14th November Movement for Left Unity

[treelover]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/12/left-unity-alternative


mini relaunch for LU, Ken is in the Guardian again, now with Michael Rosen and Roger Lloyd Pack

if new people who may be interested go on the LU site, they will probably be put off, its largely unreconstructed trots arguing over the minutae..

 

[JHE]

I had to look up who Roger Lloyd-Pack is. I'd like to think he always calls Ken Loach 'Dave', but I don't suppose he does.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I'm sure a letter in the Guardian will have an effect on recruitment figures.

 

[DotCommunist]

what adverts are next to the letter?

JOY

Jack Monroe, who writes the blog A Girl Called Jack, discusses how she became a popular austerity cook and food blogger while living below the poverty line, and demonstrates how to cook one of her signature dishes: the carrot, cumin and kidney bean burger. A selection of recipes fromA Girl Called Jack are to be published next year in a book of the same name

Austerity Cook.

 

[butchersapron]

I think you need to have a bit more of a dig on her and what she's doing and why. Or watch the bloody video.

 

[butchersapron]

And her hair is great.

 

[benedict]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/12/left-unity-alternative


mini relaunch for LU, Ken is in the Guardian again, now with Michael Rosen and Roger Lloyd Pack

if new people who may be interested go on the LU site, they will probably be put off, its largely unreconstructed trots arguing over the minutae..

This is going to end badly.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I think you need to have a bit more of a dig on her and what she's doing and why. Or watch the bloody video.

Not watched the video but if it's who I think it is she is great.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

This is going to end badly.

It's already over

 

[Joe Reilly]

It's already over

Spoiler Alert!

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

oops sorry

 

[benedict]

Like a Hollywood blockbuster: sequel after sequel and always the same storyline.

 

[treelover]

Masses of articles and posts on LU about Syria , calls for this, calls for that, they are not even a party yet...

 

[JHE]

That's fair enough, isn't it? I mean if the government of your country is planning to go to war (again) and you are a political person, you are very likely to have something to say about it.

 

[mk12]

Masses of articles and posts on LU about Syria , calls for this, calls for that, they are not even a party yet...

My local branch is focusing on setting up a student organisation, potentially doing some activity over the Syria debacle, and urging people to 'like' the Left Unity page on Facebook.

 

[nino_savatte]

Pssst! I'm actually an entryist... but don't tell anyone.

 

[JHE]

Pssst! I'm actually an entryist... but don't tell anyone.

ETA's little mole, bless him.

As part of his attempt to persuade them to go back to bombing and shooting, Ninotxi offered himself to ETA as a mascot. Out of kindness, they considered his offer, but in the end they decided to get a dog instead, reasoning that it would be just as loyal, but less barking.

 

[steeplejack]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/12/left-unity-alternative


mini relaunch for LU, Ken is in the Guardian again, now with Michael Rosen and Roger Lloyd Pack

if new people who may be interested go on the LU site, they will probably be put off, its largely unreconstructed trots arguing over the minutae..

(all over again, sadly)

 

[steeplejack]

That letter in full:


This summer will be remembered for Labour's final betrayal of the working-class people it was founded to represent. Not content with signing up to Conservative austerity measures that are dragging Britain's most vulnerable people deeper into poverty, Ed Miliband has turned his back on the union members who supported his leadership bid.

fuck, Labour's "final betrayal"? where have you been since 1994? Oh, that's right. "Voting Labour without illusions".

Austerity has not fixed the economy, while the poor pay the social cost. Labour has failed to make the argument that it was not welfare spending that wrecked the British economy, but a crisis of unfettered capitalism. Miliband cannot even promise to reverse the brutally unfair bedroom tax, which has already claimed its first life with Stephanie Bottrill (Comment, 31 May).

We urgently need a new party of the left.

Why? Has "The Left" fixed anything much since, well, 1951?

Labour will not provide the opposition to coalition policies that the situation demands. We need to provide a genuine alternative to the austerity policies which the three main parties support. A party that is socialist, environmentalist, feminist and opposed to all forms of discrimination.

See also RESPECT, the Socialist Alliance, umpteen different Communist parties, etc. The names should be familiar as you lot were involved in most of them, which failed to take off from the runway, crashing in a great fireball of political inconsequence in the trees at the end.

Since we launched our appeal in March to discuss founding such a party, more than 9,000 people have signed up (to what, exactly? Membership, or have they just signed a petition somewhere and are now, SWP style, being counted as full supporters?) and more than 100 local groups have been established across the country. As Left Unity moves towards its founding conference on 30 November at the Royal National hotel in London, we call on all those who are sick of austerity and war, who want to defend the NHS and our public services, and want to see a fairer Britain, to join us.

That would be a great many people. What hasn't been explained is how empty sloganeering and tactics from four decades ago will provide any kind of reasonable analysis of the current situation, let alone prove capable to be effective in tackling it.

"The Left" are a total irrelevance and it should be no surprise that, other than the usual suspects who have been involved in every other failed popular front /left unity vehicle in the last two decades, the electorate remain abidingly indifferent to your efforts. It seems astonishing that clearly intelligent people seem consumingly obsessed with repeating, again and again, the same old tactics and mouthing the same cliche ridden jargon to steadily declining audiences.

Eyes In for the latest Trot bingo!

Gilbert Achcar, Jean Alain Roussel, Alan Gibbons, Zita Holbourne, Kate Hudson, Roger Lloyd Pack, Ken Loach, China Miéville, Michael Rosen

 

[ayatollah]

Yeh, Leftie waaaaankerrrrs......just as well you guys have been around to stop the bosses' austerity offensive in it's tracks with your manifestly superior alternative strategy.

 

[seventh bullet]

Yes, you're a wanker.

 

[Pickman's model]

My local branch is focusing on setting up a student organisation, potentially doing some activity over the Syria debacle, and urging people to 'like' the Left Unity page on Facebook.

the syria debacle? the continuing bloody civil war or the rather less sanguinary parliamentary fiasco?

 

[butchersapron]

Yeh, Leftie waaaaankerrrrs......just as well you guys have been around to stop the bosses' austerity offensive in it's tracks with your manifestly superior alternative strategy.

For about the tenth time, can you outline your strategy that other people must come up with an alternative to?

 

[treelover]

The left doesn't need a new party. It needs some new ideas
The creation of Left Unity misses the point. Labour's inertia comes down to the left no longer knowing what it stands for

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/16/left-new-party-ideas?commentpage=1

L/U getting a lot of media coverage, largely down to Salman Shaheen who seems to be pretty good at PR, this article is by James Bloodworth who comes across quite Blairite.

 

[nino_savatte]

Shaheen's rebuttal to Bloodworth's article.

As I’ve previously argued, New Labour has done far more to entrench a Thatcherite consensus in this country than John Major ever could. By transforming Labour from a party that represented working class people into a party that represented free-market interests, Tony Blair ensured there could be no opposition to the neoliberal policies that spectacularly wrecked the global economy and plunged those Labour was founded to speak up for deeper into poverty.


When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership with the support of the trade unions, there was a glimmer of hope that we could see the return of a genuine Labour party that could provide genuine opposition to Tory policies. Not only would this be good for the poorest sections of British society, it would be good for democracy. Voters need a choice.

But Miliband abstained on workfare, he committed himself to Tory spending plans, he turned his back on the unions and, most damning of all, he utterly failed to make the argument that it was bankrupt neoliberal economics that ravaged Britain’s economy not welfare spending or state intervention.

Returning Miliband’s party to office in 2015 will, then, only enshrine an austerity consensus.

Would I prefer to see a Labour government rather than a Conservative one? Would it be ever so slightly nicer, ever so slightly kinder, its policies wrapped up in ever so slightly more understanding language than that of the Etonian class warriors? Of course.

But kicking the Tories out will seem a Pyrrhic victory for the left when the Labour government they campaigned for implements its own cuts.
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2013/09/labour-taking-working-class-voters-for-granted/

 

[treelover]

The political economy of housing and Left Unity: A note on the policy commission

http://leftunity.org/the-political-...d-left-unity-a-note-on-the-policy-commission/

The factors behind the widespread acknowledgement that housing is in crisis in Britain are easy to recognise. For the whole New Labour era falling stocks of council housing have combined with house prices rocketing away from stagnant incomes (excepting the mini-crash of prices in 2007-8). This has produced much overcrowding and homelessness, and many people finding themselves trapped paying high rents without security in often dilapidated conditions. The rapid increase in private renting and fall in home ownership has troubled even some Tories2, and threatens to make renting privately the only option for most working class and some middle class households. To illustrate the scale of potential discontent, as few as 2% of respondents told the Joseph Rowntree Federation they wanted to rent privately3 yet the number of households in this position stands at 17% and rising fast. Under-35s are now far more likely to be private renters than homeowners, a sharp reversal of the position only 10 years ago4.

Housing is a terrain where we can demonstrate the value of socialist ideas like solidarity, self-organisation and participatory democracy. We can link the struggles of tenants with efforts to radicalize and expand the trade unions of workers in council housing and benefits. This would be a sharp departure from what most of the left has practised in recent years, and suggests the possibility of a principled but non-dogmatic party that can (over time) become an important section of working class political action.

Very detailed and promising policy submission on housing by a LU member, examining such issues as the massive rise in the PRS, and makes explicit links between council housing and working class identity.

 

[treelover]

Btw, I think it is by an Urbanite!

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

It's not a bad article by any means and certainly one of the best written and researched on the LU site, a few more members like him making contributions and they might start being of use in some way.

 

[Sasaferrato]

The heirachy of PCS stood as a LU slate, then have proceeded to sell us out on pay, pensions and conditions. Useless bunch of cunts.

 

[butchersapron]

The heirachy of PCS stood as a LU slate, then have proceeded to sell us out on pay, pensions and conditions. Useless bunch of cunts.

You have been told three times now by me and on other occasions by others that you are talking about totally different Left Unities. You are now into openly lying territory.