A CRITIQUE & PROPOSAL

By Eileen Noakes

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THE EXISTENCE OF THE MONARCHY, even with symbolic rather than real power, creates  a pyramid , with a huge gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. It also enshrines the notion of superiority by reason of birth rather than character and effort.  It cannot exist alongside a belief that all men are created equal and it is inconsistent with democracy.  The Royal Prerogative, the Whip System and the absence of a Written Constitution and Bill of Rights are all totally undemocratic.

The Royal Prerogative, with prerogative powers originally exercised by the monarch, does not require parliamentary consent and is  now always exercised on the advice of the Prime minister or the Cabinet. It gives the Prime Minister extraordinary powers to act without parliamentary approval , e.g. to declare war,  the appointment of Royal Commissions and officers, the award  of dignities and honours, declaration of an emergency, requisitioning of  ships, the  issue and revocation of passports, the appointment of bishops and archbishops in the Church of England, the expulsion of a foreign national from the United Kingdom -  to name but some. In the case of the Chagos Archipelago islands, the High Court of Justice ruled that the British Indian Ocean Territory exiling the islanders was unlawful, but was overturned by the exercise of the Royal Prerogative.

The Prime Minister has pushed through draconian legislation which constitutes an abuse of civil liberties and human rights under the pretext of security against terrorism.

The Whip System should be abolished or drastically reformed. The Whips  have too much power and too much say over what happens to MPs, from the appointment of members and chairmen of Select Committees,  to MPs’ accommodation. They  can decide which MP gets which room, favouring those who toady to them and punishing troublemakers. Their power inhibits democracy, fosters the herd instinct, and encourages partisan behaviour. They twist the arms of MPs to vote with the party leader, which stifles debate and the exercise of free will and conscience. Should MPs feel strongly enough to rebel, they stand the chance of  being de-selected at the next election. (Chief Whips receive additional salaries from the taxpayer.)

The relative merits of  adversarial and  inquisitorial forms of governance should be considered.  Under our present system, issues are opposed, not on their merits or benefits to the taxpayer, but as a way of scoring points. The level of debate at Prime Minister’s Question Time would shame the fourth form.

House of Commons: Candidates in an election should set out clearly their background experience and their proposed policies on, e.g. Education, the NHS and the Police in their manifestos and also at public meetings (both main parties  instruct their candidates not to attend public meetings, only those  limited to their own  supporters). Serious thought should be given to the abolition of the Party System, since MP’s loyalties are to the Party, to the leader (with their own careers in mind) and only last, if at all, to the people who elect them and pay their salaries. If this were done, all candidates would be independents. Since they are employed by the people, if they fail to honour their electoral commitments, they should be held to account by the Citizens’ Assembly, and, if necessary, sacked.

The House of Lords should be replaced by an

 

Elected Second Chamber:

Criteria to be established for election, e.g. experience in law, education, business, social work, charity work.

Citizens’ Assembly: There should also be established a body not appointed by and totally independent of the government, whose task would be to be vigilant about proposed legislation which served the interests of the government or commerce rather than those of the people. However, if the party political system were abolished, the second chamber could fulfil this function. Select Committees should ideally act as overseers, and sometimes do, but at present their appointment by the Whips may inhibit their impartiality.

Electoral Reform:

The first-past-the-post electoral system does not represent the wishes of the public. The number of seats a party holds in Parliament is not proportionate to its share of the vote, and with perhaps only 32 percent of the vote, a Prime Minister can push through changes  for which he does not have a mandate and which may be virtually irreversible. A system of   Proportional Representation – the Single Transferable Vote or AV+ would be much fairer to all parties and would more adequately represent the wishes of the electorate. As the Observer points out, under the current system, governments are formed by parties that have not won a majority of votes and owe victory to fewer than 200,000 people in marginal constituencies. Millions of votes are wasted, and those who cast them are disenfranchised. Under AV, current constituency boundaries would remain, but voters would number candidates in order of preference instead of simply marking a cross by their first choice. A candidate failing to get more than 50% of the vote would be eliminated, and the votes reallocated to the other candidates. This process would continue until there was a winning  candidate. But it still doesn’t allocate parliamentary seats in line with the parties’ national share of the vote.

Under the Single Transferable Vote,  voters also give numerical preferences, but a number of seats are awarded per constituency, say three or five depending on its size. If the first choice candidate does not need their vote, either because he/she is elected without it or has too few to be elected, the vote is transferred to the second choice. That way MPs are still bound to represent a fixed locality, but the final make-up of Parliament is an accurate reflection of national opinion.

A few immediate suggestions:

There should be a set term of office

A reduction in the numbers of MPs

Ministers should be barred from taking jobs with companies they have had dealings with in their former  departments.

The people’s assets have been sold off without their permission.  Much privatisation should be reversed, especially railways, and that of the Post Office Service should be fiercely resisted.

We should use boycotts in purchasing power, to protest against international injustice, e.g. Israel/Palestine

Press for people’s banks, preferably in post offices.

Join Credit Unions  and and Time Banks.

Press for maximum working hours, so that employment can be more widely shared and family life fostered.

Press for employees’ part-ownership of companies,  as in Scott-Bader and John Lewis.

Just as we now have a minimum wage, there should  also be a maximum amount that any one person can earn.  (This of course will never happen, since all politicians hope to get obscenely well-paid jobs when they leave politics).

Conclusion

Respect for politicians  is at a very low ebb, and many people feel that the system itself allows, and perhaps even encourages, the corruption and self-seeking that have become endemic. Can we claim that we have a right to invade other countries to impose on them our extremely flawed system?

Politicians need to be reminded that democracy is “government of the people by the people for the people”. Politicians are our servants, not our masters.  Every penny they spend is ours. We have every right to expect from them what all employers demand from their employees – efficiency and honesty. If they make mistakes, and everybody does, they should be prepared to admit them.

But somewhere along the way they have become totally alienated from the people they serve – they live in a little bubble of their own creation. The system has allowed this, so the system needs changing.

 

At 88, and still working tirelessly to heal the world, EILEEN NOAKES has participated in many fields requiring a compassionate, egalitarian temperament.  Her resume could easily describe several people. Among her many contributions, she has spoken on the environment and spiritual and other matters in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, India, Canada, and America. She is a founding member of  The Scientific and Medical Network.  For fifteen years she helped to raise money for Tanzania in East Africa, and has been out there and set up a number of projects including training courses for village and townswomen.  Her group provided the district hospital with the first ambulance that remote area has ever owned, and set up a scheme to provide bursaries for young people wanting to train as nurses. For some years she was also Co-Chair of the National World Disarmament Campaign.  As a true republican (small “R”), she has no use for the royals in Britain or elsewhere.

William Poole, the original street tough “Bill the Butcher” played by Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, was the real thing, a brutal, homegrown racist and fascist way before the term was invented to define his typology. He would have made a good stormtrooper in Hitler’s ranks. As usual, the true story is far more compelling than the fictional version.

By William Bryk [print_link]

BELOW: The memorable John Morrissey. He died at the early age of 47.

My first “Old Smoke” column recounted the adventures of Hon. John Morrissey, Congressman and heavyweight boxing champion of the United States, who once, according to the Philadelphia Bulletin, told the House of Representatives that he “had reached the height of my ambition. I have been a wharf rat, chicken thief, prize fighter, gambler, and Member of Congress.” This was some twelve years after his indictment for the murder of William “Bill the Butcher” Poole, the 19th-century anti-Catholic street-fighting man whose memory, until recently, survived only among readers of Herbert Asbury’s masterpiece, Gangs of New York. Now, thanks to Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated film, freely adapted from Asbury’s book, Bill the Butcher is now far better known than during his own lifetime.

Or after a fashion, anyway. A few days ago, my wife pointed out a New York Post article about a recent ceremony held in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: a granite headstone was placed at Poole’s hitherto unmarked grave, inscribed with Poole’s legendary dying words: “Good-bye, boys, I die a true American.” The article even had someone playing “Taps” over the old reprobate–a gesture that Green-Wood’s president, Richard Moylan, seemed anxious to justify to audiences for the film, which sets Bill’s death, at the climax of the movie, in the midst of the Draft Riots of 1863.

“He was a bad guy, really,” Moylan observed in his capacity as an historian. The riots in question comprised a week of unrestrained mob violence–burning, looting and lynching–directed predominantly at the city’s black population. “We did it for all those who lost their lives in the riots,” the Green-Wood president explained.

The trouble with using Bill Poole to commemorate those killed in the 1863 riots is that Poole was murdered in February 1855, some eight years before. Bill the Butcher had as much to do with the Draft Riots as Bob the Builder. As an artist, of course, Scorsese isn’t trying to present history or depict Poole as an historical person. His interest in the figure lies elsewhere, in truths far more profound than one finds in the recitation of mere fact.

But there’s a disingenuous quality to the little incident at Green-Wood. Moylan claimed the Butcher’s gravestone was about history. To me, it seemed all about promoting tourism and making money.

More than six feet tall and weighing 200 pounds, William Poole stood out in an age of small men. He began his career in the Bowery Boys, New York’s most important street gang. Unlike today’s gangsters, the Boys were working men–whether laborers or self-employed small businessmen like Poole, who was a butcher by profession as well as avocation. They were also, as Asbury wrote, “the most ferocious rough-and-tumble fighters that ever cracked a skull or gouged out an eyeball.” Here, too, Poole stood out, for he fought like a berserker.

By the mid-1850s, Poole had drifted into freelance political enforcing. His personal gang controlled the Christopher St. waterfront. Militant supporters of the Know-Nothing party (so called because its members answered all questions about the movement from outsiders with the phrase, “I know nothing”), Poole and his men bitterly opposed Irish-Catholic immigration, hating the immigrants as cheap labor competing for their jobs and loathing the politicians who pandered for the immigrant vote.

New York City’s Nativists were not all thugs. The Know-Nothings had elected James Harper–a partner in the Harper Brothers publishing house–mayor for one term. In other states, they elected governors, congressmen and state legislators. Regaining City Hall through ballot box stuffing and terror seemed entirely possible. Seen in this light, Bill the Butcher was a pioneer in using street fighters to dominate a nominally democratic society. Two generations later, the same idea would occur to Benito Mussolini.

Poole emerged from the shadows by joining forces with political boss Captain Isaiah Rynders. The Captain, a former riverboat gambler and knife fighter, operated his political organization, the Americus Club, from a bar on Park Row across from City Hall. A one-time U.S. Marshal, Rynders was a virulent racist who left the Democratic party during the 1850s for the Nativists. Among his new friends was Bill Poole.

It was during this time that young John Morrissey charged into the Americus Club and challenged every man in the bar. Asbury states that Poole was among the dozen or so thugs who accepted Morrissey’s challenge with a flurry of mugs, clubs and bung starters. Rynders was moved by Morrissey’s audacity and courage (Morrissey convalesced in his best bedroom, complete with attending physicians and nurses) and even offered him a job. Morrissey declined, largely because he detested Bill the Butcher.

The Butcher then announced he would seize the ballot boxes at an upcoming election. Some honest and wealthy citizens, knowing the police would not enforce the election law, retained Morrissey. Before the polls opened, Morrissey had stationed some fifty men in and about the building, ordering it held to the death. As Asbury writes, “He also let it be known that there would be no adverse criticism if Bill the Butcher’s bullies were permanently maimed, and that ears and noses would be highly regarded as souvenirs of an interesting occasion.”

Poole and his men rushed the building around noon. On observing Morrissey and his welcoming committee, the Butcher paused, glaring at the Tammanyites. But hatred did not overwhelm Poole’s common sense: the Butcher knew how to count, and so he left with his men. This made Morrissey’s reputation, and Tammany permitted him to open a small gambling house without undue police interference, which soon made him a wealthy man.

BELOW: Bill “the Butcher” gravestone in Lower Manhattan. He died a very young man, barely 33.

Street fighting between Tammanyites and Nativists was usually about power: sometimes it was even about sports. Poole’s death stemmed from a boxing match between Tom Hyer, the Young American and Nativist brawler, and Yankee Sullivan, beloved of Tammanyites and Irish Catholics. One of Sullivan’s fans, an ex-Bowery Boy and ex-cop named Lewis Baker who had, as a judge observed, “a most unaccountable passion for disorderly scenes and associates,” got into a bar fight with Hyer, who had a knack for that kind of groin-kicking, bottle-smashing, eye-gouging, window-breaking work. After a cop refused to intervene in what he considered a dispute among gentlemen, Hyer (bleeding from gunshot and stab wounds) beat and kicked Baker senseless and left him in the street.

Baker’s troubles only began, however, when he ran into Bill Poole in the Gem, a Canal St. dive. Poole had once beaten Yankee Sullivan senseless himself and, feeling that Baker had been disrespectful to Hyer, nearly finished the job the Young American had begun. This time, the cops interfered. Poole left the bar insisting that whatever might remain of Baker after their next meeting would “scarcely be worth the attention of an undertaker.” Thereafter, Baker went out only with a bodyguard, usually one Paudeen McLaughlin, whose disposition, Asbury notes, “had been particularly murderous since his nose was chewed off during an affray at the Five Points.”

Some time later, Poole and Morrissey met in a Broadway watering hole. Morrissey wagered $50 in gold that Poole could not name a place where Morrissey would not meet him in a fight. Poole named the Christopher St. pier–his home turf. Morrissey handed Poole the money. He then asked for another location. Poole suggested the Amos St. dock (at the end of today’s W. 10th St.). They agreed to meet at 7:00 the next morning. Morrissey arrived with a dozen men. Poole did not show. Two hundred of his men did, however, beating Morrissey and his men until, as Luc Sante notes in Low Life, “a delegation of Tammany politicians” rescued them.

Poole and Morrissey next met on Feb. 24, 1855, in Stanwix Hall, a newly opened bar on Broadway near Prince St. Morrissey was playing cards when he heard Poole. Morrissey strode up, spat in Poole’s face, and drew a pistol. It misfired. Poole drew his own pistol. Either Morrissey or Mark Maguire, a friend of Morrissey’s, then asked Poole, “You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, would you?” Poole swore and threw his pistol on the floor. He picked up two carving knives from the free lunch counter and, hurling them into the bar, invited either Maguire or Morrissey to fight it out. Both declined. After all, Bill the Butcher knew the use of knives, and he was famous for throwing a butcher knife through an inch of pine at 20 feet. Then the cops arrested them both and released them almost immediately outside the bar.

Morrissey reportedly went home to 55 Hudson St. for the night. Poole, however, soon returned to Stanwix Hall. Baker, McLaughlin, and several other Tammany sluggers were there. McLaughlin jostled Poole. When Poole turned, the noseless Tammanyite spat three times in his face and challenged him. Poole slapped five $10 gold pieces on the bar, offering to fight whoever would cover his bet.

Then one Turner, another Tammanyite, flung open his cloak and drew a Colt revolver. While trying to aim at Poole, he shot himself in the arm, screamed and fired again, hitting Poole’s leg. The Butcher fell, and Baker, placing his own pistol against Poole’s chest, shot him in the heart and abdomen. Poole scrambled to his feet, probably on pure adrenalin, and grabbed a carving knife from the bar. The Tammanyites fled as one. Poole screamed that he would tear Baker’s heart from his living flesh. As Poole’s legs gave out, he flung the knife at Baker, the blade quivering in the doorjamb as the Butcher collapsed to the floor.

Everyone surrendered except Baker, who hid in Jersey City until March 10, when he sailed on the brig Isabella Jewett for the Canary Islands. The authorities remained passive (after all, Baker was an ex-cop) until George Law, a wealthy Nativist, lent his clipper yacht Grapeshot to the police; they overhauled Baker about two hours off Teneriffe and brought him back in irons. Baker, Turner, Morrissey and McLaughlin were indicted and repeatedly tried for murder. The prosecution was abandoned only after the third hung jury.

Bill the Butcher lived fourteen days after the shooting. According to Asbury, his doctors found it unnatural that he should live so long after taking a bullet in the heart. Certainly he had time to compose his last words. He died with Hyer and other friends about his bed. They gave him a hero’s funeral, with thousands lining lower Broadway as a half-dozen brass bands and more than 5,000 men marched in his procession from Christopher St. to Whitehall St., whence his remains were ferried to Brooklyn. Asbury observed that new plays were hurriedly written and current productions revised so that as the curtain fell, the hero could drape himself in an American flag and cry out, “Good-bye, boys, I die a true American,” to thunderous applause.

That, too, was all about money.

WILLIAM BRYK is a regular columnist with the New York Press, where this piece originally ran.

RELATED ARTICLES: Is the “Tea Party” really an appropriate name?

By Rowan Wolf

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First calling themselves “tea baggers” – thanks to lack of cultural knowledge about the sexual nature of that term – increasingly this nation-wide collection of populace is being referred to as the “Tea Party.” While it surely intended to stoke the “patriotic” fervor of those who see themselves as part of this movement, this appellation is very inaccurate.

The Boston “Tea Party” was populist activism by the colonists in “America” who were protesting the Tea Act of the British Parliament which imposed a tax on tea. The “rebels” felt that they should not pay a tax that was not passed by their elected officials. Interestingly, the Tea Act was passed by the Parliament to save the East India Tea Company from bankruptcy (Encyclopedia Britannica – Boston tea Party). The East India Company was given a monopoly on all tea exported from Britain to the colonies, as well as imposing a tax on that tea. The refrain of “No taxation without representation” was one of the arguments of the rebelling colonists (Wikipedia – Boston Tea Party) Regardless of frequently claiming to be “bi-partisan” or “non-partisan,” the current Tea Party is highly conservative in the contemporary sense of that word. They are anti-tax (meaning individual taxation and increasing taxes for the wealthy), anti-immigrant, and pro-corporate and privatization. They are largely anti-government, which is the supposedly “Libertarian” strain – which in the current popular rendition is largely “conservative” as well. (See site sampling at end of article). This is a far cry from the rebel terrorists (and as far as the British were concerned the folks in Boston were terrorists) of the original “Tea Partyers”. The Boston Tea Party rebels were acting against British rule in the American colonies, but particularly British taxation. They were acting against monopoly corporatism as represented by the East Indian Tea Company. They were making a first strike for liberating the colonies from Britain. However, the current “Tea Party” does have close corollaries to another historical party. The party in mind is the “Know Nothings” also known as the American Party which arose roughly 80 years after the revolt of 1773. Both parties were responding to a social environment of slavery (and the conflicts around the institution), and to waves of European immigration. Feagin (1997: 19-20 as quoted in Wolf) characterizes this period as follows:

“In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the ‘white race’ emerged as a constructed social group for the first time in history.” … “Early English invaders and their descendants saw themselves as culturally and physically different from Native and African Americans, the stereotyped ‘uncivilized savages.’ Moreover, by the early 1800s the importance of Southern cotton plantations for the U.S. economy had brought a growing demand for Native American land and African and African American slaves. Slavery was being abolished in the North, and the number of free black men and women was growing. In this period, the Anglo-Protestant ruling elite developed the ideology of a superior ‘white race’ as one way of providing racial privileges for poorer European Americans and keeping the latter from joining with black Americans in worker organisations. By the mid-nineteenth century, not only later English “immigrants” but also “immigrants” from Scotland, Ireland, and Germany had come to accept a place in this socially constructed ‘white race’ whose special racial privileges included the rights of personal liberty, travel and voting.” (As quoted in Wolf, 2008) The Know Nothings were anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic, though they were split North and South on the issue of slavery.

 

As stated in Wolf (2008):

 

The Know Nothings grew out of a secret society called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner. They were formally known as the American Party. They were anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic and claimed to be champion of the rights of American male Protestant voters. The northern part of the party being anti-slavery and the southern part being pro-slavery (Anbinder, 1992; Billington, 1952). They took political control of many state and city governments from 1855 to 1860. They supported Millard Fillmore in the 1856 Presidential election and he took 21% of the popular vote and eight votes from the electoral college. The “nativist” Know Nothing/American Party, were vehemently anti-immigrant, mirroring one of the foci of the current “Tea Party.”

 

As noted in Wolf:

The American Party platform included the following: 1. Only native-born Americans could hold public office; 2. A 21 year waiting period before foreign-born could vote; 3. Restrict public schooling to Protestants and have the Protestant bible read daily in classrooms. (Anbinder, 1992)

 

So called “native” Americans, those white descendants of primarily western Europeans who had been born here, saw the “immigrant” influx as a threat in a number of regards. They saw them as racially and culturally different and inferior to themselves. Samuel Busey (1856) wrote a book called “Immigration and its Evils” in which he presented a detailed discussion of the inferiority of the “immigrants.” In the following passage he compares the illiterate American born to the illiterate foreigner. “The ignorant natives who speak our language have been reared under our institutions, and are acquainted with the practical workings of our government; the ignorant foreigner is totally unacquainted with the language; has not enjoyed the advantages of experience and practical observation of the complex machinery of our government, and is consequently far inferior, intellectually, to the uneducated native. He cannot understand the theory of a free government, because he is destitute of the knowledge sufficient to comprehend its objects, purposes and blessings. He cannot acquaint himself with its practical operation and direct and immediate advantages to himself, because he wants the experience and observation, which birth and habits have taught; besides he is totally unacquainted with our language, and has been reared under institutions hostile to personal liberty, to free institutions, and to a Republican government; hence it is that foreigners are so prone to congregate together, to organise themselves into clubs, societies and even communities, occupying entire sections of a county, State, and of a country. These foreign organisations are dangerous to our established institutions; because, wherever they have been in our country, they have repudiated the fundamental principles of our government. (Bussey, 1856: 127-129).”

After WWI, white nativism reared its head again in the context of economic turmoil and rising immigration. The depression of the 1930s intensified nativism – now focused largely against Mexicans. It re-emerged again after WWII with the return of troops, and the displacement of the “substitute” workers who had been women, African Americans and Mexicans who had been encouraged into the country to fill labor demands. The racism that arose obviously focused in its hostility against Japanese Americans , “Asians,” Jews, “Mexicans,” Germans and Italians. The point here is that nativism is an old theme, and the current “Tea Party” joins a long line of white “nativism” and so-called conservatism. It seems disingenuous to call them the “Tea Party,” and “Know Nothings” seems more appropriate. Regardless, it joins the long theme of racism and exclusion that is the uglier part of the history of the United States. While even loosely this movement does not represent the majority of Americans, they are currently influencing – even defining – the social and political terrain. Their effectiveness, one might even say their very existence, is due to corporate funding and big monied interests on the right. For example, their birthis out of Fox “News” owned by Rupert Murdock. This has given them – or their corporate inventors and sponsors – a media megaphone. If they are allowed to continue to define the social and political terrain, we are likely to see an extremely difficult and challenging time become very destructive and ugly as well. Notes The Know Nothing and American Party sections are quoted in Chapter 6 of The Dialectic of Social Inequality by Rowan Wolf. 2008. Time Line of the Boston Tea Part. Google. Sampling of “Tea Party” Sites Tea Party Patriots Nationwide Tax Day Tea Party Tea Party Express Re-Tea Party (ironically, the “principles” page is “not found”) Desert Conservatives Tea Party Issues Statement Albuquerque Tea Party Brentwood tea Party

TGP Senior Editor Rowan Wolf also edits Cyrano’s Journal’s AVENGER212 department, where this piece originally ran.