Filling the Vacuum 1995

[chilango]

Interesting...

In my limited experience I'd suggest that a key weakness of the IWCA style approach is that for big chunks of the country it was 15 years too late.

"community consciousness" (for want of a better phrase) is as seriously undermined as class consciousness. Many places people do feel they belong to a community and have no common cause with their neighbours.

Hell, I've lived in dozens of places and cannot think of ANY where I've known my neighbours' names, nor had a conversation beyond a nodded hello in passing.

Populations are increasingly atomised and transient - and thus isolated from each other. Not a new thing, the Sits were writing aboutb this very thing at the start of the 60s. But now the "community" is a scarce creature indeed.

Rebuilding it, is probably a good thing, but a long long road of tiny steps.

Maybe saying hello to your next door neighbour and spending time in your local caff are the most revolutionary activities we can be doing these days...

 

[durruti02]

Maybe saying hello to your next door neighbour and spending time in your local caff are the most revolutionary activities we can be doing these days...

agree yet i wonder how many leftists do this

 

[audiotech]

agree yet i wonder how many leftists do this

The last time I said hello to my neighbours was just before I split up a fight between an alcoholic and crack addict, who live in the same block as me.

Three fucking burglaries in recent times too, which I suspect were done by 'the neighbours'.

Unlike you, we don't all live in the UK equivalent of Ramsey Street.

 

[Socrates]

This looks like it might be useful to proletarian praxis. Taking place in one of the historically important parts of the working class and labour movement. There are many people, trade unionists and so on who have been to Ruskin College

1ST OXFORD WORKING CLASS BOOKFAIR
SATURDAY 20TH JUNE, 11 am - 6 pm at Ruskin College, Walton Street, Oxford

Supporters of the event include Oxford & District TUC & local IWW

Books, talks, badges, workshops, posters, postcards, DVDs, CDs, music, culture, short films, magazines, lectures, warm atmosphere, fellowship, meet new people, education, entertainment, magazine, newspapers etc. To book a stall/more info. email us!

Includes 100th Anniversary of 1909 RUSKIN COLLEGE STRIKE meeting/commemoration, the first radical student uprising in English history that saw students breakaway to form radical & anti-capitalist educational networks such as the PLEBS LEAGUE and CENTRAL LABOUR COLLEGES + the story of the RED SHIRTS, the militant antifa who kicked Oswald Moseleys BLACK SHIRTS out of 1930s Oxford. Talks/workshops on anti-fascism & anti-racism, situationism/dada/surrealism, anti-capitalism, people’s history, trade unions, war, peace & empire, radical bookselling, bash the rich marches, psychogeography, feminism & women’s equality, social ecology, popular & radical education, poetry/culture/art, music etc

Speakers include -

COLIN WAUGH Radical educator/FE teacher, active on the Post 16 Educator journal, recently author of pamphlet on the 1909 Ruskin College Student Strike & Plebs League
IAN BONE English anarchist associated with Class War group. In 1984 he was labelled ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’ by a British tabloid newspaper & was involved in the legendary Bash the Rich marches on wealthier areas of England such as Kensington, Henley-on-Thames & Hampstead.
RICHARD SEYMOUR Author of ‘The Liberal Defense of Murder’, a searing critique of the B52 liberals and pro-war left & the brains behind Lenin’s Tomb, one of the best-known political blogs in Britain, listed in 2005 as the 21st-most-popular blog in the country.
ANDREW BURGIN Radical seller/collektor of books, badges, posters, pamphlets & other emphemera. As a press officer for the Stop the War Coalition he has worked particularly closely with the Military Families against the War campaign. He has also been linked to the Public Reading Rooms in London . . .
JUDITH ORR Author of ‘A Rebel’s Guide to Women’s Liberation’
MALCOLM HOPKINS Our man from Housmans, London Town’s oldest radical bookshop who boast the largest range of radical newsletters, newspapers and mags of any shop in Brtain! He also does talks on situationism, dada, and surrealism - top bloke!
Cllr JOHN TANNER Lefty Councillor supports good causes like the Palestinians and anti-fascism - top bloke!
DAVID RENTON Independent writer & historian. Written extensively on the history of anti-fascism including ‘When We Touched the Sky’ a history of the Anti-Nazi League & ‘Red Shirts & Black’ (Published by Ruskin College Library) the story of how the facist Blackshirts were driven out of Oxford in the 1930s.
CIARAN WALSH IWW/Wobblie Member involved in Traveller education. ‘The IWW is a union unlike any other. It is a grassroots, democratic and militant union that seeks to organise ALL workers in ALL industries in ALL countries’ … Sounds like a good idea!
GUY DEBORD Sadly Monsieur Debord can’t make this festival, but we have received a copy of The Society of the Spectacle - The Movie that will receive a free screening and Ruskin College premier during the course of the bookfair
LUCY PARSONS once described by the Chicago police as ‘more dangerous than a thousand rioters’, Parsons died in 1942, she will be brought back to life for one day during the bookfair with a public reading of her infamous address To Tramps

Also for OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH, there is another WORKING CLASS BOOKFAIR THE WEEK BEFORE IN SUNDERLAND! (linked to the 25th anniversary of the Miners Strike)
http://workingclassbookfair.vpweb.com/

For more info. - www.oxfordworkingclassbookfair.blogspot.com or oxfordworkingclassbookfair@googlemail.com

 

[Red O]

 

[durruti02]

wow i thought he was 100% banned .. he appears to have quite a few profiles running still .. and still spamming!

 

[Crispy]

it's not attica

 

[JHE]

But do...

Speakers include -

...Dr Totally Barking, the eminent anarcho-criminological praxicologist?

 

[Socrates]

I'm sure you can find the one you seek here

Also for OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH, there is another WORKING CLASS BOOKFAIR THE WEEK BEFORE IN SUNDERLAND! (linked to the 25th anniversary of the Miners Strike)
http://workingclassbookfair.vpweb.com/

I am not Attica.

 

[durruti02]

it's not attica

hmm

 

[Crispy]

No really, it's not.

 

[durruti02]

hmm maybe technically urban75wise not but there has to be some connection there!

 

[The39thStep]

All sorts of places; but it fundamentally comes as the result of exploitation.

There's a reason why workplace organisations became the only politically influential bodies of the workers in European history, and there's a reason why those organisations have more long-term potential. I'm sure you've read Blanqui, I shouldn't need to tell you this. Communities are all well and good, and more than not act to solidify resentments created by an unjust and exploitative society. I'm not arguing we just boycott communities. But building parochial 'wall-fallen-down/leaky-pipe's bust' politics into your primary political focus? That's straight up William Morrisism. Not ambitious enough. The right will always win.

And despite the apparant big tent politics of the SWP the right ie the BNP are winning in many working class communities to the extent that it is they and not the SA, Left List or RESPECT that are seen as opposition to New Labour.

 

[Das Uberdog]

Don't you have lot's of criticisms of the specific manner in which the SWP approaches said wider issues?

 

[audiotech]

And despite the apparant big tent politics of the SWP the right ie the BNP are winning in many working class communities...

I wouldn't choose to say that the BNP are 'winning' in many working class communities, but I'd agree that they are trying to win over and influence a specific sector of the working class, based along racial lines, which can only divide the working class amongst itself.

 

[The39thStep]

Don't you have lot's of criticisms of the specific manner in which the SWP approaches said wider issues?

Yup.

 

[The39thStep]

It's ridiculous to think you can 'out-parochialise' the right. Don't move your campaigning to their territory, out of a lack of generalised class-consciousness. The point is that easy or not easy that generalised (and internationalised) class-consciousness is what is the predicate for working-class rule, and needs to be fought for.

Moving back to community campaigning links in none of the bigger pictures and certainly doesn't develop the sense of productive control necessary to start making steps towards socialism.

The following story idicates just what the consequences of the above are.
Hatfield Main Colliery in Doncaster at one time one of the most politicised and militant pits in Britain. One of the villages that fed the colliery is called Stainforth. Stainforth Miners Welfare had in the past held big meetings with the Black Panthers (invited by the local Young Socialists most of whom were young miners and their wives) and the PLO. Invites from the NUM directly, saw large meetings addressed by ‘Sinn Feiners’ and Sandinistas. More recently it has fallen to a certain Mr Owen, a former surface worker at the pit and general odd job man, to maintain the ‘radical tradition’. A former spokesman for the NF, and now BNP mouthpiece he was recently elected as a local councillor for the Stainforth area.

Imagine for a moment a conventional left group managing anything like that breakthrough and it is easy to accept that it will be the BNP rather than any tentative self-serving little stratagem occurring in and around the left which will serve as the benchmark for some time to come. A substantial part of the BNP appeal within working class communities is its depiction of its policies in a ‘socialism of the old school’ way. Labour would be vulnerable to a progressive working class party.

So wheres the bigger picture or is this just another wild ulra left turn a la today the BNP , tommorrow us ?

 

[audiotech]

The following story idicates just what the consequences of the above are.
Hatfield Main Colliery in Doncaster at one time one of the most politicised and militant pits in Britain. One of the villages that fed the colliery is called Stainforth. Stainforth Miners Welfare had in the past held big meetings with the Black Panthers (invited by the local Young Socialists most of whom were young miners and their wives) and the PLO. Invites from the NUM directly, saw large meetings addressed by ‘Sinn Feiners’ and Sandinistas. More recently it has fallen to a certain Mr Owen, a former surface worker at the pit and general odd job man, to maintain the ‘radical tradition’. A former spokesman for the NF, and now BNP mouthpiece he was recently elected as a local councillor for the Stainforth area.

Imagine for a moment a conventional left group managing anything like that breakthrough and it is easy to accept that it will be the BNP rather than any tentative self-serving little stratagem occurring in and around the left which will serve as the benchmark for some time to come. A substantial part of the BNP appeal within working class communities is its depiction of its policies in a ‘socialism of the old school’ way. Labour would be vulnerable to a progressive working class party.

So wheres the bigger picture or is this just another wild ulra left turn a la today the BNP , tommorrow us ?

Not tomorrow, nor yesterday, but some time ago now, candidate for Respect won a council seat in Bolsover, a mining area.

 

[The39thStep]

Jesus, the anecdote describes how a place where the far left had a tradition in the work place which is now prime BNP territory . Ray Holmes hardly took the seat in a BNP area did he?

So MC5 whats the solution for you in Filling the Vacuum?

 

[JHE]

In the al-Respeq split, did Ray Holmes go with the Social Workers or with GG and the Muslims?

 

[bluestreak]

Maybe saying hello to your next door neighbour and spending time in your local caff are the most revolutionary activities we can be doing these days...

Why the sad face? Without communities there will be NO revolution. End of story. If you don't know your neighbours well enough to be looking out for them and them for you, what the fuck are you in this for? You're failing at the first step IMO.

 

[audiotech]

Jesus, the anecdote describes how a place where the far left had a tradition in the work place which is now prime BNP territory . Ray Holmes hardly took the seat in a BNP area did he?

So MC5 whats the solution for you in Filling the Vacuum?

Ray Holmes took a seat in Bolsover, where there's been a tradition of militancy.

I don't see how Hatfield, which you described as 'having one of the most politicised and militant pits in Britain' (now closed), can now be described as "a BNP area", or "prime BNP territory"?

Here he is.

I am a trained NCB Underground Electrician and worked for many years at the Hatfield Main Colliery and at Selby Coalfield. I am currently the manager of a local firm.

Gone up in the world, from being downt pit. Sounds like a tory and that's where he'll end up I suspect?

According to a comment on that site he doesn't like debating his ideas.

Election result in 2008:

Stainforth& Moorends
Lynette Chipp (Green) 64
Bert Maurice Chowings (Com Gp) 462
Martin Edward Drake (Con) 604
Michael Glynn (Ind) 166
Ken Keegan (Lab) 969
Dave Owen (BNP) 453
Maj: 365 LAB HOLD

Source.

The Community Group candidate beat him, whoever they are?

Has there been another election since that I'm not aware of, when this BNP candidate was elected by a majority then?

Anyway, Hatfield ward is in a different area and no BNP candidate stood. Labour won that with over 11 hundred votes.

That's the problem with anecdotes, they're usually based on a load of old bollocks.

Filling the vacuum?

Building a left alternative with roots within the working class.

 

[The39thStep]

Ray Holmes took a seat in Bolsover, where there's been a tradition of militancy.

I don't see how Hatfield, which you described as 'having one of the most politicised and militant pits in Britain' (now closed), can now be described as "a BNP area", or "prime BNP territory"?

Here he is.



Gone up in the world, from being downt pit. Sounds like a tory and that's where he'll end up I suspect?

According to a comment on that site he doesn't like debating his ideas.

Election result in 2008:

Stainforth& Moorends
Lynette Chipp (Green) 64
Bert Maurice Chowings (Com Gp) 462
Martin Edward Drake (Con) 604
Michael Glynn (Ind) 166
Ken Keegan (Lab) 969
Dave Owen (BNP) 453
Maj: 365 LAB HOLD

Source.

The Community Group candidate beat him, whoever they are?

Has there been another election since that I'm not aware of, when this BNP candidate was elected by a majority then?

Anyway, Hatfield ward is in a different area and no BNP candidate stood. Labour won that with over 11 hundred votes.

That's the problem with anecdotes, they're usually based on a load of old bollocks.

Filling the vacuum?

Building a left alternative with roots within the working class.

I just luurve arguing with pedantics. Here's the bollocks MC5.

Owen is a Stainforth Town councillor. He is a BNP member and a former NF member. Stainforth was a feeder village for Hatfield Main which was a leading militant NUM branch. Stainforth Miners Welfare had in the past held big meetings with the Black Panthers (invited by the local Young Socialists most of whom were young miners and their wives) and the PLO. Invites from the NUM directly, saw large meetings addressed by ‘Sinn Feiners’ and Sandinistas.

Surely you accept that New labour are susceptible to a party that seeks working class votes?
Surely you accept that the BNP try and do this?
Surely you accept that their performance so far is better than SA, Respect, Left List or what ever the latest abortion is?

So is it time to change tack or do we just need a better version of the above left 'solutions'.

 

[durruti02]

MC5 - "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"

39 steps .. your anecdote is spot on .. apart from rare successes for the left e.g at Bolsover the overwhelming gains in former mining areas are to the BNP .. a process described in Filling the vacuum .. tragic

 

[audiotech]

I just luurve arguing with pedantics. Here's the bollocks MC5.

Owen is a Stainforth Town councillor. He is a BNP member and a former NF member. Stainforth was a feeder village for Hatfield Main which was a leading militant NUM branch. Stainforth Miners Welfare had in the past held big meetings with the Black Panthers (invited by the local Young Socialists most of whom were young miners and their wives) and the PLO. Invites from the NUM directly, saw large meetings addressed by ‘Sinn Feiners’ and Sandinistas.

Surely you accept that New labour are susceptible to a party that seeks working class votes?
Surely you accept that the BNP try and do this?
Surely you accept that their performance so far is better than SA, Respect, Left List or what ever the latest abortion is?

So is it time to change tack or do we just need a better version of the above left 'solutions'.

Facts are not to be sneered at.

Town councillor? Was he elected?

The stuff on the 'international meetings' you've mentioned. How many attended these 'meetings' do you think?

New Labour? The parrot is no more, it's deceased, dead.....

What comes next Chuck is decided by forces beyond mine, or your control. You never know, it might include further 'meetings'?

Hoping for a 'left version of the BNP' is not a 'tack', i'll be following thanks.

 

[audiotech]

MC5 - "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".

The 'fascist hoards' are not descending are they?

 

[durruti02]

to respond to the facts that the bnp are doing massively better than the left in ex mining areas with one example where they are not was as i said ..

 

[audiotech]

to respond to the facts that the bnp are doing massively better than the left in ex mining areas with one example where they are not was as i said ..

It is what you mean by the 'left' though?

You focus on the far-left and specifically the SWP. It's an obsession.

They're doing dismally in electoral terms - they always have.

 

[durruti02]

It is what you mean by the 'left' though?

You focus on the far-left and specifically the SWP. It's an obsession.

They're doing dismally in electoral terms - they always have.

ok forget electoralism and voting ( where my point is overwhelmingly right)

.. so are you also denying, in the majority of ex mining areas, the influence and orgnaisation of the left has dramatically declined, and that at the same time the influence of the far right has increased dramatically?

 

[audiotech]

ok forget electoralism and voting ( where my point is overwhelmingly right)

.. so are you also denying, in the majority of ex mining areas, the influence and orgnaisation of the left has dramatically declined, and that at the same time the influence of the far right has increased dramatically?

Labour is still the main player in South Yorkshire, less so in the 'ex mining areas' of West Yorkshire, but declining in influence in 'ex mining areas' as a whole nevertheless.

The BNP have been on a wave. I'm not making any predictions, but thursdays results will determine to some degree, as to whether it continues on in that veign?