style, no content correct, it is certainly not true that glamour equals fear. The film continually ers on the side of giving an impression of the Krays - showing snap- shots of their life rather than tell- ing the story. We are not shown what made the Krays into villians. We are shown them attending a fairly barbaric school, and in a very light hearted way doing national service; but such experiences did not turn thousands of others into ruthless murderers. In fact, much of the Krays' experience doing national ser- vice wasin military prison; they ended up serving their time as the last two prisoners in Tower Hill. The film also sanitises (al- though it does not glamourise) aspects of the Krays' lives. Their mother is portrayed as a caring woman struggling to bring up a family in the difficult conditions of World War Two, and not as the tyrannical person steeped in religious excesses which the biographies have presented. Similarly, Reggie's wife is strategy majority; not under the control of the workers FSLN campaigned against two marxist par- ties which had been in the front line of the struggles against Samoza: the Maoist MAP- sent shock-waves that eventually killed the Nicaraguan revolu- tion. ment: in Chile or Bolivia: in China or those defeats or we will repeat them. The
shown essentially as a weak willed person who could not take the real world and therefore killed herself, rather than a woman locked in her room by a jealous husband and bullied by an overbearing mother-in-law forcing her to go to church. Also crucially lacking is the way top society figjures such as David Bailey continually courted the twins. In the 1960s they were the people to be seen with, and many now aspiring to be pillars of respectability were so seen - but this fact is avoided. The film does not question what exactly the police were doing when the Krays were at play - or how much it cost to keep them look- ing the other way. Some of the acting is superb; Billie Whitlaw as the Krays' mother puts in an admirable per- formance. Bell and Berkhof as Jack the Hat and George Comell respectively (the two people the Krays were convicted of murder- ing) also play their parts if any- thing too well, creating loathsome figures which are un- deserving of any pity. One mem- liance and the convergence of patriotic anti-imperialist and anti- oligarchic forces'. This perspec- tive was based on the Stalinist cross-class of a "Democratic Dictatorship', rather than working class power. The FLN's perspective led failure. them to make a govemmental al- liance with the capitalist class, not an action front around limited proposals like Lenin's Anti Im- perialists United Front. As the Samoza regime fell in 1979 the FSLN and the capitalist 'National Patriotic Front' formed a joint ruling junta. After the revolution the junta nationalised some of the economy: not a and peasants; but keeping wages low. The ML and the Fourth International's LMR. It was only after the nationalisation of Standard Fruit the next year that the blockade started When tragedy befalls the workers' move- Nicaragua, we have to leam the lessons of
ber of the audience leaving com- mented ' Well they had to kill them, didn't they? The answer is obviously no. But it is unlikely that Ronnie and Reggie will be complaining about such a response being evoked, especially from a film that has already been so generous with its advance pay- ment for the rights. However, when not being car- ried along by the style of the film or the acting of others, the Kemps, who play the Krays, seem unconvincing. In one of the few scenes where real acting is called for - when Ronnie is trying to get Reggie to get his act together - they are both cumber- some and wooden. Despite all that is wrong, as a piece of mainstream entertain- ment the film is better than most. If nothing else it can be hoped that this film will shatter the illusions of those numerous hordes who, according to Fleet Street's finest, haunt the pubs of the East End saying 'If Ron and Reg were here now, things wouldn't be so bad". FSLN had state power, the Nicaraguan people did not. The FSL.N had a mistaken strategy of collaboration with its bitterest enemy - the capitalist class. The fatal mistake of the Nicaraguan revolution was that the FSLN and its supporters failed to break with the capitalists. And they were destroyed by their A new Nicaraguan revolution is needed. Nicaragua's workers and peasants must aban- don the pro-capitalist strategy of the FSLN. Instead they must look to the spotless banner of Trotskyism. Our solidarity is only worth more than words if we help build a Trotskyist party in Nicaragua today! Chrissie Brookes Manchester We welcome letters on any subject: but please keep them brief! Letters over 400 words will be cut. Send to Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 25, June 1990
Sloan's Square G'day Oxford! APPLICATIONS are now open for the Rupert Murdoch Chair in Language and Communications, following the Dirty Digger's £3m donation to Oxford University.
The handout brings this venerable dumping-ground for public school chinless wonders another step closer to the Thatcherite ideal of a university parodied in television's A Most Peculiar Practice. The new professorial chair will carry as much prestige as a Ron and Reg gie Kray Chair in Social Work, a Crippen Foundation of Women's Studies, or a Nicholas Ridley Institute of Ecology.
The day before the Wapping gift was announced, the Sun was stoutly defending itself in one of its exquisitely-written Editorials against censure from the Press Council for using the words "poof" and "poofters" to refer to gay men:
"The Council's chairman, Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, knows a lot about the law.
"But we know a great deal more about how ordinary people think, act and speak.
"Readers of The Sun KNOW and SPEAK and WRITE words like poof and poofter.
"What is good enough for them is good enough for us".
No doubt it will also be deemed good enough for students of the new Rupert Murdoch professor.
While we know the well-educated highly-paid and patronising journalists who produce The Sun speak and write such words, we surely need more evidence as to whether (and where) Sun readers write them.
No doubt Margaret Thatcher (who has herself given an undisclosed personal donation to Somerville, her old Oxford college) is delighted that these standards of literacy are to be SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 25, June 1990
COMMENTARY part of a 'core curriculum' for the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie in generations to come. Last resort: equal rights Bloomsbury District Health Authority has been finding it hard to recruit and even harder to retain staff to work in its hospitals: some departments' staff tumover is at burger-bar levels.
After everything else has been tried and failed, Bloomsbury bosses have now resorted to promoting equal opportunities policies, producing a
MR. PRESIDENT,
WHAT HAPPENED I
LIED.
TO 'NO NEW
TAXES"?
WD WE LEARNED FROM FORD THAT LIARS GET PARDONED, special newspaper to show us how right-on they are.
Seeking to reach sections of society other employers have not reached, Bloomsbury invite people with mental health problems to come in and work for the usual abysmal NHS pay rates.
We understand managers are scurrying round departments telling them to take down all those silly office postcards that proclaim 'You don't have to be mad to work here - but it helps".
Standard reaction One employer which has recruited extensively among people apparently suffering from severe personality disorders is London's Evening Standard, part of the Daily Mail group of publications, printed with a new type of ink and now known as the papers you stick in the bin, not in your pocket.
Standard editorials are generally written by a team of maladjusted Rottweilers, and are only a fraction more sophisticated in tone or argument than their counterparts in The Sun Says.
So for these newshounds the announcement that West Lambeth District Health Authority had closed another 120 hospital beds was more mouthwatering than a postperson's leg. The
BUT WE LEARNED FROM NIXON THAT PRESIDENTS LIE. AND WE LEARNED THANK YOU FROM REAGAN THAT MR. PRESIDENT. THE PUBLIC ISN'T PAYING -AND THAT ATTENTION ANYWAY. THE PRESS HAS
BECOME A BUNCH OF LAP DOGS response to the word Lambeth was instinctive and instantaneous, and a diatribe was fired off, berating 'loony' Lambeth council and its poll tax bills.
This did not go down too well with junior health minister Virginia Bottomley: not only is West Lambeth DHA completely autonomous of Lambeth council, with its cash limits fixed by the government, but its govemmentappointed chair is none other than John Gamett - Virginia's dad!
Later issues of the Standard appeared without the offending
editorial or any correction or apology. It in after all the paper that sticks to prejudice, not to the facts. Is it old bull? Amid all the furore over British beef came the distressing revels tion that barmy Bible bashing Agriculture Minister John Sel wyn Gummer got the way lie is by cating an entirely meat based diet.
For those susceptible to such arguments, Mr Gummerat tempted to show from Biblical references that fundamentalist Christians must also be fanatical camivores. Some fundamentalists disagree: well they would, wouldn't they? The doctrinal debate on this issue is only just getting under way, and could prove promising: apparently it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for it to escape Mr Gummer's carving knife after morning service.
All his religious outpourings have been insufficient to persuade the public of Mr Gummer's line that eating beef is safe: it can't be long before the postcard people have a sign for butcher's racks bearing the motto 'You don't have to be a mad cow to hang here, but it helps.
Meanwhile there has been too little attention to the worrying, if limited, epidemic of BSB - mad sattelite disease.
Symptoms include a compulsion to mount circular or square devices outside a sufferer's house, followed by bizarre ramblings by victims on such topics as American wrestling, Derek Jameson, the New Price is Right, or any number of long-ago deleted re-run shows from BBC or ITV.
The disease cripples intellect and kills motor neurones, leaving the victim increasingly confined to an armchair or settee, suffer ing agonies in attempting to tum off the television, and incapable of rational thought.
You don't have to be mad to watch it: but you soon will be if you do.
BY AN SONN Page 33
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