Here’s one I wrote earlier
There are several blog posts in the offing, and all of them seem in one way or another to feed back to a common theme: the direction of Conservative thought and practice.
They include:
1) An assessment of the Coalition’s plans for referenda on new housing developments in rural areas, which betrays the same remarkable lack of understanding of the dynamics of localities as was displayed just three weeks ago when the Tories came up with the wheeze about time-limited tenancies and people being forced to move house if they get a job.
2) An assessment of Cameron’s support for minimum alcohol pricing and how this reflects not just a lack of understanding about the realities (and prices) of alcohol consumption, but a wider , class-based discrepancy in the way social problems and their solutions are conceptualised, itself rooted in a deeply patrician attitude to the lower classes (cf. rightwing and Tory responses to the immunization deficit caused by the middle classes).
3) Tying these and other threads together, there’s a post to be written as a response to Carl’s interesting, though I think flawed, contention that Conservatism may at a point of ‘epistemic closure’.
Rather, I will argue, the new, self-imposed ’operational codes’ of Conservative policy implementation (especially around localism and the narrative of the overbearing state), combined with the ruling class backgrounds of Conservatism’s main protoganists, are leading it – unwittingly perhaps - towards a strange, twisted re-creation of the High Tory political culture of the earlier part of the 20th century, in which there lay a clear distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ (administrative) politics (see here for the key, but now largely ignored) interpretation by the Tory political scientist Jim Bulpitt).
More generally, and though it might be a little premature to say so in the absence of Dave Semple – wherever he’s got to – both Carl and I get the sense that Though Cowards Flinch is going through a period of transition.
I think both Carl and I agree that a blow-by-blow account of the Coalition’s latest thuggery adds little value to a blogosphere in which many of the better time-resourced blogs get there first anyway, and are only worth covering here if there are themes (as above) which warrant drawing out.
In addition, the time for writing about resistance to the cuts is gone. I was one of the first out of the blocks in setting out what I thought needed doing (and coordinating) at local levels of manageable scale, but anything I said was ignored, largely in favour of more histrionic calls to action/preachings to the converted.
If I am to blog a well-founded ‘I told you so’ post in about 18 months. as the coalition crumbles and the Tories are forced into ignominious early election defeat, my efforts are best directed to the the real world of making it happen, then recording it, rather than whining on here about the way no-one listens to my great wisdom built of experience of actually getting things done.
So, from me anyway, people can expect less posts, but more carefully themed when they come, and perhaps moving back towards TCF’s earlier penchant for political theory. A smaller readership beckons, perhaps, but clarity of thought leading to clarity of action in what remains of my activists days is more important than number of hits.
Meanwhile, I’ll be putting in the hours not just on local resistance, but on – and I still have to pinch my little old self for this – developing the book of the blog and trying to convince someone to publish it.
There’ll be a crowdsourcing post about that soon, when I’ve passed some stuff by my better-known collaborator (and I hope co-author, what with me needing someone clever).
In the meantime, here’s one I wrote earlier for Labour Uncut about the vainglorious and deluded Alan Milburn. It’s not as good as Paul Sagar’s, but then I was only given 300 words to play with (I cheated a bit).
In fact I kind of agree with Hopi that Milburn’s hardly worth the effort, except for noting that John Prescott’s vitriol is in marked contrast to his silence on the even more ‘collaborative’ Frank Field.
But heh, when you’re starting to think about earning a living from this writing mullarkie, it’s important to write any old pap if it makes you the ‘go to’ person for comment about any old pap.
At least I think that’s how journalism works.
hehe readership must suffer for our creativity Paul. The anti-cuts coalition will be nothing without some political theory to back up its ideas; and while many of the other blogs offer ground for letting off steam and mud slinging it is perhaps our duty, over at TCF, to offer something a little more pivotal.
The impact of the cuts will require hard thought at two stages; before and in retrospect, the point in between will require building a rationale for taking it apart at an ideas level so as to properly organise material change.
I’ve a copy of The German Ideology at the ready.
One of the strongest aspects of TCF, for me, has always been the linking of articles with actual action. Like you say, a lot of the left seems stuck on the loop of ‘look what the Tories have done – isn’t it awful’, whereas TCF generally offers quite thoughtful and throught-provoking articles which are more along the lines of ‘look what the Tories have done – how do we respond’. Whilst theoretical aspects of this are often important, sometimes the articles that focus on the nitty-gritty are just as important. But, as some German bloke once said, ‘philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it’.
I think I know that German bloke.
Though he didn’t say we must get rid of the philosophers, he said hat we must theory must meet practice; later expanded by Gramsci in the form of ‘praxis’ – a similar argument exists for online campaigns, of course they are a good thing but they are nothing unless matched by offline action. TCF, for me, buys into this, and we’re in a unique position, collectively, to be both theoretically and actively engaged in politics and political change.
Gary @2: I don’t disagree that we must focus on the nitty gritty. It’s simply that at this stage I feel there’s little of value to be said about how we respond to the right until such a point that we are actually properly in the process of responding, and can then reflect on this process properly (and backed by theory). All else is largely bluster, though of course the odd post ‘blowing off steam’, as Carl says, can be good for us and doesn’t do any harm.
And of course this is a broad generalisation, and the odd post highlighting specific Tory incoherences/hypocrisies in ways not being picked up by other blogs will also no doubt continue.
At the momment, it feels very muh like the Phoney War
If you are doing readers’ requests, would also be good to hear over the next few months about the campaign in Bickerstaffe, how you helped to recruit someone to follow you as the Labour candidate, and what you’re all doing to ensure that the ward stays Labour.