Splintered Sunrise

It’s a curious thing about the death of Katy French, that the media seem determined to find a greater significance in it than just a personal tragedy. Some of this has just been silly – I’m thinking especially of Paul Williams in the Sunday World managing to blame Katy’s death on the Provos, via an alleged Provo-Farc conspiracy to flood the Emerald Isle with cocaine. Even for Williams and the Sunday Roast, that’s stretching credibility. More generally we’ve had the sentimental view that Katy represents some kind of death of innocence for the Celtic Tiger.

I suppose though that it does illustrate some aspects of our modern Irish society. WorldbyStorm has already reflected on this, but there are one or two things I think might be worth flagging up. The first is that up until quite recently I’d never heard of Katy and was very hazy as to what she actually did. In fact, just over a year ago hardly anybody had heard of her, but all of a sudden she was everywhere. This had an awful lot to do with her close collaboration with Dublin’s new breed of celebrity gossip columnists, who manufactured her profile in a quite conscious way. Ireland being short of real celebrities – just look at Charity You’re A Star! – it’s very easy to get a media profile very quickly.

The other thing I would ponder on is, yes, how the drugs question relates to the Celtic Tiger. It’s funny, but in recent years I’ve become much more attracted to the old Workers Party bugbear of the lazy Irish bourgeoisie, something that seems to me to have a lot of truth in it. If you think about it, what has Irish capital contributed to the long boom? A sober economic answer might be, frig all. The Tiger has been almost entirely based on inward investment – to be sure, there have been spin-off benefits for Irish capital, not least the construction industry in a wildly overdeveloped Dublin, but the Irish bourgeoisie, as such, has been very much parasitic on the boom.

So booming Ireland hasn’t really developed a culture of enterprise, but it has certainly developed a culture of conspicuous consumption. Look in the Turbine most Sundays, and you’ll see photos of ludicrously lavish society parties, not to mention weddings that even Premiership footballers might think a bit OTT. And this has drastically changed the drugs culture in Ireland. Twenty years ago, the word “drugs” summoned up images of shivering junkies shooting up in inner-city sink estates. What you now have is a very affluent section of Irish society where cocaine use is well-nigh endemic.

To a large extent we’re talking about the younger end of D4, which is why Justine Delaney Wilson’s The High Society reads at times like she’s interviewing Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. But this goes way beyond the Ross types. We’re not really talking about the Irish establishment, but yeah, the sons and daughters of the establishment are as likely as not to be sniffers. And not even just in Dublin – in provincial towns you’ll hear quite open talk about such-and-such from this rich family who’s a notorious cokehead.

And this was the layer of society that Katy moved in. That particular slice of Irish society where socialites, journos, luvvies and the like mix, in clubs where the term “powder room” carries a very definite double entendre. A lot of these people seem to have gone to ground over the last week or so, no doubt due to the fear that a whole lot of drug scandals could be unearthed by the guards or enterprising hacks. Perhaps the death of Katy French will in the end make some contribution in helping to lift the lid on moneyed Ireland’s dysfunctional relationship with drugs.

I was listening to Radio Galloway last night, mostly because there was an excellent discussion on filthy hospitals, with a typically thoughtful contribution from John Lister, as well as an ex-nurse giving a critique of nurses’ training I’ve heard from several old-school nurses in recent years. But this led me to ponder on the fact that, whatever the immense reservations I have about George, he’s one hell of a communicator. I couldn’t help thinking of Alex Callinicos’ recent performance on The Moral Maze – the good professor was nearly picking his testicles up off the floor by the time Mad Mel had finished with him.

But there was another thing that came to mind. That was this extraordinary article that appeared in Socialist Worker last September, during the split in the Scottish Socialist Party, whereat Chris Harman puts up a rather limp and shamefaced argument in support of the SWP’s defence of the Tangerine Man. This takes the form of Chris, someone who has spent decades arguing for “socialism from below”, praising the role of charismatic leaders. There is a cheap shot there about Chris Harman and charisma, but I’ll let Chris speak for himself:

Often when a new movement is developing, certain figures emerge who seem to many new activists to embody what it stands for. For instance, in the late 1960s the new mass movements of students and workers found its first figureheads in people like Danny Cohn Bendit in France, Tariq Ali in Britain and Bernadette Devlin in Ireland.

Quite, and I’ll come back to Bernie in a second. But go on, Chris:

Once such personalities begin to have a prominent role there is, of course, the danger that they will later use their prestige to mislead the movement - as Fausto Bertinotti has by entering an Italian government that is sending troops to Afghanistan and Lebanon.

But socialists cannot, out of fear of what might eventually happen, simply turn our back on their capacity to stimulate the growth of a movement.

We have to throw ourselves into building that movement, knowing that as people become part of it, they can begin to discover their capacity to take control of things without relying on individuals.

In doing so, they can create an environment with its own democratic structures which are the only protection against individual personalities going in the wrong direction.

What is remarkable here, apart from the fact that Chris could write a defence of Sheridan while failing to mention what Sheridan had done, is that the only argument he can put is an instrumentalist Heineken one. That is, that often a charismatic leader can reach the parts that, oh, a small left sect can’t. You may mock the Gorgeous One’s showbiz antics, but his talkSPORT show has a listenership hugely in excess of the circulation of Socialist Worker, and his profile is so high that even those daft twins from Big Brother know who he is. But the problem here, as Chris seems to realise, is that a movement built around a charismatic individual can easily go astray. What he seems to be arguing for is that first you use George or Tommy to build a movement, then you discipline them.

Let me take you back to an argument Chris would be familiar with, when in 1968-9 the International Socialists decided to adopt democratic centralism. The previous loose structure had meant there was little of the draconian regime that would later characterise the SWP, but on the debit side it meant Cliff could very much do what he liked. Duncan Hallas and Jim Higgins, amongst others, reckoned that the adoption of democratic centralism would give them an opportunity to discipline Cliff and force him to work as part of a team. Cliff on the other hand saw democratic centralism as a way of getting the organisation to more effectively do what he wanted. Well, we know how that turned out.

And so it is, decades later. Chris may have held out the idea that you could build a party around Sheridan and then make him act in a disciplined way, but the SSP already did that and it didn’t stop Tommy fucking them over and trying to destroy them. The Scottish SWP will learn that a second time if they stop paying obeisance at the court of King Tommy and Queen Gail. And so it is in Respect, where Rees and co may have thought that George was a figurehead and they were the power behind the throne, but they should now know that the power dynamic doesn’t work like that.

We have of course had some experience with this sort of thing in Ireland. Much as I love Bernie McAliskey and recognise her talents, anybody who knows Bernie will tell you she isn’t a team player. Like many charismatic figures, boy does she realise she’s special. This was evident early on, when she rejected Peoples Democracy in the hope that she could build something even broader and looser around her own personality. It was evident in her falling out with Costello, who was a bit of a prima donna himself. And that’s why she has never stayed any length of time in an organisation.

You could say something similar about the late Nollaig de Brún. During the Mother and Child row in 1951, Dr Browne gained a reputation as a principled and idealistic man that he never managed to lose, despite being through multiple parties including Fianna Fáil, Labour and several personal vehicles. The old SLP existed as much despite the leader as because of him, for the simple reason that Noël didn’t want a living organisation, he wanted gofers who would secure his seat. How the SLP had as much substance or longevity as it did, the deity alone knows.

So that’s what you get when you stake everything on a charismatic individual. If you’re extremely lucky, you get Fidel Castro. More often, you get Tommy Sheridan. Here endeth the lesson.

Thanks to Korakious for the scary image.

They do say politics is showbiz for ugly people, and I suppose that next year’s London mayoral election proves the point. And, just like Kylie or Madonna, the key to success is being known by just one name, as it shapes up into a fight between Ken and Boris.

So, Ken Livingstone will be running for a third term. Red Ken, truth be told, hasn’t been red for a long time – he’s more like Pale Pink Ken these days – but he’s still a cheeky chappie. And there can be little doubt that his cheeky chappiedom, combined with hostility from New Labour, has endeared him to London voters.

The Tories, on the other hand, have had serious trouble finding a contender who can take Ken on. In the first mayoral election Jeffrey Archer was making a strong pitch for the candidacy, but then he had some little legal difficulties. As a result, in the last two elections the Tories have run used car dealer and heroic shagger Steve Norris, a capable man but lacking in Ken’s star power. But now they have hit on a potential winner in Boris Johnson. Boris’s hardline neo-Thatcherite politics are neither here nor there – to the voters, he’s the amiable spacer with the arresting hairstyle who seems to appear on Have I Got News For You every other week.

It looks like being a celebrity election all round, if Wikipedia is to be believed. The English Democrats, an obscure and eccentric far-right outfit, are running TV critic and Bluto lookalike Garry Bullshit. UKIP, also seeing the vote-winning potential of talkSPORT, attempted to draft James Whale, who won’t take the party nomination but is threatening to run as an independent. Not wanting to be outdone by Bushell and Whale, LBC’s chubby chatterbox Nick Ferrari wants to be mayor. For fuck’s sake, why not run Stephen Nolan and have a full house? And that’s not to mention a potential Right Said Fred candidacy.

I am disappointed that the Liberal Democrats are refusing so far to play ball and treat the voters like idiots. This blog hereby demands that the Lib Dems draft Lembit Öpik, preferably with the Cheeky Girls in tow.

And what’s with Respect running Lindsey German? I can see that Lindsey’s magnetic personality and easy charm are formidable assets, but the left can’t afford a celebrity gap. This situation demands nothing less than that stalwart of Walthamstow SWP, Big Brother’s Carole Vincent.