Tamsin Omond to stand against Green Party’s Bea Campbell Labour’s Glenda Jackson

[kyser_soze]

Nah, she's busy with Hotel Babylon these days.

 

[danny la rouge]

Nah, she's busy with Hotel Babylon these days.

I watched that dolphin thing she did.

 

[kyser_soze]

She did a dolphin thing? Was she in a bikini?

 

[danny la rouge]

She did a dolphin thing? Was she in a bikini?

That was not the reason I watched. But, yes.

 

[Idris2002]

I watched that dolphin thing she did.

In the manner of El Che?

Going back to Bea Campbell, the major blot on her copybook (and there are many) is that she was one of the key players in the spread of the 'satanic ritual abuse' idea in the late '80s, a notion which had some very serious consequences for some (innocent) people.

 

[butchersapron]

'One of' is letting her off the hook a bit IRIC...

 

[kyser_soze]

That was not the reason I watched. But, yes.

Is that a not as in 'I don't watch kids shows because they have Connie Huque in them, it's because I have kids?'

 

[danny la rouge]

Is that a not as in 'I don't watch kids shows because they have Connie Huque in them, it's because I have kids?'

Konnie has a K, but would never join your klub.

 

[kyser_soze]

I dunno, I'm not a dad yet so don't have the excuse to know too much about kiddie telly presenters.

 

[sihhi]

Bea Campbell's attack on the rest of the anti-Labour left:

Unlike any other political party the Communist Party alone has tried to take responsibility for the culture it has created and its consequences. In the 1980s it extended the critique to much of the labour movement Left, because British labourism and communism often share the semaphore of centralism and conquest, they often inhabit the same childless twilight in the union office or the saloon bar where conversation is rhetoric or confrontation, and where community is committee. The Communist Party has not been forgiven for its critique, but that's what enabled many to stay with it, well after the promise that a butterfly might emerge from the chrysalis of self-critical communism was extinguished. That happened in the second half of the 70s, when a failure of nerve stopped the party flying into the future.

It was, nevertheless, sometimes courageous, and that's why many people still
kept their cards. It seemed to be the only part of British marxism that was
holding on by letting go. Communists participation in political construction increasingly happened elsewhere. Sometimes, as with some of communist feminism's creations, or with Marxism Today, creative construction shared the same address, but that's just about all.
They were estranged co-habitees. The Communist Party - as communist
rather that a radical party was both energised and yet exhausted by intelligent despair after 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and again after 1979 and Thatcherism, and certainly after the splits and realignments of the 1980s.
The raison d'etre was Communists, critique of their own orthodoxies, albeit constrained by the fact the party still shared the same international address as communisms' culprits. 1989 ended all that. It was all over. A party cannot live by critique alone, critique isn't a politics. So what can Communists be if the object of the critique self-destructs?
Well, it could stop being a communist party. It could emerge from its becalmed coterie, conserve its assets and in the interim contemplate politics which aren't about powering the narcissistic project of the vanguard party, but are guided by a different discipline of servicing not only struggle against exploitation and oppression but also a candid, companionable and co-operative way of being.
In 1989 I almost gave up my party card, but decided to keep it to take part in the end. What I want is a party - as in cocktail - to say the party's over.

Bea Campbell is a writer and broadcaster.
She is a member of the CP

Do the Green Party trust her?

 

[sihhi]

Bea Campbell attacking anti-poll tax activity as that of "larger louts" not "Ho Chi Minh".

What makes the resistance in England to the poll tax so remarkable is that it is so strongly sourced in popular feeling and yet so utterly unresourced by the straight, aka sensible, Left. At the level of national initiative, the sensible Left has gone Awol, when it would once have hitched its horse to a national network and a national project. It has evacuated the terrain and left it free for Militant, the Socialist Workers Party and the young anarchist Class
War to field a posse of headbangers who raid and wreck the movement-of-sorts, producing polarisation where there are compelling conditions for co-operation. And when the movement takes to the streets, the sectarian samurai poke their spears at police and loot the Body Shop. It's been enough to give rioting a bad name. What we've seen over the poll-tax spring hasn't been serious rioting so much as macho recidivism that has learned nothing and forgotten everything about our repertoire of creative, rather than destructive, direct action. It's like comparing a lager lout to Ho Chi Minh.

 

[articul8]

Interesting that her model of "a repetoire of creative...direct action" is Ho Chi Minh!

 

[Idris2002]

'One of' is letting her off the hook a bit IRIC...

Have you seen her original Marxism Today piece on the SRA concept? Someone on the editorial board had to sign off on that one.

E2A:

http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/90_11_20.pdf

 

[articul8]

Was it definitively disproved? I believe that Dr. Higgs of Cleveland is still working in child protection?

 

[audiotech]

In the 1980s it extended the critique to much of the labour movement Left, because British labourism and communism often share the semaphore of centralism and conquest, they often inhabit the same childless twilight in the union office or the saloon bar where conversation is rhetoric or confrontation, and where community is committee.

Very good and what I liked about Marxism Today. The SWP hacks got really upset when I used to pull out my copy and point to some of the more thought provoking articles within it.

 

[audiotech]

Was it definitively disproved? I believe that Dr. Higgs of Cleveland is still working in child protection?

Strange that you should post that, as I've just given a reply on that subject here. Click on the link there for the answer to your latter point.

 

[sihhi]

Interesting that her model of "a repetoire of creative...direct action" is Ho Chi Minh!

It shows the general lunacy pro-identity politics coupled with eternal respect and honour to those who actually achieved revolutions.

The claim that the CPGB took responsibility for the culture it created is something else.

 

[articul8]

Strange that you should post that, as I've just given a reply on that subject here. Click on the link there for the answer to your latter point.

strange that the wiki doesn't refer to the satanic element which was being alleged.

 

[likesfish]

Miss Omond set up her own group, Climate Rush, after failing to get a full-time job as Plane Stupid's national coordinator.

omg! its tony greensteins secret love child

 

[audiotech]

very derek and clive

Get outta the cab.

 

[belboid]

strange that the wiki doesn't refer to the satanic element which was being alleged.

the supposed Satanic evidence was only a very small part of the main allegations and mistakes from Cleveland. In most of the cases that were misdiagnosed as abuse there were no such claims. The main satanic abuse case was the Orkneys. And no real evidence was ever found to substantiate the claims, there or anywhere else.

 

[Sgt Howie]

I live in H&K (the K rather than the H I might add). Fuck me, what a shower.

 

[weltweit]

I wonder if Tamsin really thinks she can win in that seat?

If not, why bother, and if so, is she deluded?

 

[belboid]

because it might help labour lose

 

[weltweit]

because it might help labour lose

It's a pretty negative reason to go through all that work. I wouldn't bother!

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Fucking hell the only one I could vote for is Jackson. Didn't Bea Campbell right a hilarious defence of accepting an OBE (or something similar) as a triumph of feminism?

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

All out for Jackson! Come on Glenda!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/16/queens-honours-obe

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was chatted up by an intergalactic film star. "No, No, No," I said. "I love women, not men." "Yes, Yes, Yes," he insisted. It was one of those moments – apparently an offer I couldn't refuse.

I did refuse. But when I told my female friends, they all hollered: "You should have done it! Then you could have told us all about him!"

That moment came to mind recently when I was offered an OBE. This was an offer I didn't refuse. Not that refusal wasn't my first reaction. And I didn't accept it because I wanted to view the inside of a palace or see the shoes of the Queen or because I could give my nearest and dearest a day out and then dine out on it.

The OBE was conferred for service to equal opportunities. A noble reason. But it isn't even this. It's a signifier of something else – that a kind of radicalism is recognised as necessary.

My politics comes from Marxism and feminism; it's republican, it's gay and it's green. It isn't about "good works", but its works are all towards the good of society. And that can't be realised without the most radical transformations. It belongs to networks whose mission is to create ways to empower the most marginalised and to call power to account.

For sure, the political establishment has not adopted a benign tolerance for those who seek its undoing. But there is a recognition that the movements to transform relations between genders and generations and to confront the causes of inequality are indispensable.

This is not self-evident – the ethic of the last three decades of parliamentary politics has promoted the opposite, they are a riposte to the new social movements. And for all the hype about Blair's babes somehow signifying a new era of feminism-friendly governance, in its bones New Labour is misogynistic.

The survival of an honours system clothed in royalism and imperialism is a reproach to New Labour's craven sentiment about pomp and power. It's timidity about reforming the constitution and its indulgent accommodation of the monarchy encourages the belief that these institutions are somehow natural, that radical renewal is too painful – that powerful people's feelings would be hurt.

That creates a contradiction in moments like this. Looking at the community of great feminists who have been "gonged", there is a pattern of unyielding creative challenge. They're not ladies of a certain kind who've mellowed into sweet old girls – they're women who just don't give up, who've deployed their politics and their cleverness to change what can be known, what can be done, who we can be.

These gongs announce: their country needs them!

If there's a crisis about getting gonged, it is because the archaism of our constitution hails values that are inimical to the values being celebrated by the gong.

By clinging to symbols and rituals that belong to a cruel imperial order the government compromises the gonged.

You ask yourself the question: how can I accept anything from this horrible imperial regime?

And yet, getting gonged confers recognition of "citizens" contributions' to a good society – in my case equality – and the gesture affirms our necessity; the radicals – not the royalists – are the best of the British.

 

[Sgt Howie]

That makes Yasmin Alhabi-Brown's reasons for accepting (and rejecting) hers look clear-sighted.

 

[CyberRose]

My politics comes from Marxism and feminism; it's republican, it's gay and it's green

Like Mary Cheney after a heavy night on the lash?




Taxi...

 

[The39thStep]

and what of Marxism Today , today?