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

[SpineyNorman]

I presume this is the sort of thing SpineyNorman is thinking of:

Yeah - though that's one of the less class specific ones tbh - and at least includes exploitative bosses and seems to class women factory hands as 'respectable'. Some of them were pure, unadulterated class prejudice - not just drunks, 'lunatics' etc. but 'commoners'.

 

[seventh bullet]

I didn't know that. Do you have any examples?

butchersapron posted up info on this very thread about a pamphlet on this subject, connected to the Bristol Radical History Group.

The slides he also posted up about it are very good. The thing Spiney is on about.

 

[SpineyNorman]

There's one particular one I'm thinking of but I haven't managed to find it online yet. I'll have a proper look when I've got more time and if need be scan a copy from the library - I think this stuff should be available online anyway.

In the meantime, here's another 'convicts and lunatics' one

 

[SpineyNorman]

butchersapron posted up info on this very thread about a pamphlet on this subject, connected to the Bristol Radical History Group.

The slides he also posted up about it were very good. The thing Spiney is on about.

Yeah - and weepiper makes an important point in a post just above that - that when it comes to female suffrage and womens struggles generally we always hear about the suffragettes but very little is ever said about the working class women, who took great risks in far more difficult circumstances than the middle class women who always get all the credit.

 

[DotCommunist]

still holds as well, no vote for the convicted or the sectioned.

there were rumblings last year about giving prisoners the vote. Came to fuck all of course, would be political suicide for a tory gov to let the bechokeyed vote. Come to think of it vast swathes of labour voters would probably take ill to the idea

 

[ViolentPanda]

View attachment 33252

Essential kettle-on time. Or would have been.

I'm afraid I just literally did that cartoonish "slack-jawed amazement" thing, trying to imagine La Pennionara or any of her contemporaries even being fit (or courageous enough) to walk in Emily Davison's shoes or shadow.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Also a surprisingly large number of suffragettes went on to get involved in the British Union of Fascists - Stephen Dorril mentions it in his biography of Mosley.

 

[butchersapron]

So where did Sylvia Pankhurst fit into that (genuine question)? And was the force-feeding of Suffragettes on hunger strike have any radicalising effect?

She rejected it, radicalised by the great unrest, the war and 1917 and was expelled by her racist and pro-empire suffragette family as a result. That's why she changed her paper from the womens dreadnought to the workers dreadnought.

 

[Idris2002]

Also a surprisingly large number of suffragettes went on to get involved in the British Union of Fascists - Stephen Dorril mentions it in his biography of Mosley.

Yes, but by then they had "passed their prime".

She rejected it, radicalised by the great unrest, the war and 1917. That's why she changed her paper from the womens dreadnought to the workers dreadnought.

Cool story, bro.

 

[seventh bullet]

Yeah - and weepiper makes an important point in a post just above that - that when it comes to female suffrage and womens struggles generally we always hear about the suffragettes but very little is ever said about the working class women, who took great risks in far more difficult circumstances than the middle class women who always get all the credit.

Yes, unlike Ladies their families faced hunger and destitution, and they also faced hostility from within the socialist movement they were a part of.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Really reccomend people take a look at the pdf butchers linked to earlier in the thread - some great examples of the kind of stuff I was talking about, and also the way working class women were deliberately marginalised (in fact they didn't even try to hide it). But just as importantly it shows there were some who criticised it in fairly robust terms.

 

[ViolentPanda]

This is why we can't have nice things - like a revolution

http://www.liveleak.com/c/syria

^ That's what revolutions look like. Watch those videos. They're grim and violent, and unless you were desensitised by years of first person shooter games then too horrific to watch, let alone routinely watch a good few hours of them a day. Any revolution that's "nice" isn't a revolution. You think the British state would react any differently if we tried to seize power away from Crown and Parliament?

Come on Delroy, you really expect the likes of "the bubble" to be the ones fighting and dying "on the barricades"? The woman herself doesn't even have the bottle to take lumps for her journalism (remember the shitting in New York when she thought she might get a shoeing from NYPD, so stayed at home?). The bubble are much more likely to swan in once the fighting is over, and then try to take some credit for "inspiring the masses with revolutionary prose". Some nut on another board compared Penny with Rosa Luxemburg, and was quite upset when I said "Rosa was a revolutionary socialist who spent much of her adult life physically protesting on the streets when she wasn't writing polemic. Laurie Penny is a chancer".

 

[Idris2002]

Come on Delroy, you really expect the likes of "the bubble" to be the ones fighting and dying "on the barricades"? The woman herself doesn't even have the bottle to take lumps for her journalism (remember the shitting in New York when she thought she might get a shoeing from NYPD, so stayed at home?). The bubble are much more likely to swan in once the fighting is over, and then try to take some credit for "inspiring the masses with revolutionary prose". Some nut on another board compared Penny with Rosa Luxemburg, and was quite upset when I said "Rosa was a revolutionary socialist who spent much of her adult life physically protesting on the streets when she wasn't writing polemic. Laurie Penny is a chancer".

Link us, please, if you would be so good.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Come on Delroy, you really expect the likes of "the bubble" to be the ones fighting and dying "on the barricades"? The woman herself doesn't even have the bottle to take lumps for her journalism (remember the shitting in New York when she thought she might get a shoeing from NYPD, so stayed at home?). The bubble are much more likely to swan in once the fighting is over, and then try to take some credit for "inspiring the masses with revolutionary prose". Some nut on another board compared Penny with Rosa Luxemburg, and was quite upset when I said "Rosa was a revolutionary socialist who spent much of her adult life physically protesting on the streets when she wasn't writing polemic. Laurie Penny is a chancer".

She also fought and died for what she believed in - how can anyone with even the most feeble grip on reality draw any kind of equivalence between the two? Even if Penny's journalism was spot on it would be an offensive comparison to make.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Your Scorsayzee song: the Queen's husband is a Freemason
(it's gotta do more than rhyme ), I sense conspiracism

Wewll, that's fair comment really, because Phil is a Mason, so is the one that talks to rhododendrons.

 

[Idris2002]

Wewll, that's fair comment really, because Phil is a Mason, so is the one that talks to rhododendrons.

Bloody hell, are they letting anyone join these days?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Link us, please, if you would be so good.

The New York thing? I'll see if I can find it, but I'm sure it's already been mentioned on this thread.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Bloody hell, are they letting anyone join these days?

Seems like it, doesn't it? Apparently Buck House and Windsor Castle both have several Masonic Lodges that meet on site, some for staff, others for the aristos.

 

[Idris2002]

Seems like it, doesn't it? Apparently Buck House and Windsor Castle both have several Masonic Lodges that meet on site, some for staff, others for the aristos.

So mote it be.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Laurie penny - won't go to protest as doesn't want to get arrested just for journalism.

Ah, I see you remember it too!

 

[seventh bullet]

There were also some campaigners for female suffrage (not sure if they were suffragettes though) who argued that, with the inclusion of unpropertied men in the franchise, middle class women should be given the vote in order to defend white supremacy. It's ages since I did anything on this so I can't find sources right now but later on when I've got a bit more time I'll have a dig around.

In the earlier struggles for the right to vote American upper middle class women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton were against the enfranchisement of the 'negro man' before them. IIRC, old Stalinist Angela Davis went into that in her Women, Race and Class.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So where did Sylvia Pankhurst fit into that (genuine question)? And was the force-feeding of Suffragettes on hunger strike have any radicalising effect?

Sylvia certainly got a fair bit of grief from her mother and sisters for being socialist in her suffragism, according to biographers. The woman herself merely mentions "friction" in those of her writings I've read (which pretty much amounts to Kathryn Dodd's "A Sylvia Pankhurst reader").

 

[rekil]

https://twitter.com/PennyRed/status/341878873107083264

Loads of my radical friends seem to be quitting smoking now. There's a growing awareness that we may need to stay alive for a long fight.

No foolin'.

 

[DotCommunist]

e-fag to replace rollies

 

[rekil]

Giving up smoking is a little bit communism.

 

[el-ahrairah]

 

[SpineyNorman]

If smoking is a little bit communism doesn't quitting smoking suggest you've been seduced by the forces of reaction? I think it does.

 

[DotCommunist]

and they went on to become consummate killers of kittens

 

[DotCommunist]

If smoking is a little bit communism doesn't quitting smoking suggest you've been seduced by the forces of reaction? I think it does.

its just thirty hoving into view and the realisation that you can't enjoy your money if you are coughing your spare lung out aged 45

 

[Idris2002]