Dreams of a united left

In Britain the political left is in a dire way. Save for rape-loving cod-socialist George Galloway smarming his way into the Commons through Bradford North, there is scarce representation across the country. So why, deep into yet another crisis of capitalism, is it this way? Why are the Labour party, dragged centre-right by Blair and Brown, refusing to budge from their new perch? Why, when radical left parties are on the rise in Europe, is Britain remaining fixated on neo-liberalism?

As Marx predicted, the internal contradictions of capitalism would inevitably lead to it self-combusting, not just once, but over and over again. As it has done, as it is currently doing. Greece,Spain, Portugal and Italy are all moving closer to complete collapse, and are in a much worse way to Northern European countries, but Britain is under the threat of a triple-dip recession, zero growth, jobs stagnation etc. – all the signs of economic failure. As a result of this the mistrust of the usual politics and politicians is growing, manifesting itself in a growth spurt for new protest party Ukip.

So where are the British left in all this? Absent, largely. Galloway’s Respect Party is the main force for the British left at the moment, gaining votes in traditionally Labour-dominated inner-cities. A smattering of various socialist and communist cliques can often be found propping up the running order of votes, defeating only the ‘Elvis Pensioner Party’ and the ‘9/11 Was An Inside Job’ candidate. It is strange, because in a time of such economic turmoil, the left should be finding its feet, offering, again, itself as a true alternative to the destruction of capitalism. 

More so, left wing parties offer a sane alternative to the even greater danger of fascist and far-right parties who aim to stoke a climate of fear around asylum seekers and outsiders, both as an outlet for the working class who are baring the brunt of austerity, and capitalism in general; and also, more simplistically, as a protest vote. 

One of the frequent criticisms of radical political movements is their inability to remain as a coherent group. There are schisms and rivalries inside the mainstream political parties, certainly, but it is rare that the tensions emerge as a definite split, and with such dogmatic factionalism, as fringe groups do (the same goes for the far-right as the far-left, as we have seen with the splintering of the BNP and the EDL). In Scotland the SSP was designed with the aim of bringing disparate left-wing groups together. It worked, briefly, until Tommy Sheridan split off to form Solidarity, bringing about the same weaknesses that had existed previously. The SSP’s vote sank from a high of six seats in a few years, and it remains mainly as a protest organising group with one councillor nationwide. Overcoming this factionalism and in-fighting is essential if the left are to regain their standing as a serious political group. It would prevent similar groups from taking votes from each other, and present a clearer alternative to mainstream politics for voters. Various political parties in Europe who have achieved much greater success than expected, such as Jean-Luc Melechon’s Left Front or SYRIZA inGreece, have operated as a rough coalition of parties and independents from across the left spectrum – eurocommunists to greens.
Pooling support and resources in this way is essential, but difficult. The aforementioned SSP/Solidarity split is a wound that is yet to heal. Groups like the SWP have gained a reputation as unlikeable cults, distrusted and mocked as much by the rest of the left as they are by the centre, if not more so.

Plus, looming on the horizon is a bigger problem for the radical left – the Labour party. The Labour party are no longer a left-wing party, no longer a party with the good of the working class at their heart. They are uncomfortable with trade unionism, uncomfortable with the risk of breaking with the Thatcherism, neo-liberal consensus which was established in the 1980s. But, because of the proud history of the party, and it’s undeniable left-wing roots, it continues to draw in well-meaning (but naïve) socialists and left-wingers, who believe that the party can change. The Labour party, as is, is a blockade to getter political representation for real left wing parties, draining voters and high profile supporters who would be better served by a united left front.

I am not naive. I do not believe this is an easy task, one which can be accomplished before the next election. It will take a lot of hard work, from all sides - some gritting of the teeth, some hiding (if not burying) of hatchets. It is also important to remember that politcal action is not, and cannot, be limited to the parliament. It needs to take place on the streets, in the forms of protests, strikes and occupations. It is socialism from the group up, discussing with people their desires and fears - not remaining aloof in a distant parliament, recording 60% attendence and fleecing the expenses system. If this happens, any left-wing politicans would be just as bad as the Labour party, or the Conservatives, or the Lib Dems. It is about making a radical change in the way politics is not only shared, but conducted. Parties are an open forum, and representation in power of the will of the people - could a left bloc be that?

Another school shooting, and America's doomed romance with guns continues

With twenty-eight dead in Connecticut, the logical response would be gun control. America’s latest school shooting is perhaps the most shocking yet, and it is undeniable, no matter the mental state of the gunman, that the easy availability of guns was the main factor. After the Dunblane school shooting in 1996 Scottish and British gun control laws were tightened severely. The same thing happened again when Derrick Bird shot more than twenty people in his home town, targeting some of his ‘enemies’, but mainly killing random people as they walked down the street. The UK, as with most countries, are able to balance mourning for these tragedies with a level-headed and positive approach to gun control. In America, things are different.

It is inevitable, but very little, if anything at all, will happen in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting. Adam Lanza’s identity had been revealed for only a few minutes when the pre-emptive strikes against the gun control campaigners began. Lanza has a mental illness, they said, negating any responsibility that easily-accessible firearms had played in the events. At the same time, old arguments emerge which claim that bringing politics, in the form of a gun control debate, into the aftermath of a massacre is a heartless act in itself.

As someone who lives in a country where the only people who have guns are farmers and particularly determined gangsters the idea of being able to walk into a supermarket and buy a firearm is surreal. There is no call in Britain for lesser gun control, because people seem to know the risks. But Britain, like the rest of Europe, has a different relationship with weapons to America. This relationship was explored, without much in the way of a satisfactory conclusion, by Michael Moore in Bowling For Columbine (in the end this relationship confused and angered him so he ended up chasing an aging Charleton Heston around the latter's home with a picture of a dead schoolgirl).

Ultimately Americans associated guns with 'freedom', and freedom with America - as long as this remains the case, the issue of gun control will never be removed from it's deadly rut. Guns are part of the national character to a significant extent, but, especially in the familiar aftermath of shootings like the one in Newtown, there are growing calls to restrict the sale of firearms. As I said above, nothing will happen.

The political situation in America is at deadlock on almost every issue. Obama may have scrapped past Romney in the presidential election, but he still has to deal with Republicans pouncing on his every move, motivated by the slender mandate the country afforded him. Republicans don't want gun control, and they would be able, with the help of the very rich pro-gun lobbies (like the NRA, whose natural reaction to a news flash about a school shooting is to draft a defensive press release), to make the argument very difficult for the Democrats. Obama and his party know this. I don't know Obama's personal views on gun control, but it's also likely that many people in his own party are against it. It is a hugely damaging and risky argument to have, and therefore, with their partisan nature, the Republicans have been able to shut down any attempt at establishing a discourse on the matter. The same thing has happened, to differing extents, to gay marriage, to climate change, and to solutions to the failings of American capitalism.

Gun control is also not the type of thing that would show improvements overnight, and the public are often hard to convince on measures which require a lot of work now, with no guaranteed outcome. In the event of guns being made illegal to own in America, there would be shootings and suicides as the police attempted to remove firearms from people. A few months in, when the first massacre is committed with an illegal gun, the pro-gun lobby will cart out their usual argument that it would have been prevented if one of the victims owned a gun.

Perhaps Obama, with no need to worry about personal re-election, could be brave, and attempt to move America towards a solution. He would have a number of big city mayors, like Michael Bloomberg, on his side (mayors who have to deal with gun crime in large American cities know first hand that the real tragedy of America's relationship with firearms is not the occasion school shooting but the constant stream of bodies which flow from gang disputes, all aided by a lack of gun control). Obama is already one of the most divisive presidents in American history, and immediate move towards gun control would likly entrench that. But dither, and refuse to move, and he will face a few more tearful press conferences before he walks out of the White House for the last time.

The Polite British Far-Right

It's a tragic fact, that the mechanisms of capitalism swing every-closer to 'disaster' setting, political extremism on the right flares up. In Europe, which is straining most under the weight of the ongoing economic crisis, it has been the most noticable. Greece is the obvious example, where Golden Dawn, an openly violent facist party are currently polling third. In France, in Italy, all across Europe, the ugly head of facism rises, spouting Islamophobia.

What about in Britain? Our premier far-right party, the BNP, have disinegrated, but the individual splinters still protrude; the EDL, the British Freedom Party, the National Front - all offering a slight variation on the same old hatred (the EDL claims to be welcoming to non-whites and non-Christians, so if that ain't your thing, you might what to head by the openly white-supremacist NF).

If you look at the trends in the last few years, the rise of the extreme right-wing in Europe has been marked by parties that do embrace a form of facism, but in Britain, where, despite a flurry of electoral successes a few years ago for the BNP, they have made very little gain. Has the UK been spared, the trend passed it by? Not quite.

In Britain it's currently all about Ukip. They've been slowly building on successes in European and council elections, working towards calling themselves the new 'third party' in British politics, taking the place of the Lib Dems (this despite them never actually having won a seat in parliament - their only representation coming after a defection from the Tory party).

Ukip's rise in popularity has worried the Conservatives. They feared that Cameron was too close to the political middle ground to secure the traditional Tory voter base - he was, and many of them defected right to Ukip. In some places the popularity of Ukip has even been blamed for splitting the Tory vote, causing them to lose an estimated 40 seats at the last election. Michael Fabricant, who does something for the Tory party (he's high up, I don't care any more than that) has proposed an election pact between the two parties, as they increasingly seem like star-crossed lovers, split over a need to appeal to the centre vote.

The problem here is that Ukip represent the same ground as the BNP and their ilk - they just have a greater grasp of political PR. Ukip supporters and BNP supporters largely agree on the parties' main electoral points - immigration, British superiority, anti-Europeanism (unless they want to buy our stuff).

From the Guardian article 'Ukip shares more with the far right than it admits':

While they also appear deeply concerned about immigration and Islam, Ukip supporters are less intense and less hostile than their BNP rivals. They are also far more likely to consider violence as "never justifiable".

At the same time, however, Ukip critics tend to ignore the fact that their party does have considerable policy overlaps with the extreme right. Like the BNP, at the last general election Ukip demanded an end to uncontrolled immigration, tighter border controls, the expulsion of illegal immigrants, the removal of benefits for remaining immigrants and an "end the active promotion of the doctrine of multiculturalism by local and national government and all publicly funded bodies". This radical right pitch to voters included an end to political correctness and a ban on the burqa, and led Ukip to invite Geert Wilders to show an anti-Islam documentary in the House of Lords.

Ukip is not a rightwing extremist party, but on the doorsteps of voters it is often pushing the same message as the extreme right.

 What Ukip are able to do is exploit the British love for decent, honest 'chaps' who have little time for the political establishment (which Ukip claim to be outside, but are earnest supporters of). Their leader Nigel Farage smokes and is known to drink pints at lunch (probably British bitter). He is the walking embodiment of people who are just a little bit tired of political correctness and health and safety, and the liberals who push them on society.

Not mentioned in the article is Ukip's homophobic record - during the recent outcry in Rotherham, when the local council removed foster kids from the care of Ukip members because of the racist views of the party, Ukip were playing the victims. The actions of the council were perfect political fodder for the party, who used it to present a case of them being victimised and attacked by 'liberals' for their beliefs, in exactly the same way any far-right party would. (The BNP used to pull the 'they're trying to silence us because we know The Truth' card on several occasions.) What was hardly mentioned was the views of the Croydon North by-election candidate for Ukip, and the party's culture, media and sport spokesman, who said that it was wrong to allow gay couples to foster children. It was the usual stuff about the destruction of the 'traditional' Christian family, of course. Pinknews.co.uk has a further article it's worth reading about several other cases of homophobia in the party.

  Ukip supporters burn picture of openly-gay Lib Dem politican Brian Paddock

 

Listing the idiotic views of Ukip could be an enternal, Sysiphsian task. The crux of this article is this - Ukip differ from the BNP only in style and media presentation. They are slick, unencumbered by the Doc Martin-ed skinheads which are associated with other far-right movements. This makes them more dangerous. They are able to move, clandestine, into the wider political arena, trading on their created identity as a moderate party to come close to securing a place in government, as part of a Tory-Ukip coalition. They exist under the cloak that all 'protest vote' parties use - no one actually pays attention to their policies, they just want an alternative. An alternative Ukip certainly may be, but they are not even better than the Tories.

Republicanism: the only option for an independent Scotland

Something very exciting happened in Glasgow yesterday: the (first and hopefully annual) meeting of the Radical Independence Conference, (RIC) a meeting of pro-Scottish independence groups and individuals, aimed at out-lining the shape of a future Scotland, should the country vote 'yes' in 2014. Unfortunately I was unable to attend, but over 800 people did, along with speakers from a variety of backgrounds. Jean Urquhart, the MSP who quit the SNP over their pro-NATO policy, spoke, as did Patrick Harvie, of the Scottish Greens. There was representatives from around Europe as well, such as SYRIZA, the Greek left opposition, and Basque separatists from Spain. Overall, it was heartening to see not only a strong turnout, but one which had representation from across the left-wing spectrum, and which was happy to tackle a number of issues, economically and socially. A strong base of support from across a usually-divided political sphere is essential to ensuring a 'yes' vote in two years.

One of the comments that most made me pleased with the outcome of the RIC were those of Dennis Canavan, a former MP and MSP who has been one of the more recent political figureheads to join the pro-independence movement. He said:

The existing Scottish Parliament was based on the Claim of Right, which enshrined the sovereignty of the people of Scotland. That to me makes the principle irreconcilable with the sovereignty of a non-elected hereditary monarchy... If those who think that today’s monarchy has no or little relevance to the big picture in terms of building a fairer Scotland, let me remark that the Westminster parliament passed a bill to take a considerable amount of money from the Crown Estate and hand it back to the Royal Family. There was hardly a murmur of protest at the House of Commons. The Crown ­Estate should be the People’s Estate. And it should be the Scottish Parliament that decides.

The issue of the monarchy raises it's head again - Alex Salmond has put forward the terms of the split, and offered that, even in the event of a yes vote, the Queen would still be the head of the state of Scotland, essentially offering Scotland to be part of the Commonwealth, a system dedicated to keeping antiquated ideas of British Empire jingoism alive in the 21st century. It is part concession to the belief that Britain is better off with the monarchy, part acknowledgement that the Union of the Crowns pre-dates the 1707 Acts of Union by a little over a decade, meaning that Scotland, England and Wales were joined by a collective monarchy well before a collective parliamentary and economic system.

This view is ridiculous - republicanism is the only way forward for an independent Scotland.

Firstly, the view that Scotland, and Britain as a whole, is better off because of the monarchy is a fallacy. This is often seen in purely economic terms, that the tourism generated by the royal family offsets the amount spent on them. It's impossible to accurately measure these respective amounts, as tourism is not motivated solely by wanting to stand outside Buckingham Palace in the rain, and it is difficult to say how much tourism would be lost if the monarchy is abolished. The royal family ranks below Legoland on a list of tourists' reasons for visiting England, so perhaps not that much. In a Scottish context, how much of this money actually benefits the people of Scotland is also negligible. To argue it from a solely financial point of view is, in fact, quite depressing - it negates the role that democracy plays in the choice between monarchy and republic, of the simple self-respect of not having an unelected head of state in the 21st century. To entertain the idea that the monarchy is till suitable to modern life is ridiculous - this is all we will get from Britain, who still holds the Queen close to their chest; a blindfold to their weakened standing as a world power, and to a disintegrating empire.

Futhermore, if the goal of Scottish independence is to work towards a more egalitarian, progressive nation (and it certainly should be - this should be the goal of every country) then the monarchy is a blockade erected as a representative of the ruling class. Every act towards a more equal society is an act against the upper class - more rights and freedom leave them open to questioning, higher wages cut into their profits, more rights for workers make it harder for them to continue their exploitation. As a cornerstone of the ruling class, the monarchy is invaluble to them. It is inherantly British, and manifested in British pop culture to an extent that the vast control it has is largely unchallenged. The Queen still has the right to dissolve parliament, control the army, stop any legislation she desires.

The monarchy, as much as it pains me to say, is still popular in Britain, and in Scotland. People have become too used to it, unaware of the ridiculousness of the whole thing. In the run-up to the 2014 vote, pro-independence voters must not only try to convince people to vote yes, they should argue, as part of a yes vote, against the monarchy. Otherwise it may all have been a waste of time.

 

What is the point of the NUS?

Today saw the first national protest called by the NUS in two years - specifically, the first since the occupation of Millbank Tower on the tenth of November 2010. It was, without wishing to glorify violence, a glorious moment. The student population, long since thought dormant and uninterested, swung into action, staging campus occupations and a series of protests which led to an attempted storming of the Treasury building in Whitehall.

It was also the moment that cleaved the student movement in two. As with any violent demonstrations, many people were turned off, and the large scale street protests which continued throughout the winter of 2010/11 never quite reached the same levels of attendance.

The march today, a 'rainy walk to Surrey' in which the media and police both waited for something big to happen. Nothing did - the most interesting part of the day was when protesters stormed the stage in a Kensington park where NUS president Liam Burns was making a speech. He walked off and continued through a megaphone, and that was that. By that point anyway, the majority of the marchers had left (this isn't first-hand reporting, by the way, all the information I've got comes from the always good Guardian live blog) for the pub, and shelter from the rain. The story will barely scratch the surface of the mass media, an added failure given that the protest was intended to reopen the dialogue about this generation of students and their economic future.

There is growing disquiet in the student movement about the leadership of the NUS. The majority of student unions at universities feed into it, and ones that don't tend to be entirely independent, so it's status is largely unshakable. Therefore, it is placed at the forefront of a movement it helped to kickstart, but has never shown any enthusiasm for. As the wreckage of Millbank was picked over, the NUS immediately distanced itself from the student movement. It never called another national protest in London, until today, and backed away from any support of student occupations - something it had promised beforehand.

Whether the NUS is still suffering a hangover from the one-year reign of Aaron Porter (whose motto seemed to be 'No Fees! Actually, if it causes you a bit of hassle, then perhaps we should get fees! Sorry for the mess!'), or is in a perpetual state of pointlessness. I feel it may be the later, as any hope given to a more radical view of the movement when Liam Burns succeded Porter has all but evaporated.

The real problem with the NUS is that it remains obsessed with the notion of civilised dialogue, of rational, open debate. It exists, however, in a field where these things are dismissed. The coalition government has no will to back down on education cuts, as students do not represent a core voter base for them (or any party). With the help of the Met Police and Territorial Support Group, the government had managed to sideline and nullify any attempt by protesters to take some sort of action. Occupations of any kind are considered illegal, the police are able to arrest people on a whim on a charge of 'aggrivated tresspassing'. The police, ahead of one rally last year, sent letters to attendees threatening them with rubber bullets if there was violence, which helped to drive people away.

The NUS have helped in this, routing their protest away from the Houses of Parliament, and into a posh area of London where nothing important is. They claim they don't want to disrupt anything in central London, which means their march is essentially a large, organised stroll. It is the same as trade unions who say that a proposed strike 'should not cause distruption' - surely removing the exact aim of a strike!

The nadir of the NUS 'fight' again tuition fees arguably came in October 2010, when Aaron Porter secretly met with government ministers to agree a deal with them - a £800 million cut to maintainance grants (which are given to the poorest students to help them afford to live while at uni) to avoid fees. A betrayal of those worst hit in the first place, and an attempt at dialogue which admits the need to austerity and attacks on the welfare of ordinary people.

The antipathy continued today, and will continue as long as the NUS continues it's lacklustre campaign against the cuts. So is there any hope for the student movement? Less than two years ago it was vibrant, alive, straining with activity was rooms and halls were occupied at universities across the country. It even inspired solidarity marches from students in France and Greece at times - yet it has visably withered, falling from public consiousness. The same thing happened with the trade unions, who failed to capitalise of the momentum of the historic 500,000 march in London earlier this year. The problems are the same with both leaderships - a fear of action, a fear of risk taking, a fear of offending the middle ground (the ground on which politics, regretably, is largely fought). The movements to not attempt to reframe the austerity argument.

The advantage that the student movement has is that it is more autonomous than the workers unions. They do not operate under the same strict guidelines as trade unions do (students, for example, can protest about a general political problem, where strikes, under British law, must concern a direct act of government or piece of legislation). Individual branches can also operate with more freedom, holding walkouts and protests seperate from each other if needs be. The rise of alternative groups, such as the NCAFC, which played a large part in organising the later demonstrations, show the way forward for the student movement. As I argued in a previous post, (although concerning mainstream political parties) organisations like the NUS will move with the largest group of the people -  a large scale, independent student movement would either rescue the NUS from centre-ground, inoffensive oblivion, or force it there, leading it to be replaced with a group fitted to the needs and the desires of the student movement as a whole. Again, the fight against austerity must be led by the people who oppose it, not the organisations who do.

Film Review: The Master

The Master is a big film for Joaquin Phoenix. It’s his first appearance since fall-out of his fake documentary I’m Still Here, in which he faked a mental breakdown and aspirations towards a rap career. It was an ultra-dedicated piece of method acting which could have exorcised him from Hollywood. His role as Freddie Quell, a drifter ex-marine who falls in with a religious cult, needed to be fantastic, to re-establish his place as one of his generation’s best actors, and Phoenix does indeed play the role exceedingly well. His Freddie is a tightened coil of a man, constantly hunched, as if crushed by a physical injury sustained during the Second World War (of which he is a veteran), or by deeper emotional toils. His face is constantly contorted into a snarl, and he mumbles most of his lines in a Massachusetts drawl. He is ugly, in every sense of the word.  

The Master is also a big film for Paul Thomas Anderson. Like Phoenix he has been away from the limelight for a few years, emerging now to write, direct and produce the follow up his 2009 masterpiece There Will Be Blood. Regarded as one of the best films of the last decade, it would be a hard act to follow for anyone, but Anderson has a greater weight of a career-long run of excellent films to uphold. Again, like Phoenix, his work on The Master accomplishes this task, directing a film with extraordinary depth, both in content, as well as visually. Unfortunately I was unable to see the film in the intended 90mm version, but even the 'standard' print looks gorgeous. There is a pervasive sense of sadness around the film, as Anderson invites us to pity both of the main characters in turn.   

He again returns to a theme that has become as familiar a trademark of his films as expertly crafted tracking shots –the father-son relationship. The patriarch of The Master is Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), figurehead of ‘The Cause’, a cult which believes that a person’s current life is pre-determined by past-existences from thousands of years before. Like Phoenix, Hoffman gives a terrific performance (as does Amy Adams, playing Dodd’s wife Peggy). He delivers his solo scenes, the sermons extolling the theories of The Cause, with the magnetic fervour typical of film’s religious zealots (powerful, but not alienating), but his best scenes are those when he is one-on-one with Freddie. Theirs, like many of the father-son relationships in Anderson’s films, is a tense one, based on fear, or need, as much as love. It is an obsession; a need to conquer the other, a conquest which they believe will help the other. Think of the warring relationship between Daniel and Eli in There Will Be Blood. Dodd believes that he can be the saviour of the wayward Freddie, and adopts him with a view to making him a project for The Cause, a test of their true redemptionary powers.

 

Dodd first finds Quell drunk a yacht where the former is hosting his daughter’s wedding (as well as allowing The Cause some time away from the ‘attacks’ detailed by Peggy – dissenters, non-believers, and Lancaster’s ex-wives). Quell has fled from a farmer where he worked briefly as a land labourer. An elderly man drank some of his homemade alcohol (one of several toxic blends Freddie makes throughout the film, using everything from paint thinner to torpedo fuel) as died. Before this Freddie worked in an upper-class department store as a photographer, which gave his access to further chemicals he can use as intoxicants, and offered him teasing glimpses of perfect families captured on film.

As stated above, much of the film focuses on the interactions between Freddie and Lancaster. Some of the most gripping scenes of the film, (the same ones which are the most uncomfortable, for this is an uncomfortable film) are a back-and-forward between the two men. Soon after they first meet Lancaster tapes an interrogation by him of Freddie, where he grills him about his view of life, as well as his sexual relationship with his aunt. Lancaster forces Freddie to undergo a form of past life regression therapy (the practices of The Cause appear to be mainly a cherry picking of this and parts of a Buddhist circle of life theory), but, unlike other characters in the film who take part in this, he asks Freddie to think about Dorris, his pre-war love.

Despite this focus on the paternal relationship, Anderson still devotes time (the film is drenched in detail, and strains to fit in even its two hour-plus running time) to explore The Cause, and the insular workings of a cult. Once Freddie meets them, it films hands itself over completely (flashbacks aside) to the group. Dodd’s biological son Val, for example, at one point denounces his father’s theories, and claims they are made up on the spot. After this scene he disappears from the film, only re-appearing when he returns to the fold once again, at The Causes’ England-based school. This is similar to the way that real-life cults work – when you get in, you are always in. If you leave, you are forgotten about. It is at this point that doubts about Lancaster and The Cause begin to seep in. Freddie begins a flirtation with scepticism, and Lancaster is slowly revealed as a fraud, and as a much weaker man than he imagines himself to be.

Similarly, the theories of The Cause are presented to outsiders (the audience) as nonsense. Anderson refrains from any detailed explanation of Lancaster’s writings, leaving us to pick up odds and ends as they are dropped in front of the camera. What is clear is that it is a theory obsessed with metaphysics, and of the ‘journey’ which a person takes throughout their many lives. Another part of the teachings are important to the role of the cult in the film in general – the clear superiority of men to animals. Men, Lancaster states, are not animals, and animalistic actions – like flatulence – are to be looked down upon.

As a war veteran, Quell has seen some inhumane - some animalistic - things. He suffers from some kind of mental disorder, which is not specified, but inferred it may be some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This goes some way to explain his often-sociopathic behaviour. In the opening beach scene, for example, he starts dry-humping a woman rendered from sand by his fellow sailors. They laugh, but the scene, and Freddie, drag on, as he becomes more graphic and intense in his pleasuring of the sand-woman. Later he lies down with it, as if enjoying a post-coital hug. His is oblivious to their disgust and confusion, or least does not care (another credit to Phoenix's performance is the way he portrays Freddie's disorder in a way that avoids the typical Hollywood tropes of verbal tics, or being able to count cards). His job as a store cameraman exposes him to family life, and to happiness he cannot attain. His past, be it in the war or before that, haunts him, and has reduced him to a shell of a man, on the run and alcohol dependant. In this scenario, religion becomes a safety net, a shelter, and, as Marx stated, 'the heart of a heartless world'. Marx believed that embracing religion was actually a cry for help, and that religious belief was not a barrier to a socialist society, but a sign that this society was needed, even if the people did not yet know it.

Anderson's films, as obsessed as they are with warped representations of the family unit, often allow themselves to spread out into analysis of a wider situation. There Will Be Blood explores the growth of greed and capitalism in America, Boogie Nights looks at the morality, and the negative effects of, the porn industry. The Master is an exploration of the abandoning of war veterans, and their various coping strategies. The film was apparently inspired by Anderson reading that post-war societies are particularly susceptible to new forms of organised religion. Set in 1950, The Master captures a period of American history where the hangover of the most brutal war in world history remained, albeit below the surface. Around this time, many of the men who were mentally scared by the deaths and bloodshed may have realised that they were not getting any better, and that their PTSD was not subsiding. Destruction on such an epic scale removed the barrier of civilisation between men and animals, reducing life to a dangerously pointless exercise. What The Cause offered Freddie, in this context, is obvious.

Top 5 Limmy's Show Sketches

Limmy's Show, one of the best TV programmes of the last few years, and one of the funniest Scottish shows ever, returns for a third and final series this month. I've selected the choice cuts from the first two series, in no particular order.

Dee Dee Goes To Yoker

One of Limmy's most beloved characters is Dee Dee, the stoner layabout with a hyper-active imagination. In this outing, probably his finest, he takes a bus journey to an area of Glasgow called Yoker - somewhere he knows only from the signage on a bus.

This sketch works well because most people will have their equivalent 'Yoker' - a place on the other side of town from where they live, and which they know nothing about. Mystery breeds an active imagination, and Dee Dee, as per his character, allows himself to be carried away with his thoughts.

"Wrong Way Down A One Way Street!"

Limmy's cry of 'Wrong Way Down A One Way Street!' has, like many of his catchphrases, taken on a cult status in Scotland. When police evicted student protesters from the Free Hetherington occupation in Glasgow Uni last year, a huge number of supporters turned out for the occupiers. At one point, the crowd became so large the police were forced to retreat back up the road that led to building, prompting a chorus of "Wrong way down a one way street!" from the protesters. That alone merits it a place amongst his best sketches, but it's also a great example of a continuing theme of Limmy's comedy - the surreal extension of everyday, mundane life.

Eckied Dad

Eckies are a big part of Glasgow culture. Everyone associates it with heroin, but ecstacy is heroin's likeable cousin. You can make jokes about the affects of ecstacy much easier than you can about the affects of heroin. More than anything, eckies just a funny word. Some of Limmy's best sketches are short ones like this, filmed in front of green screen. It's basically just a man dancing as fast as he can in a club to bring on a heart attack, because he misses his late wife. Bring heroin into the situation, it quickly becomes depressing. Eckies saves it, and this is probably my favourite sketch.

Shout on a bus

In a recent interview with the Scotsman, Limmy said that he found everyday life painfully boring, as a result, he suspects, of having Attention Deficit Disorder. Sketches like this continue the theme seen in above in 'Wrong Way...', but move the action away from fictional characters and to the 'real' Limmy focuses this idea even more. His need to shout on the bus is a literal cry for help, a vain attempt to make things interesting again. As a bonus video, have a watch of 'Piss Yourself,' which continues with the same idea.

"She's Turned the Weans Against Us!"

Not much to say with this one, actually. Just watch it, and remember you can walk down any high street in central Scotland see this happening.