Loach criticised Tom Watson (for a time Labour’s Deputy Leader) and other members of the PLP for lack of solidarity, and for trying to destroy the socialist programme the Corbyn leadership was offering. He suggested that sitting MPs should reapply for their jobs before each election so as to be judged on their records. This calling to account clearly didn’t sit well with people who preferred to think of their parliamentary positions as uninterrupted trajectories of influential prestige, untroubled by something as grubby as mere party democracy and giving members some say. Telling truth to power started to get Loach into trouble with those who began to see him as less of a party asset and more of a threat, mostly to their jobs.

Despite his great popularity with the electorate (increasing the share of the Labour vote since 2010 substantially even in defeat) and with the Labour membership, Corbyn lost the 2019 election. Tory propaganda about the supposed bright sunlit uplands of Brexit had supplanted Labour’s transformative anti-austerity and Green Industrial Revolution messages. The Conservatives had ditched the dithering Theresa May for rumbustious and cunning clown Johnson, who seemed to some voters so funny and loveable he couldn’t possibly be lying. Continuing the deception of the Leave campaign, the Tories purported to hold the NHS as sacrosanct.

Despite the harrowing result, Ken stayed in the party as did most members, hoping that what had been built in the last four years could be strengthened and maintained and that everyone, together, could galvanise in the fight against the Tories. Keir Starmer presented himself as the “unity candidate” and also promised in 10 pledges to continue the direction of social justice set since 2015. On the basis of these promises, he won the leadership but within just seven months, several pledges were broken and others on shaky ground. Then, far from the unity promised, Starmer began to jettison left-wing Cabinet members like Rebecca Long-Bailey, herself the author of the Green Industrial Revolution and even Corbyn himself was suspended and the whip withdrawn from him.

Around Easter time in 2020, a leaked report seemed to indicate deep factional hostility at Labour HQ towards allies of Corbyn in the run up to the 2017 election, and even hinted at behaviour and actions that may have undermined Labour’s chances at the ballot box in the last crucial days of campaigning. Allegations about the lackadaisical attitude of party officials in dealing with accusations of antisemitism, behaviour at complete odds with the party’s avowed claims to be doing the opposite also surfaced. All these things were said to have occurred before Corbyn ally Jennie Formby took over as General Secretary, painting a picture of vicious, factional hostility towards the left and a disingenuousness about tackling all forms of racism. Starmer’s response was to set up an inquiry into whether all of this was true, which was supposed to publish its findings early this year at the latest. We’re still waiting.

The suspensions have continued, usually of left-wing members, regularly left-wing Jewish members. Some of these suspensions have been fought in the courts, not all members have been reinstated. The promised unity has melted into thin air and we have instead a war of attrition against the left-wing membership. The vigour and robustness with which this has been pursued contrasts steeply with the underwhelming opposition to the government. Inevitably the membership is dissatisfied not to say outraged. But even this dissent has been curtailed by the unelected General Secretary, preventing discussion in branches on high profile suspensions like Corbyn’s and even putting an embargo on discussion about himself. To say this is a sea-change from the inclusive, participatory, enlivened democracy of the party Corbyn headed is the understatement of the century. In lieu of being able to discuss these things within the party structures, innumerable groups have sprung up on social media. Some of these groups themselves have now been “proscribed”, that is membership of them means a five year auto-exclusion from the Labour party.

Ken Loach, unwilling to denounce those he considers comrades or basically play along with this charade of moral rectitude, is the highest profile member to have suffered this fate. Yes, the 85 year-old world-renowned film-director, famous for championing the oppressed and exposing the savage inequities of neo-liberalism has been kicked out of the Labour Party. What a demolition of your ‘brand’. If the eruption on social media is anything to go by, hundreds of members promptly resigned at this news saying more or less that not only did the party seem not to stand for anything under Starmer, it seems positively hostile to democratic socialism, the description it still bears on its party card. The haemorrhaging of members, unhappy at the current mixture of external blandness and internal aggression has already starved the party of funds and very little financial support has been forthcoming from an attempted schmooze of big business.

So one has to wonder, who is this PR disaster actually aimed at? Do the leadership and advisors think that expelling a paragon of compassionate socialism puts them in a good light with voters? Do they think that being strict like this will bring the membership into line, and they’ll deliver leaflets like good little boys and girls with nary a critical peep? The answers are clearly no and no, with polls lacklustre, election results dire and a membership shrinking by the day. And of course, Ken is only the highest profile victim of the latest purge. I have heard of members who have had threatening letters citing that a couple of ‘likes’ on Facebook posts (before any of this proscription business was announced) constitutes gross misconduct and said members must prove they are not members of such abruptly unacceptable groups. Calling this McCarthyism is letting it off lightly, being more akin to accusations of ‘thought-crimes’, sending the message that social media groups may suddenly become verboten at the capricious wish of a party official. Woe-betide you if you’ve ever attached any kind of positive emoji to some quip or comment.

Interviewed by the BBC in 2016, Loach described the UK benefits system as “a Kafka-esque Catch 22 situation designed to frustrate and humiliate the claimant to such an extent that they drop out of the system and stop pursuing their right to ask for support if necessary”. Frustration, humiliation, dropping out. But why would Labour wish to frustrate and humiliate its members into dropping out when they are the ones who give it money and work on its behalf for free? One answer in terms of timing might lie in the looming dates of the party conference starting 25th September. This annual event was online only last year but is traditionally where MPs and leaders meet the membership, where policy is thrashed out, where disagreements are had, sometimes loudly, where in other words, democracy happens. Could it be that those in charge wish for as little dissent as possible in this arena and hope that the big public expulsion of Loach will demoralise those still clinging on in the hope of some socialism? It’s only a theory.

But why would they not want a vibrant membership full of progressive ideas? That’s a good question and perhaps one only partly answered by this Tony Benn quote from 1982:

“If the Labour Party could be bullied or persuaded to denounce its Marxists, the media – having tasted blood – would demand next that it expelled all its Socialists and reunited the remaining Labour Party with the SDP to form a harmless alternative to the Conservatives, which could then be allowed to take office now and then when the Conservatives fell out of favour with the public. Thus British Capitalism, it is argued, will be made safe forever, and socialism would be squeezed off the National agenda.”

Carol McGuigan is a socialist living in Berlin who will vote for the first time as a dual-citizen in the coming German elections.

Why the 1969 Moon Landings Were No Giant Leap Forward for Mankind

The original space race was inspirational, if tainted by militaristic motives. Today’s is sheer vanity


16/08/2021

It if just over 50 years since Gil Scott-Heron wrote the incredible satirical poem Whitey on the Moon

“A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey’s on the moon)
I can’t pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.
(while Whitey’s on the moon)
The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)…”

The poem highlighted the enormous disparity between the money available to poor Black people in the ghettos and that spent on the Apollo 11 moon landings. In 2019. Forbes.com estimated that the landings cost $152 billion at current prices. Scott-Heron’s poem was a necessary counterweight to the dominant narrative that the moon landings were a victory for science and progress and had nothing at all to do with politics.

The “Race to Space” and the Cold War

In fact, the Race to Space was always dominated by the Cold War. Indeed, the very term “Race to Space” got its name from the arms race between the USA and Soviet Union. In the 1950s, both countries were developing reconnaissance satellites to spy on each other. The same technology would later be used to develop rockets.

The US American space programme was led by Wernher von Braun, a former member of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and the SS. Although von Braun later denied his involvement, he was very aware of the crimes that were taking place in Germany. In 1943, he was given at least one guided tour of the Mittelwerk factory, where concentration camp prisoners built the V2 rockets he had designed. Many of those prisoners died of disease and malnutrition, were worked to death, or were executed.

In October 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik 1 – the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. President Eisenhower’s response was to form the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) whose remit covered space, ballistic missile defence, and nuclear test detection. In 1960, when the space programme was transferred to NASA, DARPA continued to work on the military and surveillance aspects of space.

In early 1958, the CIA and US Air Force initiated the Corona project. Officially a scientific research programme, the Corona project launched a secret spy satellite containing a camera which was used to take photographs of the Soviet Union. Between 1960 and 1972, 100 Corona missions took over 800,000 high resolution photographs.

A less successful project, also launched in 1958, was Project A119. This was a secret plan of the United States Air Force to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon. The aim was to show that the US was still the world leader in space. In the end, US Air Force officials decided that A119’s “risks outweighed its benefits.”

The 1960s Space Race – from Gagarin to Armstrong

The 1960s were book ended by two events. In 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. For the best part of 2 decades, politicians and media had assured the post-war world that the USA was #1. Yet somehow they had been beaten into space by the upstart Gagarin. Worse still, he was from the Evil Empire.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev understood the ideological implications, claiming that

“economy, science, culture and the creative genius of people in all areas of life develop better and faster under communism.”

Gagarin went into space on April 12th 1961. Six weeks later, on May 25th, President Kennedy announced his goal of landing a man on the moon.

The Cold War was heating up, and the following year, the world was brought to the brink of destruction by the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the 1960s continued, the US bombing of first Vietnam, then Laos and Cambodia intensified. The US moon landing in 1969 was a very important significant statement that the US was back in charge. We may be losing a war to peasants in South East Asia, but at least we control space.

Of course, this was not how the Race to Space was sold. Rather it was portrayed as being part of the US pioneer spirit (we’ll ignore for a minute that the original pioneers were bandits who stole huge swathes of Native American land). In the forefront of the campaign was the young, liberal president John F. Kennedy, who famously promised to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, saying

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

In a less well known quote, Kennedy told NASA director James E Webb

“Everything we do ought to really be tied in to getting on to the Moon ahead of the Russians… otherwise we shouldn’t be spending that kind of money, because I’m not interested in space… the only justification for it, in my opinion, to do it in this pell-mell fashion is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God we passed them. I think it would be a hell of a thing for us.”

Kennedy’s successor as President, Lyndon B Johnson was just as clear about the US government’s priorities:

“We’ve spent between thirty-five and forty billion dollars on space…but if nothing else had come from that program except the knowledge that we get from our satellite photography, it would be worth ten times to us what the whole program has cost. Because tonight I know how many missiles the enemy has.”

What happened next – Star Wars and Challenger

After the USA won the race to the moon, interest and resources diminished. The US Congress was less interested in funding more space travel, especially as the US Army was being bogged down in Vietnam. In July 1975, 2½ months after the fall of Saigon, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission saw three US astronauts dock in a Soviet space capsule. This was to be the last major event that decade in the Race to Space.

In 1983, Ronald Reagan showed renewed interest in the fight in space with the launch of his Strategic Defence Initiative, which as the old ham actor he is, he preferred to call Star Wars. As he announced the launch of Star Wars, he said

“I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”

The “world peace” that Reagan talked about was to be achieved by total military domination. The aim of Star Wars was to shoot down Soviet missiles, so that only the US would be able to threaten total nuclear devastation.

In the same year that Star Wars was announced, the US launched the first Challenger Space Shuttle. Challenger flew nine missions, each lasting between 5 and 8 days. Numerous further shuttles were planned, one of which would be armed with nuclear weapons. The Challenger experiment ended in January 1986, when the tenth mission was aborted after Challenger exploded on launch, resulting in the deaths of 7 crew members.

Not everyone was upset. Spoken word artist and Dead Kennedys’ singer Jello Biafra wrote a prose-poem called Why I’m Glad The Space Shuttle Blew Up. Biafra quoted an article in the Nation reporting that NASA was planning to use the eleventh Challenger mission to send 46 pounds of Plutonium into space.

The Second time as Farce

Now it’s happening all over again. Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos have been recently engaging in a dick swinging contest about which of them can be the first into space. This time, the main finance is not coming from the military industrial complex, but private capital. While this may mean that humanity is under slightly less risk from armageddon, the futility of the project is there for all to see.

I’m not the first person to point out that these men own huge businesses and have amassed their vast fortunes by paying their workers way less than the value of goods and services that they produce. And yet rather than paying decent wages, they prefer to spaff their money on vanity projects like this.

On top of this, it wasn’t even all their money that they’ve been spending. Elon Musk’s SpaceX company was awarded a $178 contact by NASA. Fortune magazine reports that Branson’s Virgin Galactic flight into space was “worth $841 million for Virgin Galactic”. In 2020, Branson had asked the British government to give him £500m Corona bailout money for Virgin Atlantic while telling his staff to take 8 weeks unpaid leave. In 2017, after he threatened legal action, the NHS paid him an undisclosed sum.

Conclusion

Whatever their problems, the first moon landings did inspire people. Young boys (and hopefully some young girls) wanted to be Neil Armstrong. Even though the Apollo and Sputnik projects were ultimately tied up with the arms race, many people genuinely felt that we were pushing back scientific boundaries. This time round, it all feels rather pathetic. I’m not going to say that no-one wants to be Elon Musk or Richard Branson, but those who do need to give themselves a good talking to.

Once upon a time, it was possible to sell space travel as something noble which advanced scientific progress. It was a shame that this was being largely funded by US and Soviet imperialism, but at least we got GPS out of it. The antics of Bezos, Branson, and Musk are entirely without honour or scientific curiosity.

The New Space Race is a metaphor for the arrogance and false priorities of neoliberalism capitalism. It only serves a few rich white men, and it is devastating for the environment. You’re worried about the carbon footprint of long-haul flights? Professor Eloise Marais calculates that the footprint of commercial space travel will be 100 times higher.

We deserve better than that. We deserve better than capitalism.

Film Review – Wem gehört mein Dorf? / Who Owns my Village?

A new film shows that urban Leftists are not the only people fighting gentrification


15/08/2021

The film opens with what seems to be home movie footage. A woman is swimming in the sea with her children. All are naked. A shout out to the old Freikörperkultur of East Germany. A time that is in living memory, but still so far away.

One of the children is presumably Christoph Eder, the director who has made a film about his home village of Göhren auf Rügen. Like most people of his generation, Eder no longer lives there – after the wall came down, anyone without family ties went West in search of employment or education. But he obviously feels a deep emotional bond with the villagers who are currently fighting against the encroachment of property developers.

Since German reunification, one man in particular, Wilfred Horst, has been buying up the land around Göhren. Now he is planning to build holiday homes on the surrounding fields. Villagers rightly fear that this will damage both the environment and the beauty of their tranquil village. It turns out that the “hospitals” which he says he wants to build are in fact “wellness clinics”, in other words hotels for sick, and usually wealthy, tourists.

Horst is not able to proceed without planning permission. The film contains a lot of clips from sittings of the Gemeinderat (local council). Each time, much the same thing happens. The council members – mainly older men with the occasional older woman for diversity sit at the front of a hall. The many villagers in the audience ask questions which are batted away. Then the Gemeinderat votes to give Horst more rights to build, usually with the same minority voting against.

The Gemeinderat is dominated by 4 men, known as the “Vier von der Stange”. I can’t think of a satisfying translation – maybe “four off the rack”. The implication is that they will always do Horst’s bidding- The four are rarely to be seen without a large glass of Rostocker beer and a chaser of Schnapps or maybe something more deadly. They are genial enough, which is presumably why they’ve been able to stay in office for decades. But one woman now wants to change this.

Nadine Förster doesn’t look like she’d ever come close to the counter culture. But together with her father (who we learn in passing is a CDU councillor), she has formed the Citizens Initiative “Liveable Göhren”. This film mainly concentrates on their attempt to get people from the Initiative onto the Gemeinderat and to stop the rapacious developers.

This might not sound so exciting. However ‘Wem gehört mein Dorf?’ is a fascinating depiction, of how gentrification is not just something that happens in big cities, and of what has happened to the Eastern part of reunified Germany. Or, as Eder said in an interview: “It is a film which tells a story about democracy in East Germany, without reproducing the Eastern clichéd image of Nazis, prefab buildings or Stasi.”

Wulf Sörgel runs the Moviemento cinema here in Berlin, and says: “It is truly an amazing film as it tells how people would actually start being political and maybe even start acting political or even becoming political activists and how then they might succeed achieving something, despite they felt completely powerless in the beginning.”

The film shows a very parochial kind of activism, but this is none the worse for that. There are several issues that it doesn’t address, such as the nature of Citizens Initiatives, which come from a disillusionment from establishment politics which could also push a reactionary agenda – such as the campaign against minarets in Switzerland. But this was not in the remit of this film, nor should it have to be.

Nonetheless, I would love to see this other film. How do politics work in an area where official politics have broken down, where the Left is identified with the Stasi, and where leading Conservatives can be leading a fight against the encroachment of capital? When the age group from which activists traditionally emerge is absent, how do people organise? But until this film is made, we still have this one.

It is unclear what the motivation of many of the protagonists is. Are they fighting capitalism, or just trying to preserve an old way of life who’s time has come and gone? Are they trying to change the world or fighting as hard as they can to prevent any change? The film does not offer any answers to these questions, but the fact that it causes them to asked is a great start.

‘Wem gehört mein Dorf?’ is showing in Berlin cinemas now.

Berlin wall and Kaiser Palace

On the 60th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, Victor Grossman looks back at another East German monument


13/08/2021

BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 194  August 10 2021

The annual heyday for German journalists is here again – another round anniversary reminds us, days in advance, how terrible life was for us poor souls in that awful old East German Democratic Republic. This year it’s the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Wall. For me such previews were handy reminders to buy flowers or chocolates: August 13th has been, since 1955, our wedding anniversary. But I was always aware that for all its 28 years, the majority found nothing pleasant in the nasty barrier, with 100 to 150 people losing their lives trying to break through, under or over it.

But what is it that still warrants so much attention, year after year? Why (and I’ll borrow an analogy from my own book), why keep kicking a horse that’s been dead for 31 years? Do some fear that the old stud may still have a kick or a bite left in him?

But if such fears were present when parts of the giant structure titled “Humboldt Forum” were finally opened on a main square in Berlin then triumphant expressions of satisfaction drowned them out; only a small group of protesters visibly expressed some of the bitter nostalgia.

It was here that the Hohenzollerns – the Prussian kings, and after 1872, German Kaisers – had their palace. This famous dynasty was expert in three activities: making war, seizing colonies in Africa and Oceania, and amassing wealth and property. In 1918 they lost out fully in the first two; they are still litigating about the third. The palace, no longer theirs, was wrecked and burnt out in World War Two.

In 1950 the GDR leaders, faced with a choice, decided that rebuilding it in ruined Berlin was far out of reach. And was it worth it? As a symbol? One balcony was saved and built into a new government building. From it, on November 9th 1918, Karl Liebknecht vainly proclaimed a “Free Socialist Republic of Germany”. The rest was carted away as rubble, arousing the wrath of all the still very vocal monarchists in West Germany.

In its stead, in 1973-1976, the Palast of the Republik was built – a sleek, long building in Bauhaus style, with transparent-from-the-inside windows. Some found it handsome, some didn’t. But everyone I have ever met liked it on the inside, except the northern third reserved for the national legislature, which is hardly exciting since all votes have been unanimous (with one exception: in 1972 when 14 Christian party delegates voted, in vain of course, against a new law legalizing free abortions).

But the rest of the building had a big concert hall, convertable in 30 minutes into an auditorium or a dance area, and also a small theater, bowling alley (new here at the time), disco, almost a dozen restaurants, cafes and beer bars at modest prices, an always-open post office and, best of all, a big two-level foyer full of comfortable armchairs and sofas, always open, free and ideal for meeting friends, resting after shopping or escaping sun, rain or cold.

But with no more East German republic there must be no more Palace of the Republic. Asbestos was found in steel beams, offering a desired opportunity, not to renovate it like other buildings, but to tear it down despite desperate demonstrations by East Berliners and pleas by international architects. Led by a bankrupt but ambitious minor noble from Hamburg, aided by media and politicians who always hated “those Reds in the East,” with even the Greens joining in and the LINKE isolated, it was decided to rebuild – not exactly the imperial palace but an immense atrocity of the same size, with a copy of its baroque façade, Prussian eagles and all, and 200 feet up a victorious golden cross.  To diminish the all too royal association it was named, like the nearby university, after the brothers Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, a leading philosopher and a famous explorer in the early 1800s.

But what to put in it? Simply a library? Too big a contrast! So, step by step, other items were added in an effort to replace what had been torn down; a café on the roof, two restaurants, a small theater and a cinema. Even a shamed-face little exhibit about the GDR Palast. But the main content was the Asian Art and Ethnological Museum moved from the city outskirts, one of the world’s largest collections of wonderful objets d’art, begged, borrowed or mostly stolen from German colonies before 1918, now Namibia, Togo, Cameroun, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi in Africa and New Guinea, Samoa, Palau and other islands in the Pacific. There are beautiful bronze sculptures, ceremonial masks, finely-carved religious and animal figures, even a beautiful South Sea island fishing boat, 52-feet long. Some of the 150,000 objects date back to the 12th century. The most remarkable and beautiful would be exhibited.

But in France, Belgium and England some consciences had begun stirring. And even where these were weak or non-existent the feelings of scholars, journalists and ordinary people in the ex-colonies could increasingly be described by the American phrase, “We was robbed!” Plans for new museums in these countries raised the question: why should tourist money paid to see exquisite Benin bronzes fill Berlin or Paris bank accounts once founded on the backs of people who created the art work?

Of course, European curators don’t want to lose their attractive treasures, and while some respond to demands for repatriation others are seeking display loans, joint traveling exhibitions or other compromises. In Berlin, too, many conciliatory words have been spoken. But somehow the gloss of the exhibits in the Humboldt Forum has taken scratches even before being opened to the public.

Alongside embarrassed discussions about the ownership of art treasures the whole question of German colonization has gained new attention. For years many West German history books still tended to praise efforts to “civilize the savages”. But new, tougher attitudes in Africa are now demanding not just artifacts but official apologies and reparations, often in hard cash.

Many are only now learning of the first genocide in the 20th century, a decade before Armenia! In 1904 the Herero people, after an uprising against forced occupation and settlements in what is now Namibia, were surrounded, defeated with modern machine guns, driven into the huge desert and forcibly cut off from all water sources. An estimated 40,000 to 60,000 men, women and children died, mostly of thirst – about 75% of the Herero population. The neighboring Nama, also defeated, enslaved or confined to the first concentration camp of the century, lost up to half their population. In another dreadful preview, 300 skulls were taken to Germany to “scientifically prove black inferiority.” In 1907 a rebellion in German Southeast Africa claimed a death toll of perhaps 200,000.

For years Namibia has pushed for an apology and reparations – at last something over $1.1 billion has now been offered, a fraction of what the suffering cost. The negotiations are continuing.

For some, this giant edifice with its imperial façade, in disregard of any such nasty recollections, marked a delicious victory, happily recalling Germany’s one-time colonial glory and greatness. But alarm bells are now ringing to warn us that such memories are becoming relevant – and dangerous!

Did they recur when German troops moved into Afghanistan, together with US and other NATO troops? Except for the LINKE deputies (then under an earlier name) and a few brave rebels, every Bundestag party voted for the deployment. It was originally for six months. Twenty years later the troops are finally coming home, after the death of 59 Germans and thousands of Afghans, very often civilians and most famously a large group, many of them children, who had gathered to collect leaking gasoline from a mired truck and were bombed by order of a German colonel. “A mistake,” he insisted – before being promoted to general. Defense Minister Peter Struck, a Social Democrat, had declared: ”The security of the German Federal Republic must be defended at the Hindu-Kush mountains.” What was really achieved in Afghanistan? Worse than nothing!

This German security had to be defended quite often, even though the end of the Berlin Wall meant that not a meter of frontier could now be called hostile. Yet German planes flew missions over Serbia, lives were lost “defending Germany” from presumed foes in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, and the coasts of Lebanon and Somalia needed protection from hostile Arabs or Somali fishermen-pirates. And once again in Africa! While a beautifully-crafted drum from ancient Mali was being polished up for the Humboldt Forum exhibit, it was found necessary to defend freedom and peace – (and “help civilize Africans”?) in today’s Mali. Or was it to defend the gold and mineral desires of its European ally France – and squeeze back into West Africa, where the fighting in Mali has spread to four neighbors? The most recent result: twelve German soldiers wounded, three of them seriously – all presumably involved in training Mali’s soldiers – or perhaps doing a bit of reconnaisance as well?

But oceanic glories are also re-emerging from a long hibernation (to mix a metaphor). In early August the German navy’s frigate “Bayern” set sail for a seven-month tour of eastern waters.

German government officials explained: “With the rise of Asia, the political and economic balance is increasingly shifting towards the Indo-Pacific. The region is becoming the key to shaping the international order in the 21st century…The Defence Ministry intends to increase its security engagement in the Indo-Pacific region. In addition to expanding security and defence cooperation with partners in the region, defence contacts are to be intensified, too. This includes, for instance, participation in exercises.“

The head of the navy, Vice-Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, explained things more clearly to the sailors waiting to embark: ”The aim is to show the flag and demonstrate on the spot that Germany stands by its international partners for freedom of the seaways and the maintenance of international law… That means we meet our partners and train together. We also plan, among other things, to watch over UN sanctions against N. Korea…” (Under the heading “freedom of the seaways,” I guess!)

Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer made it even easier to grasp: “It is high time for Germany to be more energetic in watching over its interests.” Her words and the frigate’s trip seem aimed at tipping a delicate balance, favoring not those wanting trade and peace with China but those looking for trouble, building up German strength and influence in Eurasia as a true ally but occasional rival of its big partner on the shores of the Potomac. And again, do I hear echoes of a nasty past?

German expansionism no longer needs dreadnaughts under royal flags of a ruler with handlebar whiskers, nor Panther tanks and Messerschmitt fighters with the twisted cross of a man with a little black mustache. Fat wads of euros, now electronic, can also be effective. And yet there are always some who love Leopard tanks, Rheinmetall missiles and Thyssen-Krupp frigates, all useful for Germany’s twelve current operations on three continents. Or who pine for colorful medals!

But after one more gloomy glance at the Kaiser’s posthumous new palace, awesome in size, awful in appearance, I must return to the anniversary of that notorious, far uglier Berlin Wall of 60 years ago.

President John F. Kennedy is said to have made the perceptive remark at the time: “A wall is a hell of a lot better than a war!” And quite a few historians now agree that the tensions at the time, with East Germany facing chaos, a coup, or even a conflagration, and two atomic powers face-to-face and toe-to-toe in Berlin, might well have led to a terrible disaster if the Wall had not been built.

Atomic dangers today seem at least as menacing as then. Armed with the threat of Armageddon power are not just boxed-in little North Korea, obviously motivated by self-preservation, but eight stronger powers, and volatile borders are certainly as endangered as in 1961 in Berlin; in the Ukraine, Syria, Estonia, the Black Sea, the South China Sea, even outer space. In little Büchel in peaceful Rhineland-Palatinate an unknown number of American B61-3/4 nuclear weapons are stored, each with an explosive strength about 13 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. Right next door are hangars with Germany’s speedy Tornado planes, ready to fly them eastwards at a moment’s notice. Two-thirds of all Germans wish the bombs were gone; German law requires them to leave. But the courts look away and and they are all still there.

Until 1989 that terrible Berlin Wall angered many an East German. The small part of Germany it helped preserve for 28 years was always the butt of anger, sarcasm, vituperation and resistance in one form or another. But it also formed a kind of barrier against German expansion and war-making; not a shot was fired outside Germany by any German soldier until after the Wall was opened, crumbled and sold to tourists in little pieces (genuine or not). Now, we are told, Germany must again find its “proper place in the world”, in keeping with its economic strength. And its many “traditions”?

I think back to the Palast der Republik and to concerts I heard there – with Harry Belafonte, Miriam Makeba, Mikis Theodorakis, Mercedes Sosa, Pete Seeger, and also young people’s groups and their new songs – also about opposing bad old traditions and preserving peace. They are long gone.

What songs, if any, will we be hearing in the Humboldt Forum? I hope their motifs will not be rooted in nationalism, hatred and fear of a system they could never ever understand. I wonder: Is there really a kick or a bite or two still left in the old stud? Or will the Kaiser’s ghost prevail?

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  • For Victor’s free monthly Berlin Bulletin write to:  wechsler_grossman@yahoo.de
  • For previous Berlin Bulletins and info on Victor, visit his website.
  • For Victor’s thoughts on the rise and fall of the GDR and what we can learn from them, order: “A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee” – Monthly Review Press

Hear Victor talking about the Berlin wall in the latest edition of the Spaßbremse Podcast.

Demanding the Right to Housing and the Right to Vote

Interview with Carol from the Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen Right2TheCity group


06/08/2021

Hi Carol, could we start off by you saying who you are, and what your connection is with Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen (DWE) and the Right2TheCity group?

I’m Carol, and I joined Right2TheCity (R2C) in February 2021. I’m active in the R2C Reproduction and Organising Task Force, we make sure the wheels keep turning and connect new people to the activities of the group. We are using relational organising techniques to try to activate our 150+ strong telegram contact list. We realised that unless we have a chat with people to get to know them and their interests they are unlikely to become active members of the group. Mainly because for most people, knowing how to contribute to a new group is a bit confusing and our telegram threads are too epic. But we need active members because there is so much to do!

DWE just had a record-breaking campaign collecting over 350,000 signatures for fair rents in Berlin. Why do you think this campaign was so successful?

For several reasons. Berliners do not need any convincing that the cost of rent should go down, 80% of people who live in the city are tenants, thousands of volunteers did countless hours of work in a decentralised neighbourhood based structure to collect the signatures. Also the branding of the campaign is super effective, the purple and yellow posters really stand out! The campaign started in really difficult pandemic conditions; restrictions have only eased towards the end of the collection phase, allowing collection at events, cafes and bars. There was one other thing that happened which, although it was a disaster, it helped the campaign. The Federal constitutional court overturned the Berlin Senate’s Rent Cap legislation. This meant that scumbag landlords levied retrospective rent from tenants – amounts based on the difference between the capped rent and the rent the landlord wanted to charge. For some people this meant thousands of Euros. This caused widespread and lasting anger which helped motivate people to sign and to collect signatures. Several people on in R2C were forced to work two jobs just to keep a roof over their heads because of this indefensible landlord behaviour, cheered on by the FDP and CDU.

Also the expropriation and socialisation proposal is really well thought out and based on already existing laws. It is proposed that the cost of buying the 240,000+ apartments (calculated at 8 billion euros) will be financed through bonds issued by the Berlin Senate, with the compensation amount set to repay the cost  via fair rents (3.70 euros per square meter) over a period of 45 years. Socialised housing will not be able to be sold and rental income will not be able to be used for profit. This makes sense, especially to Berliners familiar with Wohnungsbaugenossenschaften (housing asssociations). These exist thanks to the work and organisational skills of Berliners 100 years ago. Berliners understand the value of long lasting, well maintained, not-for-profit housing. The Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen campaign seeks to socialise an additional 11% of the existing housing in Berlin. The CDU and FDP like to pretend that building new housing is the only way to address the housing crisis but it is clear to Berliners, especially lower income Berliners that we need the housing we already live in to be affordable and secure while at the same time we need to build new housing.

About 30% of the signatures collected were deemed to be invalid, mainly because only people with German nationality are allowed to vote. How come non-Germans pay rent but aren’t allowed to vote in referenda like this?

Racist voting laws. The situation is the result of a combination of the actions of German legislators. They wanted the post-world war two ‘guest workers’ to go home after they finished rebuilding Germany’s cities. In addition, the German political and legal class would like to minimise the voting rights of EU passport holders, And of course, also the racist border policies and practices in relation to asylum seekers and refugees, people who the German state prefers to exclude from even the most basic rights in relation to long term asylum, movement, work, housing and also voting.

What is the Right2TheCity group doing to give a voice to disenfranchised voters?

We are adding some small contribution to the decades of campaigning that has been carried out by a range of racialised, refugee and migrant groups. The signatures quantify the number of invalid [for voting-Editor] signatures – giving a tangible way to communicate just how many people in the city are disenfranchised. The fact that even the referendum, the most democratic of instruments – is not accessible to migrants – is a bad look for a city that benefits from a cosmopolitan, multicultural image. The decision to collect ‘political signatures’ by the Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen campaign gave us a tangible measure of just how many people who live in this city and want to have a say over its’ future are disenfranchised.

Recently Right2TheCity organised a Strategy Day to plan the next steps of the campaign. What were your expectations and were they fulfilled?

We needed to do several things. Some of them were related to group formation. We are new and our membership is in flux. Many people join and have to be brought up to speed and existing structures need to constantly be flexible to everyone’s learning curves, inputs and capacities. Strategy day allowed us to spend time together in real life (our meetings are largely all online) and get to know each other better. It also allow us to flex our organisational muscles, muscles that we developed at the Demo we held on Tempelhofer Feld in May (dubbed ‘a happening’ in the Neues Deutschland reporting). We had a large team of people helping with all the different tasks that are needed to hold a strategy day and we had fun looking after each other, and building skills such as getting experience facilitating large groups. Everyone got a chance to share ideas with people from the different task forces within R2C which has enabled us to be more coordinated and focused.

We also needed to shape a shared understanding of who we are and what we want to focus on in the third phase of the campaign. Part of that discussion was related to our structure. What structural changes do we need in order to carry out the work we want to do? How can we support all the people who join R2C to get involved, which of our task forces have served their purpose and what new task forces do we need? That sort of thing.

One thing that kept coming up at Strategy Day was a desire to improve communication. We’re doing great things, but not enough people know about them. How can this problem be best overcome?

Mainly we need more people to get involved. In order to do that we need to get better at supporting people who join, which means more people in the Reproduction and Organising Task Force, a better filing system and more of an emphasis on communicating opportunities to get involved as individual tasks that need doing. Many people don’t want to attend meetings but are really happy to do concrete and specific tasks. Which means those tasks must be identified and communicated to non-meeting-goers. We also need more people who speak German well enough to help us translate and coordinate R2C involvement in the German speaking parts of the campaign, and to build awareness in the German speaking parts of the campaign about what R2C is doing.

So far, Right2TheCity has been doing a lot of work collecting signatures, but now we have collected all the signatures we need. What is the group doing now?

In the third phase, the ‘turn out the vote phase‘ of the campaign we have three focuses. The first is to spark a public conversation about the democratic management of housing. This is a key part of the socialisation model that the campaign is fighting for. Success in the referendum means so much more than just fair rent. It means the capacity to make decisions a bout housing infrastructure that are far sighted. When the cost of modernisation and other improvements can be spread out over years instead of being undertaken under an ownership model that requires quick profits so as to pay dividends to shareholders ( the current situation, which delivers few repairs and ever increasing rent rises), then we can make more long term decisions about our housing infrastructure. How would you use the communal space in and around your building if you and your neighbours had decision-making power over it? What climate adaptations would you make to protect you and your neighbours from extreme weather? How would decisions be made about how housing is allocated when someone moves out? Could we make decisions based on the wider housing need in the city? Would it be run like an elite club like the Wohnungsbaugenossenschaften (WBG)? Which we love, by the way, even though all of their membership lists are closed.

The CDU has unfortunately spread malicious rumours that the WBG’s will also be expropriated if we win the referendum – but do not fear! Wohnungsbaugenossenschaften are explicitly excluded from being expropriated in the wording that people will vote on. The number of falsehoods about the DWE comapaign’s proposal that are circulating in the coming weeks is likely to increase. We are working to build a solid understanding of the proposal amongst R2C members so that we can combat these falsehoods when we hear them.

One of the things we have realised as not-fluent-Deutsch speakers participating in the campaign, is that we need to start pushing now for an inclusive and accessible structure for the management of the socialised housing. We need the management to be accessible for people who speak a range of languages for example. Perhaps the housing management structure will need to include paid organisers so that tenants can be supported to engage in decision-making? There is a lot to discuss and we want migrants, queers and racialised people as well as tenants of the 240,000 apartments that we are seeking to socialise, to be part of this discussion.

Our other focus is on supporting the Kiez Teams to do the work of postering, door knocking, telephoning and events organising that is needed to turn out 1 million ‘Yes’ votes. The third focus is to keep up the pressure on the Berlin Senate and Federal Government to extend voting rights to people who do not have a Deutsch Pass. To this end we will be present at all the big and small demos in the next two months with our banners that demand the right to housing AND the right to vote – for all.

There was a lot of talk about winning new members for Right2TheCity. Why do you need new members? And why would potential new members need you?

R2C has many different things that we are trying to do, which means that there is plenty of opportunities for a large number of people to get involved. In turn we provide the opportunity to be part of something that is exciting and which could significantly improve the lives of all Berliners. Along the way if you join us in R2C you will meet and work with some fantastic people and have the chance to learn new skills. There is nothing like being part of a network of solidarity to make you feel more deeply rooted to place!

The referendum will happen at the end of September, parallel to the German elections. What happens to Right2TheCity after that?

We don’t know, but with our structures and relationships I think it’s certain that we will continue to work together. One of the ideas that came out of the strategy day is that people want a physical space to host our events and activities in – a place where we can deliver a program of political education in the style of a strike school. Others are talking about a migrant tenants union, and others about setting up a housing project or something that can directly address our housing needs, others are talking about how we can support other struggles by organising the English speaking tenants and workers that German speaking groups struggle to connect with.

When we win the referendum (you can see the wording here, hopefully with an overwhelming number of votes, the Berlin Senate will be under enormous pressure to pass legislation that enables them to purchase the apartments and to hand them over to the democratically managed non-profit organisation – the specific legal form will be an Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts (AöR). The Vergesellschaften A.G of the DWE campaign has drafted the laws that we will offer to the Senate, and we expect these laws to form the basis of the final legislation which will govern the expropriation (ie: how much is paid, and in what way) and how the socialisation will take place (ie:what sort of democratic structures will manage the housing).

After the referendum, there will be the need to continue the work of creating opportunities for Berliners to come together to discuss what we want from this new democratic housing management system and to imagine what it will make possible (such as modernisations without evictions)