Labour and anti-Semitism revisited

Since my last post the issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has reached a level of hysteria that clearly is no longer an issue of Oxford University Labour Club and a few slightly unhinged individuals.
It has become a full scale attempt to destabilise the leadership and to force a crisis in the party and to try and topple the first Party Leader elected by a huge landslide on an avowedly socialist platform.
Without going over my last blog,where my views are as clear as I can possibly make them,it is time for socialists to take stock of what is happening and understand that this is no existential crisis of a handful of disgruntled,'grunts' but rather a concerted effort to break the will of the majority of Party members and go back to the past and restore a modified Blair-lite Labour party.
Lets get the anti-Semitism out of the way first.
There have been rumblings going on for weeks, the nonsense,largely unproven about in a university Labour Club became the catalyst of something allegedly  dark and sinister in the undergrowth of the Party.
Then there was the constant sniping by MP's and others of Jeremy sharing platforms with unsavoury elements.Whilst of course all this guilt by association has been going on nobody much noticed some Labour MP's happily sharing platforms with Farage and others of the far right.
Nor was much said about Blair and others sharing friendly little tete-a-tetes  with people like Rupert Murdoch and other enemies of the people (or do we politely forget Rupe's newspaper 'the Sun' and the vile comments about Liverpool and Hillsborough ?)
I may not be a sophisticated worldly wide statesman like Blair,but I'd rather share a platform with an elected leader of Sinn Fein than a seriously corrupt newspaper billionaire or his monstrous lackeys.
But no matter.
Then of course there was the stream of rich men,'donors' to the Labour party who promised never to open their bulging wallets again until Jeremy was gone and a cute pro-business leader was installed.
Well bye-bye Lord Sugar,you won't be missed and can we have our peerage back and give it to someone more deserving,like a junior doctor or a hospital porter.
In case you haven't noticed,Bernie Saunders is doing just fine with contributions from millions of ordinary citizens-no fat cats thee to call the tune.
So the story rolled on, and someone unearthed a facebook post by Naz Shah,the young bradford MP that she posted a couple of years ago,at the height of the last bombing campaign against Gaza by the Israeli government.At the time she was not an MP.
But that was enough, and all hell broke out ,she had to resign an unpaid PPS job with the shadow chancellor and was subsequently suspended from the Party.

In hindsight as a post it was a bit daft, but it was NOT anti-Semitic, it was a reference to the Israeli government and at a stretch Zionism.It was aimed at a political target, not a racial,religious or any other target.
She is the sort of young woman the Labour Party should be rejoicing in having as an MP, a fiesty woman who stood against patriarchy in her Muslim community and is brave and outspoken, in my view a bit like Mairi Black of the SNP-the future of British politics, not a time serving Party hack.

And then we have ken Livingstone.I had hoped that he would use his ability to mount a serious defence of Naz, however as so often happens with people like Ken, the ego got in the way.Astonishingly  even George Galloway sounded more diplomatic and stuck to the point.
But of course ken's shorthand of history,and somewhat confused at that,played into the hands of every Blairite that ever there was.
As an aside,if ken has been suspended for bringing the party into disrepute, how come John Mann, hurling public abuse at a fellow Party member with carefully orchestrated TV crews in tow,has got away with a knuckle slap.
it does appear there are two parties at work at the moment,and the slogan appears to be right-right,left-wrong !

I know many comrades feel that the creation of Israel was a mistake back in 1948.That might well be true,and the then Labour Government didn't exactly cover itself in glory,of course when you had a dubious anti-Semitic Foreign Secretary in Ernie Bevin chaos was bound to be the order of the day.But that was then,
There can only be one solution left and that is the two nation solution.As a Scot I find it hard not to support the right of small nations to self-determination, and it would be hypocritical if I argued that for Scotland and Palestine and not for Israel.The state exists-end of!
And it is wrong for the left to see Zionism as one homogenous block,one ideology,one size fits all solution.Right from the start of the Zionist movement there was a progressive wing as well as a reactionary religious wing.many European socialist and trade unionists who were Jewish believed in a national homeland, and were also happy to work and live with their Arab neighbours,and of course there is a sizeable number of Arabic Jews -after all they are all Semitic people.
So forget the hysteria,ignore the siren voices who are using this narrative to undermine the leadership of the Labour Party.There is far too much feigned outrage and far to little comradeship on display.

just in case you forget what it's all about listen to Ruthie Gorton's song on YouTube'To Understand Oppression is to be a Jew-so Free Palestine Now'.

The Labour Party and anti-semitism

The 'Mail on Sunday' is a newspaper,no,it is not a 'newspaper' it is at best a comic and at worst a salacious journal of misrepresentation and outright abuse.
It has of course a long history of misrepresentation,lies and campaigning for the wrong cause at the wrong time.
Lest we ever forget, Lord Rothermere's paper in the 1930's was first to proclaim 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' and gave away free tickets for Mosley's rallies in London .
It was of course the principal cheerleader for Hitler and appeasement.
Find a reactionary cause,and I can guarantee you'll find 'The Mail' standing four square behind it.
I can only assume that those who work for it are either paid outlandishly large sums or actually share the reactionary tosh that they write.
I find that a pity as they have had,and still do,have some talented journalists,so unless they are out and out xenophobes,mini-Farages,crypto fascists or simply bonkers then the only judgement that can be made is that they write only for the money and therefore are prostituting what talent they have.
So when a Rotheremere hack has a belt at junior doctors for letting down their profession,or teachers for selling out the youngsters they teach or social workers for failing the vulnerable-just remember who is voicing the garbage and why they are doing it!

They have always hated the Labour Party and the Labour movement and progressive thought generally.
The Mail,and indeed papers like it (that is most of the British press) would of course all prefer to exist in a world of Tories and Whigs when there was deference to authority,the crown,the military our betters and even the Church of England !
many of their views are so pre-enlightenment that they would have fitted in well  in Tudor England (of course that tiresome old radical Wm. Shakespeare would have been stuck writing comedies and little else)
But we are stuck where we are,and almost implausibly the Mail and the Mail on Sunday are determined to tell the Labour Party to be responsible and be a grown up opposition and do the right thing (right being the operative word)  and exile all those in the Labour Party that sound like socialists=the only surprise is that there are no longer any 'Get back to Russia' headlines,so they make do with 'Get back to North Korea' and stuff like that.
The real implausibility of all this is the campaign they are running about alleged 'anti-Semitism' in the Labour Party.Despite the fact that Jeremy Corbyn has indicated that there is no place for anti-Semitism or racialism in the Labour Party and never will be, and this has resulted already in suspensions of people accused of writing apparently anti Semitic provocations.
And so it should be and so it always will be.
When I was a fourteen year old boy in London the first movement I joined,even before CND and CARD, was the Yellow Star Movement.It began in the East End of London just as Mosely's Union Movement was starting to stir again(remember who was Oswald's biggest backer!) and what Yellow Star did was pursued a policy of 'No  Platform for Fascists'.This was not done in the quiet surroundings of university common rooms but rather on the streets of Hackney and Islington, in street markets and on street corners.
And Yellow Star didn't go in for polite heckling or holding carefully worded placards.
When we said no platform,.that was quite simply what we did.We cut the wires on their microphones and trashed their platforms.
Crude but effective.many of our supporters were ex-army,many were Communist Party members,many were Jewish lads,many were local trade unionists.
We were ferried round to the fascists meetings in black cabs,driven by sympathetic Jewish cabbies,and all good trade unionists too.

Like so many on the left what weakens our cause is attempts to whip up hate against anyone because of their race,colour,belief or indeed anything that sets one group against another.
I can't deny that within some sections of the'left' there is an element of anti-Semitism.Some of the small Trotskyite sects have we know relied in the past for funding from some dubious Arab governments.They have conflated support for Palestine with a militant anti-Zionism and that has in some cases transmuted into so meting that can be seen as anti-Jewish.
Similarly some of the Arab groups have done the same, and as long as some on the outer fringes of Arab nationalism believe that the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' was a real document,then there will always be battles to be fought ideologically.
Yet as I like to quote a song by Ruthie Gorton I heard over 40 years ago:
"To understand oppression is to be a Jew,
  So free Palestine Now!"
is a good guiding principle.

So if there are a small number of misguided people in the Labour Party who are anti-Semitic, then they must go.However the Labour Party must always be striving for unity amongst all people,and we are where we are,and so sometime there must be a settlement in the Middle East that frees the Palestinian people from the incarceration of refugee camps for generations, and there must in return be a recognition that Israel exists and a two,three ,however many it takes,state solution must be found.
You know the oddest part of the whole story is that Arabs and Jews are both Semitic people and lived together harmoniously for centuries!
And one last point, it's time that some Labour MP's and 'donors' stopped their drip drip campaign against the Labour Party leadership-and stopped taking the Rotheremere shilling!
Now that would be progress.  

The silent man-for six long years.

There is a danger as the Tory party collapses into a heap of nothingness that some are tempted to see Ian Duncan Smith as some sort of martyr,almost heroic in standing up to the Cameron hegemony and destroying the legend that is Osborne's financial probity.
Piffle, utter piffle.
IDS is a totally unreconstructed Thatcherite who has long preached the creed iof austerity and blamed poverty on ,well to put it simply, the poor.
Smith stands for the old Samuel Smiles vision of the poor standing on their own two feet, of putting up with hardship with gritted teeth and determination to drag themselves up by their bootstraps, or die in the process.
I do not believe that he had a Damascusene  conversion after visiting Easterhouse in Glasgow any more than I believe in fairies or indeed that Donald Trump is the answer to any question that mankind faces.
Indeed if Trump is the answer then it's a fucking stupid question!
I digress.
IDS has been pushing his solution to poverty ever since he supped at the feet of his heroine and replaced Tebbitt as the MP for Chingford and Central Nurenberg.

What we are watching is the falling out amongst thieves, it reminds me very much of the 'council meetings' in Ragged Trousered Philanthropists when the elite of Mugsborough got together to divide out the spoils.
The Tory Party are not really a party in any obvious sense, they are a band of opportunist chancers, self interested  gangsters,xenophobes,who combine for only one purpose-to steal the roof while the sun shines!
That's not to say that over the last century or so there haven't been Tories with something that approaches principle, indeed I have met some in local government who have a genuine concern for the people they represent and have a sort of guiding philosophy that has even a little logic behind it.
Few and far between are such Tories, and fewer by the day, and sadly even the logic is a little (no actually quite a lot) flawed.
But there are I'm sure some decent people who really believed that'we're all in this together'.Why there might even be some misguided people in the Labour Party and the Lib-Dems who believed that 'we're all in this together'
IDS has blown that idea right out of the water, along with the mantra of 'austerity now' or what they really meant was 'austerity for you lot-for ever and ever !
We are not all in anything together and never have been, and austerity simply is not the answer to the question- I refer back to my judgement on Trump earlier if you want a reason.

And I say very clearly to my loyal readership in the East Midlands Labour Party, who I understand pore over my blogs to find heresies and examples of deviation and divisiveness:
"Listen to the Leader of the Labour Party"
While you have been wringing your hands and whittling on about how Jeremy is not the leader you wanted, why low and behold, the hostile media have noted at last that austerity is not the answer (because of course IDS,one of the architects of austerity now thinks its gone too far) and indeed as Jeremy has been saying since the day he was first elected -worrying about the national debt and clearing the historic deficit  is not as important as ending poverty and building a fair and just society,based not on fiscal policy but on human values.

And surprise,surprise, it would appear that it's not just young radicals who are listening to him either.I don't for one second believe that the media will stop demonising the Labour Leader, but millions of people,unconcerned about Brexit or 'Stronger together' or whatever the chosen slogan will begin to recognise that the last decade has been one of mounting inequality and stultifying greed.
Time to tear up the slick PR spin sheet and look to something better.
IDS is already part of a history that the people can do without.Time to see that we don't need a handful of Tory MP's shuffling for advancement in Westminster, thee is a movement growing, in thiscountry,over Europe and further afield.
As I approach my seventieth summer I have never been more optimistic.

Time for the people to sing

There appears to be a debate developing about national anthems in this land of ours.It would appear that the main concern is what the people sing at sporting events,and I understand that, but songs mean different things to different people at different times.
A good martial bellow,full of patriotic fervour may be pretty good standing on the terraces, but I think it's time we reflected on songs that reflected what really matters.
So I present my readers some alternatives, and I hope my avid readers up in the East Midlands Labour party bunker will enjoy my choices,why they may even wish to sing along-if that's not too divisive!
All the songs can be found on YouTube.
So firstly i want to get rid of that dreary loathsome peon of praise to Mrs.Windsor,if your a religious royalist,it may well float your boat, but as a republican atheist of long standing-'God save the Queen'is not anywhere in my songbook!
I believe there is a much better national anthem,and I will come to that later,but first my suggestions for the four nations that make up the British Isles.
First, the Principality of Wales.A land with so many fine songs it is a difficult,nay impossible task, 'Cwm Rhondda' would be popular, but in my view it's far too religious- so that's out.'Men of Harlech ' is great to bellow out at the Arms Park, but it a little too jingoistic for me, and always in my mind associated with bloody Michael Caine in 'Zulu'
So may i suggest 'The Bells of Rhymney' a beautiful lament that reminds us of the struggles in the mining industry, and written by an American-the late Pete Seeger.
Ireland. Well of course Ireland already has a fine anthem in 'The Soldiers' Song', but sadly we will have to wait until there is once again a united Ireland,and the gerrymandered sic counties are part of the Republic.
In the meantime however , what about Tommy Makem's ballad 'Four Green Fields' it's certainly better than the sentimentality of 'Danny Boy',which is fine in the boozer or the boxing match, but nowhere else in my mind.
As an alternative there is always Phil Coulter's 'The town I loved so well',especially poignant when sung by the late Luke Kelly,but a song that brings Derry alive.
Scotland, again like both Wales and Ireland a land with masses of rousing songs which are frequently about our past glories especially when we gave the English a good kicking- well not that often since Bannockburn and after the 'Butcher' Cumberland did fearsome damage at Culloden.
I can't advocate too many Jacobite songs for obvious reasons, although 'Parcel of Rogues in a nation' has its charms.
There is of course always the supreme song and poem by Burns 'A man's a man for a' that' that should be the real national song of socialism throughout the Isles, but that may just be too much for others to thole.
So I'll content with either version of 'The Ballad of John McLean' or my favourite 'The March of John McLean'
"The Gorbals are oot the day,ah Glesca belangs tae him'
I'm sure to my enlightened readership, especially to those in Nottingham, you don't need telling who McLean was,and if you need a clue,he wasn't Jim Murphy !
Now on to England, the largest of the four nations, and sadly the one with the fewest alternatives, oh I know that many favour Blakes 'Jerusalem',especially the Rugby fraternity, but it's a bit churchy for me,although a fine song none the less. Others have suggested 'Land of Hope and Glory' which has amazing music.but sadly in my view has a dreadful imperialist tinge.
No there is only one song for England.Edward Carpenter's 'England Arise'
Who can resist a song  with the final verse:
"Forth then ye heroes,patriots and lovers
Comrades of danger,poverty and scorn,
Mighty in faith of Freedom  your great Mother
Giants refreshed in the emerging dawn."
(You may note I've forgotten one word in the stanza, that's your test for the day!)
And so finally to what should replace 'God save....'
I did thing of course that 'The Red Flag' was a good candidate for a socialist song book, but only if sung to the original  to Jim Connell's chosen air 'The White Cockade' rather than the dirge we usually hear,based on the German hymn 'Der Tannenbaum'
So we need something else, and oddly it is to Germany I looked.Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' is a majestic awe inspiring piece,but I think it's already used elsewhere, my final choice is in fact a 15th c folk song,sung by the peasantry who were revolting against some Swabian princes,banned until 1848, banned again by the Nazi's and sung in the concentration camps of the third Reich.
'Die Gedanken Sind Frei'
"I think as I please and this gives me pleasure
My conscience decrees this right I must treasure
My thoughts will not cater to duke or dictator
No man can deny,die gedanken sind frei'
Wouldn't that sound awesome belted out at the end of every Labour Party conference

Nothing changes-everything stays the same

It is all to common for commentators and spin doctors and those clever people who are now called 'moderates' in the Labour Party to run down and write off Marx as a failed prophet from a time when capitalism had a cruel and ruthless tint.
When it was red in tooth and claw,but of course we now have compassionate capitalism and everything is different and we march to a different tune.

We have the usual silver tongued rhetoric from the 'we're all in it together' win g of the cruel party, we have David Cameron telling the world that we all love the welfare state and we all want to help the poor and we all want a fair and just and equal society and blah blah blah.
Not for nothing was Cameron a spin doctor whose role model was the 'straight kinda' guy' who snuggled up to the banks and suckled the great big American corporate tit that was George Bush.

The mask has slipped.For decades the mean spirited free traders came after organised labour.One after another the weakened and divided the trade union movement.Thirty years ago they used their attack dogs in the media to howl abuse at trade unions,we call all remember what they said about the miners and the transport workers and the fire-fighters-all those brutes who held the country to ransom, who wouldn't bury the dead or empty the dustbins or force poor commuters to freeze on draughty stations Remember the feeding frenzy when they declared that they had broken the miners.How the Murdoch press rejoiced as coalfield after coalfield was closed and communities decimated.
Remember the joy in the boardrooms,not to mention the newsrooms and almost certainly the cabinet room.
And as that was happening,most people in work nodded wisely over their cornflakes and agreed with the squalid hacks who wrote the sort of lies about Arthur Scargill that they now write about Jeremy Corbyn.Marx a century before pointed out in much more measured  tones and with sound economic logic the nature of the free market and monopoly capitalism.
When they have weaken,cowed and broken the strongest opponents, they come after the rest,and so today we see swathes of the middle class,once secure in their professionalism facing the same brutality that industrial workers have gone through.
They have systematically weakened teachers,with their regime change,the creation of 'free schhols',the privatisation of education in the academy chains and the endless control freakery within the classroom.
They didn't stop there,endless experts and financial geniuses were rolled out to show how by selling essential services to the private sector everything would be better.Railways,local government,water,power,you name it-they've sold it to their mates,and not only in the city,but in the global marketplace that is known as the free market.
So now they are after the biggest prize.break the 'junior' doctors, then they can go after the nurses and the other hospital workers,and then the big prize-the consultants.

Jeremy Hunt is everything we think he is, and more, He's only the knob on the front of the packet and will be discarded like a used condom when he's done the damage(he's the one in the packet with the small prick in it!)

For capitalism to work it has only one strategy, it will never cut profit because that is its only purpose,so it will cut costs and tell us its in our best interests-we need austerity,we need lower pensions,we need lower pay,we need less services,we need to work harder and above all we need to keep our mouths shut and our heads down.
Having written a few hundred words of unrestrained gloom and misery I see some good signs.I see a trade union movement that is starting to see the danger,a bit late but better than never.If the BMA can see the writing on the wall, then maybe others will too.It's time for union members to recognise that nothing was ever won without a fight-so goodbye to 'Sir'Paul Kenny and his ilk and lets get union leaders elected who will represent their members.
The same is true of the Party of Labour.For years it has been on its knees,fawning before the big banks and the hedge fund owners and the press barons.
There is still a long way to go, as worldwide workers start to remember whose side they're on,the spectre of fascism looms once again.
Trump and all those like him are ugly and dangerous,but they can be defeated.Bernie Saunders may indeed face insurmountable odds this time, but over three million Americans have funded his campaign and that's a lot more than the few hundred billionaires and zillionaires who fund all the others.
The biggest threat we face is racism.Once you can get people divided,on race,religion,whatever,then you can beat them.
There is no refugee crisis,any more than there is a crisis in the NHS or there is a crisis in Eastenders.If you tell people often enough there is a crisis looming they will believe it-tell them every guy with a beard is a possible terrorist then most football teams would be down to three or four players.

The Doctors must win,if they lose,then the free marketeers will have won and the next set of victims will be lined up.

Is that the lawyers and judges I see getting a bit itsy ?

It's a lesson too late for the learning ?

A curious mixture of melancholy and excitement fills my sleeping hours and most of my waking ones too.

last night instead of counting sheep I lay awake thinking of old the comrades who have passed away,when I first became a Labour Councillor way back in 1973 I was trying to count the number who have died-I lost count in the forties!

this was prompted by the sad death of an old comrade Tony Deasy just before Christmas.Tony represented all that was good about the Labour Party and his death also reminded me of the excitement and exhilaration of those times  when to be young and idealistic and effortlessly looking to the future.

it seems to me that spirit of change in how we do politics is alive again in the huge support Jeremy Corbyn has created-a sense that together 'we can make it happen'.So how do we rebuild what was once a large social democratic party with a pronounced list to socialism,before the pragmatists and naysayers once again get their paws on the structure and the power.

The left has a small window-it must use it wisely.

Here comes the nostalgia bit.

I've just finished reading David Aaronvitch's autobiography 'Party Animals' and it staggers me how only a few years apart we have lived parallel lives.His parents knew people my parents knew,we lived in the same part of North London,went to the same 'Daily Worker' bazaars,why we even went to the same school!

Like him I was called a 'red diaper' baby by American Communists who visited our flat.Like him I was wrapped in the cosy certainty that when we talked about 'The Party' we only meant one party- the Communist Party.

There by the way the parallel lives end,he went over to the dark side and writes a column for 'The Times',I only write for the 'Chronicle & Echo-a part of Johnston Group newspapers !

Coming to Northampton was a real culture shock, from the frantic politics of the Stoke Newington Peoples Paper' and the 'Theoretical Practice' study group (don't ask!) the pace was very different and the rhythm,shall we say,somnambulist provincial.

One neighbour in Western View was a remarkable woman, 'Doll' Pickering. Her husband had been a local Labour Councillor and she was a widow, but very active in the community-in her local church at Castle Hill, local charities and Castle Ward Labour Party.

She heard us bitching about the government in our garden, invited us to a ward meeting and the rest is history.

Now Doll was no fierce revolutionary,far from it,she worked hard for Reggie Paget the right wing Labour MP, but she recognised that the Party needed young blood,renewal and above all a shift in enthusiasm.

It was people like Doll that were the glue that held the party together.Rooted in the community,rooted in her neighbourhood and understanding what they were talking about.

Which brings me back to Tony Deasy. He was a tall kindly man who would talk to anyone,and talk and talk....

He lived in Thorplands and for a number of years represented that ward on NBC.He didn't need to run surgeries because everyone knew where he lived,he didn't need to knock on doors to 'listen' to people because he knew them and heard them everyday and he didn't need to organise litter picks to get his photo in the paper-he would argue with the Council officers that they had to do their job properly and not rely on volunteers.

Since the 1970's the party has changed.When we first joined the newly created Northampton South CLP there were dozens of union branches affiliated, there were I think 5 TGWU branches,2 NUBSO (boot and shoe workers) several AEU branches,several NUPE branches and so on.

Wards sent delegates as did the unions andthe organisation was both welcoming and relatively efficient.we also had our own building at 97 Charles Street, once the NUBSO offices but bought I think by Paget for Labour Party use.

Later we converted the ground floor into a club with Party rooms above.Every night there were meetings and any party or Union member visiting Northampton knew that there at least like minded companions could be found.

There were often fierce arguments and passionate debate,both upstairs and in the bar sometimes,

factions met,plotted,dissolved and re-formed.The party was alive to all sorts of currents in the broader movement.

It was a time when Local government was central to party strategy, when the GLC, the London Boroughs,Liverpool,Sheffield,Edinborough and dozens of other places were the centres of resistance to central government.

Even wee Clay Cross in Derbyshire played a part in the resistance.

My point is that there was a coherence within the movement and the party, a comradeship and a vitality.members were not simply used as leaflet deliverers and door knockers.The battle in the aprty during the 70-80's was to wrest power from the parliamentary elite,or even the council elite and bring it back to the wards and branches.

There is a new enthusiasm abroad in the movement that needs to be brought out before frustration sets in.There are only so many litter picks you can support before you think maybe joining a Keep Britain Tidy group might have been a better option.

So what must the local Labour Party do ?

First it must create real meaningful branches throughout the town that have autonomy to do more than leaflet but be able to initiate campaigns.

It must ensure that as many members as possible are encouraged to get involved,not just in ward activities but in broader community activities too.How many are members of local tenant or resident groups for instance ?

There must be an opportunity at ward level to discus ideas,and not just await the word from on high.The Labour Party is not organised obn democratic centralist lines (at least not when I last looked)

And above all else wards must attempt where possible to select local candidates from their community.that may mean training,not simply in how to canvass or how to fold leaflets, but how to speak in public, how to deal with council officers,how to write leaflets and use social media.

I am very optimistic that the party can move forward, as part of a broader movement.But it needs to be brave and it needs to learn from its history,from its mistakes and its successes.

But already time is short and there are too many unleashed dogs of war, and they all seem to be in the party.

 

A wind of change blows up from St.James

Who would have believed it ? On a damp Saturday afternoon in January in downtown St James Northampton over 200 folk gathered to hear a Labour Party shadow cabinet MP.
There was a time not so long ago when a real labour Party cabinet minister couldn't attract an audience of much more than a few loyalist hacks and the odd passing dog.
Yet times have changed, and the crowd from Northampton and other parts of the County turned up at the Rodber suite at Franklins gardens to hear a range of speakers culminating in the shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
And unlike many such meetings in the past the crowd stayed on because he was delayed on his journey down from another meeting in Derby, and the meeting over ran my a good half hour.
Such is the pulling power of the new leadership of the Labour party these days.
There were other quite inspirational speakers there too, top of the platform was young Richard and his Mum.He is a very brave young disabled man who spoke movingly and with a sly sense of humour about the plight of young people with disabilities.He spoke as the Youth Ambassador of the Ron Todd Trust and a damn fine ambassador he is too.
It was therefore a pity that a local self-styled anarchist,writing on Facebook chose to describe Richard's presence as being an example of patronisation,as some sort of cynical manipulation on behalf of the organisers,perhaps even emotional blackmail.
However it would appear that the anarchist who left in protest-he thinks of himself as an eagle amongst a flock of pigeons-didn't really listen to what was being said, that solidarity is starting to mean something once again.
He demonstrated all the political skills and nuanced analysis of those Labour shadow cabinet ministers who are leaving the shadow cabinet with great purpose and no effect!
Yes,I've never heard of them either and I didn't notice them leaving!
Most of the speakers were drawing attention to two areas -Dave Ward the General Secretary of the CWU and Lee Barron the Regional Secretary of the TUC were laying great emphasis on the need to build and organise the trade union movement.
In times of great difficulty,indeed growing difficulty,it's not the Parliamentary Labour Party that will make the difference to peoples lives-that may come later,but it is organised labour that will hold the ring.
One small observation is that both Trade Union speakers came from the CWU-is there something about postmen and women that is breeding a new militancy and a new desire for change?
Speaking on behalf of the Unison members employed by Northamptonshire County Council their secretary made it clear that the biggest danger in the immediate future is the wholesale privatisation of the County Council.
Northamptonshire is being used as a blue print(in every sense of the word) for the future of public services in this country.If the Tories have their way,then there will be less than 200 people working for the County Council (and they will all probably be senior managers!) whilst all other jobs and services-those that haven't already been decimated,will be in the private sector.
What we see happening in the public sector is nothing less than what the last Tory government did to the mining and steel industries-no if's and no but's.
John McDonnell despite arriving late and not hearing the other contributions brought together the strands quite effectively, which I must say suggests that at last the Labour movement is singing off the same songsheet.
Nobody at Franklins Gardens that afternoon underestimates the scale of the problem facing the Labour movement today.But the reality at last that we are talking about a movement, that is parliamentary and extra-parliamentary, that brings together all sections of the community and understands instinctively that an injury to one is an injury to all.
The labour party grew out of mass movements, it didn't emerge a fully fledged parliamentary group that understood the archaic traditions of the Palace of Westminster, that didn't really give a monkeys about the gibberish and gentleman's club rules of the Commons, and more important than anything realised that all struggles are interconnected.The fight against austerity is not simply an economic argument, but is a social and an equality issue too, that involves healthcare,education,housing,military spending,overseas aid-everything in the end is political.
Yet the solution is not simply 'political'that is a catch all word that is about as meaningless as the Liberal-Democrats and the Progress group in Parliament.
What is changing in Europe,and indeed all over the world is that people are starting to see that there is a common interest that transcends nation states historic game playing.
Capital is global,our response must be international too.I see that there is a new grouping,or grouplet in the Labour Party called 'International Labour'.I gather they want to replace Trident and keep bombing other bits of the globe.
I expect they are called 'International Labour' because they couldn't quite get their collective heads around the idea of 'International Socialists'-hey ho!
And finally to the young Northamptonian who left in protest to continue his lonely fight as an anarchist can I remind him that the most effective strain of his particular ideology can be found in the Anarcho-syndicalist movement, that understood the need to combine and work together-in solidarity!