- Sheena Wellington sings at the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. “The Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on March 25, 1707, is hereby reconvened”

Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that:
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that:
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that;
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.

(words from http://www.robertburns.org/)

1. It has been reported by other Twitter users, that when the account started there were several obviously jokey tweets from it which were later deleted. This calls into question if the user was originally intending to conduct the “experiment” or if they used it to cover themselves after the inevitable backlash.
2. The user continues to remain anonymous, which means that they are not willing to be open about or questioned on their “experiment”. Plus in my own humble opinion remaining anonymous while lecturing others on morality is the act of a coward.
3. The experiment was apparently constructed to highlight the dangers of social networking to parents. If this was in fact the original intent it is laudable although misguided. The internet can be a dangerous place for children. The user then calls for legislation to be enacted to ban all people on the Sex Offenders Register from using digital communications unsupervised. That’s all 29000 people on the Sex Offenders Register. A clearly unenforceable, highly expensive and ludicrous law, which would require vast armies of Social Workers or Police to watch every sex offender round the clock to make sure they didn’t access a computer or phone which can connect to the World Wide Web.
4. The user criticises several papers for “promoting” Glitter, while obviously oblivious to his own part in promoting the same man and creating an internet furore around him. Although I have not read all the articles that the user refers to I did at least check out the NME one. You don’t need a degree in semiotic analysis to see that it is written in a very neutral tone and is basic factual reporting rather than promotion.

What the man or woman who conducted this “experiment” did highlight was the disgusting jokes made by some people about Mr Glitters crimes. I strongly dislike rape jokes, no matter if they are about children or adults. There are very good reasons to not make or condone them. Mainly that people who rape assume that rape is normal. Every time you make or laugh at a rape joke you are confirming to rapists that their crime is normal, ok, that all men rape, etc. This in my book, is not ok. However I leave it up to you to consider this issue and if you wish to unfollow on twitter anyone who jokes about this serious crime.

Other than that the Glitter Twitter account is a troubling story, which does little to highlight the dangers to children on the internet, less to help children to stay safe, and even less for the children who have already been victims.

“From Plato onwards, Communism is the only political idea worthy of a philosopher” – Alain Badiou

“Do not be afraid, join us, come back! You’ve had your anti-communist fun, and you are pardoned for it – time to get serious again!” – Slavoj Žižek

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, in the public exposure of the inherent failings and the inadequacies of late capitalism to deal with the economic situation in which it finds itself, amid strikes, riots, occupations and revolutions, it seems apt to re-examine the alternative: the Idea of Communism.

In 2009, Slavoj Žižek and Costas Douzinas (both of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities) convened a conference to consider the Idea of Communism and how it can be re-interpreted and imagined for our own time. In 2010 Verso published, under the same name, a collection of essays from 15 of the participants. Here I attempt to overview and connect the various conceptions and considerations raised in those works.

1968: The End of Communism
The spectre of Mao has hung, semi-ironically, through memes and cultural references, over my experience in student politics over the last year, and, perhaps through Badiou, to whom this collection and conference were responding and who has recently himself considered again the meaning and implications of the Cultural Revolution, his legacy appears in many of the essays in the Idea of Communism. Most explicitly, Alessandro Russo considers in his essay whether the Cultural Revolution marked, or perhaps constituted, the end of communism. It’s a fascinating history of the period and how it stood as an attack on the party-state as singular legitimate seat of politics, its relation to the other struggles occurring around 1968 and the question of students’ and workers’ self-organisation.

Russo concludes that the Cultural Revolution sets the stage for the dissolution of ‘Actually Existing Socialism’ two decades later, but that “rather than ending communism, [it] divided it into two, to quote Mao’s favourite philosophical motto”. Communism is split into “a name in philosophy”, which still exists as an ideal which requires discussion and thought, as in this collection, and “a name in politics” which attaches to the party-state in China.

“Declaring ‘communism’ as the name for a contemporary political enterprise would soon lead to a deadlock. This is not to say that emancipatory and egalitarian political projects cannot exist, but how could the name ‘communism’ play the role of a basic cultural reference for revolutionaries?” – Russo

Should we be that quick to throw away the history and meaning of Communism, the word? A history which as Jean-Luc Nancy tells us stretches back hundreds of years; the word ‘communist’ certainly already existing in the fourteenth century. As Michael Hardt argues at the start of his essay on The Common in Communism:

“In standard usage … communism has come to mean its opposite, that is, total state control of economic and social life. We could abandon these terms and invent new ones, of course, but we would leave behind too the long history of struggles, dreams and aspirations that are tied to them.” – Hardt

The Common in Communism
So if we are to keep the term communism, what do we mean by it today? Certainly we do not mean the same as the Chinese Communist Party. For Hardt communism today must be about reasserting the idea of the common.

Hardt argues that we should periodise capitalism via the changing nature of the dominant form of property. First immobile property, broadly speaking land, constitutes the dominant form, with rent constituting the main means by which capital is accumulated. With the industrial revolution immobile property comes to be usurped by moveable property, and rent to be superseded by profit extracted from surplus labour in industrial production. Quoting Marx from his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts:

“Movement inevitably triumphs over immobility, open and self-conscious baseness over hidden and unconscious baseness, greed over self-indulgence, the avowedly restless and versatile self-interest of enlightenment over the parochial, worldly-wise, artless, lazy and deluded self-interest of superstition, just as money must triumph over other forms of private property”

For Hardt (and similarly for Toni Negri, writing elsewhere in this collection) in the post-Fordist/post-industrial economy, the new dominant form of property is now immaterial or biopolitical, that is the forms that property as a dominant entity in the late twentieth and twenty-first century take are as ideas, images, knowledge, brands, relationships, affects and so on – information in a broad sense.

Hardt stresses that his periodisation should be seen as a qualitative dominance of one form of property, not necessarily of which form constitutes the quantitatively largest share of the economy in a given era; mobile property as expressed through the industrial revolution becomes dominant while agriculture, as representative of immobile property and rent, still makes up the largest fraction of the economy, for example. Similarly, that immaterial production is now the dominant form should not be taken to ignore the fact that most people globally are still employed in material production.

As Andre Gorz described in his book The Immaterial, however, it is the immaterial part of production which has become the key from the point of view of globalised capital:

“The major part of profits is achieved on the basis of the intangible dimension of commodities. Their ‘materialization becomes secondary from the economic point of view.’ Companies engaged in material production are relegated to the status of vassals of those firms whose production and capital are essentially immaterial.” – Gorz

In the new economy, what becomes most important for companies is to be able to monetise the experiential knowledge of their employees, not just their formal knowledge and labour time. That is, what makes the most profits are the marketing strategies, the branding, the design and research that goes into production, and these aspects are not ones which can be simply reduced to a quantity of labour time; they require alternately moments of creativity which themselves rely on the whole lived experience of the employee. From this we see the development of flexible working for these roles in production, increasing self-employment, consultancy and so on which begin to break the distinction between work and life in the post-Fordist economy.

On the other side, even where material production is still concerned we see a number of changes . Increasingly companies choose to rent fixed capital (buildings, equipment etc.) instead of owning them directly. We see an increase in outsourcing and the employment of workers on temporary contracts etc. The logic of immateriality seeps out of the direct situations in which it first occurs and affects production across the board. Immateriality becomes the dominant form of property and production within the economy as a whole. (I would see also at this point the work of, for example, Christian Marazzi on the de-coupling of immaterial and material capital in the context of the increasing power of finance and the financialistion of the economy that accompanies globalisation and post-Fordism.)

Returning to the work at hand, this change in the form of dominance in property opens up new opportunities for the idea of communism, Hardt tells us. Considering communism as the idea that against both private and public property all should be held in common, we are informed that immaterial property is both particularly amenable to common (or non) ownership (there is no issue of scarcity and temporal control over ideas or information, whereas such considerations do have to be handled for material property) and also already (or in some cases still) held in that form.

“Ideas, images, knowledges, code, languages and even affects can be privatised and controlled as property, but it is more difficult to police ownership because they are so easily shared or reproduced. There is constant pressure for such goods to escape the boundaries of property and become common.” – Hardt

In fact, Hardt goes further, asserting that not only are immaterial forms of property constantly under pressure to escape into common ownership, as evidently witnessed in the difficulty in and constant battles to maintain copyright and prevent pirating of cultural and software products for example, but also that private control and ownership of these property forms inherently reduces their productivity.

“If you have an idea, sharing it with me does not reduce its utility to you, but usually increases it. In fact, in order to realize their maximum productivity, ideas, images and affects must be common and shared. When they are privatized their productivity reduces dramatically – and, I would add, making the common into public property, that is, subjecting it to state control or management, similarly reduces productivity. Property is becoming a fetter on the capitalist mode of production. Here is an emerging contradiction internal to capital: the more the common is
corralled as property the more its productivity is reduced and yet expansion of the common undermines the relations of property in a fundamental and general way.” – Hardt

For Hardt then, the conditions of production and property in the post-industrial economy are opening up new contradictions in the functioning of capitalism, and that these contradictions and antagonisms create the space in which we can begin to see the possibility of communism.

“Putting my two points together – that capitalist production increasingly relies on the common and that the autonomy of the common is the essence of communism – indicates that the conditions and weapons of a communist project are available today more than ever. Now to us is the task of organizing it.” – Hardt

Hardt’s suggestion that our current situation is in fact closer to communism that it has ever been and moreover that capitalism is increasingly contradicted in its operation is appealing. It suggests that revolution may be relatively easy, that capitalism is inexorably undermining itself and furnishing us with the weapons with which to finish it off. But is this characterisation really the whole story? Are we really in such a positive position?

In their critique of Empire and Multitude (two earlier works by Hardt and Negri which deal with the condition of post-Fordist/immaterial production), Aufheben argue that far from being natural and autonomous from capital, immaterial labour is in fact best seen as a specific division of labour. As they say “[w]e do not eat, drive or wear ideas. Pure ideation can exist as such only because there is a stage of pure execution somewhere else.” Though we may hope that material production can be increasingly automated and freed from the necessity of human labour, we cannot all be graphic designers, authors or academics; for some time, at least, many of us will have to be factory workers and farmers. Immateriality then presents itself not as a natural stage of production which moves us closer to communism but as an impediment with which we must break and radically overcome. For interest I think it worth mentioning that Gorz did see the externalisation of material production as a new division of labour, one that broke not only between providers of labour, but between companies and capital as well:

“Material capital is abandoned to the subcontracting ‘partners’ of the mother firm, which assumes suzerainty over them, forcing them, through the constant revision of the terms of their contracts, to continually intensify the exploitation of their labour force.” – Gorz, The Immaterial

In his essay How to Begin from the Beginning, Žižek also considers the revolutionary antagonism of the commons and their relation to the idea of communism.

“There are four such antagonisms [which are powerful enough to prevent the indefinite reproduction of capitalism]: the looming threat of ecological catastrophe, the inappropriateness of the notion of private property for so-called ‘intellectual property’, the socio-ethical implications of new techno-scientific developments (especially in biogenetics), and, last but not least, new forms of apartheid, new Walls and slums.” – Žižek

Žižek describes the first three of these antagonisms as denoting the domains of the commons, “the shared substance of our social being”, and the last as the “gap that separates the Excluded from the Included”. The enclosure by capitalism of these three domains of the commons, of culture, of external nature and of internal nature, to use Žižek’s descriptors, constitutes a process of proletarianization which requires us to extend the idea of the proletariat to an “existential level well beyond Marx’s imagination”.

“Today we are all potentially a homo sacer, and the only way to defend against actually becoming so is to act preventively.” – Žižek

Without addressing the final antagonism, however, without asserting the communist universal, the singularity of the proletariat, the others “lose their subversive edge”.

“Ecology turns into a problem of sustainable development, intellectual property into a complex legal challenge, biogenetics into an ethical issue. One can sincerely fight to preserve the environment, defend a broader notion of intellectual property, oppose the copyrighting of genes, without confronting the antagonism between the Included and the Excluded.” – Žižek

Rather than expressing an inherent contradiction for capital, as Hardt argues, for Žižek the problem of the commons merely asserts a series of challenges to the current form of capitalism, but not the underlying content. Capitalism can avoid the communist solution through a (perhaps superficially substantial) reorganisation; a new ‘welfare state’ based on citizens’ income as share of the commons perhaps, the breaking of the bond between capitalism and liberal democracy (for which see ‘capitalism with Asian values’ as in China, Singapore etc. or the technocratic governments and total policing being imposed in Europe today), some new form of populist or communitarian capitalism or whatever.

The State and Revolution
As ever, of course, with Žižek, these insights are interspersed with the inevitable apologetics for and assertions of the need for a dose of ‘Jacobin-Leninism’. In fact it is the very aversion to Leninism from some of us on the left that was the downfall of the communist project until now.

“The failure of the Communist State – Party politics is above all and primarily the failure of anti-statist politics, of the endeavour to break out of the constraints of State, to replace statal forms of organization with ‘direct’ non-representative forms of self-organisation” – Žižek

For Žižek, as for Badiou, the task is to make “the State itself work in a non-statal mode”. Which, brings us to, perhaps, the second big debate in conceptualising what we mean today by the idea of communism: the nature of the state.

“State and Revolution is the title of one of Lenin’s most famous texts. The State and Event are indeed what are at stake in it. Nevertheless, Lenin, following Marx in this regard, is careful to say that the State in question after the Revolution will have to be the State of the withering away of the State, the State as organizer of the transition to the non-State. So let’s sat the following: the Idea of communism can project the real of a politics, subtracted as ever from the power of the State, into the figure of ‘another State’, provided that the subtraction lies within this subjectivizing operation, in the sense that the ‘other State’ is also subtracted from the power of the State, hence from its own power, in so far as it is a State whose essence is to wither away.” – Badiou

“Being communist means being against the State” – Negri

In these quotes we see the outlines of the debate. No one here claims to be unambiguously for the State form (as currently existent), the question instead is whether we wish to see the State altered, to see it work in a “non-Statal mode”, or whether it is to be simply opposed in all its forms. Can we directly implement the communist ideal of a stateless society and do away with the social relations that make up the underlying content of capitalism now? Or is there a need for a transitional State, a State which exists so as to do away with itself? Is the desire for communism now the only way to avoid lapsing back into the content of capitalism if not the organisational form or simply evidence of what Bruno Bosteels describes as a leftism, which reveals “a dangerous lack of maturity combined with an impatient desire to skip the intermediate phases in the gradual process of growth and development, by leaping all at once to the highest phase of communism”?

In Negri’s Thoughts on Concept and Practice we the see, as with Hardt, the connection between the common and communism, and the distinction between the common/communism and the public/(state) socialism.

“Being communist entails the recognition that the public is a form of alienation and exploitation of labour – of common labour, in our case…communism is the enemy of socialism because socialism is the classical form of this second model of alienation of proletarian power (potenza), which also requires a distorted organization of the production of its subjectivity.” – Negri

Philosophy, Abstraction & Equality
Away from these perhaps more concrete debates, the collection also considers the philosophical importance of the communist idea, the other side of Russo’s post Cultural Revolution division. Alberto Toscano considers in his essay The Politics of Abstraction: Communism and Philosophy, what “might it mean to be a communist in philosophy, or to treat communism as a philosophical idea”.

Concerning the notion of equality, and what a communist interpretation of such a notion might be, Toscano suggests that we need to go beyond the conception of equality as the social democratic equal rights for all to an equal product of labour. Quoting Marx from his Critique of the Gotha Programme he says that “‘a right can by its nature only consist in the application of an equal standard’ to unequal individuals”. Or, as Lenin put it in the State and Revolution, “the defects of distribution and inequality of ‘bourgeois right’…[continue] to dominate in so far as products are divided ‘according to work’”. Communism is not simply about the negation of the capitalist mode of organisation of the economy, but about the abolition of the social relations that constitute that structure.

“Rather than affirming the principled equality of human beings or promising their eventual levelling communist ‘equality’ implies creating social relations in which inequalities would be rendered inoperative, no longer subsumed as unequal under an equal standard or measure of right. This idea of equality beyond right and value is of course in its own way profoundly abstract – but it demonstrates, first, how the philosophical contribution of communism involves a struggle against a certain type of abstraction (the kind which is derivative of the capitalist form of value and the standards the latter imposes), and second, how the question of realization is intrinsic to the idea of communism.” – Toscano

In all this is an extremely interesting collection of essays, which manages to touch upon some of the most important debates in theorizing a communism for the twenty-first century. I certainly don’t agree with all the conclusions the participants come to, and indeed they are far from all agreeing themselves, but as an introduction to the task ahead of us in asserting a positive vision of society which goes beyond simply a rejection of capitalism, this book is a great place to begin and a useful contribution to how the idea of communism relates both to politics and philosophy today.

“If the idea or the problem of communism is inseparable, as I believe, from the problem of its realization – with the important consequences that this has for philosophy’s relationship to communism – then the question of how to connect the prospects of communism to a partisan knowledge of the real and its tendencies, without mistaking these tendencies for a preformed logic or a philosophy of history, becomes crucial.” – Toscano

Where not otherwise noted all quotes are taken from The Idea of Communism.

I’ve returned to the town where I grew up for the first time since leaving for university and a strange thing has happened: I’m scared to visit the supermarket.

This should, perhaps, not be entirely surprising. After I finished high school in 2009 I went abroad for 5 months and when my mother picked me up from my train home she took me straight to Woolworths to pick up dinner. Suddenly the realisation hit me that I was back in this fucking place (the town, not the supermarket) and I nearly fainted in terror, standing by the citrus while mum waved cheeses at me for my approval.

But at that time I was in the middle of the common late-teen crisis, that period between high school and university where you find yourself faced with a minimum of several months trapped in a rural Australian town full of people who know childhood stories about you, like how you used to walk around wearing only gumboots (wellingtons), and deep terrors relating to how exactly I should be interpreting that Herman Hesse book I read (why oh why did they include that bloody introductory letter from the author saying young people could never understand it properly?) Understanding this, I really do think I had reason to panic – and not just in Woolworths.

Surely this time it should be different? Now I’m a visitor here, stepping out for a moment of my wonderfully full life in a city on the other side of the planet to wave a cheery hello to people by way of confirming that I’m alive. I have a plane ticket home to that city, and a visa that means the UKBA will have to let me in (phew). I have a room there full of my books and clothes and dirty dishes, and outside there will be people waiting for me with wine and reassurances that not all people are morons. With this in mind I should feel, for the moment, safe.

Yet I do not.

Perhaps the scene needs more setting. It’s a mining town where everyone votes for conservative parties, apparently because it’s OK if your working conditions are shit and nobody can drink the water so long as those dangerous jobs and that damned water still belong to ‘Real [read: white] Australians’. The nurses’ area in the local hospital is still called the ‘Sisters’ Station’. And in the manner of a medieval marketplace, Woolworths is the community’s cultural centre. Sure, there’s an annual drama society play and a festival where giant papier-mâché horses are driven down the street, but the real day-to-day drama of the town is in this supermarket. Here students gather in the chocolate and crisps isle before school and during lunchtime to sell each other cigarettes. All day mothers in pastels glide behind wheeled vessels of frozen chips and coca cola and pause majestically where toiletries meets canned goods to swap stories about cousins and friends with other cousins and friends. Outside, fathers and young men in tight jeans covered in manure lean against their farm trucks and grunt at each other or raise suggestive eyebrows at women. In a corner behind the charity-clothing bin, someone’s smoking weed or something harder, while their parents talk about the new spa bath they’ve bought. And most of these people know me.

Last time, I was scared because Woolworths was the epitome of everything I hated about the place I was trapped in – the insular, never-changing rhythms that were sending me mad. But now I’m not trapped. So why am I afraid?

It’s difficult to pinpoint, and as I spend my first week hiding on the farm that was my childhood home and in the comforting bustle of the state capital, I give myself time to mull. After three arguments with three different much-loved friends about their attitudes to Aborigines, several awkward moments with a former best friend and his girlfriend when they react negatively to gay couples in sight, and two long speeches about feminism to young women friends who declare themselves ‘not feminists’ (one, because feminism has achieved all it needs to, and the other because she doesn’t want to have to fix car engines), I realise it’s probably got something to do with conflict avoidance, and something to do with my own insecurities about belonging and identity.

It’s a magazine ideal, ‘staying true to yourself’; a soundbite that fails to get at the way our identities shift and stumble throughout our lives. In my first months of solo travel, and later of university, I found myself so regularly challenged that I was in a constant state of reassessment. But in the last eighteen months I’ve made a small but very important achievement in my life, and can now identity a handful of things that are so important to me they constitute a core part of my identity. They are a set of values (I won’t call them ‘political’ or ‘ideological’, but rather ‘ethical’) that, in my university community, are no-brainers – assumed as part of what makes a person decent, the building blocks of a good human being. When I compromise them accidentally I feel guilty; when I do it knowingly, I feel disgusted. I know others feel the same.

Bigotry is unacceptable: that’s an idea that may be big enough to cover all the ‘ethics’ I’m talking about. Not just clear-cut cases of sexist, homophobic, racist or ableist language, but also more complicated (and too often, unthinking) cases of adherence to oppressive structures, from a blind love of capitalism to acceptance of the gender roles of Woolworths customers – remember the men in the trucks and the women with the trolleys. Bigotry is unacceptable, even (especially) when it’s me that’s doing it. On a personal level bigotry offends me, and on a moral level it demands a response: at minimum an articulation of my feelings and a simple explanation of why I have them. If I don’t act on this I’m knowingly compromising myself, and end up feeling guilty and angry – with me, not the people who have been bigots.

I hope I don’t sound too self-congratulatory. While I do feel this little bit of identity consolidation is a major breakthrough in my neurotic inner life, socially it’s been incredibly easy; my warrior cred is crap. At home, among friends, I feel part of a community facing the world in all its shitness together, and when there is a divide within our little community about what’s OK, I have generally found that when I do speak up I am listened to with respect.

I’ve read a few blogs recently about how we poor politically aware lot are supposed to deal with bigotry in the art we love (Moffat you shithead). I’m more concerned about how we’re supposed to deal with bigotry in the relationships we love. Because here, among my old friends, acquaintances and multinational retail conglomerates, what was easy at uni is hard again.

When Dr Who gets sexist, I can turn it off, or put something on twitter and join or start a conversation about it. Neither of these are options when a friend tells me Aborigines “just don’t want to help themselves.” Not if I want to treat the relationship with any respect. So I tell them, “actually, I find that offensive, and here’s why.” But my honesty has produced a lot of conflict. My challenges to what offends me are nearly always rejected and met with offense. Somehow the onus is put onto me; I must miraculously not be offended because we’re friends, as if the relationship gives impunity for bigotry, and my failure to recognize this shows gross betrayal on my part. So if I am to continue to refuse to compromise myself, I must endanger the relationships I spent my life in Australia building. That is a confronting reality.

It’s upsetting on 3 levels:

1. My friends are bigoted.

2. They’re not interested in confronting their own bigotry.

3. They don’t seem to be affected by the fact that I’m offended.

The first problem can be forgiven, but not when combined with the second. Still, it is the third that bothers me most, and makes me the saddest. Bigotry I can be angry about; a lack of empathy is something I find much more terrifying. I find myself blaming John Howard, conservative PM while my friends and I were growing up, who taught Australia to ignore ‘political correctness’ as a delusion of the left aimed at obscuring the tough realities of life (multiculturalism doesn’t work, refugees are a threat, etc). But how did that turn into ignoring a friend’s pain? That’s not a political position. That’s being a bad friend. Yet sometimes I find myself essentially apologising for my own hurt, because if I don’t a friendship will die. As if the need to apologise wasn’t already a death knell.

So what do I do? I could end these friendships now. But then, I haven’t stopped watching Dr. Who. These are people I love, with whom I share long histories. Giving up these relationships means leaving myself alone with memories that should be laughed about together. It means cutting off any chance at making more. And maybe they’re right and I am being too pedantic. Maybe if I’d shut up and let their comments slide, those five or six gin and tonics would have led to a wonderful night out, not a heated argument ending in (my) tears and a long patch-up session (still sans apology on their behalf). Which brings me back to my fear of the supermarket.

I spent seventeen years resenting but also loving this town. A neurotic at heart, I’ve focused my terror on symbolic old Woolworths, but really I’m scared of visiting the entire place. Because I know that at any moment I could be put into a situation that completely alienates me from my childhood home. One wolf-whistle, one bum-pinch, one old acquaintance who insists on asking me not how university is going but whether or not I have a boyfriend, or who manages within a three minute chat to tell me they’re uncomfortable with the Korean immigrant standing further down the aisle, and I’ll have to face a choice: me, uncompromised, or me and Woolworths, me and this old town. It’s one thing for my old friends to call me intolerant when I protest their racism, another altogether for one of those less close locals to tell me to fuck off.

Anywhere else in the world (I hope) I would proudly shout my anger when facing bigotry, but here I’m nervous. I can’t let go of that sad feeling that I want to be accepted here, in this first home of mine. I’m scared that if I am honest with my friends and old community, they’ll only meet me with disapproval and disgust. I’m worried they’ll disappoint me, or I’ll disappoint myself; either way I’ll end up lonely, freaking out by the lemons again. And so, finally, I just don’t want to talk to people. I don’t want to go to the damned supermarket.

On a legal level, Cameron is right. There are, in this country, churches by law established: the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. Cameron’s highly historical approach to the topic bolsters the importance of this strain within his thinking. It is worth unraveling and exploring some of these issues.

The location of Christ Church, Oxford, is particularly apt. A few feet from the entrance of the Cathedral in the College founded by Cardinal Wolsey, an old door has the legend ‘No Peel’ permanently and squarely tacked in nails, a legacy of a protest against the 1829 decision of Oxford University’s MP, then Home Secretary Robert Peel to allow Catholics to vote in elections and sit in Parliament—Catholic Emancipation. This was one of the first crucial moments in dismantling the Anglican political establishment created in the mid-seventeenth century, following what was known as the Civil War, and is now better known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (historians’ latent recognition of Scotland and Ireland). For centuries, the narrative of Anglican-protected liberty ran that Catholicism was foreign, and Catholics owed their primary alleigance to a foreign power (the Pope). State-established Anglicanism prevented Papal dominance, and allowed a freedom of conscience not possible under the despotism of the Pope. This is the origin of the idea of Anglican liberty which Cameron now proposes: bigoted anti-Catholicism.

It is worth noting how some of the response to this speech has been about demographics and church attendance: including for example the BBC coverage on the day. This maps onto a wide academic debate about the nature of secularisation and society after the Second World War: for instance, Callum Brown’s notable The Death of Christian Britain. Measuring the enormous decline in religious participation is not new, and academics developed a now-classic model of secularisation in the 1960s, informed by developments in sociology and their own generation’s refusal to continue their parents’ religiosity (see Peter Berger). However, one important riposte to this idea of an inevitable decline of religion is that measuring church attendance does not measure belief. It measures social conformity, not individual faith. By advocating a return to a socially-conditioned Christianity, Cameron is (I’m sure unintentionally) pitching into awkward territory: how comfortable are we with measuring religion? Those who attend churches today do so out of individual commitment—not social expectation. Can we truly say that our society is ‘less’ religious than previous ones?

The discussion of demographics and society is important. However, it dominates things: scholars of secularisation now try to understand who the ‘nones’ are: those who list ‘none’ on the religious questions on the census. Many religious leaders use the arguments of sociologist Robert Putnam and claim that the problem is not with religion, but civil society more generally: people don’t go to church, but they also don’t go to any other group activities and public life in the internet age is utterly different to that a few decades ago.

In both its historical and social elements Cameron’s thinking is not new. It is a diffused vestige of a long-standing British prejudice. His version is not, to my mind, bigoted. There are wonderful, inclusive strains of Christianity, and Christ Church, where I myself have often worshipped, is a Cathedral staffed by eminent academic theologians who are more conscious than most of the nuances of Christian theology. And this is something Cameron missed. In a 4000 word speech, he spoke entirely of one Christianity.

I am hugely uncomfortable with the idea that Christianity alone can provide society’s missing ethics, not because this claim automatically elevates Christianity beyond other faiths (he does, in fact, confront this), but because it is patronising to present the idea of one simple Christianity. It ignores or dismisses the complexity and nuance of Christian theology, the vibrancy of Christian debates. In the speech, Cameron argued Christianity provided ‘values and morals we should actively stand up and defend’ as ‘[t]he alternative of moral neutrality should not be an option.’ Whilst it might be obsequious to paraphrase my boss, I think in this case the point is relevant: David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, has argued that secularity is not neutral, and is not experienced as neutral by people of faith. Rather, he believes that the world is complexly secular and religious (a point I find compelling, certainly). Yet Cameron’s binary seems to be ineffective moral neutrality vs. robust Christianised moralism, which sounds rather Victorian, really.

It also ignores how the history of Christianity is a history of debate: in essence, all the great clashes of Christian history, from the Council of Nicea in 326 A.D. (which resolved debates on the nature of Jesus) through the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (where genuine theological debate was a motor of comprehensive social change) to a return to the same debates—this time looking for consensus—in the late ‘90s Cathlolic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Nature of Justification have revolved around ideas. Christianity is a religion dedicated to right-thought, to orthodoxy, to thinking. Judaism, in contrast, manifests its theology in law, in practice, in action: it is an orthopraxic religion. Cameron has marginalised an amazing legacy of debate.

This speech comes at a time when managerial politics is dominant. We mostly care about credit ratings, and the essence of politics is not any sort of comprehensive vision for society, but technocracy. This is the ultimate death of politics. If we do look to Christianity for the restitution of social ills, let us look to its messiness, its debates, its awkwardness: not a smooth, unproblematic assumption that all religions say the same thing, and that message will be positive. Let us, instead, work towards well-informed, intelligent, rigorous disagreement. That, honestly, is truly Christian.

James Golden is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University

Adam Ramsay, you are wrong about samba and this is why:

Actually first, before we inspect your analysis, lets clear up one thing. If, when you hear the bass of the big samba drums in the street, it doesn’t make you want to run towards the music, join the crowd and jump up and down and move your body, I can’t make you. You either feel it or you don’t. And is you describe samba as “cheering”, my guess is that you don’t.

But let’s get into the politics now. Regardless of whether you like the music or not. I’d like to tackle the recurring theme of “Britishness” which permeates your sentiment filled argument. Here we go.

Assumption number one: Everyone who goes on demonstrations “gets slightly embarrassed” about being on a demonstration and this has something to do with being British which you imply is natural to one’s Britishness. I do not know anyone who finds demonstrating embarrassing. They must be out there, and apparently you are one of them. I find this so fascinating, that I’m coming up to Oxford for a pint with you so I can get into the social psychology of that statement. In my experience, people may feel emancipated, bored, worthy, helpless, empowered, belonging, tribal and all sorts of other things by demonstrating, but I’ve not come across the People’s Front of Embarrassed Citizens cos we’re British yet, maybe it’s because I’m too busy playing samba, or maybe it is because they don’t exist. Or that there are few of them. Or at least fewer than you think. And I think they’re embarrassment has little to do with being British, and more to do with their life experience.

Assumption number two: The “dressing up” we do is some kind of quintessentially British Monty Pythonesque cum Carry on Occupying affliction to hide this apparent embarrassment of demonstrating/being in a public space. Like we wake up in the morning and think I’m going to a demo, I better hide my true self behind my strippy socks. Adam, it’s not that you don’t like “dressing up” at demos, you just don’t like “dressing up” on a day-to-day basis. There are three issues here. One you assume that since people are dressed a certain way that they are 1) dressed wildly out of the ordinary, normal, “British” etc. I am dressed today quite similarly to how I would dress at most samba gigs and demos. And yes I work in an office. 2) Why are your staple baggy chinos and checked shirt look, or wearing suits on a daily basis any less of a costume than what some of us wear? 3) That people wearing things that you don’t wear is alienating to other people. The logical argument stemming from this is that we should all wear exactly the same to make sure that they don’t judge us by how we look. This brings me onto 4) Rule number one of progressive politics – never ever judge people by how they look. We all do it and make assumptions about those people, and activists are just as bad as other groups. The uniform makes us feel secure, I know. But judging by what you see is wrong. That is what you are doing. So at least recognise that’s what you’re doing and start apologising now. In that very British way please.<

Assumption three: Samba is not British. Our activisty street demo style samba is as Brazilian as Chicken Tikka Masala is Indian. Ie it is not. Or it is it kind of sounds and smells “not from round here” (we’ll deal with THAT in the next section) – but there is definitely some time and space fusion going on. And a back story. Our samba has a back story. I’m not going to go into it. But I can assure you that Rhythms of Resistance and Barking Bateria’s samba would make the Brazilian crisp white trousered samba purists cringe. That’s if they even recognise it as samba. I don’t like purists. It’s the racism of art. And anyway, over the years we’ve created bits of song to the rhythm of the beat so that new people can remember the rhythm that go “Doing the Lambeth Walk” and “You’ve got custard in your underpants”. Custard is pretty British. It’s definitely British by your criteria. Lambeth is pretty London. Lager features in one song we do. Point being if you think we’re all practicing our Portuguese and polishing our Carnaval costumes and sipping caperinias at rehearsal, you’ve got another one coming mate.

Assumption number four: Britishness is definable, exclusionary and exclusive. It includes things like Dubstep and Morris Dancing but not samba. This is underlies everything you’ve said. I’m quite shocked. Not that this view exists, but that you hold this view, because I thought I had at least a vague understanding of your politics from working with you. I’ll go back to the purist thing. Your argument is borderline nationalist in the worst sense. Just because you threw rap in there doesn’t make your argument any less conservative and judgemental. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, because you’re a nice guy, by suggesting that you are confusing your dislike for the sound with your dislike for the participation of those people and that action making the sound, and their fundamental right to not have to explain their origins or authenticity before participating in collective public action. Just as your Perth school band was real, so is this. Welcome to London, Adam. We don’t all drink tea, like queuing and saying sorry for no reason. There is of course a stereotype (which the tourist industry relies on) and we’re here to break it. I’ve got a “funny” accent. Guess what it’s a “not from round here” accent. “Not from round here” or “not authentically British” is just another way of saying, something about you/what you do/how you look makes me uncomfortable so I am going to alienate you by claiming ownership over a space/time/event/word. Isn’t that a major part of what we are fighting against?

Ok, so we’ve dealt with the Britishness issue – lets get into the politics of music. One thing that seems to pain you is the fact that you don’t think any of us really listen to samba, so why should we tolerate it at demos. Weird argument. For two reasons. One I haven’t gone through the playlists/CDs/tape decks of everyone I’ve ever played samba with but I’m pretty sure some will have some sort of samba, but most wont. Regardless how many, yes Adam there are people out there who listen to samba and play some form of it too. Secondly, the whole point of our brand of samba is that it works best in certain settings, i.e the street/warehouses/fields etc rather than amplified through your ear phones. Do I have to commit to enjoying certain sounds at all times of day, everywhere in all contexts? I’m pretty sure I don’t have any electronic music on my player, but I sure like a good psychedelic trance party. Sometimes the birds sing and I think, ah, that’s lovely, other times I’m indifferent. Sometimes I get into 1980s white male punk band sounds and sometimes I can’t stand it. Surely that’s ok, acceptable and, dare I say it, normal?

One more thing on the politics of samba and carnival as resistance. There is a long tradition of this around the world. I wont go into it all here. But there are also tactical reasons why having a big band of people bashing big drums has been very useful in demonstrations and public actions. And music is important. The spirit of Tahrir and countless successful movements were held together by music keeping the spirit up and the steadfastness strong. It may not be to your taste sometimes, but you cant deny the role it has played and continues to play.

Lastly – the culture of our samba collectives. I will only speak of those in London, that I know well. This is important. Unlike your definition of Britishness, we are all inclusive. Way more inclusive than many political groups I’ve come across. Anyone or everyone can join my band. Some are very musical, some borderline tone deaf. Some have been playing for 13 years, for some it’s their first week. Some have been around for ages, some come and go. It’s transient and that works fine. If you go, you can always come back. And we’ve got as our post-Thatcher class obsessed society would say, people who are working class, upper class, underclass, middle class. We’ve got 80 year old and 8 year olds. We’ve got the mums and daughters, the electricians, the unemployed, the disabled, the teachers, the students, the uni lecturers the alcoholics, the teetotallers, the hyperactive, the shy, the quiet, and the downright mad.

And that is exactly it. We are a collection of different people and we are all being ourselves. You are obviously concerned about people being authentic and true to their selves and I’ve never seen a less oppressive, less controlled more free space than the one that samba creates for people to express themselves.

Which brings me onto another point. Not everyone has the background, education, training, or simply the will or the want to express their politics, or their anger through writing or talking. Street samba allows a lot of people who don’t belong to a distinct, neat, well trained and culturally self reinforced political grouping (by exclusion or choice) to be part of something bigger, to be counted to join in. To me that is very very very important. I want to live in a society which accepts all sorts into the mix. Where people feel they have an entitlement over public space, and where they can bring themselves into that inclusive space. Surely that is that is what is most commendable and fantastic thing about the Occupy movement is that inclusiveness. It’s not just about the demands, it’s about the space and the voice.

And finally, a personal point. As a mixed race Egyptian, Turkish, Irish, English, Celtic, Anglo, Arab (you get the point) woman, when I moved to the UK in 2002, I took solace in the infusion of smells, colours and sounds of the mish mash that is London. I felt at home. Because not everyone was playing, singing sounding the same, which would have been alienating for someone like me. I’m really happy that I’m exposed to cultural elements, that yes may have been (shock, horror!) influenced by other cultures. I really like to move my body. Nature or nurture is arguable, but samba makes me groove and makes me happy, and crucially it makes other people happy when I play it with other people. Also, “the British” are, according to the stereotype, not known for their warmth. But I have never found a more loving, welcoming, generous, accepting, non judgemental and fun bunch of people as I have through samba in London. That’s why I keep coming back for more. And so do many others!

And the music may not move you, but it moves a hell of a lot of people on the street. It fills the space and people feel they own the space, which they should. That is the first step to activism. People should feel a sense of collective entitlement of public space and the urge to reclaim it is healthy. And sometimes that comes through the power of music, rather than words. We also don’t take ourselves too seriously. And we like to party. We like that freedom. We reject pointless rules telling us where, why and how. And so do many others.

I have a confession. I don’t like samba. OK, that’s not quite true. I often enjoy it. It’s cheering. But I have a political objection.

But that’s probably not where I should start. Perhaps more to the point, I don’t like dressing up on protests. If I am going on a demo then I am putting my body in a place in order to say that I, Adam Ramsay, believe this. Because it will make my life better, or because that will make worse the lives of the people I love, or of people who I have never met, but about whom I still care. I am not anonymous. I am not a clown. I am me. Because that’s the most I can be.

And, whilst sometimes for a photo op it can easier to get coverage if we are dressed up, I prefer not to. Because I think people are more likely to identify with us if we are authentically ourselves. They are more likely to take us seriously. What is the point in demonstrating that fictional characters are against something?

Of course, I understand why we dress up. Every time I go on a demonstration, I get a little embarrassed. I’m British. We are raised to queue, drink tea, and be cynical: the cultural echo of our war traumatised grandparents and of years of imperial drilling still haunts us down the generations. We don’t express emotion in public. And so we combat our awkwardness by copying the main traditions in which we are allowed to be raucous – those of the theatre, and the circus. We step out of ourselves, and pretend to be someone else. Because that someone else can be liberated from the shackles of Britishness.

But in pretending to be someone else, we take away what is most profound about protest. That we are real people, not fictitious representations. And we are there because we care.

And that authenticity often seems to be missing from British demonstrations. And this is why I don’t like samba. Do any of us listen to Samba music other than at protests? What do we really listen to? Why don’t we represent ourselves at protests as we truly are? Why isn’t the music we listen to from our culture? Now, when I say ‘our culture’, I don’t mean Morris Dancing – unless you genuinely do it. I mean whatever it is that you and I listen to and do in the rest of our lives – whether that’s Rap or Rachmaninov.

In my generation (I’m 26) many of us haven’t grown up with a domestic protest culture. And it is always hard to know what to do when demonstrating – other than standing in, or walking through, a space, there isn’t really anything to do. And so we learn from others, and we mimic. We don’t chant that we are ‘anti-capitalist’. We chant ‘a-anti-anti-capitalista’. Because that’s what the Spanish speakers do. And Latin America has the best socialists, and Spain the best anarchists, so let’s copy them.

If we sing when we march, we sing Bella Ciao – a song about Italian struggles. Which is a lovely song, and so we should sing it. But I’ve never heard a British demonstration sing the song of the Suffragettes – based on a poem written by an early anarchist to protest against the rise of industrial capitalism – “Jerusalem”. And so it has been co-opted by conservatives as a nationalist song. I have rarely heard Scottish demonstrators sing Robert Burns’ early socialist anthem ‘a man’s a man’. Nor have I heard UK hip-hop, or Welsh male choirs, or dubstep.

Of course, mimicking can be good. As one prominent activist put it recently, the occupation of public spaces is a meme that is going feral. In itself, there is not a particular reason to go for this form of protest over any other (though it does hark back to an Irish tradition of protesting against one who has wronged you by sitting outside their house). But at a time when millions around the world are livid, but no one knew what do do, having something simple and repeatable – go and camp together in a public space – was crucial. And the mimicry has been extraordinarily powerful.

But when we copy the best bits of what others around the world are doing, let’s copy not by pretending to be them, but by being ourselves – a wonderfully multi-cultural, multi-linguistic group of people. And yes, let’s sing the songs of Italian Partisans, and use the chants of Latin America’s Bolivarian socialists. But let’s also teach them about who we are, about our many different cultural backgrounds, about the music our parents and our grandparents listened to, and the music we listen to today. And let’s remember that our cultures too – all of them – have proud histories of struggle.

The first demonstration I ever went on, I was playing in a band. It was my school pipe band – I was a snare drummer. We led a march through Perth against the closure of the local Accident and Emergency Unit. No one could ‘Other’ us. No one could define us as ‘abstract protesters’. We were clearly real – we were the local school band. And perhaps when we protest, we should be who we are – don’t let them put us in that abstract box ‘protester’. Come as us. Because that’s the best we can be. Because that’s honest. Because we are all rooted in communities, and it is for them that we stand up, and let’s make sure that the world understands that.

That prejudice appears to be shared by the authorities seeking to evict the travellers from Dale Farm.

There’s good reason for this prejudice being so profound. Owen Jones writes at length in his excellent book Chavs about how class became a legitimate field for prejudice over the 30 years as society and the economy became organised around consumption rather than community or ability. Similarly prejudice against travellers has profoundly economic roots.

Our economy is based around the exchange of work for wages. Rather than in agrarian societies where people work to directly produce their own food or in a barter economy where people swap goods and services for food almost everyone works to earn money that then allows them to pay for food, shelter and other necessities.

In a wage economy, where workers have to exchange their labour for money there is inherent conflict between those who pay wages and those who work. Everyone wants more money in return for their work while employers will want to pay less. A number of factors determine how much is paid for particular work. These factors include the availability of qualified labour (the more people who can do a job, the lower the wage for it will generally be) and the availability of money to pay for work (where there is less money available, less work will be offered).

One of the strategies pursued by organised employers is to create a supply of unemployed or underemployed workers so that wage levels will be driven down. If there are 20 people who can do a job and only 10 places, the employer is able to make the 20 people compete with each other to do the job for less money. On the other hand if there are 5 people who can do the job and 10 jobs needing done the workers can ask for more money to do the job.

Travelling people throw this equation out of balance. By travelling they make it much more difficult for employers to bargain down wages. It’s only sensible to move from somewhere where you will be played off against other workers so your labour is worth less. That’s why so many early human societies were transhumanant (moving to where the food or work was). So employers seek to introduce social sanctions on travellers.

By ensuring that workers are not able to move, the competition for work becomes greater and the value of wages is reduced. Where state boundaries cannot prevent the movement of workers, the state and the organs that influence our culture are pressed into use. One of the reasons why the Thatcher government was so keen to sell council houses was to make it harder for workers to move. Selling one house to move is much more difficult and expensive than terminating a lease, particularly if you wish to buy another house. The explosion in home ownership is part of the reason why Britain’s workforce has become much less mobile since the 1980s.

The bureaucratic apparatus of the state has failed travellers in Britain at almost every turn. Education authorities fail to put in place appropriate measures to serve traveller children, health services are rarely as accessible for travellers as they are to even the most excluded settled people and local authorities seek to prevent travellers from using traditional sites.

And that’s before you get to the employer controlled media’s portrayal of travellers…

All of the massive firepower of the state and media are used to undermine travelling as an acceptable way of life. This has led to the demonization of travellers, open persecution by bigoted politicians and the marginalisation of travellers by the state. The aim of all this is to prevent travelling becoming an acceptable way to find work. It feeds off the racist controls placed on immigration and the move to mass home ownership to ensure that wages are depressed through an end to the movement of workers.

This media attack on travellers goes as far as to claim that people who move to sell their labour actually damage the interests of other workers. The argument goes that by creating more competition for jobs in one place mobile workers reduce wage levels there. But that is a product of employers success in ensuring that most workers can’t move to where there are most jobs and higher wage levels. The movement of workers is much more of a threat to employers than it is to other workers.

The eviction at Dale Farm is just the latest act in a long and disgraceful history of oppression for travellers. A history of opression recognised by Rabbis who have spoken out against the eviction at Dale Farm as part of a shared Romany-Jewish history of victimisation. It stands as a warning to workers everywhere that if they seek to move to where their labour is most valuable they will be the victims of state oppression and media vilification. We must stand in solidarity with travellers both because of their long history of oppression and their resistance to control by labour markets.

Some people may find this hard to believe. Russell Kane’s stand-up used to be gentle, thoughtful, even funny. But with his new image seems to have come a new, misogynistic persona. Put him away and get the old Russell back, please.

I found this routine pretty disgusting in its casual use of misogynistic attitudes, and makes light of women being harassed, followed home and threatened. Shouting ‘get in the van!’ or ‘chase her! She’s got a limp!’ at a woman can’t be construed as anything other than making light of kidnap, stalking, rape, sexual abuse and harassment – all very real threats that women have to face every day. Russell Kane, a male stand-up comedian, thinks he has the right to joke about the experiences that have plagued mine and millions of other women’s lives, all in the name of a cheap laugh.

Some might say that because he is also mocking men, that the routine isn’t sexist. Of course it is sexist – against both men and women. Men are not feral creatures, only after a shag. They’re people. Women aren’t virgins or whores. They’re people.

The fact that because he’s been single for a while (either in his comedy persona or in reality), apparently makes Kane thinks it’s okay to create humour out of horrific situations. He was mocking the weakest of the weak – rape victims, women with physical disabilities, people who are emotionally broken – and this makes him no better than people like Jeremy Clarkson or Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown. He is a bully. I hope women know better than to go out with him. I’ve been out with men like him before – they grind your self-esteem down so that you’ll stay with them. They’re pathetic misogynists. Find someone who wants you for you, who treats you with respect, and who is a big enough person to tell when they’ve made a mistake.

I already though Russell Kane was a bully, even before I took to Twitter to express my outrage.

I tweeted, ‘Just watched some pretty disgusting stand up from Russell Kane. Apparently if you don’t want to be perved on, don’t wear makeup… and we should feel sorry for ‘rapey’ men who harass insecure women… Kidnap, rape, all hilarious subjects obviously…’

I then tweeted Kane with my concerns, thinking that perhaps he might apologise and think more about how his material affects people. I said, ‘I saw you live two years ago. I was a fan. Then I watched your routine on Edinburgh Comedy Fest Live. That was disgusting… Even as a joke, telling women that if they wear makeup they deserve to get perved on is sick… As is making an audience feel sorry for ‘desperate, rapey gits’. Rape and sexual harassment are disgusting… Did you think that up to 1 in 4 women watching this show are rape survivors/victims? How do you think you make us feel?’

His response? To call me a ‘thick cunt’, a ‘reactionary weak fuck’, ‘INSANE’, a ‘tiny person’ and, perhaps the most insulting, he said that I ‘fellate the right and kowtow to it.’

Great response – call a woman feminist who criticises your comedy, fairly politely, a thick cunt, because that’s not misogynistic. Make a joke about blowjobs, because that’ll improve your feminist credentials!

Perhaps most laughably of all, he said to me, ‘Do you understand misogyny?’ and claimed his set was ‘creatively feminist’. If creatively feminist means ‘massively sexist’ then I suppose it was creatively feminist. And how dare he, as a powerful white man, ask a woman who’s been taking shit from boys and men for her whole life, if she understands misogyny.

Yes, I understand misogyny. It sickens me. Russell Kane, on the other hand, uses it to bully, to reinforce stereotypes, to ‘kowtow’ (a word he likes) to rape culture and to have a good laugh at rape victims’ expense.

I want him to donate his fee to Edinburgh Women’s Rape and Sexual Assault Centre and to publicly apologise. Anything less is insulting.

After the riots across England recently we heard a lot of commentators from the left and the right talk about how the rioters had turned on their own communities. For the right this was evidence of the ‘mindelssness’ of their action; they couldn’t possibly be political because instead of making demands of government they were simply ‘terrorising’ their own communities. For the left this was evidence instead o their alienation; they had no way to make their voices heard and were lashing out undirectedly. And, of course, the unrest only happened in deprived communities, places where there was unemployment and where essential services were being cut. There were no riots in Chelsea or Knightsbirdge.

But both those narratives are too simplistic, too generalising, too eager to fit the story to their own conceptions. Because these rioters didn’t turn on their own communities. Community is about much more than a shared geography, it requires shared experience, shared culture, shared hopes and prospects.

Writing on Open Democracy last week Owen Hatherley remarked that where the riots occurred are not places of total poverty — London is not Paris, with its segregated and excluded banlieue — but places where wealth and poverty rub against one and other, where multiple communities exist simultaneously — often where the dominant, gentrified middle class are oblivious to the existence of anything else, detached from any sense of place and ignoring the poverty they help to perpetuate around them.

The vast majority of those charged following the riots are under 25, 90% of them unemployed. Are they really part of the same community as a middle aged small business owner? Do they share the same culture and face the same future? Are Footlocker and Ladbrokes really part of anyone’s community? Does Anyone feel pride in their local Currys or Tesco?

But Owen was wrong about one point. Edinburgh doesn’t wall off its poor in Muirhouse or Leith. Well, certainly not in Leith. Because Leith must surely be an archetypal example of the mix of wealth and poverty that Owen describes. A place that can boast the best restaurants in the city, and the red light district and scrapyards, gentrified, converted flats and unconverted 60s tower blocks, traditional pubs full of men who still work at the docks, and modern bars with designers who work on converted barges.

I love the contrasts in Leith, and love living here, but how do I find a sense of community amongst it all? I have no historical or family connection — in any recent past at least — I work 5 miles across the city at the university, most of my friends live in other areas and live much of my generation I seem to move flat at least once a year. In such circumstances it’s all to easy to disconnect, to find one or two pubs and cafes and shops you like and discount the rest, ignore your neighbours save for a passing nod in the stairwell because you’ll never have time to get to know them anyway and find community not in locality but work and politics.

Last week I visited the Fruitmarket Gallery for a detour by the comedian Josie Long in response to the latest collection of works by the American artist Ingrid Calame. It’s a brilliant exhibition that takes the most minute details of modern urbanity and reinvents them as works of abstract beauty. (Ingrid traces the patterns around us most of us ignore, the pebbles and scrapes and scuffs on a car park or factory floor, or the bottom of the LA river, and fills them with the most vibrant colour in pencil and oil and enamel.)

What struck me more than the artwork itself, however, was Josie’s commentary that accompanied it. What is best in Ingrid’s work is the way it forces us to re-examine the environment in which we live, to break out of the fixed routines we construct for ourselves and see our cities afresh. And, as Josie told us, it’s something we can, and should, take with us into our everyday experience.

Take a deliberate wrong turning on the way to work, go into the cafe you wrote off for no reason for lunch, go running in a part of town you don’t know and watch the city rush up to you unexpectedly before you can fit it into your pre-exisiting categories. Because it is only by violently forcing ourselves to confront our relation to our surroundings that we can begin to understand them and see outside of the structures we have created to enclose our existence. And by which we can start to interact across the different communities that overlay our localities.