Out of the blue, quite literally,came the offer from the Leader of the Council of the Freedom of Northampton.
What was more surprising was that I'm part of a triumvirate along with Keith barwell and Brian Bnley.What an opportunity to observe that staid old Northampton is honouring a onetime teenage Trotskyite,a onetime teenage Maoist and a onetime Co-op Bank clerk!
Such curious juxtapositions come along very rarely and it's time to savour the incongruity of the event.
It is strange to be honoured by a Tory led Council, withy support from the labour party that quite rightly expelled me almost a decade ago.
I was nominated once before by the Labour party,when we were all lovey-dovey kissing comrades.That proposal was scuttled by the high minded Liberal Democrats who had no time for such expensive fripperies-although strangely they were no averse to the far more expensive frippery of the Mayoralty-especially when one of their own was getting the old fox fur round the shoulders.
I've been asked what you get with the 'Freedom' and why.Well simply I guess you get a scroll,maybe a wee box to put it in and a slug of NBC hand trodden red wine from the vineyards of sultry Duston.
I have told Marie that the box may come in handy to store my ashes-when of course I've finally fallen off my perch.
Our friend Bianca suggested that the box would not be big enough for my ashes-the lack of gravitas and respect the young now display.
Otherwise it is purely ceremonial, but for me its not about the ceremony and the stuff that surrounds that,any more than for years Councillors wear robes for the annual council meeting and other civic events.
As a young Councillor I railed at the archaic nature of robes and all that appeared to go with it,until it was gently pointed out to me that it was Labour Councillors almost 100 years ago who argued for robes because they created at least for a short time,the impression of equality in the Council chamber.
In the same way I used to chafe at school uniforms until it was pointed out to me that it was an egalitarian measure designed to ensure that wealthy children couldn't flaunt their wealth in front of poorer kids.
A good principle although in practice the absurd nature of school uniforms back in my day meant expensive and impractical outfits.But that's another story.
What in the end I think is that events like the 'freedom' are harmless sideshows,but serve to remind people that we still have local government.
Every national party goes on about localism as if it is the holy grail of political well-being, yet for decades we have seen the relentless strengthening of power at the centre at the expense of the locality.
I was first elected in 1973,and then we were seeing the start of the rapid decline of locally elected councils.1974 saw the restructuring of local government when places like Northampton lost County Borough status and were subsumed upwards into the County Council.
Now there are clearly siome services that benefit from a larger organisation,like policing,fire,and even education.But other serices sit better together-housing and social services,highway building and maintainance,refuse collection, parks and the like.
The princple should always be the closer the service is to the users who pay for it,the more likely it is to be successful.
But as powers disappeared,so did responsibility.When I first joined NBC we used to decide our rent levels,bus fares,how much we needed to raise for capital projects,and we had to justify what we were doing-not to faceless government apparatchiks in Whitehall,but to our own local electorate.
What I'm arguing for is strangely not far away from my last few posts abour independence in Scotland.
Local government badly needs independence from central government.
It is likely that over the coming weeks I will be questioned about my achievements whistle on council-I'm not sure I can answer that because it was always a team effort and that is really for others to judge.
However I do know my biggest failure, and that was the failure to win the battle of unitary Northampton.Elsewhere I have explained how that failure happened,but just as Scottish Independent will return like the swallows,so the case for a unitary Northampton will soon be back on the agenda.,
Saturday, 18 October 2014
Sunday, 7 September 2014
Sic transit gloria Scotia
I make no apologies for returning to the issue of Scotland,nor quoting from the greatest Scots poet of the last century.Hugh McDiarmid (Dr. Christopher Murray Grieve) came from the borders and was passionate about both communism and Scottish nationalism.In one of his greatest poems he said of himself:
"A'm aye whaur extremes meet."
The events of the last few days might be the start of somewhere where indeed extremes meet!
There is no doubt why the main parties want the status quo to continue, for the Tories it is the old comfort blanket of the union as they know it, and it also allows them to park their noxious nuclear subs far awy from the quiet suburban streets of the deep south.
For the Lib-dems it means they can hang on to a few parliamentary seats, and come next May Lib-dem seats will be as rare as hen's teeth'
The depressing truth of this process is the cowardly nature of the Labour Party.They have had a power base in Scotland for decades and have squandered their advantage.They are desperate to make the No vote happen because in simple terms its 41 Westminster seats that makes the difference between PM Miliband and,well.....!
most Scottish Labour Mp's, well all of them really,are sad disappointments- it must have been really hard to scour all of Scotland and end up with such a band of pathetic mediocrities.
If Douglas Alexander is the answer then it must have been a tragic question!
Of course it could have been so much different.
When the issue of the referendum was first raised then the Labour Party should have put forward different proposals.Instead of 'devo=max' that they are now all pinning their hopes on, the Labour Party should have seen that the old system was broken, that there was no such thing as British politics, but rather London politics and a rather large dispirited hinterland called 'everywhere else'.
The offer should have been made of a Federation of Independent countries, with their own tax system,welfare system, defence structure and domestic policies.
The Federal government would have been the Upper chamber,what we now know as the House of the Undeas(Lords), that would be elected from the constituent countries.
Its function would be to ensure continuity and forward planning for the four countries of the islands.
It would of course mean that each country could if it so wished become a republic, thus allowing the Republic of All of Ireland to be part of the Federation,At the same time if England, or anywhere else wanted to continue with the anacronism that is the House of Saxe-Coberg-Gotha,then they could-although the costs of that 'institution' would be borne by those who want her.
It would seem that there is an objection that the British Isles would lose tgheir place at the 'top' table,but in real terms that place ended when the Empire went -indeed some might argue that went when those pesky colonials won the American War of Independence.
In todays Observer I see that their political editor is arguing for a Federal solution,and it now seems clear that had Labour proposed such a solution it might have found favour amongst many Scots.
Instead of which there is a dogs breakfast called 'Better together' of which the Tories have more or less washed their hands of "nothing to do with us guv",and Labour is left holding the tine, along with the Lib-Dems,Ukip, and the Orange Order-not forgetting of course two of the British Communist Parties!
In the Sunday Times today the figures are startling, the majority of young people,working class votes and a growing number of women and most significantly Labour voters are moving to the Yes column.
It is still too evenly balanced,but the raising of political consciousness and the sense of empowerment will not vanish,even if the No lobby win.That must be a source of real panic for Miliband.
For if those 35% of Labour voters supporting Indepence have made that awesome leap, as sure as hell they will not return to austerity-lite next May.
It seems unlikely that Labour will be able to count on 41 seats north of the border ever again!
McDiarmid was an avowed atheist,but if by some chance he miscalculated on that one-I bet he's having a good laugh tonight!
"A'm aye whaur extremes meet."
The events of the last few days might be the start of somewhere where indeed extremes meet!
There is no doubt why the main parties want the status quo to continue, for the Tories it is the old comfort blanket of the union as they know it, and it also allows them to park their noxious nuclear subs far awy from the quiet suburban streets of the deep south.
For the Lib-dems it means they can hang on to a few parliamentary seats, and come next May Lib-dem seats will be as rare as hen's teeth'
The depressing truth of this process is the cowardly nature of the Labour Party.They have had a power base in Scotland for decades and have squandered their advantage.They are desperate to make the No vote happen because in simple terms its 41 Westminster seats that makes the difference between PM Miliband and,well.....!
most Scottish Labour Mp's, well all of them really,are sad disappointments- it must have been really hard to scour all of Scotland and end up with such a band of pathetic mediocrities.
If Douglas Alexander is the answer then it must have been a tragic question!
Of course it could have been so much different.
When the issue of the referendum was first raised then the Labour Party should have put forward different proposals.Instead of 'devo=max' that they are now all pinning their hopes on, the Labour Party should have seen that the old system was broken, that there was no such thing as British politics, but rather London politics and a rather large dispirited hinterland called 'everywhere else'.
The offer should have been made of a Federation of Independent countries, with their own tax system,welfare system, defence structure and domestic policies.
The Federal government would have been the Upper chamber,what we now know as the House of the Undeas(Lords), that would be elected from the constituent countries.
Its function would be to ensure continuity and forward planning for the four countries of the islands.
It would of course mean that each country could if it so wished become a republic, thus allowing the Republic of All of Ireland to be part of the Federation,At the same time if England, or anywhere else wanted to continue with the anacronism that is the House of Saxe-Coberg-Gotha,then they could-although the costs of that 'institution' would be borne by those who want her.
It would seem that there is an objection that the British Isles would lose tgheir place at the 'top' table,but in real terms that place ended when the Empire went -indeed some might argue that went when those pesky colonials won the American War of Independence.
In todays Observer I see that their political editor is arguing for a Federal solution,and it now seems clear that had Labour proposed such a solution it might have found favour amongst many Scots.
Instead of which there is a dogs breakfast called 'Better together' of which the Tories have more or less washed their hands of "nothing to do with us guv",and Labour is left holding the tine, along with the Lib-Dems,Ukip, and the Orange Order-not forgetting of course two of the British Communist Parties!
In the Sunday Times today the figures are startling, the majority of young people,working class votes and a growing number of women and most significantly Labour voters are moving to the Yes column.
It is still too evenly balanced,but the raising of political consciousness and the sense of empowerment will not vanish,even if the No lobby win.That must be a source of real panic for Miliband.
For if those 35% of Labour voters supporting Indepence have made that awesome leap, as sure as hell they will not return to austerity-lite next May.
It seems unlikely that Labour will be able to count on 41 seats north of the border ever again!
McDiarmid was an avowed atheist,but if by some chance he miscalculated on that one-I bet he's having a good laugh tonight!
Sunday, 31 August 2014
What can you say about Clacton?
The old joke used to run ' Harwich for the continent,Eastbourne for the incontinent ' but what can we now say about Clacton?
Perhaps the new intolerant capital of Britain? or maybe the final resting place of white flight ?Or perhaps the final resting place of British, or more precisely English,political thought.
Douglas Carswell is just one more mediocre Tory backbencher, it is perhaps an ironic joke that so many of his former colleagues have described his an an 'intellectual'.
Well if he's a Tory intellectual this this country surely has need of a zeitgeist.But then the same Tory idolaters raise Boris Johnston too and claim he is some sort of advanced thinker!
On that scale then I suppose Nigel Farage must be counted as the Einstein of the right.
Clacton looks like a dreary place, it can be no coincidence that within the constituency boundaries there is the poorest ward in Britain.Other towns have welcome to our town signs at the entrance, I guess Clacton has 'Abandon hope all you who enter here'.
It must be hard to get enthusiastic for a town that offers an unyielding diet of mediocrity, a place with no vision,no hope,a Dickensian throwback with no Dickens to speak up for the place.
Sad misbegotten places throw up sad misbegotten politicians and in the current climate of despair they gravitate to the party that speaks volumes not on behalf of the sad and desperate but rather howls at them.
And the cry is not one of hope but rather a message that says 'blame the other bloke', give the europeans a good kicking, or better still give 'Johnnie Foreigner' a good seeing off!
The irony of course that whilst immigration is top of the average Clactonians' hate list, there are hardly any migrants in the place.
Hardly surprising really, why would anyone seeking to make a better life for themselves and their family gravitate to a place where even Terry and June left several decades ago.
Ukip's pitch is that it is the anti-politics political party, that it is somehow different from all the rest.It makes a virtue out of the fact that it somehow says things that nobody else dare utter.
That of course is pure horse shit.What Ukip says is what many, if not most hopeless back bench Tories really think and discuss behind cupped hands in the Commons bars.
Sadly we all know in our heart of hearts that there are several Labour MP's who think the same.Whilst they might not have the overt racist overtones of the far right, they share a belief that if only things went back to the time when MP's were allowed to lead unhindered and everyone knew their place...
We live in a country where elitism of the mediocre is the dominant ideology.It is a pattern of thought that wants to retain the status quo as long as possible.Thats why the campaign in Scotland for a No vote should not be called 'Better Together' but rather'Better as it was-for some of us'
There is however one small shining light in the horror that i9s Clacton, a Tory party dominated by the 'Lets get out of the EU' might just alert many more Scots that further Tory domination might mean an exit from Europe regardless of what the people of Scotland might want.
Schisms and tensions are starting to pull the fabric of the free market apart, if you can't have a free market in the movement of labour,how can you have a continuing free market in the movement of capital ?
Perhaps the new intolerant capital of Britain? or maybe the final resting place of white flight ?Or perhaps the final resting place of British, or more precisely English,political thought.
Douglas Carswell is just one more mediocre Tory backbencher, it is perhaps an ironic joke that so many of his former colleagues have described his an an 'intellectual'.
Well if he's a Tory intellectual this this country surely has need of a zeitgeist.But then the same Tory idolaters raise Boris Johnston too and claim he is some sort of advanced thinker!
On that scale then I suppose Nigel Farage must be counted as the Einstein of the right.
Clacton looks like a dreary place, it can be no coincidence that within the constituency boundaries there is the poorest ward in Britain.Other towns have welcome to our town signs at the entrance, I guess Clacton has 'Abandon hope all you who enter here'.
It must be hard to get enthusiastic for a town that offers an unyielding diet of mediocrity, a place with no vision,no hope,a Dickensian throwback with no Dickens to speak up for the place.
Sad misbegotten places throw up sad misbegotten politicians and in the current climate of despair they gravitate to the party that speaks volumes not on behalf of the sad and desperate but rather howls at them.
And the cry is not one of hope but rather a message that says 'blame the other bloke', give the europeans a good kicking, or better still give 'Johnnie Foreigner' a good seeing off!
The irony of course that whilst immigration is top of the average Clactonians' hate list, there are hardly any migrants in the place.
Hardly surprising really, why would anyone seeking to make a better life for themselves and their family gravitate to a place where even Terry and June left several decades ago.
Ukip's pitch is that it is the anti-politics political party, that it is somehow different from all the rest.It makes a virtue out of the fact that it somehow says things that nobody else dare utter.
That of course is pure horse shit.What Ukip says is what many, if not most hopeless back bench Tories really think and discuss behind cupped hands in the Commons bars.
Sadly we all know in our heart of hearts that there are several Labour MP's who think the same.Whilst they might not have the overt racist overtones of the far right, they share a belief that if only things went back to the time when MP's were allowed to lead unhindered and everyone knew their place...
We live in a country where elitism of the mediocre is the dominant ideology.It is a pattern of thought that wants to retain the status quo as long as possible.Thats why the campaign in Scotland for a No vote should not be called 'Better Together' but rather'Better as it was-for some of us'
There is however one small shining light in the horror that i9s Clacton, a Tory party dominated by the 'Lets get out of the EU' might just alert many more Scots that further Tory domination might mean an exit from Europe regardless of what the people of Scotland might want.
Schisms and tensions are starting to pull the fabric of the free market apart, if you can't have a free market in the movement of labour,how can you have a continuing free market in the movement of capital ?
Sunday, 3 August 2014
Soon every Scot must do their duty
In about 45 days Scotland will be able to make the most important decision since they hammered the English aristocracy at Bannockburn.The vote for an independent Scotland is almost too important to leave to political parties that are more interested in partisan positioning than in the future,not just of Scotland but of the whole of the British Isles.
A free and independent Scotland,based on the principles of equality,justice and internationalism could be the blue touchpaper that will light the way to a fully functional federation of free and independent peoples who have no need of a patronising ruling class and an overbearing establishment.
I had better make it clear from the outset that I believe in an Independent Scotland, that can build a successful social democratic country with no need for nuclear weapons,sabre rattling military alliances, indeed no need for a military anyhow.Whilst the country could have a civil emergency force it has no need for a standing army-the days of 'gallant heilan' chiels saili' aff tae fight in some foreign field' is frankly historic mythology.
Andy Stewart may sing wistfully of dead Scottish Soldiers but I for one want to see no more young men leaving to protect BP oilfields anywhere.
However I do have one or two reservations about the SNP's campaign and some of the positions they have taken during the referendum campaign.
largely I think they have been far too timid.When the anglo-Scots aristocracy decided that they wanted sheep occupying their hillsides rather than people they set in motion the tragedy of the clearances.Thousands were dispossed and sent off to populate miserable parts of the empire.
Well Alex I think its time to repay the compliment and if they prefer sheep to people then Scotland should determine that it might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
Why have you agreed to keep as a titular head of state that miserable wee German offspring of the Saxe-Coberg-Gotha dynasty?
I have never thought much of the louche Stuart bunch, but then they are all much of a muchness.Let us be bold and follow the example of one ofv the greatest Scots of the last century.The great John McLean of Glasgow argued for a Scottish Socialist Republic and he argued that Scotland should play no part in the Imperialist WW1.
For that the establishment slung hin in Peterhead prison and the experience killed him
An independent Scottish Republic might encourage the others in these islands to see it possible to get rid of a whole layer of parasites.
Now what is interesting is the panic that the establishment and its media is demonstrating about the possibility of a Yes vote in Scotland.Now its no surprise that the Tories are leading the No charge, for most of my life they were known as the Unionist party=and of course they had and still have huge vested interests up there,after all they own most of the country!
Many of them view Scotland much in the way that TV ad used to run-'Daddy-chops', except in the aristos.view the equation as 'grouse-poor people'
The Lib-Dems of course will do anything that their masters tell them, and they have a few seats on the fringes to try and hold on to.
What depresses me most is the attitude of the Labour Party,once the repository of socialist idealism and vision North of the border is now no more than the parliamentary suppository of the London elite.
There are 41 Labour seats held in Scotland by 42 useless articles.
Even if you are outside the debate, just stop and think, what kind of campaign can it be that is
1.run by Alastair Darling, unique in being the least clever Edinburgh lawyer to ever leave the country and
2.Supported by Danny Alexander,George Galloway,david Bowie and Trinny and Susannah!
Enough said.
The only other mistake that Alex has made is not making provision for exiles to vote, it would have been quite easy, after all those of us born in Scotland have birth certificates issued in Edinburgh!
Simples.
A free and independent Scotland,based on the principles of equality,justice and internationalism could be the blue touchpaper that will light the way to a fully functional federation of free and independent peoples who have no need of a patronising ruling class and an overbearing establishment.
I had better make it clear from the outset that I believe in an Independent Scotland, that can build a successful social democratic country with no need for nuclear weapons,sabre rattling military alliances, indeed no need for a military anyhow.Whilst the country could have a civil emergency force it has no need for a standing army-the days of 'gallant heilan' chiels saili' aff tae fight in some foreign field' is frankly historic mythology.
Andy Stewart may sing wistfully of dead Scottish Soldiers but I for one want to see no more young men leaving to protect BP oilfields anywhere.
However I do have one or two reservations about the SNP's campaign and some of the positions they have taken during the referendum campaign.
largely I think they have been far too timid.When the anglo-Scots aristocracy decided that they wanted sheep occupying their hillsides rather than people they set in motion the tragedy of the clearances.Thousands were dispossed and sent off to populate miserable parts of the empire.
Well Alex I think its time to repay the compliment and if they prefer sheep to people then Scotland should determine that it might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
Why have you agreed to keep as a titular head of state that miserable wee German offspring of the Saxe-Coberg-Gotha dynasty?
I have never thought much of the louche Stuart bunch, but then they are all much of a muchness.Let us be bold and follow the example of one ofv the greatest Scots of the last century.The great John McLean of Glasgow argued for a Scottish Socialist Republic and he argued that Scotland should play no part in the Imperialist WW1.
For that the establishment slung hin in Peterhead prison and the experience killed him
An independent Scottish Republic might encourage the others in these islands to see it possible to get rid of a whole layer of parasites.
Now what is interesting is the panic that the establishment and its media is demonstrating about the possibility of a Yes vote in Scotland.Now its no surprise that the Tories are leading the No charge, for most of my life they were known as the Unionist party=and of course they had and still have huge vested interests up there,after all they own most of the country!
Many of them view Scotland much in the way that TV ad used to run-'Daddy-chops', except in the aristos.view the equation as 'grouse-poor people'
The Lib-Dems of course will do anything that their masters tell them, and they have a few seats on the fringes to try and hold on to.
What depresses me most is the attitude of the Labour Party,once the repository of socialist idealism and vision North of the border is now no more than the parliamentary suppository of the London elite.
There are 41 Labour seats held in Scotland by 42 useless articles.
Even if you are outside the debate, just stop and think, what kind of campaign can it be that is
1.run by Alastair Darling, unique in being the least clever Edinburgh lawyer to ever leave the country and
2.Supported by Danny Alexander,George Galloway,david Bowie and Trinny and Susannah!
Enough said.
The only other mistake that Alex has made is not making provision for exiles to vote, it would have been quite easy, after all those of us born in Scotland have birth certificates issued in Edinburgh!
Simples.
Saturday, 21 June 2014
What on earth was Miliband thinking?
It really does not matter if Ed Miliband has no idea how to eat a bacon sandwich.Nor does it matter if he forgets the nbame of the Labour leader of Swindon.Nor in fact does it matter if he gets someone to tie is laces for him and wipe his little hands.
It does however matter if he is seen in 22 million copies of the Sun holding it up with an inane grin on his face trying to impress English football fans that he knows or cares about the progress of their team.
Had he wanted to show support then an England scarf would have been enough.
But the bloody Sun!
Especially as he knew just what a dreadful scurrilous rag that paper is, and indeed a few months ago he had courageously attacked the power of the gutter tabloids.
He must have known too that the Hillsborough Inquiry was nearing completion and that for many people on Merseyside nerves were raw.
And surely he must have known that The Sun is barely sold on Merseyside and surely someone tokld him that none of the 22 million copies would not be delivered in that area!
So why did he allow himself to be used in such a squalid way/
Because Cameron and Clegg also posed with the dreadful thing?
More reason for a sensible Labour politician to have refused point blank.
Of course Blair would happily have done the stunt, indeed he would willingly have worn a Sun paper hat on his head and pranced with another copy stuck up his arse.
As my Dad used to say:"What do you expect from a pig but a grunt!"
Miliband was sold as something different, as the antidote to all things Blair, we were told that he had a radical left leaning agenda that still had something to do with the party of Labour and the aspirations of working people.
Of course in our heart of hearts we all knew that was pure bollocks, it was simply more spin that was Alastair Campbell lite,that Miliband had been at the core of tghe Blair-Brown 'project' and nothing would change.
But socialists are optimistic souls, and knowing his father and mother and their serious commitment to socialism there was always a slight hope that like Clark Kent he would step into a phonebox and come out as Supersocialist!
We all should have known better, all we have had is a pale imitation, a raft of minimalist policies on obesity and probably traffic cones underpinned with a promise to continue the austerity programmes of the coalition.
Balls and Miliband are still wittering on about reducing the deficit and paying off the national debt!
It's a good thing that the Attlee government didn't want to pay off lend lease in the first three years and off to pay the debts of the east India Company too, otherwise the health service would have resembled Tannochbrae with only the corpse of Dr Cameron to treat the folk who called Janet.
Dr Findlay would have long since decamped to New Zealand!
Now we learn, right after his triumphant appearance as the paper boy for Murdoch, Milibands latest big idea is to cut support to the young unemployed unless they agree to (or more precisely coerced into) taking on training of some sort.
Training to do what?
learn how to work on minimum wages,on zero hour contracts,with no trade union rights and pay greedy landlords extortionate rents to live in grubby HIMO's?
Good and sensible comrades some how think that the Labour party might be better if Alan Johnston was leading it.Somehow I doubt it, he may have been a trade union general secretary and he may have an estuary accent but the sad truth is he too was part of the Blair-Brown 'project' and as Home Secretary he was almost as bad as Blunkett.
Theree still many good people working hard in the Labour Party to win the next election, but as far as I can see its a bit like that TV advert of the little girl pondering her choice between Daddy and chips
Saturday, 7 June 2014
Any lessons from the Newark By election?
Over the next few days the pundits and soothsayers,and many of the naysayers will be casting the chicken bones and interpreting what happened last Thursday.
I'll save you the trouble of masticating the press and give it to you straight.
The Tories held a safe seat, UKIP came a mediocre second, labour came a tragic third in the seat they won in 1997- and the Lib-Dems- well they came a magnificent sixth! A record failure in a long line of magnificent failures since they joined the Tory coalition as bag carriers.
Of course the expectation all round was that UKIP would do well, that they may even have snatched the seat,but of course it would appear that it was all down to superior organisation.Farage claimed that therec were a thousand Tories on the streets on election day, but of course there might have been ten thousand or a million or a zillion!
Poor old Farage could only turn out a few dozen blimps and even he couldn't be arsed to knock a few doors-despite having, according to his candidate 'the wow factor'
The real issue however is the dismal performance of Her majesty's loyal Opposition and the inescapable reality that Her majesty's Loyal Junior Coalition Partner is now an ex-party.
It is no more, it is defunct,it matters not who leads the miserable corpse,Nick Clegg, Vince
Cable or M.Mouse
The Green party put up a creditable performance, and once more humiliated the party of Government, even if only by a few votes.
There is a fairly universal view that the problem is 'connecting with the voters', which is just another way of saying that they are all saying the same thing with different nuanced phrases.
In saying that I include the obnoxious UKIP, because apart from their blood lust to leave Europe, thety carry the exact same baggage as the Tories, and increasingly hard to differentiate from the Lib-Dems and Labour.
In fact the only party competing on the national stage is the Green Party,they have a set of policies that do in fact present a radical alternative,but sadly they carry the baggage of their history and for most of their existance had a rather hazy left perspective and attracted some rather 'eccentric' followers.
That appears to be changing, but progress is slow and there is a rapid drift to right wing authoritarianism that will be difficult to stop, especially when you have a politically illiterate electorate who have lost the power to think creatively.
I watched a video interview of the late Ewan McColl who talked about his father,a foundry worker and his friends meeting in the Salford WM Club on a Friday evening for a pint and a discussuion.A group of working men, with little formal education, sitting in a smoky bar discussing the views of Hegel, the meaning of Darwinism, the nature of Capitalism and even the poetry of Shelley!
Of couse autoi didacts were not uncommon amongst wo9rkers in the early 20c.In mining villages the Miners Welfare always had a library as well as a bar, and Mechanics Institutes were alive to arguement and debate.
It was always said that the most literate of workers were the shoemakers, who whiled away the days of monotonous labour by reading or being read to.No coincidence that the great revolutions in Europe, from Wat Tyler to the French Revolution had large contingents of showemakers!
Henry Ford knew what he was doing when he introduced the production line.
So what do we go now?
Our first task must to be to constantly expose the shallow thinking of the far right populists.UKIP may indeed want out of the EU, but what useful purpose does a UKIP councillor serve on a local authority?
When you set up a rag bag bunch of misfits with a limited grasp of what needs to be done and how to do things, you tend to get the barmpots whose quotes have festooned the national press over the past few weeks.Remember how easy it was to dislodge the BNP councillors by posing them difficult questions-like how did they spell their names-or who wrote Charles Dickens 'Bleak House'?
But more than discrediting the mediocrities the left must be building bases in the communities where they live.They must be identified on a daily basis with the real problems that face people and break away from the arrogance of the elites.The left needs to use clear and unambiguous language.
UKIP and the other parties talk in sugary generalities,the left must avoid being too theoretical, too rhetorical and too censorious.
All my life left parties have behaved like religious sects, close shops that only the select could be part of, as long as they understood 'democratic centralism' and the vision that the General Strike would happen in three days time!
I'm still optimistic that the people can understand the need for dramatic change and will go along with it, in Scotland the Independence movement is wedded to an understanding that freedom comes with an increase in social justice and an ending of the grotesque inequalities that burden society.
And all over Europe left movements are getting organised.I have hopes that here in Britain Left Unity will become the catalyst for change.
I expect Barak Obama will rubbish us too!
I'll save you the trouble of masticating the press and give it to you straight.
The Tories held a safe seat, UKIP came a mediocre second, labour came a tragic third in the seat they won in 1997- and the Lib-Dems- well they came a magnificent sixth! A record failure in a long line of magnificent failures since they joined the Tory coalition as bag carriers.
Of course the expectation all round was that UKIP would do well, that they may even have snatched the seat,but of course it would appear that it was all down to superior organisation.Farage claimed that therec were a thousand Tories on the streets on election day, but of course there might have been ten thousand or a million or a zillion!
Poor old Farage could only turn out a few dozen blimps and even he couldn't be arsed to knock a few doors-despite having, according to his candidate 'the wow factor'
The real issue however is the dismal performance of Her majesty's loyal Opposition and the inescapable reality that Her majesty's Loyal Junior Coalition Partner is now an ex-party.
It is no more, it is defunct,it matters not who leads the miserable corpse,Nick Clegg, Vince
Cable or M.Mouse
The Green party put up a creditable performance, and once more humiliated the party of Government, even if only by a few votes.
There is a fairly universal view that the problem is 'connecting with the voters', which is just another way of saying that they are all saying the same thing with different nuanced phrases.
In saying that I include the obnoxious UKIP, because apart from their blood lust to leave Europe, thety carry the exact same baggage as the Tories, and increasingly hard to differentiate from the Lib-Dems and Labour.
In fact the only party competing on the national stage is the Green Party,they have a set of policies that do in fact present a radical alternative,but sadly they carry the baggage of their history and for most of their existance had a rather hazy left perspective and attracted some rather 'eccentric' followers.
That appears to be changing, but progress is slow and there is a rapid drift to right wing authoritarianism that will be difficult to stop, especially when you have a politically illiterate electorate who have lost the power to think creatively.
I watched a video interview of the late Ewan McColl who talked about his father,a foundry worker and his friends meeting in the Salford WM Club on a Friday evening for a pint and a discussuion.A group of working men, with little formal education, sitting in a smoky bar discussing the views of Hegel, the meaning of Darwinism, the nature of Capitalism and even the poetry of Shelley!
Of couse autoi didacts were not uncommon amongst wo9rkers in the early 20c.In mining villages the Miners Welfare always had a library as well as a bar, and Mechanics Institutes were alive to arguement and debate.
It was always said that the most literate of workers were the shoemakers, who whiled away the days of monotonous labour by reading or being read to.No coincidence that the great revolutions in Europe, from Wat Tyler to the French Revolution had large contingents of showemakers!
Henry Ford knew what he was doing when he introduced the production line.
So what do we go now?
Our first task must to be to constantly expose the shallow thinking of the far right populists.UKIP may indeed want out of the EU, but what useful purpose does a UKIP councillor serve on a local authority?
When you set up a rag bag bunch of misfits with a limited grasp of what needs to be done and how to do things, you tend to get the barmpots whose quotes have festooned the national press over the past few weeks.Remember how easy it was to dislodge the BNP councillors by posing them difficult questions-like how did they spell their names-or who wrote Charles Dickens 'Bleak House'?
But more than discrediting the mediocrities the left must be building bases in the communities where they live.They must be identified on a daily basis with the real problems that face people and break away from the arrogance of the elites.The left needs to use clear and unambiguous language.
UKIP and the other parties talk in sugary generalities,the left must avoid being too theoretical, too rhetorical and too censorious.
All my life left parties have behaved like religious sects, close shops that only the select could be part of, as long as they understood 'democratic centralism' and the vision that the General Strike would happen in three days time!
I'm still optimistic that the people can understand the need for dramatic change and will go along with it, in Scotland the Independence movement is wedded to an understanding that freedom comes with an increase in social justice and an ending of the grotesque inequalities that burden society.
And all over Europe left movements are getting organised.I have hopes that here in Britain Left Unity will become the catalyst for change.
I expect Barak Obama will rubbish us too!
Saturday, 17 May 2014
Is the drift tothe right inevitable?
For those of us on the left times are looking bleak at the moment.The election in India of the avowedly right wing BJP seems one more desperate victory for the forces of reaction.It is a party that grew out of a far right militant bunch that admired Hitler and has a history of violent racist attacks on minority communities.
They are simply not nice people.
Yet part of the problem is that the Congress Party played into their hands, the once leftist party of the struggle for Indian independence has become mired in nepotism and corruption.
And you don't have to look fae elsewhere to see the same traits emerging in political parties of the centre/centre left all over the world.
France, Germany,Italy,Spain,Ireland,Greece most of former Eastern Europe and you see the dame pattern emerging.
Left Parties often with proud radical traditions and history have become corrupt empty vessels that bear little resemblance to the movement that they grew from.
Even the once might ANC in South Africa is now led by people most socialists would cross the street to avoid.
How has it come to this?
Well I suppose the template in many ways is the Labour Party here.A party founded with the name 'labour' in its title.That should be the clue-a party for the people who labour by hand and by brain, a party created by working people's organisations to give them a voice in the democratic process.
A party that was different from all else that went before.
On the spectrum of socialist/social democratic parties in Europe the Labour party was always on the social democratic,gradualist wing,and liked the notion that it represented the respectable working class.From its foundations it preferred the section of the class that wore suits on a Sunday and were ideally Methodists with a trade.
However those pesky unskilled noisy workers kept joining and brought with them uncouth agitational habits like striking and demonstrating and causing class based mayhem.
As well as the rowdy street agitators the Labour Party also attracted a section of the intelligentsia who brought ideas,frequently more in keeping with the traditions of Marx than those of John Wesley.
However from whatever tradition they came they brought an idealism and a vision of the radical possibility of change.Not simply a little bit of liberal tinkering here and there but wholesale social engineering that changed the whole alance of the relationship between capital and labour.
Not for our forefathers the crumbs from the bosses table-they wanted the whole bloody bakery!
What was true in this country was true everywhere, the ideology of socialism was one that required the necessity of change with as little compromise as possible.
Gradually those principles were eroded away,but even as late at the mid 90's there seemed some possibility that change on a massive scale was just possible.Then came Thatcherism,the Chicago School.Monetarism and the collapse of the deformed workers. states throughout Europe.
None of this was really a surprise, as they were all pursuing the goal of the free market.
And to put it simply,once to accept the economics of the free market, then the ideas and the ideology follow s swiftly.
That means the values that sustained the socialist vision fly out of the winbdow, ideology is simply another commodity that you buy and sell, that you pick and choose according to taste.
Perhaps the defining moment in this country was when the cynical popinjay Peter Mandelson declared that he was 'relaxed about the filthy rich'
And so the habit of cutting corners,buying power and influence,and endemic corruption became the leitmotif of much that passes for social democracy today.
And that then lets the far right in, it allows them to posture about 'the political class' and how different they are to 'the mainstream'.Make no mistake the appeal of the sanctimonious pigs bladders like Farage and his ilk are difficult to fight because so many passes have been sold by the 'modernisers'.
Of course all the evidence show that they are just as corrupt and venal, just think of Berlusconi and he stands for all that is evil and unwholesome in the body politic.But then remember that he got his first start in Milan by cosying up to Craxi,the leader of the Socialist Party of Italy.
"You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Well right now the left internatonally needs to see which way the wind is blowing and start thinking about how we reform, and no, we won't take advice from the SWP and neither will we borrow Gordon Brown's fucking moral compass!
They are simply not nice people.
Yet part of the problem is that the Congress Party played into their hands, the once leftist party of the struggle for Indian independence has become mired in nepotism and corruption.
And you don't have to look fae elsewhere to see the same traits emerging in political parties of the centre/centre left all over the world.
France, Germany,Italy,Spain,Ireland,Greece most of former Eastern Europe and you see the dame pattern emerging.
Left Parties often with proud radical traditions and history have become corrupt empty vessels that bear little resemblance to the movement that they grew from.
Even the once might ANC in South Africa is now led by people most socialists would cross the street to avoid.
How has it come to this?
Well I suppose the template in many ways is the Labour Party here.A party founded with the name 'labour' in its title.That should be the clue-a party for the people who labour by hand and by brain, a party created by working people's organisations to give them a voice in the democratic process.
A party that was different from all else that went before.
On the spectrum of socialist/social democratic parties in Europe the Labour party was always on the social democratic,gradualist wing,and liked the notion that it represented the respectable working class.From its foundations it preferred the section of the class that wore suits on a Sunday and were ideally Methodists with a trade.
However those pesky unskilled noisy workers kept joining and brought with them uncouth agitational habits like striking and demonstrating and causing class based mayhem.
As well as the rowdy street agitators the Labour Party also attracted a section of the intelligentsia who brought ideas,frequently more in keeping with the traditions of Marx than those of John Wesley.
However from whatever tradition they came they brought an idealism and a vision of the radical possibility of change.Not simply a little bit of liberal tinkering here and there but wholesale social engineering that changed the whole alance of the relationship between capital and labour.
Not for our forefathers the crumbs from the bosses table-they wanted the whole bloody bakery!
What was true in this country was true everywhere, the ideology of socialism was one that required the necessity of change with as little compromise as possible.
Gradually those principles were eroded away,but even as late at the mid 90's there seemed some possibility that change on a massive scale was just possible.Then came Thatcherism,the Chicago School.Monetarism and the collapse of the deformed workers. states throughout Europe.
None of this was really a surprise, as they were all pursuing the goal of the free market.
And to put it simply,once to accept the economics of the free market, then the ideas and the ideology follow s swiftly.
That means the values that sustained the socialist vision fly out of the winbdow, ideology is simply another commodity that you buy and sell, that you pick and choose according to taste.
Perhaps the defining moment in this country was when the cynical popinjay Peter Mandelson declared that he was 'relaxed about the filthy rich'
And so the habit of cutting corners,buying power and influence,and endemic corruption became the leitmotif of much that passes for social democracy today.
And that then lets the far right in, it allows them to posture about 'the political class' and how different they are to 'the mainstream'.Make no mistake the appeal of the sanctimonious pigs bladders like Farage and his ilk are difficult to fight because so many passes have been sold by the 'modernisers'.
Of course all the evidence show that they are just as corrupt and venal, just think of Berlusconi and he stands for all that is evil and unwholesome in the body politic.But then remember that he got his first start in Milan by cosying up to Craxi,the leader of the Socialist Party of Italy.
"You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Well right now the left internatonally needs to see which way the wind is blowing and start thinking about how we reform, and no, we won't take advice from the SWP and neither will we borrow Gordon Brown's fucking moral compass!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
