Signs of Hope – A continuing series June 25, 2021
Posted by guestposter in Uncategorized.trackback
Gewerkschaftler suggested this recently:
I suggest this blog should have a regular (weekly) slot where people can post happenings at the personal or political level that gives them hope that we’re perhaps not going to hell in a handbasket as quickly as we thought. Or as the phlegmatic Germans put it “hope dies last”.
Any contributions this week?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Quote: “The rank and file dispute at the Gateshead Amazon warehouse construction site now appears to have ended in a win, with all sacked workers being offered reinstatement.”
http://libcom.org/news/gateshead-amazon-picket-wins-reinstatement-sacked-workers-24062021
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To balance some of the more unpleasant news about NP in DBS there’s also been some counter-propaganda mobilisations against him this week, and from what I hear Le Chéile have plans to do similar anti-NP leafleting next week too https://twitter.com/antifascistirl/status/1408003677680553987
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India Walton defeats the sitting mayor of Buffalo in the Democratic mayoral primary. A 38-year-old union nurse and Black Lives Matter activist, she is alnmost certain to become the first avowedly socialist mayor of a major American city since 1960. She went on national tv and talked about how the Americn myth of “rugged individualism” was a lie. Remarkable similarities to Cori Bush, who became a congresswoman from St Louis in 2020. Bush is also a socialist DSA member and is an African-American nurse, single mother and BLM leader. A feminst socialism put forward by black and brown women like Walton and Bush (and AOC and Rashida Taib) seems to be a way for the left to refresh its critique and win elections in the US.
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Uruemu Adejinmi has been elected Mayor of Longford today:
https://www.thejournal.ie/uruemu-adejinmi-longford-mayor-5477081-Jun2021/
Of course, there was a similar story in Portlaoise a decade ago, but I believe Mr Adebari was an independent at the time, whereas the endorsement of a political party here should encourage immigrants of all backgrounds to engage in local and national elections.
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Carmel Gates, the candidate of the Broad Left caucus, has been elected General Secretary of NIPSA. NIPSA is the biggest union in the North. Carmel is a supporter of Militant Left. It’s arguably the most important post in the Irish trade union movement to be occupied by a socialist radical since the days of Matt Merrigan.
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The SP has been a major force in NIPSA for decades,This is down to the fact that a large segment of NIPSA members are middle class civil servants with no interest in politics of any kind let alone radical politics.They are union members on paper only and do not participate in industrial action when it is called and would never attend a union meeting .It is relatively easy for committed people to attain high office due to general disinterest among the general membership.
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NIPSA is the largest union by a distance, covering most of the public sector, and its membership in its large majority is not “middle class” by any sensible definition of that term.
The radical left of any stripe do not typically find it easier to win elected positions in quiet unions full of quietly comfortable people. Far from it. It is true though that with the slow hollowing out of almost all trae unions, a process in train since the 80s, that it can be easier for highly committed activists to gain office even where their commitments are not shared by those electing them.
The Socialist Party is not, of course, strong in NIPSA these days, as their old NIPSA activists now make up much of the membership of Militant Left. I believe the Socialist Party’s greatest remaining union prominence in the North is in Unite, again not mostly a union of the quietly comfortable middle classes.
As noted above, while the left has been strong in NIPSA for decades, this is the first time it has managed to take the top job.
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The boxing out of the far right from winning any of the regional elections in France seems like good news, albeit it mostly benefited centre-right parties. I wonder if it is an indication that, in the aftermath of Trump, Brexit et al, we could see a swing to the centre-ground from electorates that are tired of an endless presentation of extremes? I think that kind of sentiment may have really helped Biden.
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It’s been somewhat of a legacy from the royal and Bonapartist eras, cemented by the weakness of the Third and Fourth Republics, that France has never had a strong parliamentary system, but rather has been characterised by the dominance of individual candidates (De Gaulle, Mitterrand, Chirac). Macron came in through the gap once Fillon imploded, and the Socialists had no obvious candidate, as seems the case again for 2022, but Le Pen could be stymied this time by one of a number of leading Republicans, such as Wauquiez or Bertrand.
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