belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
sorry, didn't realise you'd joined the AWL.
Beating the Fascists: The authorised history of Anti-Fascist Action
- Thread starter cogg
- Start date
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
An arresting narrative....except for...
a) it was not 'pro-state' elements that brought the case to the attention of the court - but four local petitioners.
b) as agents of said state, the only inquiries about and subsequent threats of arrest by police were directed at those making the allegations against 'Nucky' & co
c) 'vote early, vote often' - might have it's attractions in terms of electoral strategy, but democratic it ain't.
d) finally as with the exposure of Muslim grooming gangs the 'pro-state' 'tabloids' had little or nothing to do with any of it.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Jesus, is that meant to be some kind of serious analysis?
Four little local petitioners, lets skip over the fact one is a perennial tory candidate, and anothers a millionaire kipper. They're just four good, brave, lil locals. And when it came to the pseudo-court, was it their evidence that was key? No, it was the evidence of establishment journalist Andrew Gilligan, and the Price Waterhouse report, ordered by Secretary of State Pickles (a report which cost the borough about twice all the 'bribes' Rahman was meant to have given). And even they were just four lickle locals like you pretend, it would make zero difference to the fact that the judgement is blatantly pro-state. Your trying to argue against something I never said. Again.
The police investigated, but cleared, Rahman already, they just found no evidence against him so he wasn't arrested.
Vote early vote often doesnt come into it. you clearly havent read anything beyond some tabloid headline if you think it does. He was cleared of vote rigging. Minor detail. Dont let it bother you.
Oh gosh, funny how you're linking a Muslim mayor to paedophilia on no evidence whatsoever! You played the guilt by association card earlier, so its only natural you'd play this one now. Oh, and Gilligan. Plus the Mail's hysterical bullshit which you've just aped so neatly.
It's very sad that you have decided to highlight those non-issues at the important ones, as they skip over the key judgements that could have a massive impact in the future.
An elected representative has been thrown out of office, not by the electorate, but by a single barrister - not even a judge, although he was 'sitting as' one. That is the state taking hold of its powers quite firmly.
The claim of spiritual injury is utterly reactionary in any circumstances, in these it was quite simply racist, with Muslims being described as as backward as 19th century Irishmen. Catholic leaders can regularly say 'Dont vote for abortionists', but imams arent allowed to say 'vote against islamopohbia'? Clear and blatant double standards.
Then there's the charge of libeling his opponent as a racist, despite even the pseudo-judge accepting that neither Rahman nor his appointed agents, had ever said such a thing. He is being held responsible for things he didn't even say. Not to mention the fact that the shit being thrown at Rahman - islamist, funding terrorists, dodgy 'associates' - was just as potentially libelous as anything said by his supporters, but that is irrelevant, apparently. We've already had Farage complaining to the police about a HIGNFY joke, no doubt part of setting up a wider claim for unfair treatment that will be brought before this unelected, unappealable, court if he loses. This judgement blows the door wide open for all kinds of absurd cases - call a racist a racist and, unless the judge (if it is a real judge) agrees, the whole election has to be rerun! Even if its not another candidate calling the racist a racist.
You dont have to think Rahman is white as snow, or as red as Lenin, to think this judgement is a reactionary, anti-democratic, nonsense. Rahman - ever so slightly - challenged the establishment, and stuck up for the poorest in his borough. Even tho he is only ever so slightly to the left of the labourites, he still had a whole ton of bricks thrown at him - by millionaires and the state. Just imagine what it would be like if an actually left wing Mayor had been elected.
Mayor's are a shit idea, always have been. but if they are to be thrown out, it should be by the voters, not an unelected, unqualified, judge.
Four little local petitioners, lets skip over the fact one is a perennial tory candidate, and anothers a millionaire kipper. They're just four good, brave, lil locals. And when it came to the pseudo-court, was it their evidence that was key? No, it was the evidence of establishment journalist Andrew Gilligan, and the Price Waterhouse report, ordered by Secretary of State Pickles (a report which cost the borough about twice all the 'bribes' Rahman was meant to have given). And even they were just four lickle locals like you pretend, it would make zero difference to the fact that the judgement is blatantly pro-state. Your trying to argue against something I never said. Again.
The police investigated, but cleared, Rahman already, they just found no evidence against him so he wasn't arrested.
Vote early vote often doesnt come into it. you clearly havent read anything beyond some tabloid headline if you think it does. He was cleared of vote rigging. Minor detail. Dont let it bother you.
Oh gosh, funny how you're linking a Muslim mayor to paedophilia on no evidence whatsoever! You played the guilt by association card earlier, so its only natural you'd play this one now. Oh, and Gilligan. Plus the Mail's hysterical bullshit which you've just aped so neatly.
It's very sad that you have decided to highlight those non-issues at the important ones, as they skip over the key judgements that could have a massive impact in the future.
An elected representative has been thrown out of office, not by the electorate, but by a single barrister - not even a judge, although he was 'sitting as' one. That is the state taking hold of its powers quite firmly.
The claim of spiritual injury is utterly reactionary in any circumstances, in these it was quite simply racist, with Muslims being described as as backward as 19th century Irishmen. Catholic leaders can regularly say 'Dont vote for abortionists', but imams arent allowed to say 'vote against islamopohbia'? Clear and blatant double standards.
Then there's the charge of libeling his opponent as a racist, despite even the pseudo-judge accepting that neither Rahman nor his appointed agents, had ever said such a thing. He is being held responsible for things he didn't even say. Not to mention the fact that the shit being thrown at Rahman - islamist, funding terrorists, dodgy 'associates' - was just as potentially libelous as anything said by his supporters, but that is irrelevant, apparently. We've already had Farage complaining to the police about a HIGNFY joke, no doubt part of setting up a wider claim for unfair treatment that will be brought before this unelected, unappealable, court if he loses. This judgement blows the door wide open for all kinds of absurd cases - call a racist a racist and, unless the judge (if it is a real judge) agrees, the whole election has to be rerun! Even if its not another candidate calling the racist a racist.
You dont have to think Rahman is white as snow, or as red as Lenin, to think this judgement is a reactionary, anti-democratic, nonsense. Rahman - ever so slightly - challenged the establishment, and stuck up for the poorest in his borough. Even tho he is only ever so slightly to the left of the labourites, he still had a whole ton of bricks thrown at him - by millionaires and the state. Just imagine what it would be like if an actually left wing Mayor had been elected.
Mayor's are a shit idea, always have been. but if they are to be thrown out, it should be by the voters, not an unelected, unqualified, judge.
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Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
The notion that Rahman might ever have been considered a threat to the establishment, much less the state, is pure delusion: with a analysis buttressed by what can only be described as confused rambling.
For example:
You claim the state is out to get him but the agents of the state in the borough targeted his arch opponent instead.
You claim the state is out to get him but also seek solace in the possibility of a judicial review..
You claim the state is out to get him by stressing that his political executioner was not even a proper judge.
So let's cut to the chase.
What you seem to be careful to avoid saying, although others elsewhere, are considerably less coy, is that the real motivation behind his ousting is an irrational fear of Islam or Islamism.
That's how you and Ken and George and the SWP and the rest of you really see it isn' it?
And how do the rest of us regard it?
With wry amusement mostly.
Identity politics writ large.
For slow learners.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
So, your only actual reply is to repeat the irrelevant fact that Biggs was investigated by the police for two minutes. So what? That changes nothing. They did nothing, and all the power of the state and the right was levied against Rahman.
And not for any 'identity politics' reasons, tho I know how you can hardly see anything else when any discussion of racism comes up, but because he was a teeny bit anti-establishment.
You can repeat all the smears you like, Joe, it doesn't change the fact that this is a reactionary judgment, and that you are on the side of the reactionaries.
And not for any 'identity politics' reasons, tho I know how you can hardly see anything else when any discussion of racism comes up, but because he was a teeny bit anti-establishment.
You can repeat all the smears you like, Joe, it doesn't change the fact that this is a reactionary judgment, and that you are on the side of the reactionaries.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i would be most surprised if the agenda pushed by a part of the state was in any way anti-state. wouldn't you?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
of course, it's joe that has the problem with that statment, not me.
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
His arch opponent in terms of the court case was not of course Biggs (who along with the rest of Labour were frit and sat on their hands) but Andy Erlam, the lead complainant. One possible charge leveled at him by the Police was of 'perverting the course of justice'. The irony. Even on the day Judge Mawrey was upholding his complaints he received an email from CID inviting him to attend an interview the following day.
If Rahman was a threat to the state why did the local agents of said state, ignore 20 individual complaints (against Rahman) by a sitting Councillor, a Tory no less?
And why was it that the little time they did invest in investigation, was in harassing Rahman''s direct opponent Erlam instead?
In addition if he was as you say just a "teeny bit anti-establishment" but as a result "all the power of the state levied against him" it falls to you to explain, having again ducked the Islamaphobia angle, the real reasons behind the disproportionate response?
In your own time.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Unite moves to make clear that they do not support Rahman on the issues covered by the court case. Oh, and they will support Labour against him in any future election as well.
Not only a slap down of stalinist aide Murray but perhaps an indication that a review of the evidence does not make pleasant reading:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...-mccluskey-lutfur-rahman-tower-hamlets-letter
Not only a slap down of stalinist aide Murray but perhaps an indication that a review of the evidence does not make pleasant reading:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...-mccluskey-lutfur-rahman-tower-hamlets-letter
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
more to do with Christine Shawcross being suspended from the party, and a right-wing backlash following the election defeat. He still condemns the blatantly political, and extremely right wing, judgement re 'spiritual influence' - they do NOT say that they 'don't support Rahman on the issues'
More useful to link straight to what McCluskey said, rather than the Grauniads interpretation thereof - http://www.theguardian.com/politics...-on-lutfur-rahman-and-labour-in-tower-hamlets
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
McCluskey expresses concern about the "democratic implications of the judgement" which is fair enough. But it ought to have been balanced by the observation that it was merely corrective, if as the court found, the election was itself undemocratic.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Even tho it only found it 'undemocratic' because of the blatant political bias McCluskey complains of
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
According to Paul Mason on C4 news - 'the Greek Left have decided not to confront the Greek Right' when the latter take to the streets. Now there may be sound tactical reasons for this, but you can't help feeling this 'tactic of acquiesence' will prove increasingly popular - not only in Greece - but in host of other countries across Europe.
malatesta32
Not Serb. No, Really!
sounds like over here where, apart from in london or brighton, antifascist presence at far right demos is decreasing. although the EDL, infibellends, NF etc are calling frequent demos they are fragmented and spreading themselves thinly but some opposition should be present.
So... any word (from the greek left) on the rationale behind this?
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
The situation is in no way similar. When fascists are sending MP's to Parliament and the wider right is putting many ten's of thousands on the streets, then we can draw parallels. As for 'a fragmented right spreading themselves thinly' the solution for those who see a threat in their tactics, is a relatively simple one. It will however require intelligence, analysis and low cunning. First identify the 'weak sister'.
Done properly, all the others will feel the reverberations. If it does not seem to have the desired effect - pause - then following the same recipe. Intelligence,analysis and planning. Repeat.
The alternative approach is to try to and cover every one of their initiatives. Which means anti-fascism 'spreading itself thinly' leaving it wide open to a return of serve.
As bad, if not worse politically it is also open to the accusation of being symbiotic.
That apart, cross Europe it is the populist/euro-nationalist right who are clearly the standard bearers...becoming a viable opposition to them, is now the challenge for us here as well.
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
Nope. Just Mr Mason's analysis of the extant situation.
malatesta32
Not Serb. No, Really!
well luckily for the greeks, Eddie stampton is moving over there.
Immigrants: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Has this been posted here yet? http://www.iwca.info/?p=10247
Who will fill the vacuum?
Labour’s general election defeat has been described by one high-ranking insider as perhaps ‘the greatest crisis the Labour party has faced since it was created’. Scotland has been lost to the SNP, and UKIP are eating into Labour’s core vote in England. New Labour believed it could turn its back on the working class as they would have ‘nowhere to go’: instead, the working class is turning its back on Labour in kind. Euro-nationalism is currently filling this vacuum in working class representation, almost by default, but the opportunity is there for a pro-working class alternative to Labour if progressive forces can be drawn together down the line.
The general election of 7 May saw the Labour party suffer what Jon Cruddas has called its ‘worst defeat since 1918′. Scotland, so long the party’s backbone, has been lost en masse to the SNP, while UKIP came third in the popular vote polling 3.8m votes and finishing second in 120 seats.
The UKIP surge came not just in the shires, as liberal prejudice would have liked, but also in the Labour heartland. Of the 50 seats that saw UKIP’s largest increase in vote share between 2010 and 2015, 32 were Labour. By region, UKIP’s biggest gains were in the Labour heartlands of Yorkshire and the North-East, and across the north UKIP averaged 16.9% in Labour-held seats.
Robert Ford, who has been tracking UKIP’s ascent in recent years, writes: ‘Ukip’s advance was strongest in seats with the largest concentrations of white voters, working-class voters, voters with no educational qualifications, and where opposition to immigration and the EU was highest. The strongest Ukip advances came in the seats along the east coast and in declining northern towns, where such factors came together. The party won shares of 25% or more in places such as Grimsby, Hartlepool, Thurrock and Boston and Skegness. Ukip’s performance also confounded those who argued that the party would primarily hurt the Conservatives – Ukip’s advance was slightly larger in Labour-held seats and Labour did four points worse in the areas where Ukip advanced most, compared to a 2-point Tory drop’ (link). Nigel Farage’s personal view is that ‘UKIP significantly helped the Conservatives win this election by tearing vast chunks out of the Labour vote in the north and the Midlands’ and that UKIP’s greatest growth potential is in Labour areas (link), something outlined in UKIP’s ’2020 strategy’ (link). Labour’s John Healey concurs with this view (link) and Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s only MP, has told Channel 4 that he sees UKIP’s future as being ‘a non-socialist alternative to Labour in England’.
The Labour hierarchy is in turmoil over how to respond to this: were they too left wing? Were they not left wing enough? The horrifying answer for them is: both and neither, illustrating the existential bind Labour finds itself in. It did not just haemorrhage support in the heartlands or Middle England, it did so in both. One may be soluble, the other may not.
The working class turning its back on Labour
The roots of Labour’s crisis are quite simple. The New Labour project was underpinned by the belief that Labour could ditch Clause 4, embrace neo-liberalism and orientate entirely to the middle class, safe in the knowledge that its working class core vote could be taken for granted because, in Peter Mandelson’s words, they had ‘nowhere to go’.
At the time is was noted by those that founded the IWCA that if New Labour dared turn its back on the working class, the working class would, contrary to New Labour wisdom, reciprocate. It was also concluded that Euro-nationalism was best placed to benefit from this as the de facto radical alternative, in the absence of a worthwhile offer to the working class from the left.
Sure enough, the BNP began to fill the vacuum in working class political representation, taking 192,000 votes in 2005 and over half a million in 2010, seeing the election of two MEPs in 2009 and 50-odd councillors, becoming the opposition in Burnley and Barking. The BNP’s collapse has been gleefully received as a vindication by the liberal left, but UKIP has assumed its constituency and substantially grown it (almost seven-fold from the BNP’s vote in 2010) with the benefit of experience (learning from the BNP’s mistakes, as the BNP learnt from the NF), superior middle management, a less toxic brand and greater corporate backing.
What this demonstrates is that the BNP’s success, and indeed that of UKIP, has very little to do with the innate charm of these parties and is more symptomatic of working class disillusionment with the political centre, Labour specifically. From 1997 onwards, directly coincident with the emergence of New Labour, electoral turn-out has fallen well below its post-war trend of around 75%, with 65% now seemingly established as the new norm (link). As the progenitors of the IWCA wrote in 1995: ‘In straightforward language, it is the politics of the Labour Party that has created the BNP… Labour and the Left are increasingly alien to working class people’ (link). The Oxford academics Geoffrey Evans and Jon Mellon wrote just before the 2015 election that ‘Labour’s move to the ‘liberal consensus’ on the EU and immigration alienated many of their core voters a long time before UKIP were an effective political presence. These disaffected core voters left Labour in 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010 and went to other parties—or simply stopped voting. UKIP has since attracted these disaffected former Labour voters, particularly from the Conservatives… the damage to Labour’s core support had already been done by new Labour’s focus on a pro-middle class, pro-EU and, as it eventually turned out, pro-immigration agenda, before the arrival of UKIP as a plausible electoral choice in the years following the 2010 election’ (link). [It will be interesting to see how much of UKIP's increased support has come directly from Labour this time.]
And ‘where the liberal left continues to ignore working class concerns and has priorities other than immediate working class interests, Euro-nationalism is capable and more than happy to ‘fill the vacuum”[1]. UKIP are doing precisely this.
Who will fill the vacuum?
Labour’s general election defeat has been described by one high-ranking insider as perhaps ‘the greatest crisis the Labour party has faced since it was created’. Scotland has been lost to the SNP, and UKIP are eating into Labour’s core vote in England. New Labour believed it could turn its back on the working class as they would have ‘nowhere to go’: instead, the working class is turning its back on Labour in kind. Euro-nationalism is currently filling this vacuum in working class representation, almost by default, but the opportunity is there for a pro-working class alternative to Labour if progressive forces can be drawn together down the line.
The general election of 7 May saw the Labour party suffer what Jon Cruddas has called its ‘worst defeat since 1918′. Scotland, so long the party’s backbone, has been lost en masse to the SNP, while UKIP came third in the popular vote polling 3.8m votes and finishing second in 120 seats.
The UKIP surge came not just in the shires, as liberal prejudice would have liked, but also in the Labour heartland. Of the 50 seats that saw UKIP’s largest increase in vote share between 2010 and 2015, 32 were Labour. By region, UKIP’s biggest gains were in the Labour heartlands of Yorkshire and the North-East, and across the north UKIP averaged 16.9% in Labour-held seats.
Robert Ford, who has been tracking UKIP’s ascent in recent years, writes: ‘Ukip’s advance was strongest in seats with the largest concentrations of white voters, working-class voters, voters with no educational qualifications, and where opposition to immigration and the EU was highest. The strongest Ukip advances came in the seats along the east coast and in declining northern towns, where such factors came together. The party won shares of 25% or more in places such as Grimsby, Hartlepool, Thurrock and Boston and Skegness. Ukip’s performance also confounded those who argued that the party would primarily hurt the Conservatives – Ukip’s advance was slightly larger in Labour-held seats and Labour did four points worse in the areas where Ukip advanced most, compared to a 2-point Tory drop’ (link). Nigel Farage’s personal view is that ‘UKIP significantly helped the Conservatives win this election by tearing vast chunks out of the Labour vote in the north and the Midlands’ and that UKIP’s greatest growth potential is in Labour areas (link), something outlined in UKIP’s ’2020 strategy’ (link). Labour’s John Healey concurs with this view (link) and Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s only MP, has told Channel 4 that he sees UKIP’s future as being ‘a non-socialist alternative to Labour in England’.
The Labour hierarchy is in turmoil over how to respond to this: were they too left wing? Were they not left wing enough? The horrifying answer for them is: both and neither, illustrating the existential bind Labour finds itself in. It did not just haemorrhage support in the heartlands or Middle England, it did so in both. One may be soluble, the other may not.
The working class turning its back on Labour
The roots of Labour’s crisis are quite simple. The New Labour project was underpinned by the belief that Labour could ditch Clause 4, embrace neo-liberalism and orientate entirely to the middle class, safe in the knowledge that its working class core vote could be taken for granted because, in Peter Mandelson’s words, they had ‘nowhere to go’.
At the time is was noted by those that founded the IWCA that if New Labour dared turn its back on the working class, the working class would, contrary to New Labour wisdom, reciprocate. It was also concluded that Euro-nationalism was best placed to benefit from this as the de facto radical alternative, in the absence of a worthwhile offer to the working class from the left.
Sure enough, the BNP began to fill the vacuum in working class political representation, taking 192,000 votes in 2005 and over half a million in 2010, seeing the election of two MEPs in 2009 and 50-odd councillors, becoming the opposition in Burnley and Barking. The BNP’s collapse has been gleefully received as a vindication by the liberal left, but UKIP has assumed its constituency and substantially grown it (almost seven-fold from the BNP’s vote in 2010) with the benefit of experience (learning from the BNP’s mistakes, as the BNP learnt from the NF), superior middle management, a less toxic brand and greater corporate backing.
What this demonstrates is that the BNP’s success, and indeed that of UKIP, has very little to do with the innate charm of these parties and is more symptomatic of working class disillusionment with the political centre, Labour specifically. From 1997 onwards, directly coincident with the emergence of New Labour, electoral turn-out has fallen well below its post-war trend of around 75%, with 65% now seemingly established as the new norm (link). As the progenitors of the IWCA wrote in 1995: ‘In straightforward language, it is the politics of the Labour Party that has created the BNP… Labour and the Left are increasingly alien to working class people’ (link). The Oxford academics Geoffrey Evans and Jon Mellon wrote just before the 2015 election that ‘Labour’s move to the ‘liberal consensus’ on the EU and immigration alienated many of their core voters a long time before UKIP were an effective political presence. These disaffected core voters left Labour in 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010 and went to other parties—or simply stopped voting. UKIP has since attracted these disaffected former Labour voters, particularly from the Conservatives… the damage to Labour’s core support had already been done by new Labour’s focus on a pro-middle class, pro-EU and, as it eventually turned out, pro-immigration agenda, before the arrival of UKIP as a plausible electoral choice in the years following the 2010 election’ (link). [It will be interesting to see how much of UKIP's increased support has come directly from Labour this time.]
And ‘where the liberal left continues to ignore working class concerns and has priorities other than immediate working class interests, Euro-nationalism is capable and more than happy to ‘fill the vacuum”[1]. UKIP are doing precisely this.
Who will fill the vacuum? And how?
UKIP, like the BNP before them, are the symptom more than the disease, and an opportunistic one at that. Like the BNP, they are able to pose as Old Labour in Labour heartlands and as Old Tory elsewhere, as advantage dictates. It is not impossible that they will implode as the BNP did, or that the left-right contradictions in their make-up will rent them asunder. But the wider point is that the vacuum exists, and will be filled one way or another. If UKIP implode another formation will emerge from the right, because the gap in the market is there, and it will be wiser and more emboldened from the previous experience. And the political centre of gravity will continue drifting further to the right.
As for Labour, Cruddas says that its current plight ‘could be the greatest crisis the Labour party has faced since it was created. It is epic in its scale’. Post-New Labour, what is the Labour party for? If it cannot retain working class support in its heartlands, if it is no longer seen as the party of the class by an significant and growing section of the working class, what is its reason to exist? Can this ever be resolved? Having lost Scotland, and facing constituency boundary changes that will likely work against them, will it ever be able to form a national government on its own again? Labour, like the Lib Dems, are finding out the hard way that there is no need for three neo-liberal parties, or even two; and that gaining votes in Guardianland doesn’t compensate for the loss of the core it took for granted.
One only has to look across the Channel to mainland Europe to see the vacuum being filled by Euro-nationalist parties (just last week, the Finns Party entered government in Finland), and for similar reasons as in the UK. Recently, the French think-tank the Jean Jaurès Foundation, founded by the former French PM Pierre Mauroy to ‘promote the values of Democratic Socialism’, issued its analysis of the factors behind the rise of the Front National. It reported:
‘With no political offer from the left, working-class French people feel they have been abandoned economically, socially and culturally. The FN has stepped into the breach: it says to these people: “you are the most important and we will fight for you”.
‘The left is trying to make up to what it calls ‘real minorities’ who it believes are discriminated against. In doing so it has become indifferent, even scornful, of the wider French working class. They say to these native French “you have not understood, you are racist and sexist”, and so these people have said, so be it. They are ready to admit voting FN because the left has abandoned them and the FN is interested in them.’ (link)
In short, the left in France has abandoned class politics, embraced identity politics and taken the core working class vote for granted, and is now reaping the whirlwind. Much as in the UK. As to how the FN have achieved credibility with the French working class, the FN’s Michel Paulin put it quite simply: ‘People are coming to us because we go to them. We are there on the street, on the landings of the tower blocks. People see we don’t have horns. They see our ideas are their ideas. And they don’t see the other parties at all’ (link). This simple lesson has been staring the European left in the face since the emergence of the FN as a truly national force in 1985, and it has uniformly and wilfully refused to act on it.[2]
So what can be done? There is no reason why Euro-nationalism should be the only political tendency appearing on working class landings, listening and responding to working class concerns. This could and should be the default job of the pro-working class left, and the IWCA experiment has shown that the mainstream parties are as vulnerable to an attack from a progressive working class party as they are to the radical right.
On a macro scale, why should it be left to UKIP to frame the debate around hot-button topics like the EU and immigration in a reactionary fashion, when progressive pro-working class arguments can be made? The EU is a capitalist project; immigration policy is used to provide a weak, defenceless reserve army of labour for UK plc and keep wages down (the Migration Observatory at Oxford University recently reported ‘UK research suggests that immigration has a small impact on average wages of existing workers but more significant effects along the wage distribution: low-wage workers lose while medium and high-paid workers gain.’ [link]). This is obvious: why would the EU be anything other than a capitalist project? Why would immigration policy be designed in any other way but to service the needs of capital? In Europe, as elsewhere, the free movement of labour is at the behest of the free movement of capital – that is the way it works. And is best explained in that way. To do otherwise out of sentiment or sensitivity is to sow a dangerous confusion.
On austerity, Labour were so enfeebled in this election they couldn’t even muster the courage to counter the austerity narrative -’we must make cuts or we’ll become Greece; Gordon Brown’s profligate spending caused the recession’ – despite there being ample mainstream intellectual ammunition with which to do so (link and link). The ‘austerity’ label is nothing but the cloak behind which the state and society will be further re-configured along neo-liberal lines, with the NHS to be dismembered, education opened up to the highest bidder and the remaining vestiges of the welfare state to be squeezed yet further, with more food banks and suicides the predictable consequence. And why can’t Labour counter this narrative? Because they are complicit. The recession began on Gordon Brown’s watch, but was very much a New Labour recession, not an Old Labour one as the austerians would have it. New Labour accepted, extended and normalised the neo-liberal economic agenda in the UK, opening up the economy to financialisation which left it especially vulnerable when the global financial crisis hit. Neo-liberalism itself was a ruling class initiative which sought to resolve the endemic economic crises of the 1970s by raising profitability through the smashing of working class power, security and institutions. It is Labour’s acceptance of this agenda that has fundamentally, and perhaps irrevocably, alienated it from the working class: the class understands this, even if Peter Mandelson doesn’t.
In point of fact, if pro-working class forces can be drawn together down the line, UKIP can be looked at as doing our job for us by breaking off working class support from the mainstream parties. To again quote Evans and Mellon on UKIP’s support: ‘There are two quite distinct social groups that have shown a disproportionately high level of support for radical right-wing parties: the working class and the somewhat quaintly labelled ‘petty bourgeoisie’ (the self-employed—small employers such as shop owners)… working-class and petty-bourgeoisie radical right-wing party voters are divided on economic issues, but share the types of non-economic preferences addressed by radical right wing parties’ [italics added] (link). That UKIP is able to win working class support when it doesn’t even share the economic priorities of those self-same working class supporters is an indictment of the left as it stands, but it also indicates the opportunity that is there for an effective, pro-working class alternative to Labour. But if the battle for working class hearts and minds is to be won, Euro-nationalism will need to be challenged head on by just as compelling and grand a narrative. That is the challenge still.
UKIP, like the BNP before them, are the symptom more than the disease, and an opportunistic one at that. Like the BNP, they are able to pose as Old Labour in Labour heartlands and as Old Tory elsewhere, as advantage dictates. It is not impossible that they will implode as the BNP did, or that the left-right contradictions in their make-up will rent them asunder. But the wider point is that the vacuum exists, and will be filled one way or another. If UKIP implode another formation will emerge from the right, because the gap in the market is there, and it will be wiser and more emboldened from the previous experience. And the political centre of gravity will continue drifting further to the right.
As for Labour, Cruddas says that its current plight ‘could be the greatest crisis the Labour party has faced since it was created. It is epic in its scale’. Post-New Labour, what is the Labour party for? If it cannot retain working class support in its heartlands, if it is no longer seen as the party of the class by an significant and growing section of the working class, what is its reason to exist? Can this ever be resolved? Having lost Scotland, and facing constituency boundary changes that will likely work against them, will it ever be able to form a national government on its own again? Labour, like the Lib Dems, are finding out the hard way that there is no need for three neo-liberal parties, or even two; and that gaining votes in Guardianland doesn’t compensate for the loss of the core it took for granted.
One only has to look across the Channel to mainland Europe to see the vacuum being filled by Euro-nationalist parties (just last week, the Finns Party entered government in Finland), and for similar reasons as in the UK. Recently, the French think-tank the Jean Jaurès Foundation, founded by the former French PM Pierre Mauroy to ‘promote the values of Democratic Socialism’, issued its analysis of the factors behind the rise of the Front National. It reported:
‘With no political offer from the left, working-class French people feel they have been abandoned economically, socially and culturally. The FN has stepped into the breach: it says to these people: “you are the most important and we will fight for you”.
‘The left is trying to make up to what it calls ‘real minorities’ who it believes are discriminated against. In doing so it has become indifferent, even scornful, of the wider French working class. They say to these native French “you have not understood, you are racist and sexist”, and so these people have said, so be it. They are ready to admit voting FN because the left has abandoned them and the FN is interested in them.’ (link)
In short, the left in France has abandoned class politics, embraced identity politics and taken the core working class vote for granted, and is now reaping the whirlwind. Much as in the UK. As to how the FN have achieved credibility with the French working class, the FN’s Michel Paulin put it quite simply: ‘People are coming to us because we go to them. We are there on the street, on the landings of the tower blocks. People see we don’t have horns. They see our ideas are their ideas. And they don’t see the other parties at all’ (link). This simple lesson has been staring the European left in the face since the emergence of the FN as a truly national force in 1985, and it has uniformly and wilfully refused to act on it.[2]
So what can be done? There is no reason why Euro-nationalism should be the only political tendency appearing on working class landings, listening and responding to working class concerns. This could and should be the default job of the pro-working class left, and the IWCA experiment has shown that the mainstream parties are as vulnerable to an attack from a progressive working class party as they are to the radical right.
On a macro scale, why should it be left to UKIP to frame the debate around hot-button topics like the EU and immigration in a reactionary fashion, when progressive pro-working class arguments can be made? The EU is a capitalist project; immigration policy is used to provide a weak, defenceless reserve army of labour for UK plc and keep wages down (the Migration Observatory at Oxford University recently reported ‘UK research suggests that immigration has a small impact on average wages of existing workers but more significant effects along the wage distribution: low-wage workers lose while medium and high-paid workers gain.’ [link]). This is obvious: why would the EU be anything other than a capitalist project? Why would immigration policy be designed in any other way but to service the needs of capital? In Europe, as elsewhere, the free movement of labour is at the behest of the free movement of capital – that is the way it works. And is best explained in that way. To do otherwise out of sentiment or sensitivity is to sow a dangerous confusion.
On austerity, Labour were so enfeebled in this election they couldn’t even muster the courage to counter the austerity narrative -’we must make cuts or we’ll become Greece; Gordon Brown’s profligate spending caused the recession’ – despite there being ample mainstream intellectual ammunition with which to do so (link and link). The ‘austerity’ label is nothing but the cloak behind which the state and society will be further re-configured along neo-liberal lines, with the NHS to be dismembered, education opened up to the highest bidder and the remaining vestiges of the welfare state to be squeezed yet further, with more food banks and suicides the predictable consequence. And why can’t Labour counter this narrative? Because they are complicit. The recession began on Gordon Brown’s watch, but was very much a New Labour recession, not an Old Labour one as the austerians would have it. New Labour accepted, extended and normalised the neo-liberal economic agenda in the UK, opening up the economy to financialisation which left it especially vulnerable when the global financial crisis hit. Neo-liberalism itself was a ruling class initiative which sought to resolve the endemic economic crises of the 1970s by raising profitability through the smashing of working class power, security and institutions. It is Labour’s acceptance of this agenda that has fundamentally, and perhaps irrevocably, alienated it from the working class: the class understands this, even if Peter Mandelson doesn’t.
In point of fact, if pro-working class forces can be drawn together down the line, UKIP can be looked at as doing our job for us by breaking off working class support from the mainstream parties. To again quote Evans and Mellon on UKIP’s support: ‘There are two quite distinct social groups that have shown a disproportionately high level of support for radical right-wing parties: the working class and the somewhat quaintly labelled ‘petty bourgeoisie’ (the self-employed—small employers such as shop owners)… working-class and petty-bourgeoisie radical right-wing party voters are divided on economic issues, but share the types of non-economic preferences addressed by radical right wing parties’ [italics added] (link). That UKIP is able to win working class support when it doesn’t even share the economic priorities of those self-same working class supporters is an indictment of the left as it stands, but it also indicates the opportunity that is there for an effective, pro-working class alternative to Labour. But if the battle for working class hearts and minds is to be won, Euro-nationalism will need to be challenged head on by just as compelling and grand a narrative. That is the challenge still.
miktheword
Well-Known Member
As Jezza has seemingly taken over from Owen as 'leftie' poster boy in much of the media, if not MSM (mumsnet..perhaps due to this current facial hair thing..)
anyway, he's current.
it doesn't seem inappropriate to advertise his cameo in Beating The Fascists p103 -4
Now, attempting to join RA at the time was a difficult job. Writing to redundant Po boxes in Hatfield, with no reply, then running into those who were future RA comrades at Bethnal green events without knowing, was common. Security obviously paramount. Got a letter apologising for delay in contact, saying a recent national meeting resulted in many serious injuries...fortunately, they were all fascists !
(So, probably would have been the same Red Rose club, Islington that pages 103-4 refers to in Beating The Fascists..
will skip the description of the street struggle that preceeded (as some will no doubt view it as a football hoolie , leftie encounter ..whereas the reality is of organising and advertising a group that took the oppo on, and needed sorting, when they attacked; can't remember them doing it again)
so...
they were seen off..
p104 BtF
Without much discussion it was decided to carry on with the meeting. Though it was unlikely they would come back, I volunteered for sentry duty outside, more to calm myself down than anything else. One of the women who worked who worked in the kitchen was carted off in an ambulance, with a suspected heart attack. So I'm standing there when labour MP Jeremy Corbyn opens the door of the centre and peeps out,
'Have they gone?' he says,. .'yeah', I say. .'Were they here for you or me?'
'It was us'. .I reply. . You could see the relief visible on his face.. 'Oh good'..he remarked cheerfully. Then with a quick look in both directions, he skipped off down the road.
How ironic I thought. Here we have a member of parliament, no less, having to skulk around his own constituency for fear of rampaging fascists everyone else seems determined to deny exist'
Police turn up asking if anyone knows why there are a number of men in St Thomas's hospital with serious head injuries. .got the appropriate response.
.twelve months later Jeremy Corbyn would be installed as the honorary president of the newly launched Anti Fascist Action.
The early years obviously.. before the '89 re-launch, with lessons learned.
anyway, he's current.
it doesn't seem inappropriate to advertise his cameo in Beating The Fascists p103 -4
Now, attempting to join RA at the time was a difficult job. Writing to redundant Po boxes in Hatfield, with no reply, then running into those who were future RA comrades at Bethnal green events without knowing, was common. Security obviously paramount. Got a letter apologising for delay in contact, saying a recent national meeting resulted in many serious injuries...fortunately, they were all fascists !
(So, probably would have been the same Red Rose club, Islington that pages 103-4 refers to in Beating The Fascists..
will skip the description of the street struggle that preceeded (as some will no doubt view it as a football hoolie , leftie encounter ..whereas the reality is of organising and advertising a group that took the oppo on, and needed sorting, when they attacked; can't remember them doing it again)
so...
they were seen off..
p104 BtF
Without much discussion it was decided to carry on with the meeting. Though it was unlikely they would come back, I volunteered for sentry duty outside, more to calm myself down than anything else. One of the women who worked who worked in the kitchen was carted off in an ambulance, with a suspected heart attack. So I'm standing there when labour MP Jeremy Corbyn opens the door of the centre and peeps out,
'Have they gone?' he says,. .'yeah', I say. .'Were they here for you or me?'
'It was us'. .I reply. . You could see the relief visible on his face.. 'Oh good'..he remarked cheerfully. Then with a quick look in both directions, he skipped off down the road.
How ironic I thought. Here we have a member of parliament, no less, having to skulk around his own constituency for fear of rampaging fascists everyone else seems determined to deny exist'
Police turn up asking if anyone knows why there are a number of men in St Thomas's hospital with serious head injuries. .got the appropriate response.
.twelve months later Jeremy Corbyn would be installed as the honorary president of the newly launched Anti Fascist Action.
The early years obviously.. before the '89 re-launch, with lessons learned.
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
There certainly did seem to be some 'security' implications in contacting RA in a meaningful way at the time but I'm not convinced it was anything RA itself did or failed to do. The same problems happened with AFA including the commercial arm (t-shirts etc). Assuming it was a matter of personnel, changes were made. Then when things didn't seem to improve (complaints to people manning stalls at gigs continued: 'such and such hadn't arrived') ever greater efficiency was introduced. Public relations wise, it obviously wasn't great. Despite the changes the problems persisted.
Around that the time the weekly mail rather than being collected was posted by the BM box to a member's home. Over a number of weeks the mail was not arriving within the allotted window while the company insisted they had sent it out on time. So yer man toddles to the local sorting office to find out what was happening. With no plausible explanation forthcoming, the manager was summoned. He came across as defensive, even aggressive. Puzzled yer man strolled the 15 or so minutes back to the house. His heel had just cleared the threshold when a Post Office van screamed to a halt outside, and a bulky manila envelope was bundled through the letter box and landed at his feet. Then the van tore off again. It was evident an attempt to give the appearance of the mail having been delivered 'normally' while he was out. And thus, not as a result of his recent visit. Accordingly the mail was collected directly from the company after that. And things seemed to improve. For a while.
Eventually the company was asked to explain why the post mark on any number of letters were sometimes weeks old? 'Off the record and on the qt' - it was explained in hushed tones that all incoming mail for RA (and B&H incidentally) was routinely sifted by the type of people that did that sort of thing. So what was happening was that the mail was first sifted at the BM box and then having been re-directed was again held to be sifted at the sorting office. Looking back, it's a wonder RA ever got anything at all!
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gawkrodger
Well-Known Member
Not sure where to put this as the Clapton threads have been binned, but looks like the fash had a go at Clapton Ultras yesterday
http://www.claptonultras.org/
http://www.claptonultras.org/
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
tony.c
Well-Known Member
I had dropped out of most activity by the 80's due to shiftwork commitments, and the people I used to go with had dropped out for various reasons. I did try to give financial support though. I sent a £50 donation to RA/AFA and didn't receive an acknowledgement, though the cheque was cashed. I assumed it was because of haphazard administration. I later sent a cheque for some stickers, but never received them, although again the cheque had been cashed. I assumed that either RA had something against me or that the cheques had been intercepted and cashed by fash in Royal Mail, or Special Branch.
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