Brexit, The Left and The Assembly Elections March 1, 2017
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
I was looking through various Assembly Elections leaflets looking for parties attitudes to Brexit and their promises around it. What surprised me was the total failure to even mention Brexit in material from The Workers’ Party (Manifesto here) , Cross Community Labour Alternative (leaflet here) and People Before Profit (leaflet here). Their material contains plenty of worthy stuff but to not address possibly the most important issue for The North in this election seemed odd to say the least.
I know PBP campaigned for a Lexit, what position did Cross Community Labour Alternative (The Socialist Party) and The Workers’ Party take on the Brexit Referendum?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Thanks to IEL for bringing together these 3 pieces of literature from different parties. The political body behind PBP is the Socialist Workers Party. The political body behind Cross-Community Labour Alternative is the Socialist Party. Not alone is there no reference to Brexit in these leaflets there is no pointing of workers in the direction of Irish Unity, Independence and socialism as in the the revolutionary Connolly position. Any reference toBrexit would have raised these issues. The 3 leaflets are entirely reformist and social democratic in content. You could be in Germany!! In colonially affected Ireland Social Democratic politics has been at best useless and at worst treacherous . William Walker, Tom Johnson, William O’rien,Conor Cruise O’Brien, Joan Burton etc
The most striking omission from the literature is the asence of any suggestion that Irish workers north and south should unite in action to defend themselves. There is no mention of the complete absence of any sovereignty of the Irish north or south. I recall very similar leaflets eing issued y the peo-union North Of Ireland Labour Party in the sixties.
It is not surprising that the SWP(UK) and SP(UK) have departed from revolutionary principle in failing to call for a complete British disengagement from Ireland.
The failure to recognise the key role of the national question in the workers struggle marginalised the Irish Labor Party after 1916.WP, SP and SWP will suffer a similar fate in our time.
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Yawn
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It’s not a yawn but hoping that the rest of us are asleep and not noticing that you are ignoring Brexit!
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It is remarkable, to put it at its kindest, that the most significant political, economic, social and arguably cultural issue facing this island at least since the end of the conflict (and perhaps in a longer time period, time itself will tell) is simply ignored – an issue whose centrality to workers on this island, on the island to the east and in Europe is of the utmost importance. How does one even begin to describe that dynamic?
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That’s what prompted me …. and just to clarify ….. were I in The North I’d be voting for one of these Left Parties. I have other material from those Left Parties that I don’t have up on the site yet and none of it mentions Brexit either.
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I think the answer is that the SP/SWP twins fundamentally see the Republic as just a temporarily-separated part of the Motherland.
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That deserves a ‘yawn’.
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I don’t know CMK. I don’t think it does. It’s very difficult to understand just how blasé responses like your own actually are. They seem the political equivalent of fingers in the ears, singing la la la and hoping all this will go away.And it does seem very clear reading contributions in the Dáil etc from those parties not to get a sense that everything on this issue is refracted through a view of politics that is very centred on Britain rather than Ireland (the WP cleaving to a CPB line rhetorically, when the mood takes it).
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I think that it is mistaken to attribute the the highly deficient policies of SWP/SP on the Irish national question and their rejection of the Connolly position to the the fact that their parent organisations are based in Britain. The problem is that they have rejected central tenets of marxism and Trotskyism. This makes them highly ineffective in advancing the British revolution and revolutionary organisation of British workers in Britain.
Left social democrats such as Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone have taken a far more principled position on British disengagement from Ireland
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Shorter version: ‘Up the ‘Ra!’
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CMK-Shorter version: ‘Up the ‘Ra!’
This pathetic response proves that that CMK has no interest in serious discussion. He is covering up capitulation to capitalist imperialism by spewing out abuse while JRG ignorantly yawns!!
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Well, Paddy, what do you propose to do with those 1 million workers in the North East who want to remain British? When I see you engage with that reality I’ll stop the snarky replies.
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With all due respect Paddy – we have attempted to have a serious discussion with you before. But, to paraphrase Joe Higgins, ‘its like playing handball off a haystack’.
You views on the national question are stuck in the concrete of the last century and you attempt to argue a rigid ‘Marxist’ position that is utterly out of date, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the method of Marxism.
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CMK?
You can’t seriously believe that I along with many socialist and repulicans have not discussed this issue? It has been discussed for well over a hundred years. Have you read the Connolly-walker Controversy?
You may be too young to have read my writings on the matter in the 70’s and eighties. I must dig them out. Suffice it to say for now that this is not just an Irish issue. French, British, Dutch colonialism have left minority loyalist populations in many countries. I advise you to read marxist literature on the issue and not to confine yourself to the narrow literature of social imperialists masquerading as marxists and even Trotskyists.
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what can they do about it?
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The Unionist majority in the northern territory has been maintained in its ‘not an inch’ position partly, it is true, by the british government’s real interests in keeping it going (militarily, you have only to look at the map to see its strategic importance) and, in many cases, familial. It is also maintained by the fact that for decades the population of the Republic was encouraged to see partition as something to be resolved within the 6 Co. unit. (This has been true even for the Republicans; the business of reunification was to be left to ‘the lads’; civilians were simply polling fodder for abstentionist candidates.) Had a mass activist movement of opposition to partition developed in the twenty-six counties, necessarily linked to a programme of progressive socio-economic demands, it is possible that matters would have changed. As a matter of fact, the fear of the two states in these islands was shown after Bloody Sunday (followed by the suppression of Stormont) and in the HBlock campaign (the constitutional conference and the Anglo-Irish Agreement). The inbalance of forces inside Ulster has been reinforced by the balance of forces outside. Like all balances, this can change.
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What if, really, what if it just doesn`t matter. Brexit I mean. There are other considerations.
As for Paddy Healys contribution, you left out the WP, why is that?
Agendas, agendas, they`ve all got ag- ENDAs
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People in this state have already lost jobs over it. In the U.K. Real wages have been significantly devalued as sterling slumps. I think it matters, and it hasn’t even ‘happened’ as such yet and won’t until the UK sails away in two or do years.
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…. and those that it’s most likely to impact are those on lower incomes
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avoid as an article of faith anything that might lead to an argument on the border
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I canvassed a little in the assembly election campaign. Of the couple of dozen people I spoke to, not one mentioned Brexit. The dominant sentiment was one of apathy and indifference. Met a couple of people who were incandescent with rage at the decline in the health service, particularly mental health services. The kind of anger I’ve never encountered on the doorsteps in the south which can be explained by the fact that the health service here has always been rubbish but the North’s was actually quite decent and people are starting to notice its rapid decline.
RHI was a huge issue, obviously, but detachment from any sense that Stormont has any positive role to play was clear. Not a scientific sample but a useful insight into things. I got no sense from post canvass discussion that Brexit was a huge issue on the doorsteps. Canvassed one village just over the border with two memorials to IRA members, the classic place that will suffer from a hard Brexit, and no-one mentioned Brexit.
If the last 10 years had been a golden age for Northern Ireland where membership of the EU had a demonstrable impact on improving living standards then maybe Brexit might have been more of an issue. Instead EU membership had no impact on the Tories austerity agenda, faithfully implemented by Stormont with a few face saving tweaks here and there. The EU wasn’t a barrier to Tory austerity so trying to big it up as some kind of protector is stretching things.
Life in a Brexit United Kingdom of permanent austerity versus life in a EU United Ireland of permanent austerity is not much of a choice. I can see how NI Chambers of Commerce, the trade unions and parts of the political system are exercised by Brexit. But I think all are overplaying their hand as all have either been silent as austerity undermined the living standards of people in the North (the trade unions) or have actively enouraged and implemented austerity. Brexit, for many people in the North, is a rather abstract concern at this stage and there is probably a feeling of ‘how bad can it be?’ after the depradations of the last seven years particularly.
Paddy Healy’s analysis might play well within the narrow milieux of headbanger republicans but it, to paraphrase Morrissey, says nothing to most Northern nationalists about their lives. I think the leaflets reflect a strong sentiment on the ground among the working class that Brexit is a non-issue, for now. 10 years of SF/DUP political dominance has managed to make life worse for many and trying to play up abstract fears, at this stage, about Brexit strikes many, I’m sure, as besides the point. People struggling to get through each day are hardly going to be worried, right now, about something that possibly might have an impact in the future depending on who you talk to. No doubt that view would not be popular along the Malone Road, Bangor or the environs of Queens but that doesn’t detract from the point. Worries about your Bulgarian property portfolio post Brexit or ERASMUS are minority concerns for people whose GP is going out of business.
I would say that SF leaflets have loads to say about Brexit but far, far less to say about GP fees, closing GP practices in rural areas, their support for RHI, cuts to corporation tax and all the rest of it. Could we see a few SF leaflets to check if that is the case?
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Even if the issue didn’t play on doors it is remains the most significant issue facing this island and these islands, whatever line one takes on it. Not to address it, to ignore it, to simply pretend that it has no outcomes is an abdication of responsibility, particularly from parties that were so vehemently, at least rhetorically, in favour of it. For parties that place economics front and centre it is absolutely incredible that something that would have such a profound effect wouldn’t even be mentioned in passing. That it has already, even before implementation, had negative impact on workers on this island in the agricultural sector (and that’s just one example, again consider how the sterling fall impacts on workers on both sides of the border) is unquestionable.
It’s fine to critique PH’s analysis as narrow though he makes some solid points, but it is as or more narrow, parochial, provincial to have something which has existential consequences hanging over all workers on this island and simply dismiss it by the line ‘people don’t bring it up on the doors’. Apply to that to a raft of other issues ‘oh they never brought up social solidarity/unemplloyment/ this/that/ the other when we called’ and we might as well all go home. That’s a completely evasionary line, and for materialists to bring it up is disturbing. One looks at things as they are, opportunities, threats, etc.
And I think it’s the responsibility of those who make something an issue (in stark contrast in their position to almost all other parties on the island) to own it, not just walk away.
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I have absolutely zero doubts that Brexit will be a huge political issue and hugely problematic for workers here and in Britain. The parties under discussion will, I equally have no doubt, be fighting hard both here to protect workers from the negative consequences of Brexit. I can almost certainly predict that some of the most vehement opponents of Brexit will, once it comes to pass, make their peace with and try to make the best of it. For instance those ‘Blue Labour’; types who dog-whistled on immigration over the last 20 years and who made a song and dance about their opposition to Article 50 etc. SF will settle in nicely to what evolves from Brexit, ditto for the northern trade union leaderships.
You’ve sort of made my point for me in your response. In your opinion and in that of the majority of contributors to the CLR Brexit is of huge import and there is considerable backing for that position, I don’t downplay it. But there is an insularity to that view which holds that Brexit is, above all else, the paramount political problem transcending everything else. If I read correctly your view what I should have done at the weekend when confronted by a woman who was giving me grief because the mid-Ulster mental health out of hours provision had been cut by the Stormont/Tory axis, was to sympathise with her but remind her that Brexit is far worse? I know that’s not what you’re saying but it is dangerously close to the view that all other concerns must be subordinated to what are, at this stage, and I emphasise that, hypothetical concerns over Brexit. I think that latter view would hold for those of us, a tiny minority of the population, who think about politics 27/7/365 but it won’t hold water to others who have more pressing, immediate worries like the fact that their local GP clinic is due to close within the next few months and they’ll be facing an hour long trip to see a GP. A materialist political perspective would surely address itself to concerns about the health provision for workers first and then come back to the, at this stage, hypothetical aspects of a large geo-political development later? No?
There is a ‘The End is Nigh!’ quality to much of the anxiety about Brexit and a lack of historical perspective. Yes, it is shitty that it going to be driven by the hardest of hard Right Tory party and not by a Corbyn led Labour. But that is a function of 40 years of hard right political and intellectual hegemony in the UK that comprehensively beat back all challenges to it in the 1980s and co-opted the only possible opposition force, the Labour Party. There is no getting out of the death cycle Brexit has sparked in the UK short of a socialist revolution or a Corbyn led government. The former is probably more likely than the latter. Those socialist parties who argued for a Lexit will be doing their best, within their limited resources, to push back against a reactionary Brexit as they largely pushed back against the reactionary Blair/Brown/Milliband anti-immigrant agenda which played a huge part in delivering both the Brexit vote and a substantial part of the working class into UKIP’s hands.
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Well first to say that Ive enormous admiration and respect for you for even attempting to address these questions in regard to Brexit when so many seem to have (right up to and including leaflets) assumed an hitherto uncharacteristic silence, but it\’92s only fair to address actual rather than imagined complaints.
Im not for a moment suggesting that you should dismiss any persons immediate concerns. But thats an unconscious evasion on your part – because the original complaint isnt that the other issues arent important, they clearly are, but that at the least it is also important to address Brexit.
I dont believe it is – as a Marxist – possible to argue that theres an insularity in the view that Brexit is the paramount political issue facing this island. If as Marxists – and even still I define myself as one in part, we believe in the primacy of economics then there is a defining economic rupture ahead. It doesnt matter what view we take of that rupture, whether pro or contra – it is just intrinsic to our political worldview – along with class politics.
If all economic relations are to be inflected, as they must of necessity be, with the reality of Brexit we can’t just ignore or minimise it.
The insularity or a broader political evasion, is not even mentioning Brexit. Even if it wasnt a first order event, even if you believe that, its a second or third order event to ignore it is the parochialism, the provincialism, the little Ireland mentality.
As to hypothetical concerns. Ive spoken to elected reps from the Midlands in this state who will give chapter and verse on how agricultural produce firms have gone to the wall in the last six to eight months as a direct result of Breixt.
And – and this is quite literally just the first things that come to mind, what of CAP funding for agriculture being withdrawn in the North? Who is going to replace that on the UK side? Who is going to replace the funding for a wide range of programmes. What about the danger of a hard border and the impacts of that on workers. And thats just a small sample of the issues. None of this is addressed by the left parties. Its just astounding that serious parties can be so fundamentally unserious on this issue.
One can say neo-liiberalism is a massive problem and Brexit is a massive problem. We can criticise the EU completely and still say that Brexit is a massive error.
We can walk and chew gum conceptually at the same time. Its not either or, its not binary.
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The more I think about it, the more I realise that to have taken either side in the Brexit referendum was wrong. British exit from the EU will probably bring chaos. But it is also possible for the status quo to continue nearly as well as before in the UK and in the EU, even after Brexit. They could develop strategies to adapt to the outcomes. We don’t know.
Although my leaning was towards Remain, I would have abstained in the vote. Neither for nor against! Socialists could have best argued ‘In or Out the fight goes on’. That could be put more persuasively to people when you are dealing with the concrete issues that emerge.
I understand the wisdom of the distinctions that CMK makes with a ‘push back against a reactionary Brexit’; fair enough. But say it and make it explicit in electoral literature. That said, I am puzzled as ever about why support Brexit in the first place and later on come over all concerned about its detrimental effects. And for those who have gone silent on Brexit electorally is, as WbS says, ‘an abdication of responsibility, particularly from parties that were so vehemently, at least rhetorically, in favour of it’. There’s no getting away from that.
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I agree with Alibaba below
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In itself, Brexit, in an imperialist world was an irrelevance, one way or another. If Britain wanted to defy the Eu, it could do so and the EU, not being a proper state, could do nothing about it. Instead, successive Brit governments used the Eu as scapegoat for neo-liberal policies that they were happy to impose anyway.
However, the political effect of Brexit (with Lexit playing the role of, well, Labour in the last coalition) was aimed at getting rid of the popular aspects of the EU connection, and, of course, doing so by appealing to the atavistic tendencies of the population of what is still an imperial power, albeit a declining one. This is why it had to be opposed (and why Corbyn’s Hilary Clintonesque Remain campaign was a major blunder).
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I think you’ve got the wrong analogy there with the idea of ‘Corbyn’s Hilary Clintonesque Remain campaign’. Corbyn and the Labour left had more in common with the position Bernie Sanders and his supporters were in after Clinton became the Democratic candidate. They were doing their best to make a progressive case for something that isn’t very progressive, because they understood that a victory for the opposition would open the way for some very nasty right-wing forces; but the dominant political forces on their side (Clinton and the Democratic mainstream; Cameron, Osborne and the Labour right) were making lousy arguments that played straight into the hands of Trump or the Brexiteers (and were also lousy individuals in themselves, which had the same effect). It can’t be said often enough—because it’s hardly been said at all by most of the UK commentariat, for all their interest in polling stats—that Labour mobilized exactly the same proportion of its base for Remain as the SNP did, even though the majority of people in Scotland (home of the SNP’s entire electorate) voted Remain while the majority of people in England and Wales (where most Labour supporters live) voted Leave.
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+1 spot on
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wbs do you think PBP sees Brexit now as a massive error? I presume they don’t
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I agree with you, I doubt they do.
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“…it’s not binary.”
amen to that
This shite is about as un-binary as it gets. It’s so multi-level, 3D and fluid that we just can’t fathom the ramifications.
Was reading about WTO and the shite May is talking about regarding walking away from EU negotiations if the UK doesn’t get what it wants. According to her (or the MSM reports) the UK can just belly up to the Bar at the WOT and woo any number of willing trading partners. Screw the EU.
No, no they can’t. There’s something called “schedules” that the UK must meet and abide by. Schedules determine import/export tariffs and many legal requirement on supply chains etc.
If the UK goes it alone, it must be negotiate on a state by state basis with any other side with the schedules as a minimum guideline, but the other side need not grant the UK any slack. Countries such as Argentina*, which is in no mood to trade with the UK unless they receive some advantage or concessions, are aware of the UK’s plight. Every large trading nation knows this.
Right now the UK falls under the remit of the EU and its massive market which gives the EU big leverage in trade negotiations and a big say on schedule tarrifs and rules. The UK would dearly love to remain within the EU sphere of influence with regard to trade.
The tin opener has not even touched this can of worms yet.
I still hope Ireland (all of it) is getting its house in order. This cannot be ignored. (Again tin analogy) – there’s no kicking this one down the road once Article 50 is envoked.
[*I believe the UK courts allowed vulture bond capitalists the legal rights to pursue Argentina’s junk debt and set the country up for its present economic plight-situation.]
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+ 1
what ways should ireland be getting its house in order prior to article 50? a few weeks away but sin e.
you have posted a few times on this and seem to be thinking in terms of when the bureaucracy is sorted out what the lay of the land will be.
Not many doing that and in fairness it is difficult to visualize. The parties mentioned might get a by ball on that. If its not an issue for their target vote then its not an issue. Work, social, family life cross the border every day, was at the donegal match on sunday, the drive when we criss crossed the border was pointing out were the soldiers used to take up positions. presumably there is a least worst preferred option but it is a difficult position for the trot parties to be in.
From a lexit position critique to make exit as successful as possible from that position which could mean arguing for the state to take protectionist positions. From an ireland point of view arguing all the best for exit but for the least impact which is keeping movement of people and goods as close to the arrangement as now. Given that all cards are not on the table its a bit of a strategists headache for political formations organized in britain and ireland.
for two cents worth would the logical conclusion to that problem from that position be to say nothing in the north and argue for the 26 counties to leave the eu?
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Yes, from that position, but it would open up all manner of other problems wouldn’t it. For example, as noted by a range of commentators in the last couple of weeks, exit from the EU and eurozone means, effectively rejoining the Sterling area (in all but name) and UK economic dominance. That may play well with a small minority, but for most in this state I think that would be a bridge too far – though I’m entirely willing to accept I could be wrong. There’s extremely solid support for remaining inside the EU, if anything Brexit may well have solidified that yet further as it so clearly goes pear shaped in the UK. It’s not really politically or economically a sustainable position for political formations south of the border to take, and silence is no defence because previous statements will no doubt be publicised as matters worsen in the UK and/or the border becomes harder on this island. So small wonder no one seems to want to own up to it or to the implications.
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Yeah the arguments for leaving the eu now are more about dependence on Britain, and some are dependent for the money in their pocket. Wouldn’t dismiss the likely hood of some vested interests beyond the Trots pushing for it when tarrifs start getting put on imports and exports. And if leaving is the only way to limit border problems could see the provos changing their position on Europe as quick again.
but the motive is responding only to Britain. There may be good motive to leave the eu, that burn the bondholders stuff is as harmonious as the states relationship with Europe is when push comes to shove. But you’d want the decision to be a bit more than Europe or Britain.
The states interests at the moment is staying in Europe with the least effect from brexit. when that doesn’t happen there is going to be alot of reoeintateing. Some are staking positions early, the likes of mcgurk who you have quoted the last few weeks, and possibly the Trots from the silence in the north.
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That’s pretty much my view – there’s lots of very good reasons to leave the EU. But without a clear destination at present, i.e. for example a bloc of similarly minded states with a left orientation, one has to ask what are the advantages and do they outweigh the negatives. At this point, and for quite some time to come that has to be a no. What I find puzzling is how little interest there is in establishing parallel structures within the EU between like minded states and non-state entities precisely to organise towards a future replacement of the EU (there are honourable exceptions, but those who seem most committed to Brexits and exits seem disinterested in those exceptions or that project).
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might happen yet.
what ever about all the unknowns of brexit i think it has made the whole superstate thing unlikely. A load of european states heading in one direction. i can’t see that now.
this is probably unlikely to happen given that we are part of the anglosphere and take our norms from england and america through a whole range of cultural exchanges, same language probably the main factor and will be post brexit. but would hope that in a post brexit world people here would look past that island and maybe try and get that 35 hour working week france and germany have. complement and encourage yuppies when they have a culpa focal in those languages, try to desminiate some of the good ideas here, complain about irish media serializing daily telegraph content maybe look for translations of what the european papers are saying. Someone better will come up with the way to aim it if its worth having a go.
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Every cloud – eh? That’s one of the very few positives out of this, the lack of enthusiasm for a ‘superstate’.
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WBS – there are attempts / proposals / discussions but national elections and the setback in Spain last year are a brake on them. Not to mention fending of the fascist-spectrum right – but such initiatives are an integral part of that.
And they don’t seem to be getting much purchase in the Anglophone parts of the EU.
I ought to pull my finger out and list some of them for this blog – but I’m a little busy right now.
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I’ve never known any current members of either of the two British Trotskyist somewhat estranged twins to admit that they might have been wrong about anything. Ex-members sure – but with current members you’re wasting you’re bits in arguing about Brexit.
The agenda that they are unwilling to state too loudly is the same as the Tory’s – that RoI should follow the UK in what is quite likely to be exit without any agreement. They will continue to deny the massively racist and anti-immigrant nature of actually existing Brexit, as opposed to the theoretical one that is somehow going to further the cause of socialism in one country, or if they’re lucky, two.
Meanwhile, while recognising that it isn’t ‘the end of the world’ and that it’s a massive distraction from class politics that will dominate the western European islands for the next few years, the rest of us must go about the business of damage limitation.
The economic fallout has already begun and is hard to predict at present, but in terms of North-South relations it means in RoI’s case trying to ensure that the establishment of a hard border doesn’t lead to a restarting of the conflict in the north, among other things. Or that the RoI gets bullied into being sub-contractors to the British security state.
Enough already.
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+1
You’ll hear the same ‘analysis’ from sections within the BLP as well.
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So is there any ideological reason why the Brit-Trots seem to have undue influence over the Irish-Trots while the French are irrelevant?
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My theory is it’s mainly a question of language commonality / barriers. But I’m no expert and not likely to become one.
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The Anglophone point is spot on. But I can’t help but think that it is of a piece with the compromises the British left in all its facets has made with the reality of the British state and has been adopted by some closer to home, compromises, conscious and unconscious, that leave it profoundly short-sighted as regards the challenges intrinsic to that state. One part of that is to regard London as the ‘natural’ centre of all activity, political, economic and otherwise, and to dismiss as provincialism, ‘nationalism’ etc, the idea Scotland, Wales, NI or the ROI have an equal right to same (and I think that dynamic is oddly strong in the North of I in unexpected places ‘ an internalization of Britain as the actual focus of :real’ political activity). Part of that is an over-reification of the British state as an instrumentality ignoring that Ireland is long gone from it and no longer dominated in quite the same way economically or politicall and others are chafing under its restrictions (Scotland etc) and that trying to reconstitute the status quo ante of the pre-independence period (this isn’t thought of consciously but the power relationships I think prevail as the template) is a ship that has also long sailed.
One thing that is absolutely bizarre is the idea that a residual monarchy with considerable embedded social and economic power – with a deeply problematic relationship with its constituent parts, riven by issues of national identity in relation to Scotland, NI, etc, and an electoral system that is almost perfectly designed to marginalise anything left of Labour (and even Labour itself in some ways) provides a better and more fertile ground for leftism (and this has even been suggested as an inspiration and exemplar to others in the EU when it has departed) than social democrat inflected republics across much of the rest of Europe with much stronger lefts and PR and federal structures which have real teeth. Not that those arent without their own challenges but it does speak of a parochialism.
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You mean the ‘class politics’ of the Centre Left whose main result over 30 years is to hand the European working class into the hands of the far Right? The Martin Schulz ‘class politics’ of attacking Greek working class resistance to the EU at every opportunity? The ‘class politics’ of the European trade union leaderships who are happy enough to leave ECJ judgements that undercut workers rights stand? The dog whistling racism of Die Linke recently, that ‘class politics’?
The ‘class politics’ of the neo-liberal pre-Corbyn BLP was a critical feature in delivering the Brexit vote. That strand of the BLP worked overtime to undermine the miners in 1984/5, attack Tony Benn at the every chance and attack Labour councils who wanted to resist Thatcherism. That ‘class politics’ is getting its historic comeuppance with Brexit.
It’s funny that you should reference the ‘rest of us’ getting on with ‘damage limitation’, by which I presume you mean those who aren’t ‘Trots’, at this time when the water charges in Ireland (a product of EU intervention) are on the verge of abolition and those who paid the will be getting, it looks like it a full refund. That was brought about by the insistence on the part of the ‘Trots’ that mass non-payment would beat these charges. An insistence in the streets, communities, council chambers and the Dáil. It was an insistence matched by other parties like the WP, the anarchists and independent socialist activists. I’ll take that anytime over Habermasian boilerplate about the EU.
Anyway, we’ll see how GW ‘class politics’ works out in the next Greek crisis, due very soon.
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One real difficulty in all this discussion is an unwillingness on your part not to default to a line that anti Brexit = pro-EU. Read what GW says time and again here and it is clear he is very EU critical like many of us. It really doesn’t strengthen arguments to present people holding positions they actually don’t (ie Habermasian boilerplate about the EU).
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Yeah, well the default argument here is that supporting a Left exit makes you a Tory i.e. GW’s point above – ‘The agenda that they are unwilling to state too loudly is the same as the Tory’s’.
I don’t actually think anti Brexit = pro-EU, at least for some contributors here – but there is clearly a level that the EU – that hyper-capitalist neo-liberal entity that has been explicitly constructed to marginalise democratic inputs to decision making – holds a profound influence on many on the Left who clearly believe it represents progress over nationally organised capitalist states.
I think much of ‘criticism’ is the necessary genuflection towards the EU’s shitty behaviour in Greece and Ireland, but does not extend to any critique of how the institutions operate day-to-day.
Anyway, on a related point: Brexit is surely related to the anomaly identified by the OECD yesterday where Britain, alone among OECD members, has witnessed economic growth alongside severe wage contraction, over the past 10 years. Greece has seen both economic contraction and wage contraction in the same period. The Tories’ monstrous agenda over the past seven years has translated into a 40% approval rating and probably a landslide at the next election. But how long can that be sustained?
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“Ithink much of ‘criticism’ is the necessary genuflection towards the EU’s shitty behaviour in Greece and Ireland, but does not extend to any critique of how the institutions operate day-to-day. ”
That’s surely saying that we are arguing in bad faith.
In any event it doesn’t begin to address the further point that however bad the EU, which it is, Brebxit is for most of us objectively worse.
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Er – nothing in the first two paragraphs above are the kind of class politics that I would support, obviously. And the water charges campaign is an example of what I would count as worthwhile class politics. I challenge you to prove that I’ve ever said otherwise.
I don’t see the connection really. Oh, I get it – because I don’t think Brexit will benefit UK workers at this stage, I automatically support the actions of Schulz etc. against Greece. Hm…bit of a logical stretch isn’t it?
And conterary to what I was actually engaged in during the Greek resistance of 2015. But hey – you probably know more about that as well.
(For those not familiar with the minutiae of German politics – ‘dog-whistle racism’ presumably refers to one badly-expressed intervention of Sarah Wagenknecht, which she quickly rowed back on.)
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Some of us might question whether SWP/PBP is Trotskyist, I am not even sure they even claim to be. The SP claim to be but I’m not so sure. Their arguments over the EU seem very like the Labour left of the 70s (Benn etc), which the LP left have abandoned now (rightly in my view). They sound more left reformist to me.
GW’s “the cause of socialism in one country” made me laugh, it’s true, that does seem to be what they are arguing.
Some good arguments here about Lexit:
https://irishmarxism.net/
although I think opposing Brexit now is a no hoper. Like Alibaba said “in or out the fight is for socialism”, but “ou”t that fight is harder because Brexit has pulled many to the populist anti-immigration right and I’m not sure where they will go when Brexit faiuls to deliver good jobs etc. Ford seems like it is going to reduce its UK operations:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/03/bridgend-reels-from-jobs-threat-hanging-over-ford-plant
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Funny thing is most of my friends who are Trotskyists are broadly sceptical of Lexit.
Agree though Brecit won’t be stopped – best we can hope for us some amelioration of its worst features
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I believe Carroll and McCann are in a fight to save their seats. PBP vote down in West Belfast and not looking good in Foyle.
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Hmmm, not delighted to hear that. Thought when I heard turnout was up that might be indicative of some unpredictable dynamics, still its early yet
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McCann is gone, no chance for him at this point. A real pity.
One interesting thing about the election was the fact that all SF assembly candidates – EVERY.SINGLE.ONE – are against extending the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland. Farcically that is to the right of the North Ireland Conservatives whose candidates, nearly all of them, support extending the Act to Northern Ireland.
http://www.alliance4choice.com/news/2017/2/mla-candidates-stance-on-abortion-ae17
Fair play to Gerry Carroll who seems to have clung on.
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I’ve sometimes wondered if abortion availability is a Left issue or a Conservative issue. Or possibly both sides play political football with the issue.
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I don’t believe that the Irish SP and SWP took their line on the Brexit referendum from their British sister parties simply because they are directed from London ‘centres’ and have no autonomy. I think they followed the common practice of trusting a sister organization to decide upon the right line for an issue that arises in their country and defending that line themselves. But in this case they’ve been left carrying the can for an ill-judged position and it may do them real harm.
The two Irish Trotskyist groups seem to have been in much better health over the last few years than their British counterparts. At the time when the British SWP has become something of a pariah on the radical left and lost hundreds of members after its atrocious handling of rape allegations, the Irish SWP has seen party members elected in Dublin and Belfast under the PBP banner; the Irish SP also has much more of a presence in national politics than the British SP. People who don’t have any particular interest in the left but follow politics will have heard of Ruth Coppinger and Richard Boyd Barrett, Paul Murphy and Gerry Carroll. I doubt anyone who’s not part of the left-wing milieu will have heard of Charlie Kimber or Peter Taafe.
I don’t blame the British parties for this: it’s largely down to the electoral systems, the Irish one being much more open to smaller parties than the British. But what it meant in terms of Brexit was clear. Nobody outside the left scene heard the arguments being made by the SP or the SWP; they had no impact on the national debate. Frankly, they could just as well have been calling for Britain to form a federation with Kazakhstan or with the newly discovered exoplanets and it would have made no difference to the outcome. But the Irish parties do have a (limited but real) impact on national political debate; their opinions are reported in the national media. So their position on Brexit is something people are going to notice.
What this means in practical terms is: every time Paul Murphy or Brid Smith or Gino Kenny lashes into the Troika, they’ll have someone from the other side saying ‘you supported Brexit, and look what a car-crash that was!’ And even more to the point, in the North, PBP will have people (SF especially) saying ‘you supported Brexit, and look what a car-crash that is proving to be for all of us!’ Hearing reports that the PBP vote is down significantly in West Belfast; there may be various factors behind this, but the Brexit position certainly would have given SF a handy stick to beat them with. When the main political forces pushing for, celebrating and now shaping Brexit are the Tory right, UKIP and the DUP, how is that going to play with working-class nationalists in Derry or Belfast? I don’t expect they will ever say so publicly, but the Irish Trotskyist groups have been sold a pup here by their British sister parties, who are not the ones having to answer questions about their line in situations of real political consequence, and they should be very resentful towards them for that.
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Convincing analysis Ed. Of course the sister parties in both islands have different perspectives and interests.
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Sounds about right to me. It shouldn’t have been beyond the wit of the GB and Irish parties to come up with some Marxist flannel explaining that Brexit would be good for GB, but was to be opposed in Ireland, or at least saying `Lexit with Irish characteristics’ and adding special status for NI to any pro-Brexit campaign.
But they couldn’t even manage that.
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I agree Ed, just to be clear I don’t think either that it’s a simple London gives the orders relationship.
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Michael, if what you suggest had been done, then we’d still be having the same multi-comment thread attacking the AAA/SP and PBP/SWP over Brexit, except it would be different people doing the attacking. A case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
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For what little it’s worth, I’d still probably give a preference to AAA/PBP if I had a vote, but with even less enthusiasm than before since the slow Brexit train-wreck.
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The large drop in the PBP first preference vote shows that failure to include the united struggle of the Irish masses north and south for Irish sovereignty in a socialist programme in Ireland is totally wrong.
There is no mention of the “Cross Community Labour Alternative” in the early results on BBC.
As political crisis develops, fundamental issues always assert themselves and cant be ignored or wished away
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‘Convincing analysis’ – more like utter claptrap.
It still astonishes me that people buy into (or for sectarian reason perpetrate) this urban myth that the British section of the CWI is the ‘mother’ party of the Irish section of the CWI (there isn’t actually a British section as there is a seperate section in Scotland). All 50+ sections of the CWI operate on the basis of mutual respect, cooperation and solidarity on an equal footing. The position of the CWI on Lexit was not determined by the ‘British’ section but by the IEC of the CWI after intense discussion.
Furthermore, every single section of the CWI in Europe would support withdrawal from the EU – the main bastion of capitalism on the continent.
As regards the political clout of the CWI sections in Britain – not surprisingly Ed really hasn’t a clue what he is talking about. The electoral system in Britain prohibits all left parties from making electoral inroads. The strength of the CWI in Britain is not determined by electoral politics but by its strength in trade unions (where CWI members play a prominent and sometimes dominant role in a number of unions), in local communities where CWI members have played a sterling role in building local campaigns against council cuts and cuts in education and the NHS and among students focussed on the debilitating loans system and cuts in education. The CWI in Britain has almost doubled in size over the past period and has grown significantly since the Brexit vote.
And I agree with oconnorlysaght – the major blunder in the ‘Brexit’ campaign was the failure of Corbyn to fight for Brexit on a left programme, instead, as he has been doing since elected leader, bending the knee to the Blairites. There is no doubt that Brexit will be a complicated process, that right-wing attitudes will dominate the debate because of the hole Corbyn has dug for himself and it will boost the far right in ramping up racist and xenophobic attitudes. But it is utterly wrong for many on the left to characterise the Brexit vote as a racist and xenophobic vote – it wasn’t – it contained a significant vote that was a two fingers at the EU establishment and everything it stands for.
Last point – SF’s position on Brexit is based on the most crass form of nationalism and tribalism. Their opposition to Brexit was based on the expectation that it would create a hard border between North and South which from their perspective would make a united Ireland more difficult to achieve. If the South had already been outside the EU the Shinners would have been screaming for Brexit from the top of every British army tower in the North.
The current election in the North is nothing more than a tribal sectarian headcount. Despite Paddy’s claim the drop in the PBP vote had nothing to do with the lack of a ‘united struggle’ (and I do have major issues with the approach of the PBP in the North) and everything to do with a vicious smear campaign by SF (and they are pass-masters at such smears), making sure that they weren’t utterly complacent like they were in 2016 and the ramping up of tribalism in West Belfast.
The increased vote for SF in the North is almost exclusively based on the claim by SF for Catholic voters to come out because they smelt blood and thought that the DUP would be hammered because of ash for cash and SF could become the largest party in the North and claim the First Ministers job (as if that would result in any change to the austerity being imposed by the Executive). All the election has demonstrated is that the electoral process in the North has become more entrenched in the sectarian extremes of SF and the DUP. This was amply demonstrated by the hysterical screaming match between Martina Anderson and Donaldson on the media a couple of hours ago.
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Always nice to be lectured on my ignorance by someone who apparently can’t read plain English:
“It still astonishes me that people buy into (or for sectarian reason perpetrate) this urban myth that the British section of the CWI is the ‘mother’ party of the Irish section of the CWI.”
Which is precisely what I said; I was rejecting the idea JRG objects to:
“I don’t believe that the Irish SP and SWP took their line on the Brexit referendum from their British sister parties simply because they are directed from London ‘centres’ and have no autonomy.”
And this is also a rephrasing of what I wrote:
“As regards the political clout of the CWI sections in Britain – not surprisingly Ed really hasn’t a clue what he is talking about. The electoral system in Britain prohibits all left parties from making electoral inroads.”
“I doubt anyone who’s not part of the left-wing milieu will have heard of Charlie Kimber or Peter Taafe.I don’t blame the British parties for this: it’s largely down to the electoral systems, the Irish one being much more open to smaller parties than the British.”
You can take pride in the role your comrades play in the unions, or in their membership figures if you like; it doesn’t change the fact, there isn’t a single SP member here who is a prominent national figure frequently quoted in the national media. Peter Taafe was approached a few times last summer for quotes when there was a Red scare about ‘Trotskyite infiltration’ of the Labour Party. I didn’t see him or any SP member quoted during the Brexit referendum. If you asked the average person in Britain who follows political news fairly closely what the SP’s position on the referendum was, I very much doubt they could tell you. As I said, I don’t blame them for this marginal status, but it’s the reality and it distinguishes them from the Irish section of the CWI.
“And I agree with oconnorlysaght – the major blunder in the ‘Brexit’ campaign was the failure of Corbyn to fight for Brexit on a left programme, instead, as he has been doing since elected leader, bending the knee to the Blairites.”
I hate to break it to you JRG, but you don’t agree with oconnorlysaght at all – he actually suggested that Corbyn wasn’t vigorous enough in opposing Brexit (something I disagree with him about, for reasons I’ve stated above). Here’s what he said (honestly, can you read at all?):
“However, the political effect of Brexit (with Lexit playing the role of, well, Labour in the last coalition) was aimed at getting rid of the popular aspects of the EU connection, and, of course, doing so by appealing to the atavistic tendencies of the population of what is still an imperial power, albeit a declining one. This is why it had to be opposed (and why Corbyn’s Hilary Clintonesque Remain campaign was a major blunder).”
As for the rest of your cobblers—honestly, would you ever go and take a running jump, and take your pompous finger-wagging lectures with you. Let me be absolutely clear: you’ve been proven abjectly, shambolically, catastrophically wrong in your analysis of Brexit. You assured us all that it would lead to a Tory split, a snap election and a Corbyn-led Labour government; if I remember rightly, you even threw in a general strike for good measure, because why the hell not? If we’re chomping down pie in the sky, we might as well put a f**king cherry on top while we’re at it. Now here we are, less than a year later, with the Tories soaring in the polls after shifting markedly to the right; the Labour Party way behind, confronted by difficult if not insoluble electoral conundrums, its left wing leadership reeling under repeated blows; the political debate dominated by the question ‘how can we keep foreigners out?’, and racism and xenophobia given a major boost; and for good measure, some of the most progressive elements in British society have been driven by their reaction against all of the aforementioned trash into a dead-end, Europhile stance.
The balance-sheet from Brexit is unambiguously negative, and by the time the Tories start to pay a price for the games they’re currently playing, there may be no significant left-wing force in a position to take advantage. I don’t think there’s any mileage in trying to reverse the outcome of last summer’s referendum; we are where we are and we have to fight on that terrain. But anyone who thinks this has opened up great new fields of possibility for the British left is living in a fantasy world.
And you have the f**king nerve to wag your finger at me or anyone else who has been observing this at close quarters from your perch in our dearly beloved motherland and presume to tell us you know better. And all you can manage by way of explanation for the gulf between your predictions and the reality—a reality that was anticipated and predicted by many of us, coming from a radical-left, harshly Euro-critical standpoint—is a tediously predictable, cookie-cutter, Trotskyism for Exceptionally Stupid Children line about betrayal by the weak-kneed reformists (as usual with this stuff, Marxism ends up being replaced by half-baked amateur psychology as an explanation for political action). Can I suggest that the next time you feel like delivering a lecture about the hole that Corbyn—or anyone else who declined to follow your counsels of idiocy—have supposedly dug for themselves, you dig a hole of your own and insert yourself therein?
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And to add to your critique Ed, what about the delusionary stuff including the demand that a party that is pro-EU, pro-remain, etc, i.e. the BLP( even including the new membership brought in by Corbyn) simply acquiescing to Corbyn imposing on them a pro-Brexit policy at the referendum? Whether one agrees or disagrees with Brexit that would have been utterly undemocratic. Really JRG, it’s adding one delusion on another with no reference to reality, democracy, anything. Claptrap indeed.
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Here’s one prediction of how it would pan out, a month before the vote, from a left-wing writer who considers the EU an irreformable neoliberal institution and would have been happy to support an exit from the EU under different circumstances:
“The conservative right could have conducted the leave campaign on the issues of democracy, rule of law and UK sovereignty, leaving the economics to the outcome of a subsequent election. Instead, Johnson and the Tory right are seeking a mandate via the referendum for a return to full-blown Thatcherism: less employment regulation, lower wages, fewer constraints on business. If Britain votes Brexit, then Johnson and Gove stand ready to seize control of the Tory party and turn Britain into a neoliberal fantasy island.
Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders goes on trial for inciting hatred.
“They will have two years in which to shape the post-Brexit economy. Worse, the Tories will be free to use the sudden disappearance of our rights as EU citizens to reshape the UK’s de facto constitution. The man who destroyed state control of education and the man who shovelled acres of free land into the hands of London developers will get to determine the new balance of power between the citizen and the state. So even for those who support the leftwing case for Brexit, it is sensible to argue: not now. The time to confront Europe over a leftwing agenda is when you have a Labour government, and the EU is resisting it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/16/brexit-eu-referendum-boris-johnson-greece-tory
Now let’s compare that with the wit and wisdom of the SP:
“For British capitalism in particular it is a terrible defeat. It could lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom if there is another vote for independence in Scotland, and also lead to the collapse of the Tory Party, once among the most successful capitalist parties on the planet …
“Despite the serious mistakes made by the majority of the leaders of the workers’ movement in the referendum campaign, it is not at all automatic that UKIP and their ilk will be the gainers from it. A clear call now for an immediate general election could still lead to the coming to power of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government, especially if an anti-austerity programme is put forward. At the same time, the trade union movement needs to go on the offensive against this weak and divided Tory government, fighting for a 24-hour general strike to be called against any new threats of austerity in the wake of Brexit.”
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/23102
“The vote – 52% to 48% – represents at bottom a predominantly working-class revolt against austerity and the Tory millionaire government of David Cameron and George Osborne which has laid waste to living standards and working-class communities. It is totally false to draw the utterly pessimistic conclusions which some small left groups have done that this result could lead to a ‘carnival of reaction’ in Britain and encourage right-wing forces in Europe and elsewhere.”
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/23119
(‘Some small left group’ made me smile there, I have to say)
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‘But anyone who thinks this has opened up great new fields of possibility for the British left is living in a fantasy world.’
What, then, is the territory of which a Left fight back against a rampant Tory party in a post-Brexit UK can be fought? From what I can see the rapidly declining social and economic conditions for wide sections of the UK working class don’t seem to be impacting on the Tories poll ratings suggesting either a severe polarisation is underway between a small majority doing ‘OK’ to ‘very well’ and a very substantial minority whose living standards are declining at a rate never seen before in an advanced industrialised country. Which group will form the basis of a fightback or even modest resistance? Labour seem to be rediscovering a bit of backbone with their defeat of the government in the Lords over the rights of EU citizens post-Brexit. Are the next two years going to be irredeemably dominated the Tories hard Right agenda? Are there no countervailing forces that will emerge to bend Brexit in a more progressive direction?
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To answer your last three questions, None that has any political weight, Yes and most likely No.
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1) What’s the terrain? A harder, meaner, less favourable terrain, full of irrelevant and often poisonous diversions. If you have no choice but to eat shit and get on with the struggle, that’s what you have to do, but there’s no point pretending it’s steak. I was told with great conviction by Lexit advocates that by now we would have seen a Tory split, a snap election and a Labour government led by Corbyn. None of those things have happened, and the odds of the third thing happening have lengthened dramatically.
2) Gee whizz, ain’t that swell – with a bit of luck and effort, the Tories might be forced to guarantee the status of EU citizens already living here (whose status was never in question before the poxy Brexit referendum; nor was the status of EU citizens who might want to come here in the future). If that’s all we can put on the positive side of the ledger, forgive me if I keep the champagne on ice for now.
3) Are there no countervailing forces? Who’s going to lead the resistance? There are always countervailing forces, even at the bleakest of times. There are countervailing forces in the US right now; there are countervailing forces in Turkey, or Egypt, or any number of places where conditions are still pretty grim and the outlook isn’t at all hopeful. The relevant question is: are the prospects better or worse now than they were before the referendum? Better or worse than they would have been in the event of a Remain vote? From where I’m sitting, it requires extraordinary myopia to deny that the answer is ‘worse’. I think Alex Nunns called it well in a recent interview (which is well worth reading in its entirety):
“The context has now been transformed by Brexit, which is a nightmare for Labour. Brexit plays to all the party’s long-term weaknesses and none of its strengths. It’s just typical that at the moment that the left finally takes the leadership of the Labour Party, a referendum on Europe comes along and drives wedges into all the party’s fissures. Imagine if Cameron had never called it. Of course, Labour would still have had its own problems—the coup would have happened anyway. But Cameron and Osborne’s project was looking shaky. Austerity had failed. The cuts were increasingly unpopular. The Tories were down at 30% in projected national vote share in the 2016 local elections, behind Labour. The NHS was moving towards crisis. And we now know that Trump was about to arrive and destroy Cameron and Osborne’s pro-China orientation. Instead, all of that is obliterated by Brexit.”
http://salvage.zone/online-exclusive/the-left-corbyn-and-labours-future-interview-with-alex-nunns/
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“And you have the f**king nerve to wag your finger at me or anyone else who has been observing this at close quarters from your perch in our dearly beloved motherland and presume to tell us you know better”
This. There’s a considerable population of posters here who live and work in Britain, and not one of us is anything other than dismayed in the aftermath of the referendum.
I find myself advising students from elsewhere in the EU to consider staying here after they graduate for a couple of years in order to keep their options open. I hear English students everyday appalled and depressed at what is happening to their country. I’ve spoken to 2nd generation immigrants from Pakistan who fear in their bones the revival of the kind of shit their parents generation put up with. Ukip may be failing as a political party, but they don’t even need to win a single seat to control the terms of everyday political discourse. But yeah, the revolution…..
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You’re a Labour Party member, the fear your Pakistani students are feeling is as much to do with the Blari/Brown/Miliband regime as it is to do with UKIP. Indeed, what need is there really for UKIP and Britain First when many in th Labour Party parliamentary party are to the right of them. The ‘Immigration Mug’ will decades to live down. And then we have lectures from LP supporters about how mandatory deselection would be ‘divisive’. Talk about having your cake and eating it.
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“You’re a Labour Party member, the fear your Pakistani students are feeling is as much to do with the Blari/Brown/Miliband regime as it is to do with UKIP”
To clarify; the British -Pakistanis i was talking about are not students but neighbours, and some labour members. And while i’m sure they weren’t happy with the mug, they’re not afraid of the LP. Participation in uni education among asians here is low, mainly thanks to the 11plus and the Grammar schools that make Bucks so attractive to ex-Londoners. The number of asian kids in the three grammars here is in the handfuls and there is not a single afro-caribbean kid in any of them.
But feel free to tell me what people here should think and who they should blame.
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It’s interesting. Doug Henwood’s ‘Behind the News’ had a very interesting interview with Mark Blythe where the latter remarked upon the absolute absence of any self-criticism or reflection on the part of Europe’s Social Democratic parties.
You clearly think the ‘Immigration Mug’ was not problematic and did not feed into the rise of UKIP?
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Look I agree about the mug and did my best to wreck the candidate’s day about it here when he was canvassing and protested directly to Miliband. It was beyond stupid.
I joined the LP to elect Corbyn and stayed because i got to know some of the people in the party and they are decent hard working types in a hopeless seat. there are some battles that could be won on education and health here though.
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Oh and two other points CMK. Once again you ascribe to others opinions you either know or should know they don’t hold. SoS is as unlikely a supporter of the anti-immigration mug as anyone I can think of and it is deeply unpleasant and unfair to suggest he is otherwise. But you can’t have it both ways in this discussion. The LP can’t simultaneously be the great left hope in a Brexit context and also the repository of deep anti-immigrant feeling. Yet again the formation you support (and you) during and after the referendum said that it was the first – as recently as yesterday JRG was arguing that Corbyn should have imposed a Lexit line on that party, yet here in a discussion you immediately default simply to score a point against Sos (albeit not a very good one) to suggesting that it and he and the LP is anti-immigrant. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Is it any wonder that Ed et al are so exhausted and tired of all the hollow rhetoric?
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Yes. I was at another university on Thursday for a meeting of EU staff (mainly) worried about their (our) position, which is turning out at least as bad as we expected and, funny thing, nobody reckoned it was worth it because it will lead to the new Jerusalem.
It’s one thing to have Ireland Britsplained to us; now we have Brexit Micksplained.
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You should ask WbS to out a filter to exclude any opinions on Brexit from Ireland? Lest there by ‘Micksplaining’ whatever the f**k that is. Or maybe you and Stan should keep your mouths shut on what’s happening in Ireland? That sounds like a fair exchange? No?
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In fairness to MC (or SOS) he didn’t set himself up as the expert on Brexit and all that followed a year ago but the formation you’re a part of did and came out with predictions etc. Now if people over there like SoS and MC are sore after all that has ensued which has been utterly at variance with what was predicted perhaps a little humility or even empathy on your part wouldn’t go amiss. I mean it’s great to build castles in the sky but SoS and MC are dealing every day with people who are genuinely terrified and with good reason as to the ramifications of a Brexit on them and theirs and that wasn’t the case prior to Brexit.
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Look, I am going to have to say it again, don’t tar all those who would see themselves as in the Trotskyist tradition with the same brush. Way back in ’74 I took the abstentionist view, along with many others in what was then the International Socialists (forerunner of the SWP), regarding joining the EEC (as it was then, I think). For similar reasons Alibaba, Ed and Wbs seem to be articulating now over Brexit. It was always a capitalist project, but a post-imperialist British nostalgia was no better. IS changed its position to opposition to the EEC, in a confused way. I believe this was to cosy up to the Bennite left, Militant, if my memory serves me, also opposed EU membership.
I think the vast majority of non-group Trots in the UK (far more than are members of SWP/SP) plus the very small AWL argued a Remain position for the reasons put forward by Ed and Wbs. There are some Labour “left ” who want to fight Brexit, I do think some have an appocalytic view of Brexit and see the EU as a haven of internationalism and a bulwark against racism. I disagree with that. The political climate is, sadly, much worse now for making socialist arguments.
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I would very strongly agree with everything you say, my experience is that many (perhaps most) of those from the Trotskyist tradition st least in Ireland have the most balanced view of these matters (at least in my opinion). And speaking of the UK i know views differ on the Weekly Worker CPGB who also come from that tradition but I’ve found their analysis to be both broad based and extremely thoughtful encompassing genuine and excoriating critique of the EU and seek its replacement and with one of Lexit while not blinding itself with the idea all who voted Leave are racist etc and so on. Frankly my experience also is that there’s a fair number too in the more ‘traditional’ CP oriented left in the RoI too who hold similar views to my friends from the Trotskist tradition but won’t articulate them openly for party loyalty and I wouldn’t be surprised if that dynamic is extant further afield (though I do think that in England SP and SWP do hold sincerely if from my view mistakenly to their positions on this).
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https://irishelectionliterature.com/2016/07/12/alliance-for-workers-liberty-vote-to-stay-fight-for-a-workers-europe-brexit-leaflet/ One particular Left Group who were for Remain, also said why the SP and SWP were wrong.
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The AWL maybe isn’t the best example—they have a pretty woeful history of adopting positions seemingly just to spite the rest of the far left, for example over Israel (it was slightly comical to hear Owen Smith accuse them of anti-semitism last summer, after years of them making the same insinuations about other left groups). But they certainly weren’t the only ones to dissent from the Lexit line:
http://socialistresistance.org/brexit-vote-is-a-disaster-but-the-struggle-goes-on/8534
http://socialistresistance.org/the-ukipisation-of-the-tory-party-the-brexit-left-in-denial/8623
http://socialistresistance.org/world-politics-after-trump-and-brexit/9601
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Yes, the AWL are a bit like a sort of Spiked for the further left in terms of their contrarianism.
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JRG agrees with me about the brit LP campaign being inadequate. He ignores the fact that I considered it inadequate for reasons diametrically opposed to his: that Hamlet Corbyn, having committed himself formally to an anti-Brexit position could/would not fight for it effectively.As for his own current, I am glad that a self-proclaimed socialist body is growing, but i doubt whether that growth is specifically pro-Brexit. And Ed is correct. a far larger proportion of the population of Ireland know the names of P.Murphy , Boyd Barrett et al than the proportion of Britain that has heard of C.Kimber or P. Taafe.
Whether or not the Brexit vote was xenophobic and anti-immigrant could be investigated more. Certainly the pressure from the media to make it so was far, indeed qualitatively greater than all the rival propaganda of the Lexiteers.
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McCann says ‘ that the Brexit issue “didn’t do us any favours”.
http://www.bbc.com/news/politics/northern-ireland-constituencies/N06000008
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Ah the ould smear campaign..where would we be without it..JLR
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Do members of the parties we’re discussing actually believe that leaving Europe will mean that Britain has more left wing policies in the future?
I could understand French leftists being pro-Brexit because the UK has opposed so many moves to improve workers’ rights but the British leftists must realise that Brexit means more power for the likes of Murdoch, the potential loss of Scotland (which would lead to near-permanent Tory government) and less regulation.
I get not liking that the EU as a capitalist entity but in Britain it means that workers gained rights and outside of the EU, they’ve even less protection. The UK outside of the EU is an even more right wing state than before. It just seems like Turkeys voting for Christmas because they think somehow they’ll magically convince people to change the traditional dish to tofu.
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I think I said it above, I’m simply unable to understand how a renaissance of the left can be launched from a UK outside the EU (and then there’s all the aspects of the UK that are deeply problematic, monarchy, embedded privilege etc, etc), or how that could impact on European states. It’s almost like a sort of leftist rerun of WWII in their heads. Very odd.
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I’m sure there’s more depth to the argument that I’m not aware of but I can’t help but feel it’s like opposing the nature of the banking system and telling people to cancel their bank accounts and keep their money at home. It might damage the banking system but it doesn’t help workers. It’ll just probably make their lives more difficult.
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I think you’re right. It’s just not something that has traction on actual dynamics. I’d love it if Brexit could usher in something better, different, whatever, it would be great if the EU could be replaced with something better – and that fundamentally isa task for leftists, but from the of the nature of the environment seemed to be so obviously tilted against that that at best arguing for Brexit seemed aspirational. Ach, it makes little difference now – but I suppose the thing is that its one thing to climb out of the bunker and survey the ruins around and another to climb out and be told that the ruins aren’t that bad, or let’s not focus on them or that there’s no problem that can’t be overcome with a bit of extra belief.
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its an issue thats going to run and run. there is a line in the sand and will be a few surprises who will be on which side in ireland and why they are there and thats the nature of the argument.
whats this about french leftists being opposed by britain to improve workers rights. Will that dynamic in a britainless europe push certain sectors over the line here?
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Assembly Election results for SP-AAA–“Cross Community Labour Alternative”
East Belfast Courtney Robinson CCLA 442 1.0%
Suth Belfast Sean Burns CCLA 531 1.2%
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Assembly Election Results for PBP
West Belfast
West Belfast 2016 PBP Gerry Carroll 22.9% 8229
West Belfast 2017 PBP (Two Candidates) 15.6% 5999
Gerry Carroll gained the fifth seat for PBP, having headed the poll with 1.4 Quotas in 2016
Foyle (Derry)
2017Eamonn McCann (PBP) 4760 10.7%
2016 Eamonn McCann (PBP) 4116 10.5%
Eamonn McCann lost the seat. On the basis of above it may be concluded that Eamonn lost the seat because of the reduction seats from 6 to 5. This would not be correct. In 2016 Dr Anne McCloskey was proposed by a number of republican councillors who were critical of Sinn Fein support for cuts and collaoration with UK government. Dr McCloskey came seventh in 2016 having polled 3,400 votes. Dr McCloskey did not stand on this occasion. Clearly those who had voted for her voted for Sinn Féin rather than for Eamonn.
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Brian Feeney, Belfast Irish News on Assembly Result
“The voting in critical nationalist constituencies like West Belfast and Foyle showed that Sinn Féin got it exactly right, not just in terms of their astonishingly successful vote management, but in sensing the mood of frustration, despondency and apathy that was developing among nationalists over recent years.
Perhaps the best illustration of the accuracy of Sinn Féin’s diagnosis of discontent was the west Belfast result where the Sinn Féin vote was up 7.3 per cent and the Trotskyite People Before Profit was down 8 per cent. In short, the people who last year voted PBP as a protest against what proved to be Sinn Féin’s continued pointless dalliance with the DUP came back to Sinn Féin. The increased Sinn Féin vote also gave the lie to the nonsense PBP spouted about their cross-community support when a simple analysis of their transfers last May showed they got about 30 unionist votes.”
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Whatever about the rest that’s a remarkably low transfer from unionism. Is that robust though?
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Even if I dont have political agreement with former SDLP rep Brian Feeney. I find him reliale on factual issues. I haven’t checked the transfer myself.
Gerry Carroll had a large surplus in 2016 and his surplus was first to be distributed. A first count surplus is distributed by going through all valid first count papers of the elected candidate and counting the second preferences for all the other candidates. If candidate “A” got 10% of all second preferences s/he is allocated 10% of the surplus.
Brian Feeney would know this.
I will check it when I get a chance
The negligile vote for CCLA in unionist dominated constituencies bears out this trend
Associates of mine from Derry tell me that Eamonn McCann gets very few unionist votes
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Even if he has the facts right, Feeney can’t hide the gleeful tone (‘nonsense spouted’, etc). PBP may not have got very far with winning votes from working-class unionists, but they have at least given it a try and made some effort to reach out. The party Feeney now boosts for (after a long time as a SDLP hack) is happy to distribute flyers in Belfast urging nationalists to support it on the basis of crude sectarian head-counts.
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Unionist (DUP+UUP) candidates received 80 of Gerry Carrols second preferences out of 8229 -less than 1%
I have now checked the West Belfast Second Count 2016-distribution of Gerry Carrols surplus of 3047 votes on Wikipedia.
Unionist candidates were therefore allocated a total of 1% of the surplus of 3047 or 30 votes. That is where Brian Feeney got his thirty votes
It is clear that Gerry Carroll got a tiny vote-less than 1% from unionist sources
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About 2000 of Gerry Carrols Surplus or 64% went to SF+SDLP. A surprising 760 of these went to the SDLP. The rest or 35% went to WP, Green, Alliance or were non-transferable because they contained no second preference
As I said above the two unionists candidates received less than 1%
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well did an anti-austerity vote get turned back into an anti-DUP vote. Not sure how voting for Sinn Fein will change the outcome of Brexit.
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It might, just might, put pressure on the Tories in tandem with pressure from the SNP and the BLP – not to reverse Brexit but to ensure that some sort of deal more to the liking of this island comes about. It’s a long shot…
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Cross-Community Alternative(Socialist Party NI) Down Everywhere!
2017 East Belfast Courtney Robinson CCLA 442 1.0%
2016 East Belfast Courtney Robinson CCLA 517 1.4%
2017 Suth Belfast Sean Burns CCLA 531 1.2%
2016 Suth Belfast Sean Burns CCLA 871 2.7%
2017 East Antrim Conor Sheridan CCLA 393 1.1%
2016 East Antrim Conor Sheridan CCLA 551 1.7%
2017 Fermanagh South Tyrone Dónal Ó Cofaigh 643 1.2%
2016 no candidate
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Might be overstating things, but an imaginative proposal now might get somewhere.
https://mobile.twitter.com/adamboultonSKY/status/837787705182420995
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This supplements the 3 leaflets of other left formations provided by IEL
Not alone does it not refer to Brexit, it does not refer to any political solution of any kind
Political Programme of Cross-Community Labour Alternative
http://labouralternative.org/about/
Labour Alternative will stand candidates in the Assembly election with a simple programme:
• Labour Alternative is against austerity and for a better life for all
• Labour Alternative is for equality and against discrimination
• Labour Alternative is for compromise and against conflict on the issues which divide our communities
• Labour Alternative is for new politics and against the sectarian agenda of the past
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It is important to note that because DUP has dropped below 30 seats it has lost its power to veto legislation in it’s own right.
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Your poster CMK seems to think that the North is a “normal” society and also is somewhat ignorant of the situation on the ground.The 1 million protestant reference is simply untrue .Less than half the North’s population idenify as “protestant”.On issues like abortion,the North is 20 years behind the south on dealing with the issue.The “conflict” and little else dominated up here for decades.In the 1980s every “left” Dail formation would have been to the right of the British conservatives on the issue.Kemmy famously lost his seat on one occasion after being attacked by a bishop for being”pro abortion”.He responded by stating that he was only in favour where a womans life was in danger and was lauded as a hero for being so “progressive” No other TD publically even went as far.SF in the North are attacked relentlessly by SPUC and their allies as “baby killers”.Half page ads were placed in local newspapers saying SF wants to kill “disabled children” and saying how “sound” the SDLP,DUP, TUV etc are on the pro life side.When SF ensured that Marie Stopes was allowed to set up in Belfast they were denounced for months.A large banner was erected inside the porch of a Tyrone church last week telling people “in no circumstances vote SF”. (imagine a similar banner erected in Joe Sherlocks local church in the early 90s for a comparison)The WP for instance never mention the”a” word in any of their publicity material and are never targeted by SPUC. SDLP loudly proclaim “we are a pro life party” and the free state Labour party (Burton,Costello etc) were canvassing for them in Belfast last week.
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In fairness in their manifesto the WP do actually mention they’re pro-choice though not in their leaflets as far as I can see. That said that’s a very good point re the ILP.
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Sinn Féin passed a motion at its 2015 Ard Fheis supporting the repeal of the Eighth Amendment and making abortion permissible in limited cases. Two other motions fell automatically This included a motion which called for terminations to not be allowed in the circumstance of fatal foetal abnormalities, and motion 125 which states: ‘This Ard Fheis believes that women’s reproductive rights, and control over a woman’s body and sexuality are entirely a matter for the woman concerned in each particular circumstance’. To her credit, one speaker expressed dissatisfaction that members would not get a chance to vote on 125, saying she viewed it as a separate issue.
To refuse to allow members to even discuss the matter is a bureaucratic abuse par excellence, managed by SF when it resorts to procedural manoeuvres behind the scenes. Unfortunately, I see SF turning a deaf ear to women’s right to choose to terminate unwanted pregnancies and have full control over their reproductive choices.
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Roddy, I don’t doubt a single thing you say on that issue. Not alone do you have the Catholic head agents to deal with you also have the various Protestant denominations, particularly the wee frees and the various demented ‘Evangelicals’.
Having said all that, I still think SF are being very cynical on the issue of abortion. Posing as pro-choice in the so-called ‘Republic’ and opposing choice in the six counties.
I actually think Northern Ireland is not ’20 years behind’ the South but actually far in advance. At least constitutionally and legally, if not in terms of social attitudes. Abortion is not constitutionally outlawed in the North as it is in the ‘South’. Also, while the six counties have always been a sectarian state in healthcare it has, courtesy of the NHS (which the residents of the estate I canvassed with the memorial to two members of the IRA at the entrance, seem to support), it has been secular. There were no, correct me if I am wrong, no ‘Prod’ and ‘Taig’ hospitals in the North (there were in the South).
To do a thought experiment. Imagine if SF, along with liberal elements in the Alliance, the Greens and the UUP, were to insist on the 1967 Act being extended to Northern Ireland. And it was implemented. Women then in the South would have the option of a few hours on the motorway to Belfast, Derry, Enniskillen, Newry and not be faced with trips to London, Liverpool etc. Women in need of abortions could stay on the island of Ireland and not have recourse to perfidious Albions health service.
If I were an Irish republican, which I am not, I would have thought that that situation might be attractive and enough to sideline the anti-abortion craw thumpers.
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And yet it was the NI authorities, not the those in the republic that, last year tried to prosecute a woman for taking the morning after pill.
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SF have voted en bloc to save Marie Stopes,whilst Alliance split down the middle on the issue.You would be lucky to get 2 “liberals”in the 10 strong UUP group.The storys the same on fatal foetal abnormality and otherreforms- SF will stand virtually alone as a united party whilst only a handful from other parties will join them.
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Interesting article here.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/northern-ireland-sinn-fein-foster-brexit/518583/
“Republicans, as well as moderate unionists and independents, want Northern Ireland to receive a special status allowing it to remain in the EU’s common travel area, thus retaining free movement between the North and the Republic. More hardline unionists, like Foster, reject this solution for precisely the reason the others embrace it: It would mean, as McGarry put it, “Northern Ireland wasn’t in the United Kingdom in the same way as everywhere else.”
On Tuesday, during the second half of the final leaders debate, this issue of Brexit and the border dominated discussion. At one point, while the candidates were arguing over the role of the EU and the Republic in negotiating the North’s post-Brexit fate, Colum Eastwood, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, shouted, “It’s not up to the British government!””
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Perry Anderson on Lexit in Le Monde Diplomatique:
“For anti-systemic movements of the left in Europe, the lesson of recent years is clear. If they are not to go on being outpaced by movements of the right, they cannot afford to be less radical in attacking the system, and must be more coherent in their opposition to it. That means facing the probability the EU is now so path-dependent as a neoliberal construction that reform of it is no longer seriously conceivable. It would have to be undone before anything better could be built, either by breaking out of the current EU, or by reconstructing Europe on another foundation, committing Maastricht to the flames.”
http://mondediplo.com/2017/03/02brexit
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Silence from the Left on outcome of Assembly Election
No News or Comment on Socialist Party Website SPNI.net, or on Cross Community Labour Alternative websie labouralternative.org, or on PBP website! How about an explanation of the debacle?
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So Paddy, you expect the Socialist Party to shoot their mouth off with cliches – just like you do.
The Socialist Party will do what it always does – it will analyse the recent developments, it will publish this analysis and it will have a discussion within its ranks to see if the analysis needs to be extended, elaborated on or altered. That is the method of Marxism.
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As somebody who has never had any real interaction with the SP or SWP, does anything ever come of these discussions? I mean, does the analysis ever come out as, effectively, “Oops. We miscalculated”.
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Don’t you know that all revolutionary socialist organisations are top down dictatorial groups with a bunch of mindless automatons as members.
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To be fair, I don’t think that revolutionary socialist organisations need to be top down dictatorial groups. Most political parties put a far greater emphasis on parliamentary representation etc. Whether for good or ill, it acts as feedback.
For a revolutionary socialist organisation, this is far less important. But I do wonder what objective metrics they use to measure the impact of policies. As I understand it, when things get worse for workers (as is likely for workers in Britain and NI post-Brexit), that doesn’t necessarily mean that the organisation has made a mistake. So how does it recognise when it’s made a mistake?
Sure, it can get feedback from members but acceptable criticism has to fall within specific marxist interpretations (or at least that’s what I understand while happy to admit I don’t know much about these things).
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But you haven’t even anounced your results-yor much reduced votes in a highr poll. Would that be shooting yor mouth off?
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Actually Paddy – CCLA received 1939 votes in 2016 and 2069 votes last week – so using your terminology, we could claim a ‘much increased vote’.
By the way – tell me how are the Workers and Unemployed Action Group’s plans that were announced 5 years ago to become an all Ireland party going – what kind of vote did the WUAG get last week in the North (or anywhere else around the country outside of Tipp in the last five years)?
I could be accused of being facetious – and I am – but it is a bit irritating to have to listen to you spout the same nonsense as you did 35 years ago (almost word for word) – and I still remember Alex White trying the same thing when he was a top knob in USI with those bastions of working class revolution, Joe Duffy and Mark Durkan.
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Wash your Mouth Out! Surely you couldn’t have expected to get away with that with me! As I posted above: Cross-Community Alternative(Socialist Party NI)
2017 East Belfast Courtney Robinson CCLA 442 1.0%
2016 East Belfast Courtney Robinson CCLA 517 1.4%
2017 Suth Belfast Sean Burns CCLA 531 1.2%
2016 Suth Belfast Sean Burns CCLA 871 2.7%
2017 East Antrim Conor Sheridan CCLA 393 1.1%
2016 East Antrim Conor Sheridan CCLA 551 1.7%
2017 Fermanagh South Tyrone Dónal Ó Cofaigh 643 1.2%
2016 no candidate
In the 3 constituencies contested by CCLA in 2016 you got 1939 Votes
In the same 3 constituencies in 2017 you got 1366 votes in a higher poll
You contested an extra seat in Fermanagh South Tyrone in 2017 where you got 643 votes
Sure if you put candidates up in every constituency and got the relations to vote for them, you could have doubled your vote!!!
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psst jrg WUAG didn’t put up anyone for election in 2016 http://tipperaryreturningofficer.com/index.php/general-election-2016/7-notice-of-poll
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these might be interesting
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The Principled Position Of All British Left Wing Organisation Should Be For the Full unity and Independence of Ireland and Complete Disengagement of the British State from Ireland. BUT WHAT IS THE REALITY? FIND OUT HERE http://wp.me/pKzXa-RO
The Position of British Left wing Groups on British disengagement from Ireland is a key ctiterion for assessing the political position of their Irish sister bodies and their own credentials as principled British revolutionaries.
Positions of British Left Wing Groups on Ireland
Jeremy Corbyn: “United Ireland:it’s an aspiration that I have always gone along with”. Thu, Sep 24, 2015
From Their Websites CPGB , SP(UK), SWP(UK), New CPGB, Socialis Fight(Trotskyist) Click Here http://wp.me/pKzXa-RO
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Just for clarification Paddy – there is no such organisation as SP (UK) – there is the Socialist Party of England and Wales. Socialist Party Scotland is a separate independent section of the CWI.
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