Some kind of campaign there to highlight the sheer discrepancy between Straw's blatant assistance for General Pinochet, who was purportedly hit by a cerebral haemmorage, and the vindictive persecution of petty criminal Ronald Biggs, who is most certainly suffering from the same illness.
As for the election itself, there seems to be so much, yet so little to say; nothing, I feel, can shake the latest manifestation of the ruling oligarchy. Blair has now successfully cast himself as the head of the plutocratic national moral family and relatively few people will actively go against the prevailing conventional opinion. Interestingly, George Orwell used the same analogy in the 'thirties: "... A family with the wrong members in control ..." was how he described the political edifice when he was doing his best to say something good about it ! Compared to the fashionable dictatorships of the time, he might have had a point, but he forgot to add that there is very little worse than such a family...
on the subject of dictatorship, I was rather alarmed to read the observations of Mr Sky (May 10th) on his vaunted anti- capitalist dictatorship. He should refrain from dabbling with such terms, for he has taken the 'thirties model (roaring iron madman ) as definitive, when (and this is a general problem with the current left, anarchist OR socialist) he needs to do a lot more theoretical work. Read. Read. Read. Read the originals, not just Prof Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Paul Foot or Ralph Nader. I suggest he starts with the POLITICS of ARISTOTLE, who was the first to classify the problem of dictatorship and other, similar forms of government (Oligarchy, Monarchy, Tyrranny &c,) and how one may transform or degenerate into the other. Old Aris is not a leftist, so you wont find any Trotskyist propaganda to upset you ! Moving on a bit, you may care to look at MARX'S "EIGHTEETH BRUMAIRE" and other writings on Louis Napoleon (III) Bonaparte, the forerunner of the modern dictators such as... you know who.
Concerning Mayday, it is interesting that some journalists and civil liberties agencies are coming out in defence thereof; the problem is that firstly, it casts the protesters as having "lost", secondly that it is probably a left- Labourite oblique attack upon Ken Livingstone (professional pest remover) who has now over extended himself and made too many enemies... considering that the Maydayers had to go it alone, with no help from the Labourites, or the farmers, or the Fuel Tax protesters, or the tube workers, or any other current activists, leftist or populist, they did pretty damn well.