discokermit
Well-Known Member
the closed shop is well within living memory. and most of the people i work with started work in the early seventies.
SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
- Start date
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
I'm one of the oldest at my work. I started work this millennium.
discokermit
Well-Known Member
i'm one of the youngest. i started in '85.
almost fifty percent of the fellers there have moustaches. not hipster ones, proper seventies blokes ones. so my place is in no way typical, but these fellers have still got another seven or eight years to go. i reckon a big chunk of the workforce remember the seventies and your disregarding them.
i don't think it detracts much from your point though.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
I don't mean to disregard them.
I've just never come across them.
I've never worked with anyone whose experiences go that far back.
discokermit
Well-Known Member
i've worked with people who fought in the war. i feel old.
You are old.
discokermit
Well-Known Member
i know.
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
Which one?
discokermit
Well-Known Member
world war two.
though i've worked with veterans of burma, suez and northern ireland. and a bloke stationed on the czech border in the sixties who spent all day watching guards in a czech tower a hundred yards away. they would wave to each other with their little fingers while they held the binoculars.
and a bloke who fought for smith in rhodesia.
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discokermit
Well-Known Member
that's the spirit.
Yet, they still think they have the answers.
you don't know what you're talking about you div. I was in the SWP for less than 6 months. In 2001.
Didn't realise you work in a care home discokermit fairplay.
This article is a potential counter to the whole "Labour needs to appeal to the centre" argument:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/it-was-working-class-not-middle-class-sunk-labour
It suggests that between 2005 and 2015 Labour's "middle class" (A/B/C1) vote held up, but it lost a quarter of its working class (C2/D/E) vote.
I say "potential" because of the lazy use of statistics - what do these numbers represent? and why only go back to 2005?
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/it-was-working-class-not-middle-class-sunk-labour
It suggests that between 2005 and 2015 Labour's "middle class" (A/B/C1) vote held up, but it lost a quarter of its working class (C2/D/E) vote.
I say "potential" because of the lazy use of statistics - what do these numbers represent? and why only go back to 2005?
Only if you think appealing to the centre automatically attracts middle class voters over working class.
Ah, what I think is that this whole notion of middle class is illusory and the majority of B/C1s are working class. But even talking about class is too much for Labour these days - "aspirational hard working families" is what it's all about. So let me put it another way.
Wasn't it one of the key aims of the Blair triangulation to pick away at soft Tory voters? Based on the idea that Labour doesn't have to pander to its core constituency because they will always vote Labour, so they needed focus on the centre ground. That's the reasoning behind all the "Labour too left wing" nonsense being pushed relentlessly by the usual suspects.
My view is that the lesson of 2010 should have been that if you piss off that core they just won't turn out. Perhaps the lesson of 2015 is that if you blame immigrants and promise them austerity-lite some will get so pissed off they vote UKIP.
newbie
undisambiguated
of course it is, for good and bad. Protection for the aristocracy inside, with a lot of pre-entry tickets handed down father to son (not daughter) as inheritance rights, demarcation barriers to keep the peasantry outside, structured differentials to denote status and caste. When I got my ticket and started moving from job to job it gradually became apparent that the guys who did the card checks spent most of their working day sat at the back playing cards. Of course those were the days when a job was supposed to be for life, the employer expected to provide the work, the worker to remain in the same shop (ie same grade) throughout.
There were positives, of course there were, but as a beneficiary of the tail end of the system I didn't mourn its passing, and certainly wasn't up for more than token resistance, and nor were the factory workers I grew up amongst. I might occasionally chunter at work that we should fight to bring it back but in reality I quite like working with people who get jobs through equal opps rather than who they know and who they're prepared to salute.
Sorry if that's not what the working class thinks I should think.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Lot of truth in what you say. My son is 27 , he has the values of solidarity and equality for all but has never been in a union , attended a left meeting and despite his mother being in TUSC there is nothing in his daily life experience that would connect him to the cobweb left. The pointers and language that framed left politics for a generation of my age have long since faded and are relevant only to those who are stuck in the left bubble.
The 'middle class' category is an invention of psephologists and academic sociologists (amongst others) designed to fill university departments with impressionable students and allow dons and profs and mere lecturers a strong sense of self importance.
The overwhelming bulk of the UK population sell their labour to employers - ie, they are working class.
What we need here is not a Labour Party (which since its birth has been married to capital and does capital's every bidding), we need a Party with a clear marxist understanding, that fights for the overthrow of the free market system.
That organisations isn't likely to be the SWP, who i believe to be a contaminated brand. But it might contain some of their current number?
init
The overwhelming bulk of the UK population sell their labour to employers - ie, they are working class.
What we need here is not a Labour Party (which since its birth has been married to capital and does capital's every bidding), we need a Party with a clear marxist understanding, that fights for the overthrow of the free market system.
That organisations isn't likely to be the SWP, who i believe to be a contaminated brand. But it might contain some of their current number?
init
As a defence against despair and confusion perhaps.
You're as ritualistic as they are, posting the same stuff over and over and over and over...why do you do that?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Of course their were good and bad things about the closed shop but since when has management recruiting staff had anything to do with 'equal opps' or not recruiting applicants on either who they know or who they are prepared to salute?
I can recognise some of what you say in your first parody although I think it was done better in that Peter Sellers film I'm Alright Jack. Differentials and demarcation was part and parcel in most work places where there were trade unions not just the closed shop , pre entry tickets had very little impact on labour mobility in my own experience. I worked in both the building game and in engineering and where we were able to build a strong rank and file all union officials worked on the job but had necessary time to carry out duties.
The "left bubble" is an interesting idea that fits the Lefts ossified circumstances.
Whenever i meet former cadres from my political past i am struck first of all by how old they are, and more importantly perhaps, how rigidly dogmatic their thinking has become. Some of them have been involved in the 'revolutionary' process for so long that their mission has become one of defending their entire political lives rather than allowing themselves the flexibility of a good old shake that might enable them to behave less as foot stamping toddlers screaming 'I told you so' and more like the intelligent individuals that so many clearly are.
i think i'm suggesting that far greater strategic and tactical flexibility would be an excellent development at this point. The bubble needs bursting before it assumes the character of a boil.
The print was the extreme end of the spectrum and as you say there were negatives as well as positives.
I worked for British Rail when we won the closed shop in the 70s. At the time I welcomed it as a sign of the strength of the unions, but later I realised it actually damaged us. For starters it meant we had a layer of members who were opposed to the very idea of a union, then our organisation at the grass roots slowly withered as there was no need for branch officers doing the rounds actively persuading people to join and stay.
If these things go in cycles, and I suspect they do, then maybe in 30 years employers' forums will be reminiscing about the downsides of zero hours contracts.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
<bloody bad gateways...lets try that again...in the right thread this time...>
Even the stories of the print are grossly exaggerated. My partners father was a printer at Wapping, having previously been a mechanic who, therefore, knew how machinery worked. He'd worked on various cars - including the Times editor of the time - and it was that that got him a possibility of a job. But even then, he couldn't just walk in and do it, he had to prove he was actually capable of doing so. At a time of relatively full employment that was frequently how people got jobs, its not really much different to any other word of mouth.
The difference with the closed shop was that once he was in, he was staying in.
Even the stories of the print are grossly exaggerated. My partners father was a printer at Wapping, having previously been a mechanic who, therefore, knew how machinery worked. He'd worked on various cars - including the Times editor of the time - and it was that that got him a possibility of a job. But even then, he couldn't just walk in and do it, he had to prove he was actually capable of doing so. At a time of relatively full employment that was frequently how people got jobs, its not really much different to any other word of mouth.
The difference with the closed shop was that once he was in, he was staying in.
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