Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[articul8]

every careerist fucker seems to join the labour party just so that they cna slag it off.

aimed at me? You'd rather people just joined Labour and banged on about how wonderful it was?

 

[butchersapron]

Can anyone else spot the flaw in the above?

 

[frogwoman]

aimed at me? You'd rather people just joined Labour and banged on about how wonderful it was?

i don't care what you say about it but i find all this "i joined the labour party in order to destroy it BWAHAHAHA" slightly weird. And no it's not just you.

 

[ymu]

What happened? What was it for?

We were wrongfully imprisoned.

and wanted the media to report on why whilst we spun it out as long as possible

 

[sihhi]

We were wrongfully imprisoned.

and wanted the media to report on why whilst we spun it out as long as possible

It's OK. I've clocked the event now.

 

[articul8]

i don't care what you say about it but i find all this "i joined the labour party in order to destroy it BWAHAHAHA" slightly weird. And no it's not just you.

I don't want to destroy Labour as such (and don't harbour delusions of grandeur) - I just want, in my own miserable little way, to contribute to salvaging something from the party that generations of my family - like so many others - spent in trying to build it on the ground. I don't think Labour will ever be the sole agent capable of delivering a pro w/c politics, of course I don't. But no socialist active in the party has ever believed that.

Labour is going to be the repository of an enormous amount of anti cuts, anti-coalition sentiment. We know this. So it's crucial to influence the course it takes, and it isn't allowed to play the shit role it has for most of its existence. Of course this will be done in part from outside. But nothing would delight the Labour right more than for the left to shout from the sidelines and isolate themselves from how political debate is framed for most people.

 

[nino_savatte]

Ah but Labour has a habit of betraying those it claims to support. I was listening to an interview that I did with someone from the 60's and he was telling me how Wilson had betrayed voters. I remember the party under Kinnock in the 80's; the tepid, half-hearted support for the miners; the feeble efforts it made to attack the Thatcher government in the Commons. It seems to me, that Labour won't learn from its past mistakes and that we need a party that is going to work for ordinary workers not the fat bastards in the City or their chums in the CBI and IoD.

 

[The39thStep]

Struggled to get through two pages of 'Blue Labour' in Sundays Observer

 

[articul8]

Blue Labour is a very mixed bag from what I've read so far - it appears to be about developing an alternative which resists the full ideological onslaught of neoliberalism but by appealing to faith, flag, family, etc - and a more solidaristic version of the big society.

 

[articul8]

Ah but Labour has a habit of betraying those it claims to support. I was listening to an interview that I did with someone from the 60's and he was telling me how Wilson had betrayed voters. I remember the party under Kinnock in the 80's; the tepid, half-hearted support for the miners; the feeble efforts it made to attack the Thatcher government in the Commons. It seems to me, that Labour won't learn from its past mistakes and that we need a party that is going to work for ordinary workers not the fat bastards in the City or their chums in the CBI and IoD.

We need "a party"...

Isn't part of the problem - for Labour too - that the early 20th C model of the mass political party doesn't really work anywhere today? Re-thinking the relationships between class organisations and social movements - producing new models of community engagement and alliances seem more relevant than insisting that "only by electing a Labour government/council can we.." or "only our by voting for our latest crack at a new workers party in embryo instead can we.."

 

[dynamicbaddog]

Blue Labour is a very mixed bag from what I've read so far - it appears to be about developing an alternative which resists the full ideological onslaught of neoliberalism but by appealing to faith, flag, family, etc - and a more solidaristic version of the big society.

it's a cheap attempt to gain votes by scrapegoating the economically vulnerable , that's what it is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/25/blue-labour-working-middle-class

 

[articul8]

That seems to be a (very well deserved) broadside at New Labour's actual record in government - not specifically an engagement with the Blue Labour ideas at all?

 

[The39thStep]

Blue Labour is a very mixed bag from what I've read so far - it appears to be about developing an alternative which resists the full ideological onslaught of neoliberalism but by appealing to faith, flag, family, etc - and a more solidaristic version of the big society.

No doubt a 'good' idea but Labour actually undermined the delivery streams that might have made this idea even vaguely tangible. It was them who said we are all middle class now and peddled the myth that the working class was a dying breed. ( (a view held by Newbie as well).

This article makes a reasonable job of summing up labour's dilemna even if I don't agree with its conclusions are :

http://blue-labour.blogspot.com/

 

[articul8]

The implicit assumption of BL seems to be that class solidarity was one component of a wider small 'c' conservative culture that was also about watching out for each other, bringing up your kids to know right from wrong, grafting hard and wanting the best for them, being proud of your (national?) origins, etc.etc - and once the economic ties of class were disrupted the rest kind of got torn down too.

So the BL project is about the avowedly post-"class" reconstuction in commonly held values and practices. As though class difference has evaporated altogether and no longer stands for anything.

 

[Athos]

Can anyone else spot the flaw in the above?

Join Labour and slag it off or join Labour and sing its praises. There simply cannot be any other answer.

 

[rekil]

From LP's blog.

What drags me to the scene of any riot, to any interesting protest currently ongoing, is not just politics, nor thrill-seeking: it's chasing a story that the mainstream press are still not telling properly yet, chasing a an important story, a story to which I currently have unique access as a young person within the movement.

That's how she pitches her articles isn't it. Unique access if you please.

 

[butchersapron]

So why was you 200 miles away from stokes croft and simply collated existing accounts via twitter? A story all over the mainstream press btw penny.

 

[frogwoman]

don't want to destroy Labour as such (and don't harbour delusions of grandeur) - I just want, in my own miserable little way, to contribute to salvaging something from the party that generations of my family - like so many others - spent in trying to build it on the ground. I don't think Labour will ever be the sole agent capable of delivering a pro w/c politics, of course I don't. But no socialist active in the party has ever believed that.

Fair enough. It's just that some of your posts in the past have given a different impression, but fair enough.

 

[nino_savatte]

We need "a party"...

Isn't part of the problem - for Labour too - that the early 20th C model of the mass political party doesn't really work anywhere today? Re-thinking the relationships between class organisations and social movements - producing new models of community engagement and alliances seem more relevant than insisting that "only by electing a Labour government/council can we.." or "only our by voting for our latest crack at a new workers party in embryo instead can we.."

You can no more change Labour from within than I have a chance of passing for a Tory peer (I have more chance of passing a gall stone). Going back to the past and speaking the language of the enemy is the road to ruin. For a party that tries to portray itself as 'progressive', "blue Labour" is such a backwards step.

 

[sihhi]

You can no more change Labour from within than I have a chance of passing for a Tory peer (I have more chance of passing a gall stone). Going back to the past and speaking the language of the enemy is the road to ruin. For a party that tries to portray itself as 'progressive', "blue Labour" is such a backwards step.

It's an inevitable step. Labour have nowhere left to run.

Note that Blue Labour's critique of New Labour is the Labour Party "need to get away from this obsession with absolute fairness, with material equality."
That's what they offer. Anything, anything at all - having more Union flags on public buildings, talking about traditional morality, reducing immigration - to weaken any efforts to strive for equality. A phenomenon, wrapped as populism, that hates the people being equal.

He has, he believes, ‘no concerns that the future of the country's going to be pluralist' and is himself from a family of immigrants but believes there has also ‘got to simultaneously be solidarity, and there has been an erosion of solidarity'. The party's conception of equality is problematic, he suggests. ‘There have to be ways of honouring the common life of people who come [as immigrants],' he believes, but it also not the case that ‘everyone who comes is equal and has an equal status with people who are here

‘I've paid my taxes all these years and yet I get bumped out by people who've just arrived on the basis of need', he argues that the party has ‘got to not view that as reactionary [or] bigoted but as a real violation of what people actually mean by fairness. We've essentially devalued our language by making things the opposite of what they mean, and losing "fairness" - which we did at the last election - was actually a catastrophe for us because when we said "fairness" people thought we meant privilege, privilege for the new, privilege for people who don't work, everything calculated on need and nothing done on desert.

What exactly the proposals are, no one knows. What would a Blue Labour manifesto be? No one knows. That's not BL's point, Blue Labour is there to cement the illusion of Labour as real/red under Red Ed.

 

[butchersapron]

 

[treelover]

'We've essentially devalued our language by making things the opposite of what they mean, and losing "fairness" - which we did at the last election - was actually a catastrophe for us because when we said "fairness" people thought we meant privilege, privilege for the new, privilege for people who don't work, everything calculated on need and nothing done on desert. '



This is exactly what David Milliband is saying, it effectively means more cuts in welfare, more harrasment of claimants, more conditionality, etc...

 

[temper_tantrum]

LP currently getting a kicking on Twitter from Julie Bindel - apparently LP claimed to have interviewed JB for her book, which JB denies.
Edit: Oh and Finn MacKay too apparently.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

That's an odd claim to make if it isn't true and an odd thing to do if it is.

 

[butchersapron]

Jb claims she had a ten minute discussion for a blog article on the phone for years ago, and that lp has now turned that into the claim that she was recently formally interviewed for her book. Argument motivated by gin, jealousy and careerism.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Laurie wants to be careful with stuff like this given the way the press and media are currently viewed...

 

[butchersapron]

...and given that she already has her own record of making stuff up

 

[frogwoman]

the johann hari school of journalism turns out another graduate i see ...

 

[articul8]

To be fair if you've spoken to someone with an implicit understanding that it relates to research for a piece you are writing or intend to write - you don't have to announce "this is a formal interview". Obviously if you've just imported material from somewhere else and passed it off as your own (like Hari) that is different altogether.

 

[butchersapron]

According to bindel there was no interview, there was an out of the blue 10 minute phone call about some blog bollocks years ago that has now evolved into an interview given especially for this book - an interview which JB says she would never have consented to. This - if JB is accurate- is as sort of reverse Hari - take things that were said to you elsewhere at another time and in a different context and pretend they took place in a a proper interview - the same as he did with that porn actress a few months back. There appears to be none of this 'implicit understanding' here at all (again, if jb is accurate).