For Lefties too Stubborn to Quit
As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.
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I found this on the Socialist Democracy site. It is the only defence I have seen from a political point of view of working with Mick Wallace.
‘Mick Wallace has exploded the Irish left and split the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party argue that Wallace is a capitalist and a tax dodger. It is impossible to work with him and impossible to work with others who cooperate with him, a position the Socialist Workers Party largely share.
Mick Wallace is a capitalist who fiddled VAT tax returns (a common practice in the Irish building trade). He was bankrupted in the credit crunch and is a savage critic of the government. He supports the house-hold charge campaign and opposes the austerity.
Can socialists work with Mick? Why not? This is especially true in the household charge campaign, essentially a movement that itself stands for tax non-payment.
The moral outrage seems strange when we look at recent alliances in Britain. There was no difficulty with George Galloway. There was no difficulty with homophobic Muslims in the RESPECT alliance. The Socialist Party remained outside these alliances but was itself accused of accommodation with right-wing English nationalism. In Ireland there has been no savage break with the trade union leadership, including David Begg and Jack O’Connor, although they are joined with government and bosses in enforcing mass austerity. Massive scandals involving taxpayers money and SIPTU junkets go unremarked
And that is the issue. The problem is not with Wallace but with the SP and SWP. The Irish socialist movement has not broken from the union bureaucracy. Their main slogan, along with the British TUC, is a call for tax justice – a vacuous, moralistic bleat that calls on the rich to play fair while disguising collaboration with the bosses.
There have been many mass movements in Ireland. None have ever vetted their members – but then they weren’t focused on the Dail or the union bureaucracy.’
Jesus that is drivel
It’s the kind of thing you can only write if you know that no-one is going to pass any heed on it. With great lack of power comes great lack of responsibility.
Though maybe everyone’s expended too much energy on Wallace as it is. There are seventy FG TDs who are considerably more obonoxious and who wield greater power to do damage.
I suppose what gets people’s goat is being told not just that black is white but that they’re deficient for not seeing this. The SF cosying up to Sean Quinn is similar.
Not only if you know that “no-one is going to pass any heed on it”, but if you have no real interest in the wellbeing of the campaigns you are writing about and no particular in the truth.
“…no particular interest in…”
Well said. If Wallace or anyone else is prepared to support the campaign he should be welcome. The moral policemen of the left are on the road to nowhere.
Link to the piece here:
http://socialistdemocracy.org/Bulletins/SDBulletinOct2012TheWallaceTest.html
How much influence does SD have? About six people,
most of them working in the North, who put
out the occasional pamphlet?
Wee John McAnulty, who I respect, the man who during the hunger strikes 1981, along with Fergus, stood for the prisoners in Belfast City Council, and that took balls. SD are the current PD? But influence among the class well they are part of ULA? They seem to be heralding a Wallace Nua era and enjoying a notion of a split SP. Looks sadly like a sectarian statement. An ortthodox Trot group oppose other Trots. Whither the working class? Of course I could be completely wrong.
Progressive Film Club
The Food and Water Show
The global struggle for food and Water.
A series of films dealing with the struggle for and around food and water. Two essential and very basic human needs.
Saturday 27th October
The New Theatre.
43 East Essex St,
Temple Bar,
Dublin 2
First film 12-30pm. Full list of films @http://www.progressivefilmclub.ie/
Excellent idea. If I was in Dublin I’d go.
ULA apology to KKE & SYRIZA over inappropriate use of image in ULA poster advertising talk by SYRIZA MP is Dublin last week:
” Clarification from ULA about poster for public meeting featuring Yiannis Stathas MP (Syriza) 23 October 2012
The United Left Alliance would like to unreservedly apologise to our comrades in Syriza and the KKE for the offence and confusion caused by the use of a doctored photo of a KKE protest on posters advertising a public meeting with Syriza MP Yiannis Stathas speaking on 19 October in Dublin. This utilisation of a doctored photo was a serious mistake that has understandably caused confusion and offence.
The ULA would like to clarify that this mistake is the responsibility of the ULA solely. Neither Yiannis Stathas nor any other members of Syriza saw the poster before the meeting took place.
In recognising this mistake, the ULA commits to ensure that such a mistake does not happen again. The ULA underlines its solidarity with the struggles of Greek working people against the savage austerity being imposed by the Troika and the Greek government.
“
http://www.left.gr/article.php?id=10781
Unfortunate incident.
KKE statement on the misrepresentation of SYRIZA’s political position by the use of the well known image:
http://inter.kke.gr/News/news2012/2012-10-24-lathroxireia-syriza
I was only posting that Wallace article!
Re Sean Quinn, what some are missing is not just that some SF people are pro-Quinn, but that Quinn himself would be perceived as pro-SF.
I know you were RH, thanks for doing that. It was interesting to read.
I also know that the Quinns are close to SF but that’s hardly much of an excuse for the party really. It’s just the old ‘it’s different when it’s one of your own gang’ which bedevils Irish politics and is probably at the root of the pro-Wallace argument as well as most of the political corruption over the past few decades. One person’s commendable loyalty is another’s blatant cronyism.
Is anyone else uneasy about the Children’s Referendum? It’s not the referendum itself, which is all to the good and an improvement on current arrangements. No, what is making me uneasy is the referendum is being conducted at a time when the austerity policies being enforced on this society will worsen, with varying degrees of intensity, both the life experience of many of today’s children and, coupled with the race to the bottom in working conditions and pay, will ensure that when these children do grow up and enter the workplace, they’ll do so under possibly quite savage terms and conditions.
It’s been discussed here before but there is a clear and conscious effort to adopt contradictory positions by the government political parties and the children’s NGO sector in this referendum. On the one hand, all are urging a ‘Yes’ and no-one would argue with them on that – that’s not really a ‘political’ question. Greater constitutional protection for children is urgently required. But, and it’s a significant but, they are all, simultaneously, committed to a policy agenda that they must know will impact dramatically on children. The children’s NGO’s recent, disgraceful, intervention on cutting child benefit, framed as a ‘fairer’ two tier system, belies a willingness to line up with the government on the austerity agenda that will compromise child welfare to a very significant, and damaging degree.
We’re a society where tens of thousands of children are schooled in pre-fabs in large classes; where we’re depriving children with special needs the assistance they require (on a phased basis but the intention is clear to run down SNA provision); where thousands more a schooled in buildings little better than glorified cattle sheds; where the wages and salaries of hundreds of thosands of parents are under incessant attack and cutting, negatively impacting on children’s life experience; where hundreds of thousands of families are facing the prospect of not being able to provide the little luxuries and treats that enhance children’s lives and where the basics (food and clothing etc) are now under threat; where what little direct transfers for children are under unrelenting attack with the intention, eventually, to remove them altogether; and, where tens of thousands of parents are being condemned to artificially maintained high levels of un- and under-employment so as satisfy ‘the market’. These are just some of the many problems impacting on children’s lives. All the while the government, NGO sector and media commetators are clappings themselves in the back over the referendum which will, undoubtedly, improve the constitutional and legal position of children, but will do nothing to shield children from the tsunami of austerity measures that are still to come.
CMK: An absolutely fantastic post, thank you, it encapsulates all that is being glossed over in Irish life today. I suppose what they are about,the government, NGOs & media, call it optics.
That’s why blogs, social media, left wing magazines/newspapers are so vital. The kinds of obvious questions about the co-ordination between government, media and NGOs, exemplified by the child benefit intervention, are completely ignored by the mainstream media. With the result that many people, presented with a carefully packaged case for means testing child benefit, from which they themselves could suffer from, end up nodding and agreeing. The other side to the means testing agenda: the costs of the means test, criteria etc, are not touched upon in any serious way.
CMK, can we post that up as a proper post? It’s excellent.
WbS. No problem. Cheers.
Eamonn. Your Dad was on the right track when it came to use of the term ‘most vulnerable’. I loath it as it basically licences attacks on those not classed as ‘vulnerable’ and it is something used frequently by Labour, ICTU and sundry NGOs. There’s.the insidious outcome that by wanting to protect the ‘most vulnerable’ the protections they are afforded become a focus of resentment for those hard pressed but not yet ‘vulnerable’ thereby dividing and ruling and complicating efforts at building solidarity. Eliminating ‘vulnerability’ would make a better goal than just ‘protecting’ the ‘most vulnerable’.
All true CMK. The capturing of the civil society groups to the agenda of liberal politics and liberal economics is significant. They know who pays their bills, whether through government grants or funds raised from the corporations and affluent individuals who prefer charity to taxes, and are singing the tune required of them. The separation of the real politics of people’s lives from the veneer of politics that plays out in the corridors of the political and chattering classes is all part of the project to de-politicise society. While the proposed change to the constitution is to be welcomed, the political cynicism which accompanies it is shameful.
Yes, good point CMK and LATC too. The civil society groups with their statement on the helpfulness of a means tested childrens allowance showed remarkable innocence.
There’s no better way of having child benefit reduced and marginalised in the long term than changing it from a universal benefit to one availed of by those who generally get the sharp end of the stick whenever cutbacks are made by this government. And it was pretty dispiriting to see the organisations fall for the most basic and transparent divide and conquer tactic imaginable. I’ve contributed a few bob to some of the groups involved in the past and can’t find it in me to do it again given that those statements will probably have the effect, if they have any at all, of making life harder for low paid workers.
I don’t really believe that there was much innocent about it. It was a calculated argument for cuts to universal benefits as a way of paying for help for the “most vulnerable”(tm), channeled through quango bureaucracies (or “Irish civil society” as they like to call themselves)..
It’s interesting how often “bureaucracy” crops up as a negative in the statements of the ultra-Left. In the real world what is the viable alternative to the organisational function that is fulfilled by a bureaucracy?
It’s interesting how often “ultra-left” crops up as a negative in the statements of Stalinists.
The key part of my description of “Irish civil society” was “quango”, by the way. Most Irish charities, NGOs, community schemes etc, are essentially outsourced sections of the state. They are also tend strongly to be both both “bureaucracies” in the neutral, organisational, sense and bureaucratic in the negative, undemocratic, sense.
So answer the question. Regardless of whether services are provided by public service or out-sourced to the chartity sector, what is the alternative organisational form that could fulfill those functions? Boilerplate rhetorical condemnation of “bureaucracies” doesn’t add much to the discussion.
I don’t think you read my response their LATC.
Once more: The key part of my description of “Irish civil society” was that it is essentially made up of quangos. That they are also bureaucracies is true in both the neutral and pejorative senses of the term, but that is very much secondary. Even if they were not quangos, I would still object to the rather extremely undemocratic way in which Irish (qua)ngos organise themselves, and indeed it’s important to remember how they organise when you hear the usual guff about the democratising influence of “civil society”, but in terms of their social role, it’s their function as outsourced wings of the state that is more interesting and more significant.
Perhaps you’d care to discuss the content of my description rather than engaging in this rather clumsy nit-picking?
You don’t think I read your comment? Bully for you.
I’m not interested in discussing the substance of your initial comment because I agree with the substantial point you’re making. However, the language you used in making the point, using the crutch of condemning “bureaucracies” is what caught my attention. It is ritualistic language. Predictable. Divorced from reality.
Eamon, I think the term ‘innocence’ is an unnecessarily charitable interpretation of the children’s NGOs on the child benefit/means testing debate. I’d say it was a ‘dig-out’ from Fergus Finlay (ex Labour advisor and waxwork Machiavelli) and the Labour Party in government scrambling around for some way to market a cut in child benefit and not suffer John Bruton’s fate with the VAT increase on children’s shoes (how innocent those times were compared with the current Heavy Gang in cabinet).
Yes, I don’t think you read my response. Either that or you were being deliberately evasive.
There’s nothing ritualistic about mentioning the bureaucratic nature of the Irish (qua)ngo sector. They are almost entirely undemocratic institutions, yet they regularly adopt the language of democratisation. It is actually important to understand the dichotomy between “civil society” rhetoric and quango bureaucracy reality, both in terms of the way in which the rhetoric masks the real relationship that sector has with the state and in terms of the democratic claims it makes.
There’s nothing “divorced from reality” here. I am however amused to see the usual Stalinist defensiveness about the “ultra left” and “bureaucracies” emerge even when, it seems, you actually agree with the basic point being made.
LATC, I suppose this exemplifies the difference between liberalism and marxism (to put it very crudely but hopefully the point is clear). The liberals are overjoyed because the ‘rules’ are being updated but not attention to the material circumstances of children is being paid. While from a marxist perspective while the ‘rules’ are, of course, important without concomitant focus on improving material circumstances they’re more or less useless.
CMK, I agree with the point you’re making, and I agreed with it when Mark P made it using his somewhat roundabout and ritualistic phraseology. I’ll drop the debate over language at this point, it’s going nowhere.
On the subject of bureaucracy, there’s a very convincing dismissal of the ultra-Left argument against bureaucracy in Alec Nove’s “The Economics of Feasible Socialism” in which he agrues that bureaucracy is an inevitable and not necessarily negative result of the horizontal and vertical divisions of labour which are required within a modern and technologically sophistoicated economy and society. I’d recommend the book although it might not be comfortable reading for those of an ultra-Left inclination.
I’m not often accused of being unneccessarily charitable. I do detect the hand of Fergus Finlay behind the child benefit statement but I do think some of the signatories are political innocents because they don’t seem to realise that in the long term those they represent will be the losers. Or maybe they do and don’t care but surely all those NGOs are not crewed entirely by scoundrels.
Then again maybe they are given that they’ve had umpteen opportunities to point out how their work will be adversely affected by the decision to fork out billions to bondholders and didn’t do so. Hopefully they won’t subsequently be enlisted to help attack the pay and conditions of others on the grounds that somehow it’s this money, rather than that given to the bondholders, which should be given to the disadvantaged.
My late father used to always say, back when he used to shout at the television when Mike Allen came on representing the INOU, that focussing attention on ‘the most vulnerable’ while ignoring working people wasn’t left wing but just another version of the Vincent De Paul. I may be doing the INOU a disservice but I seem to remember rhetoric about job sharing when PAYE workers were getting it hard to get by with the job they had.
I’d also agree with the pointlessness of a referendum giving children ‘rights’ when a substantial proportion of kids in this country are so severely disadvantaged as to render the notion of ‘rights’ meaningless. These rights are, in any case, not so much entitlements as pious aspirations.
Ok! Who here was at this???
What kind of people think it’s appropriate to honour a leader whose funding of foreign terrorism led to so many deaths in the eighties?
Fair point and all Eamonn, but seriously, is the Gaddafi thing taking the piss? Never entirely sure what the politics of the IRSP are nowadays, now that the INLA has laid down its guns, but is Gaddafi’s Libya really their idea of a healthy system? And the ‘Communist Party of the Irish Republic’ that’s mentioned, would that be the CPI? Never heard them described that way.
Maybe it’s Bobby Channels and Terry Ghusto again.
This is a joke right? What is the Communist Party of the Republic of Ireland, not the CPoI I assume. Do the IRSPs really admire the GReen Book.
It’s a joke, right?
CPIR dont seem to actually exist or at least outside of the internet.
http://www.politics.ie/forum/events/198406-annual-al-gaddafi-day-school-commemoration-all-anti-imperialist-martyrs.html
So second question then: who? what? why? Putting up a fake poster on politics.ie is one thing, whatever floats your boat I suppose, but the youtube clip seemed to have taken a lot of work (who are the guys in the Garden of Remembrance?). Why would you bother?
“Communist Party of the Republic of Ireland,”- are
they Maoists, or Trotskyists, or what?
Yes, this is a joke.
Great post from Curtis on Gaddafi and friends here btw
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/10/hes_behind_you.html
That is a great post, doctorfive. Thanks for sharing it.
I did not know that stuff about Gerry Healy. Wow.
It’s probably the least convincing performance Vanessa Redgrave ever gave.
Very odd stuff indeed. There is an air of familiarity to her speech. I cannot quite put my finger on it.
That stuff is probably what Healy is most famous for now. There’s a seriously grim book length history of the SLL/WRP available online, by the way.
http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Healy/Contents.html
One odd thing about Healy is that he was apparently the inspiration for John Tagg in The Party by Trevor Griffiths which was staged at the National Theatre with Laurence Olivier as Tagg. Tagg is kind of the Platonic ideal of a left-wing activist, eloquent, down to earth, tough, persuasive and has one fantastic speech where he tears strips off a middle-class left winger for condescending to the working class. In fact almost everything Tagg says in the play would incline you to follow him on to the barricades. Not surprising because Griffiths was a genius of a playwright.
It’s a pity the reality was so different.
As a matter of balance does anyone have a good word for Healy? Or was he simply a charlatan and a bully with no redeeming features?
I dunno if you’d describe this as a ‘good word’, but it’s certainly funny:
“God,” so they say, “does not pay his debts in money”. I was reminded of this wise old maxim when the news broke that Gerry Healy had been expelled from his creation the Workers Revolutionary Party for allegedly using his exalted position to extract sexual favours from young female comrades. For some 50 years, Healy has graced, or rather disgraced, the British Trotskyist movement. In that time, by a combination of low cunning, skullduggery and verbal and physical abuse, he has created almost as many ex-Trotskyists as Joe Stalin. It would not have surprised me at any time in the last 30 years it he had been expelled for grievous bodily harm, but that it should be for grievous bodily charm is extraordinary.
“Physically, Gerry Healy is probably the least prepossessing man I have ever seen. Short, very stout and with an extremely large head that grows directly out of his torso, he is for all the world closest in appearance to the Mekon, that fearsome tyrant from the planet Venus, whose plans for universal domination were foiled by Dan Dare in the pages of the Eagle. The similarity does not end there: like the Mekon Healy is given to wild, splenetic rages when crossed.
“On one famous occasion, a dissident member of the organisation was speaking at a meeting of the central committee, justifying his position. His speech was continually interrupted by Healy, who, becoming exasperated by the comrade’s (shortly to become an ex-comrade) persistence, gave tongue to the immortal phrase: “Stop speaking when I am interrupting.””
http://www.marxists.org/archive/higgins/1985/11/mekon.htm
No, that probably doesn’t count as a good word. Did anyone on the CLR ever meet Healy. He was from Ballybane in Galway city, wasn’t he?
You can find plenty of kind words about Healy in “Gerry Healy: A Revolutionary Life”, a biography written by two partisans of a split from a split from a split from the Workers Revolutionary Party.
It’s mostly famous for its fold out guide to Healy’s dialectical thought and for Ken Livingstone’s assertion in the foreword that he had never changed his “belief that the split in the WRP during 1985 was the work of MI5 agents.”
You can find the foreword and introduction here:
http://www.aworldtowin.net/resources/GH.html
Now that is bizarre – I thought Ken’s cronies were all from Socialist Action, never knew he had anything to do with Healy. What does he mean by this:
“Given the pivotal role of Healy in maintaining contact with Yasser Arafat’s HQ through the WRP’s use of the latest technology, MI5 clearly felt that they had to stop the growing influence of the WRP.”
Early ’80s, latest technology – does this mean that the WRP had a fax machine linked to the PLO offices? Or did they have an early mobile phone, one of those brick-like things, that Healy would use when he wanted to have a natter with Arafat?
Livingstone’s very friendly relationship with the WRP and with Healy in particular predates his much closer links to various Socialist Action people. The WRP produced the “Labour Herald” newspaper for Livingtone and that end of the Labour left.
Basically it had resources and it was willing to adapt to pretty much anyone or anything with the aim of gathering influence. It really did have resources, by the way. They had state of the art, full colour printing presses before Fleet Street, a network of bookshops, a daily paper, “Marxist colleges” in the countryside etc. Livingstone was never a member or supporter. He found them useful.
Just to add, I have no idea what high-tech connection the WRP supposedly had to Arafat’s HQ.
A good word?
I saw a quote from Dominic Behan (an ex deputy leader of the WRP?) at the time Healy was thrown out for exploiting young female comrades. The quote was along the lines of: “He’s a small, fat, balding guy with glasses. I say fair play to him.”
Brian Behan was the Behan brother who was prominent in the SLL for a while. As for the comment, if accurate, I don’t think that sort of flip response would go down well at all these days.
Brian, yes. You are right on both counts, Mark.
Episode 10 of the History Show on Near FM. On this epsiode we talk to Dr. Conor McCabe of the UCD School of Social Justice about the southern Irish economy since partition. Would love to get posters’ views on the episode. http://archive.org/details/TheHistoryShowEpisode10NearFm
Cllr leaves the Labour Party
http://www.tippmidwestradio.com/news/767-cllr-leaves-labour-party.html
Interesting correlation between “lack of opposition from the higher ranks within the party to the abolition of Town Councils contributed to his decision” and “he no longer thinks Labour, at its higher levels. represents the ordinary worker anymore”.
Which carried most weight in his decision one wonders, and which caused him to leave the LP at this time rather than say after the last budget? Hard not to be cynical there I’m afraid.
yip
Given the way the LP poll ratings are going down you’d wonder how many will cut and run. A sort of echo of the run of ‘Independents’ from FF in the last local’s…
[...] thanks to CMK for the following which I’ve copied and pasted from comments under the thread [...]
WbS, this may be of interest from a number of perspectives. Just what would be the result if the Living Marxist/Spiked! crowd (under the “Institute of Ideas” cover name) held a panel discussion about the music industry and invited John Waters?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/25/battle_of_ideas_music_debate/
Damn, he was disappointingly sane. I thought he’d tell everyone they have to believe in God and vote Fianna Fail but maybe he saves that for the columns.
I was hoping that he’d develop his theme of suing people for ‘defamation’ on the Internet (which is obviously much on his mind), but apparently not.
But, on the other hand, the contributions of people other than (veteran Spiker!) Orlowski appear to have been condensed, so I’m looking forward to seeing the actual video when it appears here:
http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/index.php/2012/video_index
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/1026/1224325734364.html
He seemed to enjoy himself…
Should be of interest to many here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nl67c
The British Gunner and the Irish Civil War
Duration:
28 minutes
First broadcast:
Monday 29 October 2012
Mike Thomson returns with Radio 4′s investigative history series.
Dublin 1922. Irish rebel leader Michael Collins has signed a new Treaty with Britain. The new Irish Free State is taking shape.
But even as Collins was establishing the Free State, a rebellion from within Irish Republican ranks broke out against the new state and the Treaty with Britain. The anti-Treaty forces seized the ‘Four Courts’ legal complex in central Dublin.
Meanwhile, in London, the former Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson, was assassinated by Republicans outside his Chelsea home.
The British Government urged Michael Collins their recent foe – and now fellow national leader – to act.
Mike visits Dublin to examine what a soldier’s forgotten memoir reveals about Britain’s true role at the start of the Irish Civil War.
It’s worth a listen, if only for the pleasure of hearing Tim Pat Coogan hot on the heels of Michael MacDowell. I’m not wholly convinced by the argument, but I’m sure someone here will know enough to assess the evidence.
‘The Guardian’ disgraced itself today by giving over the entire front and back cover of the print edition to an ad for Vodafone! An absolutely ruthless and relentless tax avoider, things must really be bad at ‘The Guardian’ if they’re reduced to this.
And more….
The Guardian discovers that middle-class people are nicer than working class ones.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/oct/26/middle-class-leftwing-working-poll
Seriously, take a look at what the Guardian thinks are the indices of ‘left-wing’- ness: not the passing of the ownership of the means of production into the hands of the producers, or even the preservation of the vestiges of the welfare state. No, liberal immigration policies and overseas aid.
Things are very bad at the Guardian. The rumour is that it will soon become the first UK daily to do a Newsweek and abandon print altogether.
I thought it was UK Independent that was going to that?
I would very much like to know the basis for ‘class’ designations ascribed in that poll. Is it the ABC nonsense that we find often used in polling here which is essentially marketing categories?
In fairness I think that poll was taken by Peter Kellner for Prospect magazine.
The poll does go by ‘ABC nonsense’. To be fair, it’s the Grauniad’s headline and interpretative strategy that is most offensive, not the stuff Kellner is quoted as saying.
To be honest I didn’t even read the piece, saw the headline, saw the figures and realised it was Prospects stuff. Typical of them though.
I read the original article by Kellner in Prospect, and it was very heavily tilted that way in the first place (I doubt the reliability of the figures; I’d suspect the questions were phrased in a way that was likely to deliver the answers they wanted).
What stood out for me was this: they had a pie chart showing the people who had voted for Labour in 1997 and their voting preferences now; the majority still intended to vote Labour; excluding the ones who were now dead, you had 1m votes distributed between the Tories and the Lib Dems, but 2m distributed between ‘other parties’ and not voting at all. If I remember right, the people who had dropped out of voting were a bigger group by themselves than all the defectors to the Tories and Lib Dems.
Now, from other surveys we know that the people who have stopped voting since 1997 are more likely to be working-class (in the conventional, blue-collar sense). The ‘other parties’ vote would presumably include some who had started voting for the BNP or UKIP, but also a lot of people who had defected to the Greens, Respect, or the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, i.e people who had abandoned Labour because it wasn’t left-wing enough. So if Labour could appeal to them, and to the non-voting blue-collar working class, it would stand to gain more votes than it could possibly win back from the Tories and Lib Dems by moving further to the right.
But of course, I had to think this all out by myself, because there wasn’t so much as a sideways glance at this line of argument in Kellner’s piece, which was straight Blairite orthodoxy. BTW there’s few magazines I detest more than Prospect (I didn’t have to pay for the copy I was reading), it makes the Economist look warm and cuddly. They have their own ‘Think Tank of the Year’ awards, which tells you a lot about its target readership.
I find Prospect fascinating for all the wrong reasons. It’s very irritating – and has shifted right of centre sharpish over the past few years in a way which is – at the least – opportunist in the extreme. You could see they thought pre 2000 that there’d be a Tory single party government and were betting the house on it. +1 re the think tanks.
There is a growing disconnect between the working class and the liberal middle class which used to form the bedrock support of Social Democratic/Labour Parties in the western world.
From a London perspective the Blairite/Cameroonian socially liberal policies of mass immigration benefit the Notting Hill/Islington affluent middle class – cheap childminders, exotic third world restaurants and a large unskilled labour supply that drive down wage costs are all good for them. And they don’t feel the social consequences of their kids being sent to inner city schools where teachers have to spend a large part of their time with kids who cannot speak English or having to queue at the local hospital for 5-6 hours before they get seen. The liberal middle class elite – Polly Toynbee and her Guardian colleagues – all go private or live in cosy middle class enclaves.
The far left seem to have this ongoing love affair with radical Islam. But somehow the European working class do not seem to want to experience the joys of Sharia Law or join the mugger/drug dealer/lumpen proletariat so celebrated by the SWP in August riots of 2011.
So where do the working class turn for political representation? Thw debate continues.
“And they don’t feel the social consequences of their kids being sent to inner city schools where teachers have to spend a large part of their time with kids who cannot speak English or having to queue at the local hospital for 5-6 hours before they get seen.”
There’s something in that but it’s perhaps overblown to some degree. The school where my daughter goes – on the fringe of the inner city and resolutely working class, about twenty ficve per cent of her class group – perhaps a little more – would be from orgiinally non-Irish backgrounds. But language isn’t a problem (not least because of their age they’re all coming to terms with English!). Obviously older children would present different issues.
It is true that huge strains are placed on resources both educational and medical, though given underfunding and austerity one has to point the finger of blame at the government there.
Clearly in the UK there’s a broader for want of a better word class disconnect, but it’s also evident to an extent (though hard to gauge how much) in this state.
My daughter started at is the local national school but the whole stuff about that in terms of questions asked etc by some has been a revelation about class in this society and about their perceptions and preconceptions of schools. The most amazing comment was when told the name of the school someone entirely seriously looked at me paused for a beat and said ‘well… I suppose you get scumbags everywhere’.
BTW, in relation to a lot of these issues immigration, etc I’ve always felt this crowd had one of the best take on matters…
http://www.iwca.info/?page_id=1000
But language isn’t a problem (not least because of their age they’re all coming to terms with English!).
Quite so. My wife used to teach in a primary school in an inner-city area of London (Peckham, for those who know it). There were a lot of kids for whom English was not their first language. She says that yes, of course this causes difficulties at first, but because kids learn language so fast, those difficulties don’t last: what does last is the advantage, for everybody, of having so many kids of different experiences and backgrounds.
I live in a predominantly Muslim area of London (the anti-dog litter signs are in English and in Turkish), far from any ‘cosy middle class enclaves’. No sign of sharia law here – I buy my booze from the Kurdish shop on the corner, where it is sold to me by an (unveiled) woman. So to put it bluntly – what the hell are you talking about? The far left’s ‘ongoing love affair with radical Islam’ only exists in the feverish imagination of Nick Cohen and Melanie Philips.
BTW, the only political demonstration by Muslims I’ve seen in this area in the year I’ve lived here wasn’t by Islamists, it was by the Kurdish nationalists a few weeks ago, marching down the main street with PKK flags chanting ‘we are the PKK, the PKK is us!’ The PKK are militant secularists (they have a lot of female soldiers in their army). And I live within walking distance of Finsbury Park mosque, which is meant to be the heart of ‘Londonistan’ if you read Melanie Philips. So I take this talk about the ‘Islamisation of Europe’ with a large pinch of salt.
I live in East London and unfortunately, the ongoing efforts being made by Tablighi Jamaat to build the largest Mosque in Europe (projected capacity 80,000) does not just exist in the fevered minds of Nick Cohen and Melanie Philips. And I suppose the SWP/radical islamist organisation RESPECT is a mere mirage concocted by the right wing press. I am sure that one of the main reasons Livingstone lost the Mayoral election was a perception he was very friendly with Mullahs who who had some strange ideas about women and gays.
A lot of women in the area wear the veil although I suspect with a lot of the younger ones it is more a sign of teenage rebellion than adherance to strict Islamic piety. The shoes they wear seem quite fashionable. But by wearing a veil it does create a pressure for all young Muslim women to do so.
WbS, I agree about IWCA. They seem to have the most coherent analysis about the pressures facing the working class today. They don’t seem to be big fans of multiculturalism. Its a pity there are not more articles on their website. I agree with their analysis that the far right are ahead of the Left in appealing to the working class. It seems that whenever they get a local council seat (Oxford, Islington)the local Labour Party put in great efforts to stop them growing further.
“And I suppose the SWP/radical islamist organisation RESPECT is a mere mirage concocted by the right wing press. I am sure that one of the main reasons Livingstone lost the Mayoral election was a perception he was very friendly with Mullahs who who had some strange ideas about women and gays.”
You do realise the SWP broke with RESPECT back in 2007, don’t you? Besides which, describing RESPECT as a ‘radical Islamist organisation’ is just ridiculous. Its leading Muslim figure, Salma Yaqoob, was a socialist feminist (I believe she has recently resigned from the party because George Galloway refused to apologise for his rotten comments about rape; in that case, we see a Muslim taking a better feminist line than a Scottish Catholic who has spent his adult life in the British Labour Party, so there’s a lesson to be learned about defining misogyny as a ‘Muslim problem’). Where was the RESPECT programme demanding that Britain become a theocratic state, that alcohol should be banned, that women shouldn’t be allowed to drive? I suspect that your image of RESPECT really is a ‘mere mirage concocted by the right-wing press’.
I don’t buy your argument about Livingstone for a moment; he lost in 2008 because he was dragged down by Labour’s general decline (he still polled much higher than the national party average); he appears to have lost this year because he was seen as a tired figure, yesterday’s man (his result this time was much lower than Labour’s national average) and also, infuriatingly, because people saw it as a personality contest and find Boris Johnson amusing (he’s currently the most popular politician in the country).
The fact that some women in East London wear the veil (they do where I live in North London too), or the fact a conservative religious group wants to build a huge mosque, does not mean that sharia law is in effect or has any prospect of being in effect. I don’t want to see anyone wear the veil, and I’d rather see money being spent on things other than big mosques (or churches for that matter). But I’m not going to echo the rhetoric of Melanie Phillips and the BNP / EDL by talking about sharia law or ‘Eurabia’. Right now, I consider the EDL to be a much greater threat to democratic rights – chiefly the right of black- and brown-skinned people to walk the streets safely – than any reactionary Muslim group.
That would concern me too Ed. It’s far too easy to slip into the Eurabia rhetoric as you say. And that’s an excellent point about Yaqoob.
There is a line to be walked which recognises the pressures on both communities and within the working class – pressures exacerbated by the right quite deliberately too. The main thing is to be certain not to demonise any group even inadvertently. This doesn’t mean we can’t be critical of them (indeed we should in a constructive fashion) but to ensure that class interests are pushed to the fore.
It is always only a matter of time before the far left accuse anyone who is concerned about the rise of islamic fundamentalism of being sympathetic with the EDL. Then they wonder why the working class has no time for them. I don’t know why a left wing organisation like the SWP found common cause with religous fundamentalists in the first place.
Any chance that you might try and respond to the points I made above, instead of repeating the same catchphrases about ‘religious fundamentalists’ and ‘sharia law’? I never said you were ‘sympathetic to the EDL’. I said that you were ‘echo[ing] the rhetoric of Melanie Phillips and the BNP / EDL’, which you are, by making groundless assertions about ‘sharia law’ being some kind of threat to the Anglo working class in Britain (“the European working class do not seem to want to experience the joys of Sharia Law”).
I never hear any suggestions from people who tell us that the Left needs to ‘get serious’ about immigration as to what, exactly, left groups should be doing or saying that they’re not doing now. Do you think immigration should be stopped? Is that what our programme should be? Well it’s not going to be stopped. If you ban legal immigration, there will be illegal immigration, which can’t be stopped. The US spends vast sums of money militarising its border with Mexico, yet there are still so many Mexican and Central American immigrants working in the States that if they were all deported at once (or went on strike for a week) the economy would grind to a halt. The Left can support ugly racist border-control policies all its likes, but there will still be foreigners of all kinds entering the countries of Western Europe and North America.
The problems that are said to arise because of immigration—downward pressure on wages; competition for scarce jobs; over-stretched public services—are general problems of neo-liberal capitalism; whether or not there are immigrants, we will still have capitalists trying to drive down wages, make employment less secure, and cut spending on public services. These problems are not going to be solved by keeping out immigrants. They are only going to be solved by building a strong, militant left with a base in the working class of all ethnic groups. Immigrant workers don’t want to be working for a pittance, either – they should be unionised, not driven out.
Once you start pandering to anti-immigrant prejudices, there’s no point where it’s going to stop. Every year (or every few months), a British Labour politician will make a speech or give an interview telling us that we need the ‘courage’ to talk about immigration (as if nobody had ever said such a thing before). It’s all grist to the mill of the BNP and EDL. The BNP was driven back (for now) by strong, determined anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigning work, not by pandering to racism.
What the Left needs to do, above all, is to get serious about class politics and push them to the forefront. The Greek Left isn’t going to get anywhere trying to come up with a policy on immigration that will draw support away from Golden Dawn – what they need to do is to keep people focused on the Troika and the Greek elite, keep reminding people who the real culprits are for the mass impoverishment of the last few years. Far-right parties got their chance to win working-class support in Europe when the communist parties collapsed and the social-democratic parties shifted right and forgot about representing the working class. Rebuilding the Left is the best way to fight racism.
@Ed.
+1
+1 also
Also plus one, I’m childminding so I can’t say more than that but there are a few points I’d like to make in a day or so. Surprised to hear that rhetoric from a reasonably regular contributor to the site, usually it comes from some lad we’ve never heard from before popping up to say we should have ‘an honest debate about immigration.’ Of course he doesn’t want an honest debate at all, he wants us to agree with him because as far as he’s concerned any defence of multi-culturalism is essentially dishonest because deep down we all feel the same way he does.
Statement by the Democratic Socialist Movement Executive Committee, response to allegations of violence (26/10/2012)
Published 26 Oct 2012
Democratic Socialist Movement Executive Committee
The DSM strongly rejects the allegations by the Congress of South African Trade Unions General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, at a press conference on Saturday 20th October 2012, that the DSM instigated the stoning of his car at the Orkney Mine in Klerksdorp on Friday 19th October 2012. These allegations are false, unsubstantiated and irresponsible. More reprehensible are the allegations of the National Union of Mineworkers leadership on SAFM’s morning show, on Friday, 18th October, that the DSM is responsible for the murder of their shop stewards.
http://www.polity.org.za/article/sa-statement-by-the-democratic-socialist-movement-executive-committee-response-to-allegations-of-violence-26102012-2012-10-26
Here’s a statement by the Democratic Socialist Movement, the South African sister organisation of the Socialist Party, responding to allegations made against it in the South African mainstream media because of its role in supporting striking mineworkers.
The COSATU/NUM leadership went ahead with their anti-strike march in the Rustenburg mining district, and, predictably, it led to clashes between strikers and marchers.
The march had been called to reassert the now entirely discredited NUM’s authority in the area, and they had declared that it would “reclaim” Rustenburg from “counter revolutionaries” (ie strike supporters). It was a dismal failure – despite the resources put in to the march by COSATU, the NUM and the South African Communist Party, attendance estimates range from six hundred to a thousand. Blade Nzimade, the head honcho of the SACP, declared his support for the police’s decision to fire rubber bullets and tear gas at counter-protesting strikers.
http://www.starafrica.com/en/news/detail-news/view/south-african-police-fire-tear-gas-at-mi-258809.html
This stuff almost makes me grateful for our own useless union bureaucrats.
Sorry Ed, I’ve just read your further posting now and I’ll hold my hand up and say you made some very relevant points. Expressing concern about the pressures large immigration causes on the local working class population if not argued coherently can turn into an anti-immigrant position. Not the case with me, one of the reasons I left Ireland was that I found living in London withs its multitude of cultures a much more attractive position.
But you have expressed the point I am trying to make, it is class that is important. I honestly believe that the Left pandering to a violent, reactionary section of Islamism is counter to this. Living in the East End I have always tried to understand the white working class that live there (before they all move to Romford!). This Michael Collins book is a good place to start.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Likes-Us-Biography-Working/dp/1862077789 .
Despite being sneered at by middle class liberals and now increasingly by the far left it is the British white working class that have always been the first to integrate with the waves of immigrants that have come to London over the decades. The have adapted the various cultures (and married), musics, foods, etc from Ireland, The Carribean, Asia and Africa. Likewise the immigrants have integrated with local population, I’m one of them. Unfortunately, a significant section of the Muslim population have no wish to integrate or develop class consciousness. Yet they make full use of a welfare system that the working class has invested in since the second world war. That is a cause of resentment and it should be acknowledged.
Yet they make full use of a welfare system that the working class has invested in since the second world war. That is a cause of resentment and it should be acknowledged.
What a bizarre thing to say. What exactly does it mean?
OK, I give up. I’m not getting my point across, propably my fault. I will now check myself into a rehabilation camp and read the Guardian non -stop for a week. When I come out I will never speak to a white working class person again.
That may be the most convincing rebuttal I have ever received.
One comment above above the right exacerbating the issue of immigration strikes me as missing the big picture a bit. Labour is accused by the bnp fascists as being the driver for the recent large scale immigration flows yet any left leaning person worth their salt can see plain and plainly states that Blair’s labour was a right wing party. Similar to the other nominally left parties in Europe who all pushed right wing policies under a clenched fist.
The biggest right wing interests will not pull back now on immigration. Look at peter sutherland calling for a higher rate of immigration even now. It’s hard to square the rights push for immigration with the left assessment that the right seeks to stop it. The left in Europe has missed the logic of immigration while properly even while standing up for immigrants.
extraordinary caption
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1027/1224325792666.html
Beyond ridiculous no All-Star for Johnny Coen last night. Would have been 3 or 4th name on the team. Felt Pa Cronin deserved one as well, granted the competition was fierce
From the Boston Globe, from an online poll:
Poll finds majority in US hold racist views
Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the nation elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward black people whether they recognize those feelings or not.
….
Racial prejudice has risen slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.
In all, 51 percent of those surveyed expressed explicit racist attitudes toward black people, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the share with racist sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing positive attitudes toward black people fell.
http://bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/10/27/poll-majority-harbor-prejudice-against-blacks/5Tj42nmGdF8e4iF0FQ0aNK/story.html