Campaigning vs. ‘getting something done’ in socialist strategy
A comment on Duncan’s piece on goings-on in the BNP got me thinking. It’s all very well, ran this comment, people gearing up to protest the latest march of the EDL or the BNP, but what about actually getting something done? This is much less ‘sexy’ (so runs a certain strand of opinion) and therefore attracts less attention than marching all over the place.
Such opinions are regularly levied at various lefties occupying students union councils up and down the country. They’re too concerned with Palestine, say the centrists and right-wingers, and not concerned enough with what’s going on in our own university, with our own students etc. The truth is a little different, I think. This comes out when lefties propose solidarity demonstrations with unionised university staff, and even the ‘soft’ Left tend to shy away.
Yet the situation is a little more muddled than a hard left/everyone else are cowards dichotomy. It’s true, being out marching against the BNP and the EDL is unlikely to lead to new council housing and services of itself (which, most of the left now agrees – a little belatedly, are what we need). On the other hand, it can lead to networked community groups powerfully in tune with local opinion and able to stand up and fight for the needs of their area.
National and international issues are somewhat different to the able local campaigns that have grown up around fighting the BNP and the EDL, evidence for which comes from several of the last major engagements.
While the Stop the War movement developed strong local contingents, these seemed to fade out when it became apparent that marching wasn’t really doing much and that there wasn’t a plan B.
The movement against the war in Lebanon didn’t develop such roots, nor have more nationally orientated campaigns such as Youth Fight for Jobs.
It is this last, which is backed by several of the more militant unions, that really got me thinking about whether or when we can draw distinctions between ‘campaigning’ and ‘getting something done’. My new union is likely to be PCS, which is a strong supporter of YFJ (as am I, for the record) and which carried the following statement on its website:
“[YFJ] was unanimously backed by PCS delegates at this year’s Annual Conference. Activists from our Young Members Network have already played a significant role in the campaign by marching through London at the time of the G20 Conference, having motions passed at the YFFJ launch meeting and being elected to the steering committee.”
The claim to a significant role in the campaign amounts to being part of a march, passing motions at YFJ conference (though I didn’t attend, let it be said that the majority of things which tend to go through are worthy-can’t-we-all-yawn-and-let-it-pass-without-speaking type motions) and getting a few people elected to the steering committee.
Which is great. Marches are confidence-building, awareness raising endeavours, if costly. Representative institutions are great. Yet…if I’m honest, I suspect that the sort of people who get elected to steering committees here have a bunch of other committees and national committees and executive committees to their name. The same faces, different venues.
On the ground, in PCS, despite the representative institutions of the union acknowledging YFJ and perhaps – perhaps! – a few people in different locations being interested in it, the vast majority of union members don’t know it exists. It hasn’t contributed anything to them, nor (though a laudable goal) to the young unemployed. From the point of view of the union, YFJ hasn’t done much to be proud of.
Which is sad, but not unexpected nor necessarily bad socialist strategy. It’s sad because it’s hard to stress enough to young people the supreme importance of seizing control of unions immediately and making them relevant by using them as forums through which to change the nature of their working environment.
It’s not unexpected because the last period has seen key upheavals across universities in the UK. Labour’s cuts were beginning to take effect over the last year, leading to movement by UCU against the plans laid out for workers. Con-Lib cuts are likely to bite harder, and with nuclei of students and staff willing to resist to the utmost – including occupation – it’s no surprise that an organisation based more on students than young workers will turn in that direction.
It’s not bad strategy because pulling people together in campaigns such as this fosters the engaged attitude on which solidly unionised workplaces rest, and it’s a lesson that the people involved will carry with them.
A jaundiced view of left politics might suggest that interest in the issue of top-up fees and the like is really sustained by the desire of so many campus Lenins to occupy their university and rise to fame, or by the ease with which national demonstrations can be swapped for actually finding a tactic that will stop the introduction of higher top-up fees. It’s one of the ‘sexy’ issues allowing for maximum posing and minimal cerebral engagement.
I disagree. Quite the opposite; a renewed focus on top-up fees springs from the development (in coordination with and by various socialist groups including Socialist Students / YFJ) of a new layer of socialists who have been on the front lines of cuts and pickets, and who see ever more urgently the need to oppose this government in the arena that they have experience building up campaigns and support.
This is an important prelude to getting anything done. If we don’t pursue tactics that can reach people at their current level of political awareness and engage it in battles relevant to them, we’ll never get them to take on the additional fights we think will help. So a lot of people dislike the BNP intensely, based on the political consciousness they do have – but they don’t see how they can fight the root causes of fascist sympathising – so we take the one and build it into the other by succeeding at the campaigns we do fight.
If we can’t do this, then we’ll end up no better than the professional politicos in London, building their email campaigns on well-meaning supporters but ultimately speaking into a vacuum where real mass action is concerned.
That’s why I’m happy to be part of a Left that can appeal to the local – residents against the BNP – and the internationals – young people concerned at global injustices – and which has the wherewithal to bind them together.
Very interesting piece Dave, and it definitely touches on issues I have been mulling over for some time, particularly around the strategy of the YFJ campaign. I would probably agree with your description of YFJ as “It hasn’t contributed anything to them, nor (though a laudable goal) to the young unemployed. From the point of view of the union, YFJ hasn’t done much to be proud of.” But then you go on to argue that this isn’t necessarily a bad strategy.
I really disagree – I think that this is an accurate description, but I do feel it is a bad strategy. Although you argue that “pulling people together in campaigns such as this fosters the engaged attitude”, and I agree with that, surely this should be a sort of ‘side objective’ and not the main objective of the campaign itself? Surely it would be much easier to foster an engaged attitude, and surely people would carry the lessons of the struggles with them more, if the campaigns we do actually do make a positive impact on peoples lives.
Quite how YFJ does move beyond marching and placard waving and start is something I am still mulling over, but might do a blog post in the future on the subject.
“[A] Left that can appeal to the local – residents against the BNP – and the internationals – young people concerned at global injustices – and which has the wherewithal to bind them together.”
I think this point is very important. There is a severe disconnect between both levels in Europe for various reasons.
The so-called labour aristocracy of the early 20th century, the skilled and best educated, and also most politically commited workers, were linked to the rest of the working-class on the shop floor so to speak. But few left-wing intellectuals from the professional middle class are today structurally located near the working-class, neither in the workplace nor in the neighbourhood. This has weakened socialist politics.
Incidentally I came across this quote by Hobsbawm, written in 1971:
“Recent studies of Labour Party local organization suggest that as the party branches have increasingly fallen into the hands of devoted militants from the professional strata, the rank-and-file working-class supporters and militants have drifted into political inactivity. Whether the one phenomena is the cause or consequence of the other, both reinforce one another.”