British journalist Tim Wall is an editor at RT.com. A former editor-in-chief of The Moscow News, he has lived and worked in Russia since 2003.
With the death this week of left-wing leaders Bob Crow and Tony Benn, the UK has lost two of its most principled fighters for socialist ideas.
The right-wing media, which never tired of attacking them when
they were alive, now hypocritically praises them in obituaries.
In a poignant twist, it so happened that Crow, 52, and Benn, 88,
died within three days of each other. Crow, a no-nonsense
working-class Londoner, was widely regarded as the UK’s most
effective trade union leader, leading numerous campaigns and
strikes to defend the jobs and conditions of transport workers,
particularly London Tube drivers. Benn, one of the major
intellectual figures on the left, was a rare bird in UK politics
– someone who started out as a moderate reformer and Cabinet
minister, and became progressively more radical and socialist as
he grew older.
Both were passionate in their belief in ordinary working people,
the 99 percent, to change society and wrest power from the
richest elite, the 1 percent, and both were staunch opponents of
the UK establishment. Yet that same elite, be it government
officials, mainstream political leaders or big business,
hypocritically praised both men in nauseous obituaries, tweets
and sound bites within hours of their deaths – after attacking
them mercilessly when they were alive.
Boris’s U-turn
London’s Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson, who clashed
repeatedly with Bob Crow over the city’s plans to cut jobs and
services on the Tube, typified the sheer brass nerve of that
elite. Doing a complete U-turn to heap praise on Crow as a
“fighter and a man of character” after news broke of his
death Tuesday, Johnson said: «Bob fought tirelessly for his
beliefs and for his members. There can be absolutely no doubt
that he played a big part in the success of the Tube, and he
shared my goal to make transport in London an even greater
success. It’s a sad day.»
Yet just a few weeks earlier in a confrontation on LBC radio,
Johnson accused Crow of «talking complete nonsense» and
“holding a gun to Londoners’ heads.”
«The blame for this strike lies squarely with union
leaders,” Johnson said in another interview , “who have resorted to myths
and stunts in a pathetic attempt to justify a strike that is
utterly pointless.”
Fighting for workers’ jobs and public services
Crow, a militant trade unionist ever since starting work for
London Underground at the age of 16, will be sorely missed among
the UK’s 7 million trade union members, for whom he was one of
the few workers’ leaders who was prepared to stand up to the
establishment and fight against austerity, job cuts and brutal
capitalism at a time of deep economic crisis.
His death Tuesday morning, at the age of 52, came after he
suffered a sudden aneurysm and massive heart attack at home in
the East End of London. It came at a time when his union had just
won a victory over Johnson’s plans to cut 1,000 Tube workers’
jobs, forcing the politician to back down after successful
strikes in February.
Crow’s passing was met with a wave of tributes from ordinary
trade union activists, workers and Londoners from all walks of
life, as well as the wider socialist and left movement in the UK.
That Crow attracted such widespread affection among workers was
no surprise to members of his RMT union, as he was highly
successful in defending their living standards. At a time of
recession, when wages and jobs have been under brutal assault
since the crisis of 2008, drivers on the London Underground
represented by RMT have received pay rises each year, and their
current starting salary is over 48,000 pounds a year – far in
advance of the 22,000 pounds for a Metropolitan Police officer or
27,000 for a teacher in the UK capital.
Many workers said they wished that their union leaders fought as
hard for their members as Crow did for his.
Sadly, most union leaders in Britain, like the Labour Party
leaders, have accepted big business’s mantra of austerity –
effectively siding with the fat cat millionaires in the
Conservative-Liberal government and the City of London, who
constantly call for workers and the poor to pay for the
capitalists’ crisis. Instead, Bob fought for his members’ rights
– not just on pay, but also for higher pensions and for better
health and safety on the Tube.
One London newspaper, on the news of Bob’s death, went so far as
to run a cartoon of him in angels’ wings being met at Heaven’s
pearly gates, with Bob immediately telling St. Peter: “Now, about
these terms and conditions…”
The extent of the media’s hypocrisy can be seen from how they
treated Crow when he was a threat to their wealth and privilege.
Then, the London Evening Standard and the Express, for example,
derided Crow as “the most hated man in Britain,” while
the Conservative-supporting Daily Mail constantly jeered at him
for continuing to live in a council house while on a comfortable
salary as a union leader, and for his unashamed pride in his
working-class roots.
On Tuesday, it was as if the “boss class,” as Crow would
have referred to them, were taking a day off from attacking him
to praise his personal qualities as a “fighter” – while
glossing over the socialist ideas and the movement he fought for.
As Suzanne Moore commented on the Guardian’s website: “It
is as though a truce can be brokered for a few hours during which
the ruling class pretends to admire the guts of those it lives
off, before it goes back to selling off bits of the NHS to people
who run inadequate gyms, directing jobseekers to food banks and
insisting zero-hours contracts are the future. Bob Crow
understood the fight was never fair, but it was necessary. He
never wanted to be ‘them,’ and that is why ‘they’ finally doff
their caps to the man.”
‘Media hate… may have been a factor’ in Crow’s death –
Livingstone
A former Labour London Mayor and council leader, Ken Livingstone,
himself often vilified as “Red Ken” when he was the
left-leaning leader of the Greater London Council in the 1980s,
told the BBC in an interview that the constant media vilification
of Bob, the «endless strain of being a media hate
figure» had taken its toll and «may have been a
factor» in his death.
Livingstone said Bob had «put on a very brave front» in
response to constant media criticism, but that he knew that it
«takes its toll,» the Huffington Post UK reported.
«I also expect just the endless strain of being a media hate
figure, you know, the following on holiday, people intruding into
every aspect of your life, I’ve been through that, it does take a
toll, that might have been a factor,» he said . «It’s that constant unremitting
intrusion. People outside the door. People chasing up old
girlfriends. It’s got worse and worse with the passage of time
because there are more media outfits doing that.»
Labour – no longer a workers’ party
The vast gulf between Crow and the Labour Party, which expelled
Crow’s union a decade ago for being too left-wing, was papered
over this week by the party’s leader, Ed Miliband, in his own
“tribute” to Crow.
In a statement, Miliband, whose party had just voted to cut
historic ties to the trade unions days before Crow’s death, had
the gall to say: ‘Bob Crow was a major figure in the labour
movement and was loved and deeply respected by his members.’
‘I didn’t always agree with him politically but I always
respected his tireless commitment to fighting for the men and
women in his union. He did what he was elected to do, was not
afraid of controversy and was always out supporting his members
across the country.’
But in an interview given to Afshan Rattansi, for RT’s
Going Underground program, just weeks before his death, Crow
pointed out that it was Miliband and the Labour Party leaders who
had refused to support workers.
“When it comes to a strike, you have to decide whose side
you’re on,” Crow told Rattansi, standing in the very RMT
meeting room where the RMT’s predecessor transport union had
helped to found the Labour Party 100 years ago. “You can’t
sit on the fence. You’re either supporting the workers in
struggle, or the employer.”
Crow added that the Labour Party’s policies today are
“totally against what our union stands for.”
In May’s European elections, Crow had planned to stand along with
other RMT members and the Socialist Party under the banner,
“No to EU – Yes to workers’ rights.”
Benn another target of right-wing media
In this media hypocrisy – hounding left-wing leaders when they
were alive, and lionizing them when they’re dead – Crow was not
alone.
Tony Benn, another thorn in the side of the British establishment
for decades, also received glowing media tributes from his
enemies and opponents after his death Friday morning. The BBC
even described David Cameron as “leading” tributes to
Benn, whom he described as “magnificent.”
Tony Benn was a magnificent writer, speaker and campaigner.
There was never a dull moment listening to him, even if you
disagreed with him.
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron)
March 14, 2014
The idea that Cameron could have anything in common with Benn is
bizarre, whichever way you look at it.
Benn, a Labour MP from 1950 to 2001, moved progressively to the
left in his parliamentary career. From a Cabinet minister in the
1960s and ‘70s, Benn became the standard-bearer of the Labour
left in the 1980s, standing unsuccessfully for Deputy Leader in
1981, offering full support for the epic miners’ strike in
1984-85 and innumerable other struggles against Margaret
Thatcher’s government, including the Liverpool City Council fight
to improve funding for local jobs and services, the magnificent
anti-poll tax campaign – which brought Thatcher’s downfall in
1990 – and GCHQ workers’ protests against their trade union
rights being taken away from them. In recent years, Benn was
chair of the “Stop the War” coalition and a vocal
opponent of austerity policies practiced by Conservatives,
Liberals and Labour in successive governments.
Cameron, meanwhile, has presided over the biggest increase in
poverty and unemployment in the UK for decades – rivaling even
that perpetrated by Thatcher, his political hero.
Back in the 1980s, Cameron even called for Nelson Mandela to be
hung while a member of the Tory Bullingdon club at Oxford – while
Benn was a leading member of the Anti-Apartheid movement in the
UK.
‘Dirty tricks’ campaign
The so-called “tributes” to Benn and Crow in the
right-wing UK media also have to be seen in the light of their
constant campaign of vilification against not just them, but any
left-wing leaders.
Benn in the 1980s was described by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper
as “the most dangerous man in Britain,” and the whole of
Fleet Street routinely called Benn and his fellow socialists
“the Loony Left.”
And the “black PR” did not stop there – it included
“dirty tricks” campaigns by the media, the security
services and big business to discredit left-wing leaders by
digging up falsified allegations of wrongdoing and corruption, or
just dredge through their private lives.
Over the last 30 years, left-wing trade unionists and workers’
leaders have been accused by the right-wing media of all kinds of
crimes and misdemeanors – but the allegations turned out to be
completely false and trumped-up.
Arthur Scargill, the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers
during its strike against Thatcher’s government, was falsely
accused throughout the UK media of using strikers’ hardship
payments to pay off his mortgage, and equally falsely accused of
taking money from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Both accusations
were proved nearly 10 years later to be complete fictions,
dreamed up by an MI5 mole planted inside the NUM as chief
executive, Roger Windsor, and plugged ceaselessly by the Daily
Mirror newspaper and its billionaire proprietor, Robert Maxwell.
Maxwell committed suicide shortly afterward, when he himself was
found to have defrauded Mirror employees of hundreds of millions
of pounds in stolen pension funds.
Another left-wing leader, Derek Hatton, a leader of the
Militant-led Liverpool Labour Council that created jobs and built
5,000 council houses at a time of recession and great poverty in
the city under Thatcher, was on the receiving end of a character
assassination by the media for years, and the police falsely
brought charges against him of fraud. Several years later the
charges were quietly dropped due to lack of any evidence.
In yet another case, Tommy Sheridan, a prominent Scottish
socialist and anti-poll tax leader in the 1980s and ‘90s, was
sent to jail a few years ago for perjury after taking the News of
the World to court over allegations about his private life. The
sentence was later quashed and Sheridan freed after it was
revealed that Murdoch’s newspaper had illegally hacked Sheridan’s
phone.
The other tack that the UK media has taken in recent times is to
condemn leaders such as Crow and Benn as out of date and their
ideas as irrelevant.
The BBC’s uber-establishment, right-wing interviewer, Jeremy
Paxman, just a month ago tried to portray Crow as a
“dinosaur” for his stubborn insistence on fighting for
the working class.
Crow’s reply summed up his common-sense approach to trade unions,
and showed how absolutely necessary fighters like him and Benn
are for the 21st century: ‘They were around for a long
while,” Crow said of dinosaurs. “People join a trade
union for job security, being safe, best possible pay, best
possible conditions, decent pensions and a world that lives in
peace. That’s what we strive for. And we’re not going to put that
on the agenda, who else is going to? Is the Labour Party? Who’s
going to be the people on the street holding the banner if the
trade union doesn’t?”
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
