Though Cowards Flinch

Paddles! 20mg Epi! Stat! Get this social movement on its feet!

What follows is a summary of the ten pages of notes I took at Saturday’s BlogNation event, organised by Sunny Hundal under Liberal Conspiracy’s banner. On a personal note, it was great to meet Paul Sagar, Paul Cotterill, Carl Packman, Kate Belgrave, Cath Elliott and Sunny himself, as well as seeing a bunch of other blogoland people I’d met before. Especially gratifying was the piss up afterwards.

There were four main elements to the conference; over the first two, six people spoke from the front of the room about upcoming battles for the Left and how we should address them. After three speakers had their turn, each table discussed the issues, what they thought they could add to what the speakers said and threw out ‘strategic’ ideas.

Part three was much more traditional – there was a full panel of high-profile individuals (which, to the mirth of several of us at the back, was described by Sunny as containing individuals from all across the Left – liberal to socialist), each of whom offered a contribution on Left co-operation, followed by contributions from the floor. For the last part, the conference divided into two – a forum for London bloggers and a forum where anyone could pitch any idea.

Parts one and two – coming battles and how we prepare
Individually, the ‘coming battles’ issues are well known and there’s no point in my only rehashing what the speakers said. Instead I’d like to view what was said – both from the platform and from the floor – through two categories: packaging and practicality. The first was by far the most dominant, which was perhaps expected in a roomful of bloggers and actual or aspiring journalists.

In this regard, some good ideas came out – though not anything that hasn’t come up before. One idea repeated multiple times in multiple contexts was the need for some means whereby to get out anecdotal evidence as well as statistical evidence, something that was also a feature of the stillborn Left New Media project. The immigration debate stressed this; it was noted than when communities were confronted with those who were likely to be deported, or with the realities of Yarls Wood and other camps, opposition developed fast.

What to do with such collated information ranged from the broad and insubstantial (e.g. Anthony Painter’s ‘be positive and passionate about the contribution of immigrants’) to the very specific and activist (e.g. Kate Smurthwaite’s desire that details of sex education in schools should be used to arm a campaign that could provide speakers and organise protests against faith schools and other educational bodies which deviate from basic science).

Only one of these responses moved from ‘packaging’ to ‘practicality’, and the failure to make this transition was a key feature of the contributions of many of those at the conference.

Tim Ireland phrased this problem quite well with his adaptation of the 1-9-90 equation. His argument was that we’re the 1% creating content, that the audience we write for is only another 9%, those who feedback, those who we engage with as activists etc, and that it’s the remaining 90% we need to bring on board – which we can do by appealing to technical wizardry like SEO or more skillful use of comedy and emulation of the soundbyte style of the Right.

Quite clearly these are solution to how the Left ‘message’ is packaged. It doesn’t address the more specifically political questions of whether or not that message is the right one, and what sort of political practice it is that our ideas demand. That the political practice of Right and Left will be different is essentially a Marxist idea predicated upon a class analysis that identifies more fundamental reasons behind the bias of the media than merely the Right being good at PR.

Packaging was also at stake when conferees argued that one of our key strategies should be to change the content of debate. On anthropogenic global warming, for example, it was argued by Leo of Climatesock that we should move the debate from whether or not AGW is for real to “what do we need to do about it” and the policy options. I’m not clear as to whether that means we bloggers should stop engaging with the Climategate controversy.

If so, I think that fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between the junk science that people like Nadine Dorries and fellow Tory nutters spout and the currency it has amongst the certain layer of the public. It is my view that it fulfills a social function which is not adequately addressed simply by putting out the opposite story, and especially not by trying to move on to some later stage of the same question.

In fact I would go so far to say that it’s the attempt to move on like this which produces a dangerous disconnection between government and people (an inevitable disconnection under capitalism).

All of that said, from different parts of the hall as well as from Kate Smurthwaite on the platform, there was a serious attempt to address practical measures and not just the packaging; the need to build definite organisations which could organise communities and workplaces. Sunny suggested that the conference should not address ‘movement’ issues, but should speak as bloggers and journalists about issues specific to us.

My view, though I didn’t make any contribution beyond at my own table, is of course that we don’t have any relevance beyond our our movement. Getting people to agree with us is great – but if the only people we’re appealing to are those who are already listening to us, we’re still hitting the thin end of the 1-9-90 wedge. Moreover, we’re failing to appreciate the dialectical relationship between argumentation and organisation.

A key part of the debate Saturday should have been what form that organisation should take, under which aegis all of us bloggers could stand. That would have exacerbated all the tribal divisions – Labour, Liberals, Socialist – but importantly there was a wide swathe of people as yet uncommitted to a party, community organisers and such. Of course there were also the anti-party crowd, but they’ll never amount to much and can be ignored.

Part three – scope for co-operation on the Left
From the get-go this discussion wasn’t going to be the one people wanted. The key mistake, I suspect, was involving James Graham of the Social Liberal Forum. He was meant to introduce the discussion and instead spent his time sermonising the hall on why we shouldn’t regard the Lib-Dems as liars and traitors to a Left ideal lest we drive them into the arms of the Tory Right.

Claude Carpentieri has already addressed this at Lib-Con and Dave Osler did so from the floor of the conference, rubbishing Graham’s contribution as partisan self-justification which glossed over the fact that a large part of ‘the Left’ don’t believe the Lib-Dems deserve that soubriquet. This received loud applause and cheers from the floor, stretching far beyond the Labour members present.

One of the most egregious comments Graham made was to suggest that while we need to guard against the Tory Right, Labour must rein in its own ‘headbangers’ (and mention was made here of those who ‘sabotaged’ a Lib-Lab deal). Evidently the conference wasn’t willing to stomach denunciation of Neil Kinnock-like proportions when hiding behind the remarks is a political party quite happy to sustain Tory attacks on workers, the disabled, pensioners and the unemployed – basically every disadvantaged group.

Beyond this, quite a proportion of the speakers kept their remarks focused on Westminster and the happenings there – on what one faction should do to woo another faction, on what ‘compromises’ must be made to stop further inroads being made against the issues we consider to be vital. Perhaps this was to be expected when members of the panels are MPs or former MPs (Evan Harris, Michael Meacher) or commentators on parliament (Graham, Alex Smith).

There was also room for comments that could be filed under the “bloody stupid” category – such as Rowenna Davis’ statement that since joining Labour she’d felt more ‘tribal’, more willing to defend policies she didn’t believe in simply because they were being evinced by her own party. While that’s useful for all readers of Ms Davis’ future contributions, her attempt to generalise this is of course nonsense – clearly she’s never met a real Labour Leftie, because as I can attest, smacking about Labour policy takes up a large part of our time.

Another stupid comment came from the floor, that it should be ‘disinterested groups’ who we look to, to campaign against the budget etc as the trades unions look too partisan. It’s in the interest of workers to campaign against cuts, therefore their motives are suspect. That one was beautifully shot down by Justin Baidoo, a community activist from Peckham. Implicit to a lot of this liberal dithering is the Aristotelian golden mean – which is a worthless concept in a society that cannot be anything other than dominated by particular interests. All we need to do is decide which.

Where things did become interesting (briefly, before wandering off again) was in the discussion around what Evan Harris said about Labour party democracy. His statement was clear; if Labour wants to win back the Left, they should give members a say again. I couldn’t agree more – though Harris’ subsequent elevation of the Lib-Dems to status of ‘people’s party’ by virtue of their internal workings is rather a laughing stock bearing in mind what the parliamentary party subsequently decided to do – i.e. go into coalition and toss out half the ‘member agreed’ manifesto.

Alex Smith’s view that we need to ‘build institutions to re-wire the progressive architecture’ drew plenty of attention – particularly his addendum that this means ‘more than just parliament’. Yet it was clear from subsequent remarks that what this means is up for debate – Alex appealed to a MoveOn.org style solution, returned to time and again by his queries, “How did the Americans do this?” and “How did the American Left win?”

The twists and turns of the Obama administration should give us pause for thought – as should Obama’s complete failure to articulate a relationship between politicians and popular movements beyond the wish that they should come when called and otherwise twiddle their thumbs. It’s this very factor which threatens the credibility of the Democrats at this year’s mid-term elections, especially given that the Dems have adopted policies hostile to the very movement which pushed them to a landslide victory in 2008.

It was left to Michael Meacher to say that he had no truck with ‘aspirational views’ as regards the Con-Lib coalition. He rightly said that it was this year’s disastrous budget which was likely to dominate politics for the next 5-10 years. Judging by IDS’ (less blunt) repeat of Tebbit’s “On yer bike” outburst against the unemployed, Meacher’s assessment seems bang on. Meacher said our only response must be to line up with the popular movement that develops to oppose the Tory agenda.

Where Meacher went completely off-beam, I thought, was his remark that, “Vince Cable and all the rest are decent people, but are completely overruled by the Tories”. No doubt Meacher made this comment in response to a clear tension between the Lib-Dem elements to the room (though several Lib-Dems, such as Linda Jack, proclaimed their alienation from their own party) and the rest of the conference – but the reality is that such a view merely obscures the real problem – that policies like supposed equidistance from labour and capital cut the Libs off from the Left.

This is why the Liberals found it so easy to go into coalition with the Conservatives. Lib-Dems who want to quibble with the Left about the ‘good’ the Liberals are doing in office are basically performing the political equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “Lalala, I can’t hear you”. Thus Evan Harris’ comment that the ‘budget is not a Conservative programme” – reassuring ammunition for those of us on the Left who can point to the £11bn cuts and only £2bn in new tax revenues.

As a last note, probably the scariest and most reactionary part of the conference came whenever Alex Smith pontificated for several minutes on the need for a new “national narrative” as a means to restore the pride of being Left-wing. By this he meant a “chronology” about how “we” (presumably the British, though possibly the English) “built the NHS” and “defeated dictators” and that we needed to stress “Labour’s place in that”. All I can say is yikes.

The contributions concluded with Michael Meacher denouncing careerism, and the disengagement from communities, and his call to reinvigorate the Left at a local level. James Graham then summed up with another self-righteous justification; that he remembered similar talk about ‘localism’ in 1997 but that here were are, 13 years later. He said that “so long as most spending is decided in parliament, the daily parliamentary grind must be central to our concerns” – thus completely missing the point of Meacher and others that this means nothing without a popular movement.

Part four – 5 minute pitches
Since I’m not a London blogger and am thus spared having to listen to people angling to endorse Oona King or Ken Livingstone (and I’d prefer Genghis Khan to Oona King), I attended the session which permitted anyone to make a five minute pitch. Paul Cotterill made his expected presentation on the need for a local media effort, in print, that could take information to the masses and be a focal point in resistance efforts – especially important in light of current events.

There was a pitch for a MoveOn.org style organisation, to bring pressure to bear against individual candidates – and again the American example got cited. Amnesty International made a pitch about involving people in corporate responsibility campaigns. Reclaim the Pubs pitched something that sounded like speed-dating for politics; meet ups in pubs, open to all, designed to encourage political engagement, advertised to anyone who wants to come.

People around the Labour Values website announced that they’d be holding meetings of those outside Labour, to try and garner ideas from that angle, and that they would be establishing a blog with case-studies backing it up. David Babbs outlined the reach of the organisation 38 degrees and pressed everyone to tell his group what they should campaign on. One P. Casey argued for a British version of American groups like Factcheck.org.

A particularly interesting pitch was by the chap behind Political Scrapbook, in response to recent cases of left bloggers facing nuisance lawsuits, for a collective fund to fight such cases. This proposal was the ‘ultimate development’ of co-ops which could start small, by inviting bloggers to bunch together to purchase high quality hosting, and later premises in London with video editing facilities and access to subscription-based databases – as a lot of the mainstream media is about to become, online.

If anyone is interested in any of those, they should contact the relevant organisation or website. More can be read about the event at Liberal Conspiracy and on the pages linked to.

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Overall, I was happy to attend the conference. Even where someone disagrees with what is being said, it’s important to meet people outside of the controlled environment of the internet, where people can’t pre-vet what they say. Our little group of activists is only ever relevant based on the roots we put down in social movements – and what roots I have exist offline. But what to do with those roots – what tactics we use – is debated everywhere, online and off and it’s always good to get a fresh perspective. I look forward to Blog Nation 2011.

Both Ed and David Miliband have begun their rhetorical repositioning for the leadership campaign. The by-line of the Guardian article on Brother David reads, “Former foreign secretary woos the party’s left…” but the reality is probably more accurately exposed by Paul Waugh’s summary over at the Evening Standard. David Miliband has set himself up as the ‘clean hands’ candidate – nodding to the past, nodding to the thousands of activists who had to watch dumbfounded as Labour waddled from mistake to disaster and so on.

Meanwhile, brother Ed has turned to rather naive-sounding guff about New Labour not having a sense of mission, but falling into the mindset of ‘technocratic caretakers’. His pitch is that Labour needs to hook up once more with the core vote, but that New Labour ‘asked the hard questions’ – that something can be saved. Some people seem to think that Brother Ed is appealing to the working class, and he picks out ‘real world’ examples, saying that we should prefer the realities visited upon people instead of abstract economics.

The harsh reality, of course, is both were cabinet ministers (one under Blair and both under Brown). They aren’t reformers, and a latter-day conversion towards Labour members having a greater say is opportunistic in the extreme. When we see concrete proposals on this ‘having a say’ bit, I’ll be sure to return to it, but the ‘feel’ of their speech is that there may be institutional adjustments and gasping policy announcements and lots of talk about ‘renewal’ but that very little will change. This is virtually inevitable if Brothers Ed and David don’t move beyond Blair – and I don’t think they will or can even imagine how to.

Just as interesting as those who have thrown their hat into the ring is who has not.

Jon Cruddas has ruled himself out of the leadership race, which probably removes the only chance the soft Left ever had at influencing the thing, beyond gushing pronouncements in favour of Ed Miliband, who is viewed as the more Left of the two brothers. Wannabe softie, James Purnell, is pushing the same line as Cruddas at the moment; re-connect with the vote (among C2 voters), move slowly, re-energise the Party. This seems to be standard for the so-called centre Left; thus too pressure group Compass’ post-election statement. Evidently Neal Lawson and the rest of that self-admiring cohort don’t think they’ve done enough damage with their urgings to vote ‘tactically’ for the Lib-Dems, to keep out the Tories.

All of this talk about renewal and reconnecting etc, from the centre-Left, is meant to fill the bloody great hole where actually doing something fits in. Around the world, indefinite strikes have been pronounced – here at home, workers (often against the wishes of their trades unions) are gearing up to fight the incoming cuts, whether from private business or the public sector…and meanwhile the lions of centre-left socialism are doing little but mewl in the press. Which is exactly what I and others expect, so that at least is gratifying.

A centre-Left candidate may yet emerge, of course. In the meantime, those who have been casting rather silly aspersions at John McDonnell’s potential candidacy find themselves in the unenviable position of wanting ‘a clean break from the policies and practices of the New Labour era’ while opposing the only leadership candidate likely to achieve it. Former MP Bob Clay’s article on the subject departs from reality entirely, with a mention of Michael Meacher as a more likely candidate (Meacher got three endorsements and crumbled at the 2007 debate).

McDonnell ran in 2007 and though he failed to get enough endorsements, his campaign was like a fresh wind through the often sterile internal debates of the Labour Party. Even a Cruddas candidacy, though more likely to gain enough nominations, would not necessarily provoke this – Cruddas is, after all, basically a Blairite, and support for him would still place the  soft Left in contradiction to themselves – wanting a change from New Labour, a return to an older form of social democracy, while supporting a candidate who wants nothing of the sort. We’re spared making this argument because Cruddas isn’t running. His own reasoning (if such banalities deserve the title) can be read here.

This makes the attacks against John McDonnell seem all the more surreal. Without an alternative candidate of even basic Left credentials, McDonnell is the natural choice for any socialist remaining in Labour. What all the arguments against McDonnell clearly miss, of course, is the chance that a McDonnell candidacy gives the LRC – a group based around members, union branches and CLPs – to get a foothold in Labour around the country, to kick off real debate and to set up mini-groups of supporters who can deepen and broaden LRC support by campaign activities. Only this long game offers a glimmer of hope for the Left; otherwise they should get out of Labour and stay out.

Key among campaign priorities before the election demanded the full attention of every activist was the People’s Charter, which is solid Left stuff that appeals far beyond the narrow confines of the Labour Representation Committee. This is the sort of thing which could get off the ground, certainly in time for conference in the autumn. What plenty of the nay-sayers also neglect to note is that there are several McDonnell supporters running as the Left candidates for leadership of different unions. Paul Holmes, interviewed here, is a key one, over at UNISON.

This is a chance to energise and mobilise the whole Left – both its union and party elements. Meanwhile those people saying that John McDonnell is hostile to or likely to alienate the unions because of his opposition to union bureaucratisation need to catch themselves on. McDonnell is the only candidate who, as leader, would have any intention of mobilising parliamentary and extra-parliamentary elements of the movement to slam dunk the Trade Union Freedom Bill.

Whatever platitudes we get from the soft-Left, that fear of extra-parliamentary action will always keep them bottled up – that is why we need a candidate like McDonnell. The other regular rebels – like Jeremy Corbyn – will likely fall into line behind McDonnell, especially with the unanimous backing from the LRC’s National Committee put firmly on record, in the aftermath of Saturday’s conference, sponsored by the LRC, whatever remains of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and various unions.

If McDonnell doesn’t win, then Labourites face years of a Tory government whose best friends are the Labour leadership, as under Thatcher and Kinnock, when everything possible was done by the Labour heirarchy to smother mass activism and militancy, in fear that it could damage the credentials of the Party to lead ‘the nation’. Then, I guarantee you, that space outside of Labour for a Left party, which people are saying has closed or is closing, will be blasted wide open in no time at all. Tomorrow’s article concerns just that.

Jon Lansman contacted me about a week before Election Day, to ask whether or not I’d be interested in getting involved with a new website, Left Futures. This website has now gone live, and Jon has asked if I’d express the thoughts I shared with him in our email correspondence, where I cast doubt on the idea of a new ‘internet hub’ for ‘those who have no sustainable political vehicle for their aspirations’, but nevertheless agreed to be involved.

Last year, TCF was part of an effort – led by John McDonnell and other LRC figures – to try and make the web work for us. The work both Paul and I have done, as regards issues like “Tory” co-ops, or Tory plans for local government in the aftermath of an election victory, have been the sort of thing that initial effort was meant to bring together on the web. This is the space into which Left Foot Forward (and to some extent, Next Left and LibCon) stepped, as we moved too slowly.

Thus, I’m not certain what another aggregating website can achieve in this regard. Labourhome and Labourlist have brought out a great deal of comment – but to the best of my knowledge have had absolutely zero impact when it comes to re-energising the grassroots of the Party in a left direction, and plenty of those on such sites are left wing. LibCon, further left and bigger than either, despite key interventions on things like abortion rights, has been unable to do much except speak at the odd conference.

These are environments completely removed from those of the average person, the average voter. Basically a lot of this is political activists talking to an audience of political anoraks, most of whom have long since made up their mind where they stand. It’s still useful, for Labour Party members, as it can educate them against the gushing well of platitudes the leadership uses to cover itself, but the actual renewal of the Party – which is far from begun, never mind accomplished – is something that must take place offline.

It can still be reported on, and can still use the web for discussions of direction etc – but someone needs to pick out the course of that renewal first, before seeking out the accoutrements like a website, and then get on with it. If it begins to get traction, its members will quickly set up their own websites and these can then be brought together, if there is a demand for that. That’s down to you and the other members of the LRC National Committee, and to the institutional support that can be provided by MPs like Michael Meacher and John McDonnell, who are prepared to use their full-time staff as lieutenants in such a movement.

Perhaps my problem is in failing, as Paul and I have been accused of, to correctly identify the methods of Web 2.0. The point, on such a reading, is merely to provide the form, while users provide endless amounts of content. This has been the achievement of websites like Comment is Free, LabourList and, much more selectively, Liberal Conspiracy and Left Foot Forward. And these sites are phenomenally successful, from the point of view of gaining readers.

If that is the only goal of the blogosphere, then it seems relatively easy to generate the sort of community which will sustain high viewing figures. It’s merely a question of diversifying in content and contributors. From the point of view of ‘the Left’, however, actually having an effect seems qualitatively different. Blogs can command the same sort of (relatively) passive outrage as the mainstream media, but is that all that can be done?

In short, I think so. Blogs and communities of blogs are sustained ultimately by self-referentiality, of developing one’s own opinions elsewhere and enjoying batting them around with others of similar and different mindsets. Bloggers end up having long running conversations with one another, as can be seen from any of the comments threads on TCF where LibCon editor Sunny Hundal intervenes (see also: Paul Kingsnorth, Susan Press, Paul Cotterill, Tom Miller etc). Names become well known because of these arguments. All you really need to be able to do is string a coherent sentence together.

When it comes to actually wielding power however, a necessary prerequisite of Left regroupment, then I suspect blogs come up somewhat short. Of necessity, power exists in the offline world, and must be wielded there. The key tactical question is, where does this power reside? Thirty years ago, most people in our position would have said it exists at CLP meetings (especially selection meetings) or in their union branches. What about now?

There’s a plethora of think-tanks, pressure groups and professional politicos (almost all based in London) telling us about the myriad ways we can ‘get involved’. Who hasn’t had emails pestering them from 38 Degrees, Compass, Pam Giddy of Power 2010 and so on? But the recipients of such emails are the political activists and anoraks like yours truly, or the politically literate who enjoy the spectacle, like a number of our thread-inhabitants.

When all the chaff is blown away, of course, precious little of this involvement remains. As recently witnessed with the Lib-Dem move into a Tory-led coalition, despite all the protests that a hung parliament would deliver electoral reform and that voting Lib-Dem would help, under the current system, if you don’t directly wield power, then expect to be left out in the cold. This disfranchisement may result on Lib-Dem members moving back to Labour – but likely they will find a similar disjoint between their formal rights as voting members and the reality once someone is in power.

These leaves us back with CLPs and union branches – the direct, organisational elements where we can exert pressure on our not-entirely-self-contained-however-much-it-gives-that-impression political class. As I’m not a Labour Party member – and for good reason as I see it – my view of CLPs is not unclouded by the belief that Labour’s machinery is indefatigably and (shy of some unforeseen event) forever set against the Left, and that the Right-ward direction of this machinery makes Labour’s connection to the working class tenuous and residual.

For this reason, when the Convention of the Left was set up a few years ago, I had high hopes that it could bring together the best of Labour and the far Left for the purposes of establishing a critical mass that would attract new people into the activist circle(jerk?) and would actually have the clout to mobilise far beyond that small group. Instead, much like the blogosphere, it seemed to be little more than talking shop. Fun, but not the point.

Despite the knocks delivered to unions over the last few years, the unabashedly activist role played by union branches – inside and outside Labour – demonstrates how key engagement with unions still is. When it comes to resisting public sector cuts, political pressure groups won’t be the force mobilising hundreds of thousands of people on strike – it’ll be the PCS, RMT or the other unions, if we can ever convince them to get off their ass, as they have skin in the game.

As the poll tax federations, and various smaller scale campaigns since then, have showed us, there is also always room for community-orientated campaigns, which can be explicitly socialist in tenor, especially bearing in mind the ramifications an unchained capitalism has for the built environment, and thus for the context in which our social and community cohesion must exist.

But what role in any of this for so-called new media? New media may have a role in persuading people, but if it does, then that doesn’t say much for the strength of the Left in the real world. People are not rootless just because they’re online. They exist in definite contexts: they have workplaces and communities. If we haven’t already snaffled their support through such arenas, then we’re focused too much on presentation and not enough on organising.

Consider the recent straw poll done by Alex Smith over at LabourList of Labour leadership candidates. John McDonnell, who wasn’t one of the original options in the poll, came fifth on the basis of write-in votes. That’s encouraging – but it’s not a win, and it’s never going to be a win on the basis of the internet. What it does show, however, is the lamentably backward political consciousness of the Labour Party, where David Miliband is wildly popular.

Miliband, as we know, is a dyed-in-the-wool New Labourite. His leadership, much like the transition between Blair and Brown, represents hardly any change at all – and yet Twitterers already see him as the ‘change’ candidate. This is reminiscent of David Cameron lining himself up as the British Obama. It flies because the Left has not succeeded in challenging the context of people’s lives. Information – getting our knowledge and arguments out there – undeniably has a role to play, but mere information does not positively identify a political alternative.

Hence the limits to Cameron’s attempt at identifying himself as an Obama figure. He came up against the lived experience of Tory policies, still extant amongst the working class of this country. Labour may not be a party for the working class any longer, but policies like the minimum wage and investment in the NHS (ignoring the privatisation for a moment) are a far cry from the state of schools and hospitals by 1997. The problem for the socialist Left is that there is very little ‘lived experience’ of the type of political alternative we advocate, and too many groups – like Compass – aren’t especially bothered by it, sustained as they are by a revolving door of those who believe in the pressure group approach.

Where it does exist, there’s the ever present danger of fatigue setting in, of it being isolated to a particular sector of the workforce, and of it thus falling to contradictory demands by different political factions. Nevertheless, this experience, and its concomitant political education, is what we’ve got to establish. When public servants inevitably come under attack from the Cameron-Clegg love-in, the opening will be there. Setting up a website which will report material from the strike lines is good and useful, but it will not complete the political education of workers.

You need to be on the pickets. You need to be pulling together threads from disparate struggles and tying them.

Even that isn’t going far enough. Sooner or later, purely economic – for the sake of our bread and butter – strikes have to cross the line into politics. If we’re to stop Cameron, Clegg and whoever Labour next elects as leader in those elements of the agenda they share, then the debates at the front line need to expand beyond what we’re paid to encompass who controls the economy, in whose interest it is run, and how we can best intervene to shape it in a manner favourable to the millions who are about to have tax rises, wage freezes and service cuts slapped on them.

These debates happen in the real world, and even there, they don’t stand alone, and aren’t merely academic, as many online debates can often become. They happen in the context of a struggle won here or lost there. A strike successful, or an exhausted workplace not turning out and working on as usual. Sustaining this type of activism is physically exhausting; leafleting, meetings, trips to hotspots, knocking on doors, more meetings, stalls and petition gathering and did I mention the meetings? The potential for none of which exists online.

Online is merely where we can compare notes and strategies, and perhaps butt heads over what our long term goals are. But the ‘we’ in the real world is the whole of the working class, the ‘we’ online is merely a self-selecting group no more representative of those we aim to devolve power to than that bunch of twits sitting in the House of Commons.