I read with interest Lynn Barber's petulant attack on Vanessa Redgrave in The Observer last Sunday. In the guise of an interview, Barber gets to set Redgrave up on straw arguments about leftism, and then dismiss the responses she's provoked. "I would do almost anything not to hear her talk about politics. But politics seems to be her default setting - you can ask a question on almost any subject and she will soon veer off into the plight of the Chechens, the Bosnians, the Iraqis - so many people, so many plights, I lose track and occasionally wonder if she does, too." To Redgrave's credit she gamely plays along, at one point declaring "I like you!" to the cynical Barber, who is caught off-guard, so busy is she projecting her guilty conscience back onto the straw-ogre that is Redgrave, the leftist. "I find myself saying, to my own surprise, 'I like you, too!' But then she adds: 'And I don't quite believe you don't care about peasants in Kosovo.' Wrong again: she is wrong about everything. But perhaps that is part of her charm."

For Redgrave, part of her charm is being a Trotskyist, something she never hides. Being political is not a choice for her: it's a recognition of the reality of injustice. Check out her Oscar acceptance speech from 1977, in which she denounces Zionism, for an example of her courage:

My dear colleagues, I thank you very very much for this tribute to my work. I think that Jane Fonda and I have done the best work of our lives, and I salute you and I pay tribute to you, and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you have stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression. And I pledge to you that I will continue to fight against anti-Semitism and fascism. Thank you.

For her troubles, she was burned in effigy by Zionists outside.

Politics as reality - Vanessa Redgrave

But to Barber, politics only evinces discomfort. Caring about someone else, other than herself, is impossible.

'But,' I continue, 'you have to realise that there are selfish people like me who just don't care about the rest of the world.' She is genuinely shocked: 'You're not one of them! Are you one of them? I don't think so.' 'Yes I am,' I insist. 'I don't care what's happening in Kosovo, I really don't. I care a lot about what happens to my family and friends, so I'm not entirely selfish. But I sometimes think it's easier to worry about people on the other side of the world than to worry about people you know.' She is obviously hurt

It never occurs to her that Redgrave might have considered how her fate is linked to Kosovan peasants; that Redgrave has an analysis of the world as a system that implicates everyone from actors, to generals, to horse-blinkered apologists for injustice, in a global battle for rule of world-historical significance. Hell, it never occurs to her that using an interview with someone famous to expound her own views is duplicitous - that an interview with Vanessa Redgrave is about Vanessa Redgrave, not a platform for Barber's own denunciations.

Which include everything from Redgrave's foray into electoral politics ("she and Corin set up the Peace and Progress Party just last year, to fight three seats in the General Election - predictably they lost their deposit.") to a rehashing of Redgrave's involvement with Gerry Healey, cult-leader of the Workers Revolutionary Party which imploded when allegations of Healey's sexual abuse came to light. Yes, Healey was crazy; yes, members actually did have a meeting to marvel at Trotsky's death-mask. (It's true, I heard this from an ex-WRPer myself.) But Healey didn't create Marxism any more than Redgrave did; and Marxism didn't create injustice, that's left up to the Bushes, Blairs and faceless corporate peaons of this world. With this association, Barber dismisses every critique Redgrave has:

She writes unrepentantly in her 1991 autobiography: 'I can truthfully say that I remain absolutely convinced of the necessity of Marxism and that not for a single day has my conviction been shaken. On the contrary, it has grown deeper with experience and the passing of time. That this should be so I ascribe not to my own resoluteness and determination - though I think I can show those qualities when the occasion demands - but to the training and education I received from the party I joined, and from the man who led it for almost all those years, Gerry Healy.'

And no, she does not think she was brainwashed by him.

The issue is no longer cults, or Healy, but social justice as a whole. This speaks more to Barber's talent for disassociation than Redgrave's own commitment.

This would be a sad indictment of atomization under capitalism, were this not part of public discourse, a journalist's attempt to inure the sad, alienated masses from the consequences of their oppression. Here are some pictures from Abu Ghraib. If you don't have an opinion about this, you're not selfish: you're a sociopath. Which, come to think of it, is the perfect personality profile for capitalism. Separate your actions from their consequences, locally and globally. Otherwise you might get a little depressed. Thank god "family and friends" take up so much of your time; thank god there's a new iPod to talk about.

Thank fuck for people like Vanessa Redgrave, who uses her fame and fortune to try and build a political alternative to capitalism, in the face of apathy, fear and denial.

Who's responsible
You fucking are
- Manic Street Preachers