Though Cowards Flinch

Following on from Phil’s blogging about blogging post, I wanted to offer a few thoughts of my own as 2010 gets properly underway, heralded as the year the Left blogosphere might make itself felt, the year of a General Election, and the year the Tory blogosphere might actually have to indulge in some navel gazing of its own, once their party gets into power and fails to live up to its billing of all things to all men.

The first thing I’d say is this: novelty is overrated. Currently on the internet there exists, in one form or another, everything that could make blogging relevant for the Left. Sharp looking and easy to navigate web-design, an audience, a connection to the real life of the people of the UK and talented writers and editors. We don’t need to add anything new per se, we simply need to reorganise what there is.

For example, there are various socialist, grassroots email lists plus sites like Indymedia, where information about activist events, high quality photographic content and first hand accounts of important events of concern to the Left can be gathered. This type of information gathering should be expanded, and in that area various attempts have been slow to begin, only partially successful or are too new to comment on.

Liberal Conspiracy, Left Foot Forward and Tory Stories all deserve comment on in this regard. Each have attempted either to break news stories in addition to commentary, or to provide accounts and evidence-based research on Tory policies. These are substantive contributions to the Left blogosphere, providing ammo to the arguments of skilled bloggers who can tie many themes together to make their point.

Indeed it’s probably because of efforts like these, which have been replicated in a less high-profile way on other blogs, that people can talk about a Year of the Left Blogosphere in 2010 without it looking vaguely ridiculous. I don’t think this will happen for quite some time, because the structure of the Left and Right blogospheres are and should be very different. The Right can survive on mainstream narratives. We can’t.

We shortcircuit those narratives by reaching out to the real world, by connecting to and organising activists. This isn’t new either. Some of the sites mentioned already attempt it. Labour Members’ Net attempted it, there was just no critical mass, it was an impenetrable site and the lack of editorial controls drove off many bloggers.

What we lack is continuity, and this is related to scale of the endeavour. When speaking on a national level, a lot of information is out there in the ether, to be gathered in. But on a local level, on the level of one business, or important issues which don’t receive national attention? It may seem contradictory, but the more local one tries to focus, the more resource- and personnel-intensive the endeavour will be.

There are a few bright sparks who’ll attempt it, and self-organisation is coming on leaps and bounds to aid us. Within hours, for example, of the Visteon or Vestas strikes and occupations, the workers had created internet sites and many of us were attempting to direct traffic their way from our own sites. There are ways this could be improved, even when dealing with run of the mill situations that lack the explosive energies of workers on strike.

Most banal of all is a centre of information on what the key Left parties (Labour, Socialist Party, Socialist Workers’ Party) are doing in various cities, towns and rural areas around the country. If someone logs on to a computer, feels strongly about a national issue and wants to do something about it, there should be a self-explanatory system of linkage, guiding people from inchoate anger to activism aimed against Right policies around the country. Framing the debate and setting the narrative are good aims, but activism must take place once we’ve established that narrative, or it will be for nothing.

This needs to be done on a local level, because it’s of no use me knowing what’s going on in Liverpool or Edinburgh and wanting to help out if I can’t afford to travel the distance to be active on the ground. Which I can’t. Most important for me is Canterbury and Kent generally. There are a number of excellent bloggers from this area, including local councillors, but unless you already know about them, one is unlikely to go looking.

Second most banal is a discussion of the methods and means of that activism. Once we’re all fired up, what then? A protest? A stall? Frankly I’ve never been very imaginative in this regard (and always hated doing stalls – much prefer the one to one of the doorstep, or talking to a crowd in a hall) and we can all benefit from examples given from other quarters – examples which will increase in quality and quantity as the internet assists people in linking up.

As this happens, we might begin to reverse the transition from political activism to civic activism* which was aided by the Thatcherite policy of creating civic elites through the funding of third-sector groups, a policy perpetuated to this day. That reversal is utterly vital; politics must equate to political parties, as these represent the only hope of collectively controlling representatives and being fully heard.

None of this escapes the continuing structural weakness of the Left blogosphere instantaneously. The mass media make mega-bucks by being educated gossip mongers, effectively, and this has had a long time to make itself felt in the national political discourse and ways of looking at things. Certain liberal-left elements might succeed in that, but the core proposition of the socialist Left is the recrudescence of working class activism and concomitant ways of challenging the status quo. Gossip mongering about Westminster has no bearing on that.

Yet we can be sure that if through our online efforts we can pull in a new layer of people to real-world activism, in addition to or instead of them populating the comment section of CiF, this will in turn have it’s own effect on the number of people reaching out for Left answers to the problems that confront them in every day life. And good sites (with room to improve) like LEAP or our own dear Though Cowards Flinch will be waiting.

*If you don’t have a feel for what I mean by this, hang around as I think it’s important to hammer one out.

Appendix 1: On organisational democracy and the ‘net.
At Phil’s place, I pointed out that the SWP and SP have been very slow to grasp how the internet can be used. At the risk of sounding like an internet warrior, blogging has been a key way for activists to discuss policies, events and political theory – probably much more intensively than the same activists would engage with their respective national conferences, for one reason or another. Both have been slow to react.

Labour reacted to it by giving everyone a space to vent, if they were members, and then completely ignoring it, in keeping with its bureaucratic nature. The SWP seem to have gone to the other extreme of expelling people for sending emails to each other, discussing policy with a view to securing some vote or other. The Socialist Party, which probably punches above its weight online, has seemed largely indifferent.

Political theory has a place on the internet. Whether or not we actively subscribe to the dead-tree published views of one scholar or another, we all utilise assumptions which are not our own to inform our actions, implicitly or explicitly, and which can and should be challenged. Factionalising online, building up groups of supporters for any given approach, is as valid as having discussions in a branch meeting. The wisdom of the more experienced, more involved comrades, is just as available online as offline.

All such ideas are then tested in the fire of ‘real world’ debate when electing branch delegates to national conference, and by those delegates when voting at that conference. Bearing in mind how rich the tapestry of socialist bloggers has become over the past few years, it would be a shame to relegate all such interactions to the patronising vacuity of Members’ Net.

Appendix 2: Who pays?
Obvious a knotty problem. Some of the measures outlined above require skills that are not in abundance to be provided by all activists, such as coding, and are expensive. I can’t help but feel, however, that the promotion of political activism on behalf of workers should fall on the workers’ movement itself – both the parties and the trades unions. This raises questions about the exclusive relationship of many trades unions with the Labour Party, but it is an emerging political reality that a great deal of pro-union activism exists outside Labour.

If it is ignored, it will wither – and the entire labour movement will be the weaker for it. It can be strengthened through the ability of every man and his dog to check out the political events and approaches of those in his given area and beyond, to make the link between anger and activism. So in the first instance, the trades unions and the political parties. Will Straw, of Left Foot Forward, engaged with the debate at AVPS to point to the involvement of NGOs and think-tanks in his endeavour, though I’d not be comfortable with that myself.

I do not think efforts like the above can be made in isolation, except under the exceptional circumstances of people with a great deal of time (and money) on their hands, or the sheer will to engage – like Kate Belgrave does with her pieces on Skelmersdale and other topics. Bearing in mind that most bloggers are part time, such an endeavour would have to involve many of them from day one – and I suspect that means institutional support from somewhere. I suspect that groups like the LRC, Left-Greens, SP and SWP might have difficulties getting around a table on this one.

More thought necessary.