The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Well perhaps we are all sometimes not good at responding to criticism.
Here is what you said:
Re reading it it's frankly disappointing and your subsequent comments even more so.
I don't think anyone could knock the IWCA for their capacity to take on big issues and to have a stab at breaking the mould.However capacity can't be reduced to just a question of the 'right people' and in any case I am not sure where the notion you raised of 'the right people' came from.Whilst any organisation has to recruit, develop its membership the notion you introduce of 'the right people' smacks of that very vanguardism that projects like the IWCA and others are opposed to. I don't have any problems with the idea of a cadre personally but not that baggage of democratic centralism and vanguardism that has pervaded a left that seeks to reproduce 1917 all over again.
As a supporter of the IWCA I think it is important that we discuss why the project has not been as successful as some of us hoped it would be.Ironically I think that there are probably more supporters and people sympathetic to the ideas than ever before even though in terms of election results it probably peaked four/five years ago. The very point that one of the IWCA members made both here and at the Newcastle panel last year/two years ago about community based campaigns is that unless there is a community based organisation is that local campaigns either rise and fall or they get taken over and co-opted by a party, if that's the case then a trade union for the community is a way of sustaining the fightback. You would have to convince me further re the notion of generalising into wonder ones as whilst I sense an element of truth in it it immediately made me think of the need to rush into the time honoured 'this proves the need for the revolutionary party' twaddle in which some unfortunate is dragged across to an educational on the situation in Venezuela. And in my mind there is a question as to why the left and others didn't come on board in the very simple premise that we put behind all our political difference and work together in building a trade union for the community. I have met all sorts of people who support the IWCA who after a few pints find out that they have different views on all sorts of things but that they all agree on the basic IWCA premise.
Its a shame that you feel that we have no movement and no analysis , I might have misinterpreted what I sensed was a triumphalist sneer in your post which sort of me me think just because Belboids part of a failed left project ( despite your Don Quixote efforts to resuscitate the Socialist alliance) he probably can't wait for others to be reduced to the same level.So rather than go into a cockneyrebel type calculation of size and relevance I wondered if we would discuss the analysis.
For me the basic premise in Filling the vacuum rings truer that any of the perspectives from the SWP or indeed your mates in Workers Power or Permanent Revolution. For all the gazing into global events, frantic if completely comically and amateurish calculations on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and their impact on the working class struggle in Britain and for all the sneers of sub reformism labelled at groups like the IWCA the basic question is whose analysis is closer to what is no unfurling some ten years later? I would go with the IWCA's- that the abandonment of working class communities by New labour, the decline of the 'labour movement' etc etc would create a vacuum hat could be filled by a left alternative or indeed the far right.
In my opinion the far right is winning. It has and ill continue to make inroads into Labour votes and is increasing its share of not just protest votes but as party of first choice.
It is more effective than the left partly because it isn't tied to some shibbolith ( its actually marginalised the nazis that the cobweb left would really like it to be) but mainly in that although it has a national perspective , and indeed an international one ( it was very successful as an anti war party) its focus is on local activity. It seeks out local issues and where it can't racialise them it adopts a classic old Labour style. It enters into a dialogue which the far left won't touch ; crime, immigration, multi culturalism , worklessness but actually its the working class that wants to discuss these issues. Whilst they will racialise them, a left alternative would put class first. And they have done well , despite a national media campaign against them, despite state infiltration, despite having to spend a large amount of time neutralising the old orthodox nazis within.
Look at the Essex video , I am sure you would be a shocked as I was in the numbers they brought out, their confidence and the impunity in which they were allowed to operate. Where was the opposition? Not just the no platformers/no pasaran crew but the political opposition.
So the idea of a left wing BNP is to emulate their success beat them at their own game but with class as the solution/problem not race.
And what is the vacuum after the elections? Labour are forecast to get about 18% of the vote , that is 5% points worse than Michael Foots worst result. Can you remember how bad things were then? And if anything the 'left' was stronger. The Times made an interesting point recently and the bit I will put in bold stuck in my throat a bit. I have been an active trade unioinist for thirty years but it rings true and reinforces my view that the political opposition to the BNP has to come form withing a community based political organisation:
