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Would it help to talk about it?

Socialist Resistance is having a one day seminar on the British and European experiences of broad parties. We’ll be having speakers from Die Linke (Germany), the LCR (France), the Left Bloc (Portugal), maybe Sinistra Critica from Italy along with the Greens, Respect and one or two other British organisations which will be confirmed shortly. It’s…

Liam
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Socialist Resistance is having a one day seminar on the British and European experiences of broad parties. We’ll be having speakers from Die Linke (Germany), the LCR (France), the Left Bloc (Portugal), maybe Sinistra Critica from Italy along with the Greens, Respect and one or two other British organisations which will be confirmed shortly.

It’s in ULU, Malet Street, London on Saturday 28 June from 11am. To reserve a place send a cheque for £10 payable to Socialist Resistance to PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU and more details will be shortly.

22 responses to “Would it help to talk about it?”

  1. Adamski Avatar
    Adamski

    So why did Ken lose?

    According to Respect/Left List:

    “Livingstone has moved progressively to the right since he first ran as Mayor as an independent eight years ago. He moved right when he rejoined Labour four years ago – and his vote went down. In this election he moved even closer to the Blair-Brown-City axis – and he lost.”

    Meanwhile, Respect Renewal supporters on Socialist Unity seem to be arguing that Livingstone’s vote went up, just the Tories’ went up more, & that it was UKIP voters and LibDems transferring their first pref votes to Boris that caused Ken’s demise.

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  2. Andy Newman Avatar
    Andy Newman

    Adam

    It is simply a matter of fact that Livingstone’s vote went up.

    In 2000, Ken received 667,877 1st preference votes
    In 2004, Ken received 685,541 1st preference votes
    In 2008, Ken received 893,877 1st preference votes

    Share of vote 2008
    Boris Johnson (Conservative) 42.48 (+14.3%)
    Ken Livingstone (Labour) 36.38 (+0.7%)

    This is not a question of interpretation, it is a FACT that any interpretation has to be able to explain.

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  3. maeve66 Avatar
    maeve66

    I love your post titles. I wish I could go to this dayschool, but airfare would be $1200.

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  4. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Yes it clearly would help to talk about and this dayschool looks good, but even better would be a Respect conference to talk about strategies and accountabilities. Any news of this?

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  5. Clive Avatar
    Clive

    Respect’s NC will meet in a couple of week’s time I think.(Palestine demo next Saturday by the way).

    I’m sure the conference will be discussed there.

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  6. Ray Avatar
    Ray

    Livingstones vote went up but then more people voted in this election. He lost the election and that speaks volumes. He didn’t do as badly as New Labour outside of London but then again he had cobbled together quite a few cross party deals and the electorate’s anger was directed at Brown rather than Livingstone.

    We have to face facts that Livingstone and Labour are dead in the water. The left inside Labour is a tiny rump, there isn’t a Labour Left leadership any longer and the neo-liberals control Labour. In this condition there’s little chance that ex-Labour members are going to return to Labour in their droves. The only people attracted to Labour are neo-liberals. Time for the left to discuss how to work together outside of Labour and The Convention of the Left looks like a good place to start.

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  7. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    I think you’re looking at it all wrong. Instead of looking at organisations, i.e. whether people are inside or outside the Labour Party, inside or outside Respect, inside or outside the Left list etc. we should be looking at policies.
    What do we need to fight for and how are we going to fight for it.

    There are people inside the Labour Party who we need to fight with for these priorities and Labour Party members, notably the LRC, John McDonnell and co are involved in the Convention of the Left. There are people from the Greens, both halves of Respect, etc.etc.etc. none of them are about to leave their organisations if that is a pre-condition for unity.

    So instead of thinking which bits of principled politics we need to ditch in order to build an electoral broad party, why not just think about which principled politics we need to fight for and then work out the organisation best fitted to do it?

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  8. Ray Avatar
    Ray

    There appear to be a number of perspectives on the left after the election:

    1. Try to rebuild the Labour Party and pull it to the left.
    2. Focus inwardly and try to build our own organisations.
    3. Remain seperate but organise together around certain issues.
    4. Dissolve all existing alliances and reforge another left organisation.

    I believe that option 1 will pull the left further to the right. It’s a futile exercise anyway. Option 2 is sectarian and will further weaken the left. Option 3 seems to be the most realistic approach at the moment. While option 4 means expending lots of time and energy building a new organisation when it would be better spent organising in the unions and against the BNP.

    As for agreeing policy I think that’s going to be dependent on which perspective each organisation on the left decides to follow. For example, an alliance against the BNP will be weakened if the left chooses option 2 and sets competeing anti-nazi groups. Another example would be if the left chooses option 1 and the focus is on electioneering for Labour rather than organising in the unions and against the BNP.

    Of course the left isn’t homogenous and all these options can co-exist at once but then why bother having a convention of the left if we’re going to carry on as before?

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  9. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    well 3 as you say is the immediately operable policy and IF we can actually build mass organisations of working class resistance to th epay cuts, privatisation, racism, the BNP etc then it will clarify IN PRACTICE where we should go next

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  10. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    Ray – there is a rat in separate.
    But that’s by the by. Basically its up to people what they want to do, that’s why its futile telling them to leave their organisations before we can work together. They’re not going to, until we can show in practice that whatever we propose as an alternative actually works better.
    So its a case of live and let live, up to a point, if people want to stay in the Labour Party, there’s not stopping them and personally, given the paucity of alternatives I don’t see the value in asking them to leave. You have to say why? What’s leaving the Labour Party, (or Respect or RR, or whatever) supposed to achieve in and of itself?
    Better I think to say, the left is where its at for various reasons – we can all have our opinions about what they are – but what needs to be done now, to advance the cause of the working class?
    So fighting the fascists, climate change, abortion rights etc. concrete policies that we can agree on and then decide how far we can co-operate together to achieve them.
    If out of all that, people are able to see the advantages of working together, then maybe there will be space of a more developed organisation – but this is some way down the road.

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  11. Ray Avatar
    Ray

    On one level I accept your point billj (and the spelling correction!) I’m all for getting on with it and I don’t expect anyone to leave their organisation just because I say so but the question is why didn’t we get on with it before the election? That’s the political issue I think needs to be worked out sooner rather than later.

    For example, on SUN they are complaining about the anti-BNP demo outside City Hall tomorrow. One who shall remain nameless doesn’t even think it’s a good idea in case it plays into the BNP’s hands. If this is the new unity in action then we haven’t learnt anything. 😦

    As for remaining in the Labour Party I think that will lead to further demoralisation for activists who do so. That’s why I urge them to leave. This issue won’t go away and it could affect our ability to organise in the future. The left outside of Labour need to be debating this issue with those on the left who remain in Labour. It would be ducking the issue if we didn’t raise this after the decimation of the left inside Labour and the election defeat Labour has just received.

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  12. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    Well that individual hasn’t learnt anything, but that’s fine they can stay at home and watch telly.

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  13. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Looks to me like the Socialist Unity Blog (not SUN by the way) carried a strong call to support the anti-BNP demo and someone else criticised the idea for political reasons. This is political debate. Ray and billj are just saying ‘do it’ without political argument. Me – well it’s a long and expensive way to London, but I hope the picket is big and noisy and gets publicity – but we still need debate about the way forward, and the ‘person who shall be nameless’ and ‘they haven’t learnt anything’ business is just not debate.

    Meanwhile good to hear that Respect will discuss a conference, but I still think they are poor at communicating with potential supporters and members.

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  14. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    I’m saying quite the opposite. What masquerades as political argument is generally just an aimless dispute about which organisation is the best – people in one group say theirs is the best and all the others are crap – people in the other group say theirs is best and all the others are crap.
    This isn’t based on any political differences generally, but organisational braggadachio.
    What I am saying is let’s have a political argument about what are the key political priorities of the moment and then work out the organisational way of achieving them.
    If we have to agree which organisation is best – before we have the political discussion, then we won’t have the political discussion – we’ll just have what you get on the misnamed (laughably misnamed) Socialist Unity site.

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  15. Liam Avatar
    Liam

    That’s an important point Bill makes. A lot of what passes for political activity seems almost purpose built to stop people reflecting on what they are doing and why they are doing it. Attempts to develop a shared strategic vision are given a back seat to the next “really important thing” and defence of organisational position and and “prestige” are more valuable than building common projects.

    A difference of emphasis that I have with Bill, Jason and other PR supporters is that we do have a sufficient experience in Britain and Europe to make an assessment about what possibilities we have to build a broader anti neo liberal formation. The elections should give an urgency to that discussion.

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  16. Ray Avatar
    Ray

    Mathew, the demo is going ahead and we need to relate to it instead of criticising how it’s been organised (with less than a few days notice) or who is organising it (more anti-SWP rants.) For a leading member of Renewal to claim that the demo could play into the BNP’s hands is a political statement and my criticism of it is political. I’ve no idea who called the demo but my gut instinct is that it’s a good idea.

    Perhaps you could put across your ideas about how we should organise against the BNP so that we can have a political debate.

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  17. Dave Riley Avatar
    Dave Riley

    I’ ma little confused as to SR perspective given this article by Phil Hearse: Europe swings right

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  18. JimPage Avatar
    JimPage

    “The BNP barely scraped through with one GLA position. They were hoping for three. Their vote nationally did not improve. ”

    Whether they scraped through or not, they did and we didnt. And scaping through on a 50% turnout is a better performance than not scaping though on a 40% turnout- like last time. And considering the great new idea is “turn out and vote for anyone but the BNP”- where does this leave what passes for the major antifascist strategy?

    ” They were hoping for three” is nonsense. This is based on one blog posting by an enthuasiatic fash, not their internal documents, bulletins or website postings. Griffin predicted a single win and he got it. Hope is another thing, am sure many “hoped” for 3, but didnt “reasonably expect” it.

    As to their vote nationally, it was patchy, but still 13 seats won for 3 losses.

    Yes, by all means demonstrate outside city hall. But if this is the sum total of what is proposed, it isnt good enough. Accept that antifascist tactics failed this time- every tactic- all failed. New thinking is needed, and not thundering press releases reminicent of the battle of stalingrad.

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  19. Andy Newman Avatar
    Andy Newman

    Jim

    That is all very well, but I have been reading the same point from you for it seems like years arguing that “new thinking” is needed; but what is the new thinking you propose?

    The huge increase of the Labout vote, and the increase in Respect vote in City and East constituency pushed the BNP into fourth place, and given that UKIP’s vote collapsed, the overall increase in the BNP’s vote was smaller than I was expecting. Nationally, the BNP’s vote did not go up.

    This suggests not that all our campaigning was a disaster, but that some of it was a qualified success, but we haven’t yet found the answer.

    And to be honest the answer only partially lies in the anti-fascist campaigns anyway, the real solution is with engaging with the hopelessness that grips those communities who are tempted too vote, or are voting, BNP.

    Are the left up to that job? we know we aren;t; but we have to become better.

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  20. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    I know this might sound a little highbrow, but what the hell, I was thinking about Marx’s critique of the Gotha Programme;

    “Apart from this, it is my duty not to give recognition, even by diplomatic silence, to what in my opinion is a thoroughly objectionable programme that demoralises the Party.

    Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes. If, therefore, it was not possible — and the conditions of the item did not permit it — to go beyond the Eisenach programme, one should simply have concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy.”

    http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_05_05.htm

    In other words there is no way that I think we should agree to a botched broad programme, but we could agree to a programme of action – i.e. the key priorities that need to be fought for in the current period and take it from there.

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  21. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Ray typically sees criticisms of how the anti-BNP demo has been organised and by whom – where, here? And finds anti-SWP rants where there are none, which is kind of typical of one individual who is prone to rant. I thought I said if I was in London I would support it. Tell us how it went. My point remains that you fail to debate with the individual who made the critique.

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  22. JimPage Avatar
    JimPage

    Andy

    As to their vote out of London a few things. Their split earlier this year affected them badly in some areas of the country, like Kirklees, Bradford or Black Country, and the elections held little interest for their own activists. In some of the examples given by Searchlight (vote down in Southend and Broxbourne) it was partly because they fought full slates this time and hence less promising wards. Thurrock down, but they were elected, so you judge if this was a success or not.

    Secondly, they took the strategic decision to prioritise London, hoping a win there would be better than another 20 council wins nationwide. You may have noticed no BNP in Swindon this year- and this is because they sacrificed their local campaign to work in Hillingdon most weekends Yes, modest gains outside London, but still ten seats up. However, best ever votes in areas they were not elected, as diverse as Tameside, Carlisle, Newcastle, Derby, Jarrow, Barnsley, etc etc. Judge for yourself whether this strategy paid off.

    As to ther new thinking,act its very much in line with your thoughts “the real solution is with engaging with the hopelessness that grips those communities who are tempted too vote, or are voting, BNP”. It is the long term solution which in needed.

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