Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Round our way they should have renamed it Left Disunity.
Transform: The latest "new party of the Left.
- Thread starter chilango
- Start date
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Well yeah, that's true in general, but I also think there's quite a specific reason why people who were joining the Greens in early 2015 thinking that it was going to be the best chance of building a mass left party were not still in the Greens by the end of that year.
mojo pixy
○-<{[°_°]}>-○
O, Jeremy Corbyn wasn't it. So inversely Starmer may end up being the best thing that's recently happened to the Greens ... but we'll see.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Then there's no point in comparing the fate of any surge in membership they had then with any surge they might be having now (I have no idea if they are), is there? Clearly the Labour Party is not about to suck away left wing activists.
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Well, I don't think it's about to. But then at the start of 2015 I thought there was no chance of Labour doing the same thing then either.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Whilst I don't think Corbynism had a core ideology , it's width of aspiration attracted both new members, ex-members to rejoin and revived the idea that the Labour Party was a party of change for a wide range of issues. If anything its width was its weakness as in opposition inside the Labour Party it couldn't consolidate around a core set of issues and fragmented. I wouldn't want to put all those that have left Labour due to the rout of Corbynism all in the same bag. Some undoubtedly have voted or gone to the Greens in the same way that some Labour left both in voting and membership went to the Lib Dems years before. I remember in Manchester in the post Blair pre-Corbyn hiatus it wasn't the left who won Council seats against Labour , it was the Lib Dems .
There is also a layer who after the hangover from Corbyn have also been revived, in some cases perhaps radicalised, by the wave of strikes , and this includes strikes against both Labour and Green Councils, and I'm not so sure that they would see the Greens as the next step. Again we will see.
mojo pixy
○-<{[°_°]}>-○
Agreed. But it's not some ideal left-wing party that will hoover the labour leavers up - because there isn't one, or anything close to one, and the FPTP system is biased against new / small parties. I suspect the main beneficiary will ultimately be the Greens, for two main reasons. 1, people will be drawn to a party that isn't starting from zero over a party that is and 2, a lot of people will hold their noses and forsake some degree of hard-left politics in order to support a radical(ish? I am behind on exact GP policy tbh) ecological position. Especially if the Greens do also start making noises re.nationalisations, windfall taxes, increasing inheritance tax etc, all of which would win people over if Labour have as they appear to have given up on all that. Once again all together now, "we'll see!"
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
This is something that I suppose we all struggle with a bit, the timescale demanded by climate change is so rapid and urgent, but if I look at stuff that seems remotely plausible and strategic, it's very hard to see anything much faster than "I can imagine a way that in two years or so, things might be slightly less fucked than they are right now."
As a general principle, leaving aside my objections to electoralism and so on, I think that formal political organisations only make sense when they're an expression of already-existing movements. Corbynism was sort of an exception to that, because in many ways you had the capture of organisational power first and then an attempt to build up a movement around it, but that did also hit some fairly clear limits.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Very hard to keep up with this timescale as I think ska invita is now arguing ( in the Brexit thread) about in the fullness of time and a centre-left reformist government. Is this Labour being pushed by the Greens or some sort of Labour Left revival or the Greens themselves?
magneze
🎧
Read this today and thought it was worth sharing on this thread. Interview with Nye Bevan.
Shows how far Labour today are away from where they were at the founding of the NHS.
We have a politician openly talking of Socialism, Marx and the "forces of production". Would we hear anything like this from a "mainstream" politician today?
tribunemag.co.uk
Shows how far Labour today are away from where they were at the founding of the NHS.
We have a politician openly talking of Socialism, Marx and the "forces of production". Would we hear anything like this from a "mainstream" politician today?
Aneurin Bevan on the Socialist Roots of the NHS
On this day in 1948, the National Health Service was born. To mark the occasion, its founder, Aneurin Bevan, spoke to Tribune about the socialist ambitions of public healthcare.
tribunemag.co.uk
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Read this today and thought it was worth sharing on this thread. Interview with Nye Bevan.
Shows how far Labour today are away from where they were at the founding of the NHS.
We have a politician openly talking of Socialism, Marx and the "forces of production". Would we hear anything like this from a "mainstream" politician today?
Aneurin Bevan on the Socialist Roots of the NHS
On this day in 1948, the National Health Service was born. To mark the occasion, its founder, Aneurin Bevan, spoke to Tribune about the socialist ambitions of public healthcare.
“Each advance has been based upon a philosophical appreciation of the relationship of the working class in the modern world towards modern society”.
“Further, it had to be introduced at a time of sharp inflation. This made the professions concerned even more resistant than they would have been in normal times. Were it not for the powerful authority of the Labour government, and its massive support among the people as a whole, it is fairly certain that professional resistance would have been too difficult to overcome.”
Can’t imagine Rachel Reeves has a similar philosophical appreciation….and as for sharp inflation well, that’s a matter for the market.
That was a great read. Thanks for posting.
mojo pixy
○-<{[°_°]}>-○
"The insistence which socialists lay upon the development of this distributivist service sharply distinguishes the Labour movement from the Tories. The Tories are laying increasing emphasis on what they call ‘property- owning democracy’. They want the consumption of the individual citizen always to be governed by the amount of property he possesses. The more property he has got, the higher his consumption. The extension of the social services ignores that property qualification, and insists on the equality of the individual citizen as such."
I'm fairly sure Labour MPs are actually banned from saying stuff like this nowadays.
I'm fairly sure Labour MPs are actually banned from saying stuff like this nowadays.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Most of them wouldn’t agree with it.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
If the 1945 elections was re-run on PR would the result still have been a Labour majority or is it impossible to say?
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Meanwhile Lawrence Parker has noted the SWP reflecting on their electoral sojourns.
communistpartyofgreatbritainhistory.wordpress.com
“How might a mass socialist party try and resist that pressure from reformism? The short answer is by doing the exact opposite of everything the SWP does.”
The SWP ponders electoral strategy – past and present
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has a Bakunin-type approach to its goals, fundamentally a matter of ever-bigger strikes and demonstrations, capsizing reformist and bourgeois politics, and somehow…
communistpartyofgreatbritainhistory.wordpress.com
“How might a mass socialist party try and resist that pressure from reformism? The short answer is by doing the exact opposite of everything the SWP does.”
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Depends precisely upon which version is used, but it would almost definitely have been Labour with a much reduced majority.
50 & 51 would have been far more interesting tho.
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
that, probably. labour didn't get over 50% of the vote.
although there's an argument that people would be less likely for one of the 'big' parties if there was PR.
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
I dunno, I just don’t think anyone should, although I get the appeal, join a Left party and spend their time activising for post war social democracy, with all its horrors (and there were quite a few), and i don’t think in a globalised world, where Britain is a somewhat smaller player than it was, it’s even on the cards (I may wrong). And as has been said, think of who you’re going to be spending your time with.
There limits and issues when it comes to doing case work or other forms for solidarity for individuals (including, sadly, that some people are piss takers), but there is quite a lot that needs doing atm. Sorry not trying to sound rude but there are better and worse ways to use your time.
As things are as bad as they and as they’re going to get worse I think it’s better to focus on the tangible solidarity and collective action at the ground level, it’s not just needed (and more enjoyable than joking the Party) you get to pick up on ways of resisting and organising that you otherwise might not: eg there’s a lot of people in my area who are being hassled to ‘move on’ from their social/supported housing into either an even smaller flat or somewhere with less support. Not the worst thing hapenning stm of course, but still a bit shit, still driven by the class war of the ruling class, and it’s not being appreciated. We’ve had quite a few successes of getting the respective providers to fuck off (always on a case by case basis, but they do add up, bad you can start to picture how this might be scalable). I’m not trying to peacock, i just have no desire to join any left party at this stage, I wouldn’t have the time to be doing what i think is useful activity such as this modest housing rebellion, and I know full well that politics that would be advocated by such a party would have all those rebels put away somewhere (and please let’s be honest about that)
There limits and issues when it comes to doing case work or other forms for solidarity for individuals (including, sadly, that some people are piss takers), but there is quite a lot that needs doing atm. Sorry not trying to sound rude but there are better and worse ways to use your time.
As things are as bad as they and as they’re going to get worse I think it’s better to focus on the tangible solidarity and collective action at the ground level, it’s not just needed (and more enjoyable than joking the Party) you get to pick up on ways of resisting and organising that you otherwise might not: eg there’s a lot of people in my area who are being hassled to ‘move on’ from their social/supported housing into either an even smaller flat or somewhere with less support. Not the worst thing hapenning stm of course, but still a bit shit, still driven by the class war of the ruling class, and it’s not being appreciated. We’ve had quite a few successes of getting the respective providers to fuck off (always on a case by case basis, but they do add up, bad you can start to picture how this might be scalable). I’m not trying to peacock, i just have no desire to join any left party at this stage, I wouldn’t have the time to be doing what i think is useful activity such as this modest housing rebellion, and I know full well that politics that would be advocated by such a party would have all those rebels put away somewhere (and please let’s be honest about that)
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moochedit
I'm not feeding seagulls
They got 47.7% of the vote in 1945 according to wiki.
1945 United Kingdom general election - Wikipedia
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
Could be the name for a samba band
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
First line seems a bit harsh on poor old Mickey B.Meanwhile Lawrence Parker has noted the SWP reflecting on their electoral sojourns.
The SWP ponders electoral strategy – past and present
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has a Bakunin-type approach to its goals, fundamentally a matter of ever-bigger strikes and demonstrations, capsizing reformist and bourgeois politics, and somehow…
“How might a mass socialist party try and resist that pressure from reformism? The short answer is by doing the exact opposite of everything the SWP does.”
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Ta . I thought I read somewhere that they wouldn’t have had a majority due to the National Liberals or something but tbh could have imagined the whole issue after it got in my head . Agree about the next elections .
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
He’s great read on the history of the CP imo .Meanwhile Lawrence Parker has noted the SWP reflecting on their electoral sojourns.
The SWP ponders electoral strategy – past and present
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has a Bakunin-type approach to its goals, fundamentally a matter of ever-bigger strikes and demonstrations, capsizing reformist and bourgeois politics, and somehow…
“How might a mass socialist party try and resist that pressure from reformism? The short answer is by doing the exact opposite of everything the SWP does.”
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
Great post, this.
That last bit is something people on the left need to give thought to.
And funnily enough this is pretty much something I was saying just now irl:
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Meanwhile Lawrence Parker has noted the SWP reflecting on their electoral sojourns.
The SWP ponders electoral strategy – past and present
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has a Bakunin-type approach to its goals, fundamentally a matter of ever-bigger strikes and demonstrations, capsizing reformist and bourgeois politics, and somehow…
“How might a mass socialist party try and resist that pressure from reformism? The short answer is by doing the exact opposite of everything the SWP does.”
I knew (and liked) 'Lawrence' back in the day. Not sure I'd trust his political judgement though.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
I was going to add something similar to my post although that mistrust would apply to his non CPGB work. I think he is particularly honest with regard to the positives and negatives, twists and turns whilst respecting the fact that they set a benchmark in engagement within the working class on a radical programme which no other organisation has measured up to in the UK.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Are you meaning the time pressures of climate change stuff ska invita? I know hitmouse has mentioned that later. Do want to come back to that as a topic at some point. Someone posted this article elsewhere (can't find where now) Risk and Revolution | Wen Stephenson which points out Malm's 'ecological Leninism' position which tbh I have some sympathy for relating to climate change. (I haven't got to grips with what that might mean practically for political organising though.)
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Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Is there a book/links to this? Particularly interested in the bits on CP engagement within the WC?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Have to read around a bit tbh . I had quite a lot bookmarked several years ago and then the PC packed in and I moved here. His blog is worth reading for bits and bobs on this as are his books on the CP . There is also Phil Piratin's 'This flag stays red ' which describes the campaign against rents and evictions which undermined the BUF. There was some stuff kicking around the post war squatting for homes in the housing crisis. Unfortunately, a lot of stuff on the CPGB isn't written in a bottom up approach but from a top down 'the Party's line was x and then due to Moscow became y'.
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