Textual Healing - A Review of 'What's Going On' by Mark Steel

The new book by Mark Steel, the socialist and comedian perhaps best known for his excellent 'Mark Steel Lectures' and occasional appearances on shows such as 'Have I Got News for You' and 'Mock the Week', is written in the engaging, entertaining and light style that made his previous books such a joy to read. The formula of outlining a ridiculous situation and then taking a logical - and humourous - leap is present and obvious as always, though no less effective for that. Humour and analogy are perhaps the best ways we have of outlining the absurdities of many aspects of life under capitalism that people might take for granted or not question.

Where 'What's Going On' really departs from his previous work is in the tone and mood. Even when recounting defeats and setbacks in his earlier books, there was not the mood of melancholy that appears regularly in this one. The reason for this is the subject matter - a midlife crisis involving the breakdown of two of his most important relationships, with his wife and with the party (the Socialist Workers Party or SWP) that he was a member of for nearly 30 years.

The key theme running through is one of change, and not necessarily for the better. His marriage like so many starts off bright, but gradually the problems mount and he ends up sleeping on the settee. He sees the SWP change from the party he perceived it to be to one that has lost its way. He also mulls a lot about changes in Britain, particularly how the need to make a profit out of everything has changed the idea of public service, and how modern working practices turn human beings into a product on a factory line. He recounts the late Linda Smith's description of work in an apple pie factory. The apple pies became known as 'little f*ckers' to one of the workers, no longer an apple pie but simply a product, one that keeps coming along the production line, giving him no respite. Steel compares being served in a cafe or getting through to a call centre to this production line, where the customer is simply a product, and the worker has to work through a checklist of things he or she needs to ask or say. No room for human interaction or initiative.

Running through a thread in the book is the unspoken fear that he may be changing. He seems to live in a middle-class neighbourhood and regularly rubs shoulders with celebrities such as Bob Monkhouse, who bizarrely struck up a friendship with Steel shortly before he died, starting when he praised Steel's book 'Reasons to be Cheerful' (a book charting his experiences as a revolutionary socialist), which he had received as a gift from Jeremy Beadle! It is clear though that politically, Steel hasn't changed much, though his interests and concerns will obviously differ from many workers, as a result of his fame and (relative) wealth, though he does get irritated by the (apparently incorrect) suggestion by right wing controversialist Dr David Starkey that he earns a six-figure sum.

He does outline quite perceptively the subtle mechanisms the British ruling class has to bring people into the system, ostensibly to neuter them. Attending a party to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Independent newspaper, he is surprised to see Gordon Brown, the then chancellor, praise the newspaper to the hilt, despite it being opposed to the Iraq war, which Brown of course financed. There might be cross words, but fundamentally the Establishment is a fairly cosy club. This leads into a discussion of the way, through gossip, charm and positions on meaningless and powerless bodies, the Establishment wins rebels over. The now ex-rebel, once in the system, tries to go deeper and deeper in to try and exercise some power and influence, but ultimately fails. By way of illustration, Steel paints the picture of former left-wing anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain on the phone to Labour MPs to persuade them to vote for the renewal of the Trident nuclear missiles.

While his passages on the breakup of his marriage are thoughtful and moving, laced with a bittersweet humour, some of the more revealing passages appear in the later stages of the book, dealing with the break up of Respect and the bad behaviour on both sides of the split, from George Galloway and his supporters and the SWP. Despite now being associated with the Galloway Respect (known as Respect Renewal to many), he has some harsh criticisms of the Bethnal Green and Bow MP, many of which we would agree with. The ludicrous spectacle of Galloway in the Big Brother house loomed large, but even more significant than his unpleasant behaviour on live TV was the fact that none of the leading members of Respect (including SWP big cheese John Rees, who Steel only refers to as 'the National Secretary of Respect') knew about Galloway's entry into the show, or rebuked him after it. He did not behave the way a socialist MP should behave in many ways, and was not held accountable to the democratic structures in the party he was in.

Steel does not mention the fact that Galloway is the third highest earning MP, up there with the likes of William Hague and Ann Widdecombe. The Socialist Party has a policy that all its elected representatives should earn the average wage of the workers they represent. The late Terry Fields MP only took his firefighters wage when he entered parliament. The other Militant MPs did the same, taking only the average wage of a skilled worker in their constituency and donating the rest back to the workers movement. This is critical. How is an MP supposed to properly represent and work in the interests of their working class constituents if they live in the Westminster pay and expenses bubble, and don't know what it's like to have to think about bills and other concerns?

Of course, at the time, the SWP leadership did not say boo to Galloway. Rather than build on a principled, if slower, basis, the SWP were prepared to stay hitched to Galloway because he gave (and gives) Respect a media profile. But Steel also doesn't address the problems inherent in Respect from the beginning, that of being a party that was not a union of workers parties, organisations and campaigns, but a coalition with other groups and individuals outside of the working class. Respect was for a time making claims to be the 'Muslim party'. Now, there's nothing wrong with trying to attract disaffected working class Muslims who may have been radicalised (leftwards) by the 'war on terror'. But Respect was trying to recruit all Muslims, regardless of class. The SWP used to have the slogan during the Cold War, 'neither Washington nor Moscow'. Now they were effectively saying 'both the factory worker and the factory owner'.

With both the factory workers and factory owners, Respect was never a viable proposition for the liberation of the working class. It was a textbook example of a popular front, an organisation containing both workers and bourgeois parties, organisations and individuals. A key cornerstone of Marxism is the independence of the working class and their organisations. If this independence is compromised, by entering into a popular front, defeat is inevitable, as the front gets pulled by the bourgeois elements away from where it needs to go to fight effectively for the working class. This contributed to the defeat of the Spanish Republic to General Franco's fascists in the 1930s. In the 2000s it meant Respect didn't put forward a taxation policy in one election because they didn't want to upset supporters and voters who were businessmen. One council candidate, when asked by a journalist what he thought of trade unions, hesistated and then answered that he thought anything that boosted trade was good. This year, three Left List (the SWP's post-Respect organisation, now called Left Alternative) councillors defected to New Labour. Previously, an SWP councillor elected under the Respect banner defected to the Tories.

The most revealing chapters of the book were the ones dealing with how the SWP precipitated, and disastrously mishandled, the split from the rest of Respect centred around George Galloway. It perhaps wouldn't be right of me to recount all the examples of the behaviour that eventually led Steel to resign his membership, but a few examples highlight where the SWP have been going wrong. I think the most damning comment I can make is that the behaviour of the SWP leadership makes Galloway look innocent and virtuous in comparison.

The split began when Galloway circulated criticisms of the work of high-up SWP people in Respect. He suggested that someone be employed to work alongside the National Secretary, John Rees. The criticisms were constructive and aimed at improving the effectiveness of the party. But the SWP reaction was to go nuclear. Soon they were circulating petitions talking about a 'witchhunt'. One SWP member, to the approval of others in the audience of a meeting held to discuss the 'witchhunt', compared it to the military coup in Chile in 1973, which resulted in the torture and murder of tens of thousands of people, and the installation of a vicious right wing military dictatorship.

Members who criticised the party line on the 'witchhunt' were informed that they couldn't submit articles to the party's newspaper Socialist Worker, because according to party records, they weren't members. This Stalinist tactic of declaring anyone who dissented a 'non-member', is doubly laughable given the SWP's incredibly lax standards when it comes to claiming membership figures. People who have very definitively told the party that they don't want to be a member are included in membership lists, including people who have signed petitions. This reflects the SWP's opportunism in trying to boost membership numbers, either by recruiting people who later don't blink as they join the Tories, or just adding anyone to the rolls who smiled at an SWP member in the Post Office. It also reflects an anti-democratic culture inside the SWP. One SWP member once told me that the Socialist Party is 'too democratic'. What he means by too democratic is that we have vigorous debates over all sorts of issues and then take a democratic vote to determine the party's tactics, strategy and policy. Guilty as charged.

Ultimately, the consequences of the Respect adventure have been disastrous for the SWP. They have lost many members like Mark Steel. Some have joined George Galloway's Respect. Many more will have dropped out altogether, disillusioned. Fortunately, Steel doesn't seem to have given up, despite the dispiriting events in his personal and political life. An excellent, eye-opening and readable book, 'What's Going On' is by a man who has lost the certainties of his younger days, but hasn't lost his hope, despite hope often setting him up for a fall.

Review by JL, a Socialist Party member in North Devon. The views in the article are his alone, and not necessarily those of the Socialist Party.