Were you recruited to the Left? Have you recruited people to the Left? Is it even possible to be "recruited" to the Left?

[tim]

One of our esteemed Comrades recently lamented on the Clare Fox thread that whilst in Warwick he once helped recruit her to the left. I've assumed all of my adult life that I was "in the Left", but am not aware of having been recruited and I don't really understand how anyone could be.

Obviously, if you can argue convincingly you can persuade someone to change their opinions but that isn't recruitment. You can also "recruit" if you get them to join a particular political group, but getting someone to join the SWP or the Labour Party when it had Momentum doesn't mean that you've turned them from something else into a Leftist.

Am I missing something? Or am I right in believing that it is a stupid concept?

 

[planetgeli]

Recruited kinda implies a party thing. Plenty do this, SWP famous for recruiting middle-class students.

I've always assumed, since childhood, I was 'in the Left'. Poverty, communist sympathetic dad.

It sort of goes back to another thread (for me) about what left media (or something) influenced your politics most. Experience (then Marx) informed mine.

 

[8ball]

One of our esteemed Comrades recently lamented on the Clare Fox thread that whilst in Warwick he once helped recruit her to the left. I've assumed all of my adult life that I was "in the Left", but am not aware of having been recruited and I don't really understand how anyone could be.

Obviously, if you can argue convincingly you can persuade someone to change their opinions but that isn't recruitment. You can also "recruit" if you get them to join a particular political group, but getting someone to join the SWP or the Labour Party when it had Momentum doesn't mean that you've turned them from something else into a Leftist.

Am I missing something? Or am I right in believing that it is a stupid concept?

You mean you never had the knock on the door from the fella in the white hat with the eye patch?

Who let you in here?

 

[Spymaster]

I'm told I was right-wing, but Cyril Smith urged me leftwards

 

[NoXion]

I never had to be recruited in order to be a leftist. From the earliest age it's just made sense to me that basing a socio-economic system on the accumulation of capital is a shit way of doing things.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I didn't consider myself recruited but I've never been a member of any party.

I do think my working class parents were recruited to neoliberal Thatcherism the dark side.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I think I've always been left as that just makes sense.

 

[Humberto]

I was indoctrinated as a child by my da. He had Militant meetings in my house and I did the paper round with him.

 

[Eric Jarvis]

I've been waiting to be recruited by the international left conspiracy all my life and to the woke liberal conspiracy for decades, but all I ever get is invitations to demonstrations and to meetings where people argue with each other. It's all very disappointing.

 

[muscovyduck]

Kind of. I was recruited to a left wing org when I was young enough that it probably resulted in me being "recruited" to the general left wing silo, instead of being recruited into charity work and becoming a careerist centrist type, a religious org with a focus on a set of beliefs (even if practical behaviour and actions of the group might be 'left wing) etc.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

One day when I was about 9 years old, a red and black Rolls Royce pulled up next to me.
The rear passenger window retracted and an elderly man stuck his head out of the window. “Tell me young man, would you like to earn money doing some vandalism?”

To my young ears this sounded like just the ticket.
“You bet mister”
“Good, now take these paints and make some revolutionary slogans on the walls by that lock up over there”

That man was George Soros.

 

[JimW]

Boris Sprinkler I hope he didn't stiff you on the packed lunch.

 

[[62]]

Lefty punk bands and a reaction to the world around me got me started, so I suppose that's a bit like recruitment. My family weren't very political (I always think of them as natural working class Tories who would never vote Tory). I'd still describe my politics as left-wing, but I don't have the answers anymore and I don't get too involved for my own sanity more than anything.

 

[Cloo]

The Tories recruited me to the Left

 

[mojo pixy]

When I was about 14 I read this:



...and it's been downhill ever since.

 

[Serge Forward]

I wasn't recruited, it was a combination of things.

As a schoolkid, the NF was causing grief to people I cared about and this led to a few altercations. I then started work proper at 16 going from job to job in various workshops, factories, warehouses, building sites, kitchens and doing a window cleaning round. That gave me a fair bit of schooling, especially being involved in a successful strike at 17.

My level of knowledge and education was very poor though, so I started reading and went to night school while working in the day. At some point I was introduced to Marx via a sociology text book. So then I checked out groups like SWP, the CP and Militant. I started selling Militant as they were the biggest group where I was living. I fell out with them though after having a little, ahem, altercation with them one night in the pub (hmm... I was always having altercations when i was young).

Around that time (1980/81), I bumped into this guy, Bob, who was handing out leaflets. We became friends and later ended up sharing a house. I got involved in the libertarian communist group that used to meet in our living room and read lots of Bob's books and pamphlets. Most of them I couldn't understand. Hmm... maybe I was recruited by Bob Miller then?

 

[SpookyFrank]

Various trots and solfed type anarcho-trots attempted to recruit me when I was younger but I don't belong to any specific ideology. If I am a leftist or an antifascist it's by instinct, not training.

The people I have learned most from have always been the ones who were more interested in getting shit done than which banner they were doing it under.

 

[krink]

I can only remember two attempts to be recruited politically - one by the BNP in the late 80s and the other was that Fight Racism/imperialism group about 12 years ago. Both were wasting their time. I was very rude to the former but polite to the latter

 

[A380]

Mother’s knee. Being taken into both the Morning Star building and the CP’s King Street offices before I could walk probably helped.

 

[marty21]

Early 90s I went to a film festival , it was a series of Irish Republican films , it was put on my the folk behind Living Marxism

I gave my contact details (ffs, I was just being friendly) and for about 18 months I got regular calls inviting me to various events, always seemed to be a different person calling , I'd make excuses. Eventually they gave up, a bloke rang, and he realised I couldn't be arsed , and said , you don't want us calling do you ? I said no , and he said he'd take me off the list

SWP had a go when I was a union rep , and voted with them at an Exec Committee meeting , they weren't as persistent as the Living Marxism (or whatever they were called then) crew.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I was recruited to the IWCA on here.

 

[A380]

I was recruited to the IWCA on here.

I said Young Man!

 

[brogdale]

I never had to be recruited in order to be a leftist. From the earliest age it's just made sense to me that basing a socio-economic system on the accumulation of capital is a shit way of doing things.

Yep, childhood poverty formed my politics; I didn’t need recruiting

 

[JimW]

I never lived anywhere big enough to have an active political scene, not even a Tory or Trades club. Grandad was a shop steward though Catholic worker rather than militant and parents old-school Labour. Must have picked up the leftier stuff from books. When we moved to one village the local cricket club were straight round though when they heard we were three boys. Nothing for my sister of course in those benighted times.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

i never noticed the advert on the jobs pages of the south london press

 

[The39thStep]

I was aware of the revo left especially IS and the CP as I was active in UCATT. I had been to some public meetings , and enjoyed them but always thought of myself as independent. I was never going to join the CP, although I had met some really helpful and knowledgeable members and ex members , due to me not thinking the Soviet Union was socialist .I was always a bit overawed at being out argued tbh by the CP or the IS/SWP I got arrested on the first day at Grunwicks and was in a cell with a bloke called Brian Higgins who was a SWP rank and file building worker and some others. The IS/SWP waited outside the police station for people to be released, chanted and gave us fags when we got out. I went with some of those who had been arrested with them to the pub. We had a few pints and then I agreed I'd go to their public meeting and joined then. I was a bit sporadic in the early days but really got into doing things locally and learned an awful lot politically.

 

[LDC]

I sometimes long for the days of recruitment by organised groups rather then the individualised supermarket choice of campaigns and issues people pick up and drop as the feeling takes them. It's all lacking some focus, seriousness and discipline if you ask me...

 

[Serge Forward]

I was aware of the revo left especially IS and the CP as I was active in UCATT. I had been to some public meetings , and enjoyed them but always thought of myself as independent. I was never going to join the CP, although I had met some really helpful and knowledgeable members and ex members , due to me not thinking the Soviet Union was socialist .I was always a bit overawed at being out argued tbh by the CP or the IS/SWP I got arrested on the first day at Grunwicks and was in a cell with a bloke called Brian Higgins who was a SWP rank and file building worker and some others. The IS/SWP waited outside the police station for people to be released, chanted and gave us fags when we got out. I went with some of those who had been arrested with them to the pub. We had a few pints and then I agreed I'd go to their public meeting and joined then. I was a bit sporadic in the early days but really got into doing things locally and learned an awful lot politically.

I remember Brian Higgins from the rank and file group. Sadly he died a few years back.

ETA Guardian obituary

 

[A380]

i never noticed the advert on the jobs pages of the south london press

That's because North London is the home of the left innit....

 

[Wilf]

Born in a left wing household, my Mum was briefly a Labour councillor. Joined the Labour Party at 18 and stayed a decade, through the Bennite/democracy battles. Began to see the limits of all that and left and then did very little due to health issues for a decade or more. From there. belatedly sussed out I was an anarchist, though I've only been in local groups on and off since then (plus local anti-cuts stuff, union rep etc.).

Only time anyone has tried to recruit me - I take 'recruited' to mean something you can't just walk in off the street to - was Militant, at the time of the Miner's strike. It was the time of entryism and I knew the local Militant lot from the local Labour Party. They were so keen to get me, not sure why, that they got their regional organiser down to a meeting at someone's house for the purpose. I'd acted with them when it came to various things in the local Labour Party, but knew I would never join a party that denied it's own existence, ran centrally, was boring as fuck - trots basically.

They sold it to me that it was a secret organisation and that they'd have to deny we'd even had this meeting if I mentioned it to anyone outside the room. I was also told I'd be well up in the branch because I'd read stuff (I was doing an MA in politics at the time), even to the point of saying 'you'll be above x and y'. Couldn't have been a worse sales pitch. Hierarchical, conspiratorial and centralised. Yuk