Comments on: Owen Jones’ Five Point Plan and our Left New Media project

By: Dave Semple

Dave Semple — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:29:51 +0000

“This is the type of politics that should distinguish us as socialists from those organisations for whom a media presence and jumping on policy bandwagons is more important than supporting real struggles.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself John.

By: John McDonnell MP

John McDonnell MP — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:18:56 +0000

Although I had read Owen’s article some time ago I have just picked up on this discussion on your site Dave.

I think Owen’s focus on real world activity is exactly right.

In Hayes if something moves in the community that we haven’t either started or been a part of we get worried. There isn’t a local community organisation, residents and tenants association, or environmental group that hasn’t either been set up by us or which isn’t organised by sympathisers.

The BNP and in the past the NF have always stood against me but we have managed to box them in because we are ahead of them in tackling community issus and concerns. The main problem we encounter on issues like housing shortages which can open up the opportunity for BNP scapegoating campaigns, is that the problem does directly result from New Labour’s appalling housing policy record. Nevertheless having a Labour MP and local community activists addressing the issue and leading the campaigns denies the BNP the space to organise.

We call this community socialism and I always describe myself as a community MP and our local councillors describe themselves as community councillors.

This is fine at the local level but the question is how do you translate this real world campaigning into co-ordinated national activity. This is what the LRC should now discuss at the forthcoming AGM and then get on with an agreed programme of realistic concrete activity and stick to it.

This is the type of politics that should distinguish us as socialists from those organisations for whom a media presence and jumping on policy bandwagons is more important than supporting real struggles.

Dave’s criticisms of the LRC’s lack of progress on developing this type of engagement nationally are dead right. I share alot of responsibility for this.

In mitigation I admit that the threat of the third runway at Heathrow demolishing the homes of anything up to 10,000 of my constituents and as a result the threat to my seat has meant that I have had to naturally focus even more on my constituency. Also there are such a limited number of us fighting on so many fronts in Parliamemt as wave after wave of reactionary policies still gush out of New Labour under Brown from welfare cuts to a new wave of privatisations and attacks on civil liberties.

However, excuses over, we now have 6 months to an election. If the LRC can determine at its AGM a clear focus for its campaigning activities over this period based upon a limited number of specific grassroots campaigns within target constituencies with an element of national co-ordination we might just convince enough people that there are some socialists within the Labout party worth fighting for and make the LRC a credible force for people to associate themselves with again.

So – see you at the LRC AGM.

By: susan press

susan press — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:25:07 +0000

Obviously I would disagree. I’ve seen plenty of “real people” from trade unions, picket lines, and various campaigns in my last 12 months of LRC activity.
My own union the NUJ joined an LRC-led Parliamentary lobby with plenty of “real” journalsts from all over the country who like me are facing unemployment due to the receession and wanted to make their voices heard.
The sick, disabled and low-paid were at another PCS-led lobby which the LRC backed on Welfare Reform Bill in the spring. “REal people” in the Leeds LRC are working on solidarity with the binmen and railway workets, in Cambridge the LRC had a speaker from a local union branch where aerospace workers are facing redundancy. And LRC members there plan to get stuck in with activity. Buikding the LRC in the regions was the reason I got involved in the first place – with a small measure of success.
But yes, there are still plenty in the LRC who belong more to the armchair school of socialism. There are some who can’t even be bothered to turn up and do that. Which is why I hope our new National Committee will have more “real people” than the “do nothings” .

By: Dave Semple

Dave Semple — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:57:02 +0000

Right, on with the show. I agree that building real links with working class communities is vital, Susan, but I haven’t seen that approach from the LRC. And this is what makes me think it has been a dismal failure. This failure to connect is surely what keeps the committee-joining chatterbox do-nothings in place? If real people were circulating through the organisation, the do-nothings would soon find themselves ousted by those who can see what we need to be doing?

By: susan press

susan press — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:16:09 +0000

Basically that “where next for the Left” pieces don’t belong in Briefing. I disagree…….

By: Dave Semple

Dave Semple — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:23:00 +0000

Susan, I’ll come back to the major points in your reply – but I’d really appreciate it if you could outline (and no names need be mentioned) what the theme of criticism was about Owen’s piece?

By: susan press

susan press — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:10:17 +0000

Thanks for asking me to chip in, Dave.
Owen’s piece appeared in Labour Briefing and attracted much criticism from some people at the Editorial Board- moat of whom have been around forever – or at least since the 1980′s when it all went pear-shaped for the Left.
I thought it was a pretty good analysis myself.
I get increasingly exasperated by the in-fighting of the left and the fact so many just want to endlessly theorize and speculate and join committees and do in practise very little when push comes to shove.
I’m not brilliant on theory. I’m a Cambridge Eng Lit graduate but to be honest much of the debates I find on Sovialist Unity- and I must be honest also on this blog – go way above my head.Which is fine because actually I think there is room for that kind of intellectual stuff. It’s vital.
But what is far more important is building links with ordinary working-class communities and being prepared to engage in a real way which, as Owen says, does not always fit nicely with the lines taken by small left groups. Owen is spot on on the BNP.
I found Nick Griffin’s abhorrent rantings on QT very offensive. The reality is we have to tackle their arguments with those you put forward on decent pay, conditions, for all workers.Not demonise groups, as the Labour leadership has done
Re the LRC. I think it’s unfair to say it’s been a dismal failure. But I also think some of the criticisms are fair.
In the past couple of years I’ve worked extremely hard to extend its remit beyond London – with some success.
There are regional groups in Cambridge, Leeds, Newcastle, Greater Manchester , West Yorkshire. But broad swathes of the country where the LRC is an unknown acronym.
I hope to be re-elected as Vice-Chair, not because I’m on a power trip, but because I’m seriously prepared to carry on that work . But we need thousands more and we cannot spout the same old line of “re-claiom the Labour Party” while most workers are disgusted with much the Labour Party has done at the top levels.
On Saturday I’m speaking at the RMT Conference on political representation.
I will be saying that we face the imminent prospect of a Tory Government, that we have to take a reality check, salvage who we can from electoral Armageddon, and get 100 per cent behind workers in struggle whoever is in Government.
As far as Parliament goes, John McDonnell told us yesterday he was up at 5.30am the other morning to join a CWU picket line. Without indulging in a cult of personality, I wonder how many other Mps would do that? Bloody few.
After the next election, we will be lucky to have a dozen left Labour MPs. So the old ways of working will have to change.
I know Owen gets frustrated at the number of armchair socialists who are happy to meet up every month or so for a cosy chinwag – and then do little inbetween. Or just organise for the next demo, where increasingly we see the same old people albeit in steadily dwindling numbers.
The good news is that what I have seen at a local level is younger people prepared to get stuck in and join the LRC to move it forward but, yes, the results are often slow and disappointing.
In some ways, I think we’re just going to have to do what we can, take on board the unsexy issues like pay, housing and trade union rights, and see where we are after the General Election. It IS a shame about the failure of the Left New Media group. But there is no substitute for old-fashioned activism and solidarity on what we used to call “bread and butter” issues.

By: Reform – what it means to me « Though Cowards Flinch

Reform – what it means to me « Though Cowards Flinch — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:28:35 +0000

[...] no quantitative analysis, I would suggest not – and this touches on to questions raised by John Angliss in his comment here, about how much manpower the Left (which, broadly speaking, is the vanguard of reform) has and what [...]

By: Dave Semple

Dave Semple — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:28:48 +0000

I would actually disagree about the end of Stalinism and the USSR. The Rise of Thatcher is only part of the story – it’s the story of the Right. But it is connected to, and not necessarily a direct cause of, perhaps more a mutual symptom with, the fragmentation and collapse of the Left. The key example of which was, of course, the fall of the Soviet Union, however far from the ideal that was. The real triumphalism of Fukuyama and the rest wasn’t following Reagan or the Miners’ Strike: it was the death of really-existing-socialism.

As for a manual of what to do, couldn’t agree more. Any manual must outline how the centre, the full-timers, are going to render support to recruit and build to the rest of us who are amateurs. That is something I don’t think the LRC has come close to grasping yet, either with its regional LRCs or with the Left New Media or with its other ventures.

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:39:05 +0000

I think Owen’s piece is good as far as it goes, and it may certainly be a step forward if some of it can be taken forward as the principles for a minium progamme, initially by the LRC.

I’ll leave the immigration issue for another time as i’n still trying to work this through myself.

The problem with parts of Owens’ recommendations though are that in places they slip into the Compass style of ‘we shoul have such and such a policy e.g. around housing. That presumes a level of power the left does not have.

What we need is a ‘manual’ of what to do on day 1, then day 2. Not to be slavishly followed, of course, but something to get us started on the five points (or however many there end up being). This though needs to be rooted in a more detailed analysis than I’ve seen of how and why the Left got it wrong last time – an by that I mean the 1980s, not the New Left of the 1960s that Owen mentions. for the British left of today the key reference point is not the end of Stalinisms, or the end of the USSR, but the the rise of Thatcherism.

On data collection etc., I agree there is a need for academic engagement to establish some kind of accurate baseline of where we stand, though I’m not convinced this needs to be quantified. I’ll come back to that.

On Dan’s point about community activism, I agree, but it has to be tied into an active process of conscientisation/politicisation. Nor can it be a confortabe subsitute for union engagement/unionisation, which is what it has been for much of the Left (this ties into Owen’s point about the relative importance of minority groupings in a strategic struggle (and back to your earlier typology).