Could this be a new chance for the left?

[jiggajagga]

Lynn Jones, Labour left-winger and green has said she intends to stand against Gordon Brown in an election for leader. She agrees she has no chance at the moment because all the 'real' labour party members have left.
What about if we all rejoin and vote for her instead of Gordon Blair....sorry! Brown when the 'one man one vote' system is used?

 

[treelover]

Lynne Jones is great, but afaik she is a scientist and was pro GM foods/genetic engineering, so not completely green then.

 

[JHE]

There is already a thread on this: http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=152027

A new chance for the left? No chance of winning, as Jones concedes.

 

[s.norbury]

I wish her luck, she seems to have plenty of energy. Maybe she'll inspire people to join the labour party more than Brown can, t'would be a good thing.

 

[TAE]

all the 'real' labour party members have left.

There's no-one left on the left cause they left?

 

[articul8]

I wish her luck, she seems to have plenty of energy. Maybe she'll inspire people to join the labour party more than Brown can, t'would be a good thing.

am not sure why it would be a good thing to lead people down a dead end.

 

[TremulousTetra]

am not sure why it would be a good thing to lead people down a dead end.

I think it would be much better to have a bigger better organised left in Britain. I think it is naive in the extreme to believe a smaller purer left is better.

fraternal greetings. ResistanceMP3

 

[In Bloom]

I think it would be much better to have a bigger better organised left in Britain. I think it is naive in the extreme to believe a smaller purer left is better.

fraternal greetings. ResistanceMP3

And I think that it is a testament to the stupidity of the authoritarian left that having a big "organised left" is an aim unto itself without any regard for the structures involved, the tactics used and the actual politics of that "left" group.

But maybe that's just me

 

[Groucho]

Of course I wish the remnants of what is left of the left in LP all the best with their electoral challenge. However, I feel sure that a new left will not arise within Labour but rather outside of LP. To some extent decent left-wingers in the LP provide left cover for an organisation that is pro-war and anti-working class. All credit to Jeremy Corbyn et al but really he is in the wrong party.

Respect,

Grouch

 

[jiggajagga]

And I think that it is a testament to the stupidity of the authoritarian left that having a big "organised left" is an aim unto itself without any regard for the structures involved, the tactics used and the actual politics of that "left" group.

But maybe that's just me

Thing is, if you are under 45 you don't really know what a left government is!
From 1979 to 1997 we had Thatcherism and from 1997-2006 we've had Blairism ( Thatcherism reconstituted)

I remember when the working class worked 5 days a week Mon to Fri. with regular tea breaks. If you worked 30 mins overtime you got 30 mins extra pay!
Saturdays were time and a half, Sundays double time. No time off in lieu bollocks.
If a manager spoke to you wrongly you all downed tools and scared the fuck out of the fascist twat!!!
Nationalised coal and utilities, no rip off price rises like 22% at a time.
When "BRITISH" petroleum found North Sea oil and gas it was to be used to give everyone a good school and facilities, new roads , new infrastructure, etc. What did Maggie do....? Sell it off and here we are now with shite roads and shite schools and shite infrastucture. A wasted treasure trove all gone in the back pockets of fat cats getting even fatter on your sweat and your worry.

The people had some vestige of power pre 70s . All I see today is a people who constantly say " Oh dear, what can WE do about it?"

" Nothing I suppose. I think we'd better drudge on just doing what they tell us. Lets keep jumping through the hoops eh. Its easier that way."

 

[Fullyplumped]

Thing is, if you are under 45 you don't really know what a left government is! I remember when ...

Oh. My. God.

I grew up in the 70s. Horrible, HORRIBLE schools. A feeling of crushing depression and boredom. The silver jubilee. Unemployment as a new thing. No jobs for young people leaving school - nothing. Blackouts. Stupid, pointless strikes. Crappy make-or-break British Leyland Maxis and Hillman Imps. Unburied dead, courtesy of NALGO and NUPE.

Loads of working class people ended up voting Tory, they were so desperate.

On the other hand, if you were in the 5% of clever kids, a free way in to Uni. But please don't paint the 70s under Sunny Jim as some kind of socialist paradise. It really was like a mix of the Grimleys and Our Friends In The North.

 

[JHE]

Fullyplumped, don't you think that your feelings of "crushing depression and boredom" in the 70s might have owed more to your adolescence than to capitalism, the state of the labour market, low-paid public-sector workers striking for a better income, monarchism, the inadequacies of the school system or the failures of the government?

 

[articul8]

I think it would be much better to have a bigger better organised left in Britain. I think it is naive in the extreme to believe a smaller purer left is better.

fraternal greetings. ResistanceMP3

And I would like to be spoon fed apple pie by scandanavian virgins. But I'm realistic enough to know we don't live in that kind of world (yet )

Many, but not all, of 'the 'lefts' at one time in the Labour party have departed. Lynne Jones stands no chance whatsoever of winning. Would I hope existing Labour members vote for her instead of Brown? Of course. But I think the idea that people should be encouraged to rejoin a party which has virtually no democratic structures anymore would is lunatic, frankly.

 

[Fullyplumped]

Fullyplumped, don't you think that your feelings of "crushing depression and boredom" in the 70s might have owed more to your adolescence than to capitalism, the state of the labour market, low-paid public-sector workers striking for a better income, monarchism, the inadequacies of the school system or the failures of the government?

Well of course I was a glum teenager, and I did hang out with Barclay James Harvest fans until I got into punk (in a fairly restrained way - I was in the 5% that got into Uni). But everything else was true too. Sunny Jim, NALGO and NUPE's corpses, power cuts - these were the reality of that time. You humming the Hovis ad tune doesn't make it a better memory. In 1979 millions of voters, mainly in English constituencies, voted to reject it all and just look what happened.

 

[MatthewCuffe]

Why do we look so doggedly in the rear-view mirror that Marshall McLuhan wrote about? Why only look to the Left of the 1970s? Yes, it's important to respect tradition. That has been the Achilees heel of Nu Laybore. But you need to move on. Times have changed. There is such a thing as 21st century socialism, and it is young, vibrant and wonderful. Bolivia and Venezuela are important parts of its crystallisation.

It is moving, growing, mobilising, regenerating.

And spreading to the UK.

And there IS a Labour party left - about 40 or 50 MPs by my reckoning. Getting stronger and starting to walk with the pride of lions. It might seem like a small caucus, but it has the infinite advantage that there is no Iraqi blood on its hands.

Forget Nu Laybore. It's dying. And it's sold off half the NHS so nobody is going to bother stitching it up. It had heart disease all along, anyway.

 

[jiggajagga]

Oh. My. God.

I grew up in the 70s. Horrible, HORRIBLE schools. A feeling of crushing depression and boredom.
On the other hand, if you were in the 5% of clever kids, a free way in to Uni. But please don't paint the 70s under Sunny Jim as some kind of socialist paradise. It really was like a mix of the Grimleys and Our Friends In The North.

Jim Callaghan was the first Labour PM to be a thatcherite at heart. He was more like Tony Blair than Tony Blair ffs!!
I did say PRE 70s

 

[articul8]

And there IS a Labour party left - about 40 or 50 MPs by my reckoning. .

how did blair get ID cards through, then? If 40 Labour MPs had voted against, it would have fallen.

lions, my arse.

 

[Fullyplumped]

Jim Callaghan was the first Labour PM to be a thatcherite at heart. He was more like Tony Blair than Tony Blair ffs!!
I did say PRE 70s

You're right - you did say pre 70s. Darlin' Harold and all that. I was focusing on the time I grew up, after the white hot heat of technology transformed all our lives.

Back to the Sixties, then?

 

[MatthewCuffe]

Articul8, were you ever bullied at school?

And I mean PHYSICALLY as well as mentally and emotionally. There was a female Labour MP who defected to the Lib Dems - I forget her name - at GE 2005 election time I think, who talked about physical violence in the HoC.

Apologies for forgetting her name. There is too much bad stuff to keep up with. It will be a rum job for historians to chart the orchestrated violence of New Labour - to its people, to people abroad, and to Labour members in Parliament.

I don't think Blair is a benign idiot or a harmless chump. I think he is a nasty, nasty thug who got involved with an even nastier (and drunk) thug in the USA. I've seen his sort in playgrounds.

How do you get something bullying like ID cards through? You bully people.

The men and women who have stuck to their guns in the face of intimidation and kept a Red flag flying during the Iraq period are heroes and heroines. If you think it's easy, go and be a principled Labour Member of Parliament right now. Good luck and all blessings. You will find it no picnic. I doubt you would be selected in the first place.

NEW LABOUR IS NOTHING TO DO WITH LABOUR. IT'S A CON.

 

[kakuma]

*balks at thread*

 

[Fullyplumped]

Articul8, were you ever bullied at school?

Were you, matthew?

 

[MatthewCuffe]

Not something I much want to answer. That is private. PM me and get to know me and I might tell you how I know what the abuse of power is.

 

[articul8]

If you think it's easy, go and be a principled Labour Member of Parliament right now. Good luck and all blessings. You will find it no picnic. I doubt you would be selected in the first place.

No - you are right. As a militant socialist, I would be barred from Milbank's approved list of candidates. They only tolerate a residual handful of left MP's as a screen for their single-minded neo-liberalism.

If you are a member of the Labour party and are against Blair, the occupation of Iraq, ID cards etc - and want to try to change the party, I wish you all the luck in the world. But I don't fancy your chances.

I think, however, that people who feel New Labour is a betrayal of everything Labour was meant to stand for, should very seriously consider joining the campaign to launch a new workers party - like in Germany and Brazil
see http://www.cnwp.org.uk

 

[tollbar]

Did labour ever stand for what many people on the left beyond labour think it should have stood for ?.

 

[Groucho]

Did labour ever stand for what many people on the left beyond labour think it should have stood for ?.

Good question. I suspect you know that the answer is no, not really.

The ideology for Labour was provided by the Fabians and noteably the Webb's who were far from Socialist (although they admired Stalin somewhat). Labour was created in a period of retreat for the working class and reflected the interests of a conservative trade union bureaucracy. The old Clause 4 was written in order to give expression for constitutional left-wing hopes in order to head off the challenge of the early Communist Party.

But Labour had long been home to those with aspirations for reforms to benefit the working class. The 1945 Labour Govt. and to a lesser extent the Labour Governments of the sixties and seventies implimented reforms that benefited the majority. They did so within the confines of capitalist priorities, and when the going got tough Labour Governments turned on the very reforms they had fought for, and the very workers who elected them.

During the Miners strike of 1984/5 the Labour leadership ignored the interests of the workers, but Labour Party members organised significant solidarity. The social democratic hopes of the Labour Left have died and all that remains is thememory of 1945 (a Govt. that as well as implimenting positive reforms also used troops to scab on the dockers and secretly developed nuclear weapons)

The aspirations for reform can not be met within the priorities of capitalism. George Galloway put it well when he described the aspirations for a new party as seeking to be the party that Labour should have been.

 

[audiotech]

Oh. My. God.

I grew up in the 70s. Horrible, HORRIBLE schools. A feeling of crushing depression and boredom. The silver jubilee. Unemployment as a new thing. No jobs for young people leaving school - nothing. Blackouts. Stupid, pointless strikes. Crappy make-or-break British Leyland Maxis and Hillman Imps. Unburied dead, courtesy of NALGO and NUPE.

Loads of working class people ended up voting Tory, they were so desperate.

On the other hand, if you were in the 5% of clever kids, a free way in to Uni. But please don't paint the 70s under Sunny Jim as some kind of socialist paradise. It really was like a mix of the Grimleys and Our Friends In The North.

1974 was pretty good as I remember it.

 

[jiggajagga]

You're right - you did say pre 70s. Darlin' Harold and all that. I was focusing on the time I grew up, after the white hot heat of technology transformed all our lives.

Back to the Sixties, then?

Yes! Those wonderful heady radical days when young men and women had balls!!
The days like 1968 in Paris when millions had the balls to kick the shit out of the elite!
The days like the anti-Vietnam demonstration in London in Grosvenor Square on 17 March 1968.

Today all you young whippersnappers want to do is shopping and ensuring you have the latest ring-tones for your mobiles ffs!!


Load of fucking political wimps today!!!!!

One day, your grand kids will be on your knee and they will ask " Grandad, why did you do nothing when our freedoms and strength were being taken away"

And you will reply:

" Sorry grandchild, I was shopping and it passed me by".
Fucking sad or what!!!

 

[MatthewCuffe]

I hear your passion there, comrade. It disgusts me everyday to walk through a land where EVERYTHING has been sold off lock, stock and barrel. Consume consume consume consume consume.

Fuck me backwards with a rusty barge-pole. That experience would be preferable to having to eke out a living in an ethically socialist way in a country that thinks that Posh Spice is a paragon as opposed to the symptom of a disease.

ID cards fit the consumer nation - people's identities are becoming narrower and narrower. These days they let the hypermarkets dictate their identities for them.

The fact is that New Labour is violent, thuggish, materialistic, cruel, short-termist, awful on the environment and celebrity-obsessed. As is the general culture. The two exist in a nasty symbiosis.

YA BASTARDS!

 

[Brainaddict]

This is a horribly backward-looking thread given that's it's title is talking about a 'new chance'. I'm all in favour of an invigorated, radicalised left in Britain, but as far as I can tell there's no desire except among a few politico geeks to go back to socialism as it used to be.

I reckon the 'old labour' wing of the labour party is just going to wither and die over the next ten years, not suddenly spring from the ashes of Blairism. As for where we go then, it's difficult to predict, but I reckon the crucial factors will be things like global warming/energy policy, rising anti-corporatism (but not particularly from a socialist perspective) and the war against terror. I hope we'll start reaching a point when people start voting in politicians who have interesting things to say on that, but our electoral system is so shit that I don't have my fingers crossed for it any time soon.

 

[MatthewCuffe]

Check out the Political Compass analysis of the 2005 General Election - http://www.politicalcompass.org

Now because Blair is a Tory in disguise, we have hardly any left-wing representation in Parliament these days. We've been CON-ned.

I could bomb Parliament but my bomb-making skills are crap and I don't believe in bombs. Just another excuse to take our remaining two and a half liberties.

I'd rather have a ball making as much left-wing representation in and outside Parliament - saying it loud, proud, relentless, remorseless - and shake up the illegal, deceptive and defunct hornet's nest of New Labour while I'm at it.

And completely buck the trend of thinking that one has to espouse the free market or the police state or war in order to get elected.

In the name of J.Keir Hardie.