Liam redux

Guess who

See if you can work out which organisations are making the following recommendations about who you, and other advanced workers, should vote for in the European elections. Pick your options from the answers below. You can decide for yourself if getting full marks is an achievement or not. Vote left and build resistance Calling for…

Liam
1–2 minutes

See if you can work out which organisations are making the following recommendations about who you, and other advanced workers, should vote for in the European elections. Pick your options from the answers below. You can decide for yourself if getting full marks is an achievement or not.

  1. Vote left and build resistance
  2. Calling for a vote for Labour is one way of taking a step alongside the millions of trade union voters who still support the party
  3. Recommending the biggest possible vote for Britain’s bourgeois workers’ party on June 4.
  4. Vote No2EU – Yes to Democracy
  5. Vote No2EU – Yes to Democracy except in the north west where you should vote for the Green candidate
  6. The sad truth is, there is no party that deserves workers’ vote in this election.
  7. In Scotland we will vote for the list of the Scottish Socialist Party…we will vote Labour, in the absence of working-class socialist candidates.

a) Permanent Revolution

b) Socialist Resistance 

c) SWP 

d) Workers’ Liberty 

e) CPGB 

f) Socialist Party 

g) Workers’ Power

 

 

 

 

 

 

ANSWERS

1C  2A  3E  4F  5B  6G 7D

 

33 responses to “Guess who”

  1. ks Avatar
    ks

    i hope no ‘ordinary’ people read your blog because posts like this just make the left look like dicks.

    i know it’s supposed to be humorous, and i enjoy sature and polemic like everyone else… but just maybe it doesn’t help the image of the left. any ‘normal’ person reading this blog would not be impressed.

    time to get serious i think.

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  2. Jacob Avatar
    Jacob

    It just goes to show how much the left – and particularly the Trots – needs to unite and actually do something. Now wonder we’re so down in the dumps.

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  3. djinbrighton Avatar
    djinbrighton

    well said ks

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  4. Liam Avatar
    Liam

    I’ll be your mirror
    Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
    I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
    The light on your door to show that you’re home
    When you think the night has seen your mind
    That inside you’re twisted and unkind
    Let me stand to show that you are blind
    Please put down your hands
    ‘Cause I see you
    I find it hard to believe you don’t know
    The beauty that you are
    But if you don’t let me be your eyes
    A hand in your darkness, so you won’t be afraid
    When you think the night has seen your mind
    That inside you’re twisted and unkind
    Let me stand to show that you are blind
    Please put down your hands
    ‘Cause I see you
    I’ll be your mirror

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  5. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    It makes sense now billj slagging off NO2EU at every opportunity. The great revolutionaries are going to vote New Labour, along with Workers Power and the CPGB. Try explaining that to workers, especially those under 30. Good luck with that comrades,

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  6. Duncan Avatar
    Duncan

    Labour will get an atrocious vote in these elections, most polls are registering their support at under 20% and factoring in the usual low turnout at Euro elections it means the party will be endorsed by a small minority of working-class voters despite the sage advice of the advanced vanguard.

    So, once again the ‘vanguard’ is trailing behind the working-class.

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  7. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    They’ll get a better vote than no2eu!

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  8. karl shayne Avatar
    karl shayne

    oh grow up.

    as if its just about which party gets most votes. ukip will get more than labour probably so what though?!!!

    i’m afraid that a lot of the people who post on blogs like this, with snide remarks, abuse and constant petty squabling, are dead weight that only make the left unattractive to normal people.

    these cdes need to change their outlook and behaviour or get the hell out the left, because they just drag it down further, make it more inward looking, more fragmented and nasty, and far harder to recruit any normal working class people into.

    if we want the left to suceed in launching and building a serious workers’ party we can’t afford these people.

    it’s not their ideas necessariy that put people off, it’s their behaviour and culture and entire outlook and approach.

    yes to revolutionary politics and healthy debate and discussion, but the culture has to change.

    i think some cdes are too far gone. frankly, they are just not nice people, they are mentally damaged and cynical to the core now after too many years in sects. i’d rather these people just moved out of politics altogether.

    the aim of building strong workers’ organisations and a movement for socialism is not a game. the concequences of failure are just not funny at all but very serious. maybe it’s time to act seriously for a change?

    i think some people have lost sight of any ideals they once had, or any drive or belief to really achieve socialist change.

    anyway, lets start from now.

    lets change the culture and behaviour on the left, even on the left blogs!

    comradely,

    ks

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  9. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    ks – I’m not sure it’s at all productive to insult people as ‘mentally damaged’ or very inclusive to say ‘i’d rather these people just moved out of politics altogether.’

    and then- in an apparent complete volteface call for the left to change its culture!

    Perhaps part of this could be not to use such insults and not make political differences personal? Just a suggestion.

    Moving on to more constructive ideas it would be good to convene meeting sof union militants, community campaigners and activists to tryo to rebuild a democratic fighting working class movement and within it a socialist curent open to all workers (except the fascists) to debate policy and decide on action

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  10. Liam Avatar
    Liam

    I strongly agree with Karl’s point about what passes for discussion on much of the left, a problem which is particularly bad on blogs. Personal abuse, rhetorical table thumping and an unwillingness to accept that someone who has arrived at a different conclusion is neither necessarily a traitor or an idiot feature far too frequently.

    This way of arguing is politically poisonous and hectoring someone until they can’t be arsed to reply is not my idea of a dialogue. It owes a lot to a Stalinist politically culture that some currents feel is synonomous with Marxism and is a real obstacle to developing politically pluralistic organisations.

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  11. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    I agree with what you write there, Liam but you fail to note the irony that KS (Karl) condemns this by calling people ‘mentally damaged’- in my opinion Karl needs to take his own advice!

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  12. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    What saying that Labour will do better than no2eu is “hectoring” or “personal abuse”?
    Get a grip.
    Banal fair enough. Poisonous hardly.
    What put me off no2eu was on Monday attending a rally of it in Manchester, where two BNP members were allowed to speak uninterrupted in order to explain their agreement with the policy of opposition to “social dumping”.
    So much for “socialist change”.

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  13. Liam Avatar
    Liam

    Bill – it wasn’t you that I had in mind. From my drinking habits it should be fairly obvious that I find your comrades among the most non-dogmatic, critical thinking, non-sectarian on the far left.

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  14. RobM Avatar
    RobM

    Bill, you were only ‘put off’ No2EU last Monday?
    I thought you had been against it all along like the rest of your comrades- I didn’t realised you had been waging a one man struggle in pR in support of it…

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  15. martin ohr Avatar
    martin ohr

    Billj,

    You should have been at the Leeds rally on monday, every single person who spoke said “the name is rubbish, the politics are rubbish and there’s no democracy” that included the platform speakers -2 were candidates and one was Alice Mahon.

    The best anyone in the audience could say about the no2eu project -including the isolated socialist party hacks- was “it’s crap but it might lead to something better”

    There is a very brief report on the workersliberty websitehttp://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/06/04/new-socialist-alliance-idea-gets-good-response-leeds-no2eu-meeting#comment

    Why are Socialist Resistance supporting the middle-class-wannabe-tories of the Green Party in the north west? Did you hear Caroline Lucas on any questions or the today programme this week?

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  16. entdinglichung Avatar
    entdinglichung

    some of the recommendations can be paraphrased like “break with labour but vote them (critically) this time … and maybe also next time, etc. …”

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  17. RobM Avatar
    RobM

    Only on the weird planet AWL could Peter Cranie be described as a middle-class-wannabe-tory.

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  18. martin ohr Avatar
    martin ohr

    way back at Lancaster I wish I’d known that in 20 years time you’d be arguing for a vote for stalinist nationalists or greens as a way forward for the working class; when did you give up being a revolutionary?

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  19. RobM Avatar
    RobM

    Stop sticking your tongue out, Martin. As a serial New Labour voter you are in a big glass house.

    Did Liam get it wrong above. Are the AWL not advocating a vote for “working-class socialist candidates”?

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  20. Foraging in the depths Avatar
    Foraging in the depths

    The Weekly Worker calling for a Labour vote is definitely entertaining.
    I hope something good comes out of this shambles in the future. It is indeed time to get serious.

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  21. martin ohr Avatar
    martin ohr

    never voted “new labour” in my life thanks very much, although I would have done had I lived in bethnal green and bow, obviously.

    Still doesn’t explain why supposed socialists, even ex-revolutionaries argue for a the green party who are fundamentally opposed to everything we stand for.

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  22. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    Fair enough Liam sorry for being delicate.

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  23. Jim Monaghan Avatar
    Jim Monaghan

    Hi Liam,
    I would guess that North of the border SR comrades would vote SSP. Not so sure about Cymru.
    Still let us hope the NPA win out over the cobbled alliance of the PCF. and Melanchton and provide a real opposition

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  24. pete shield Avatar
    pete shield

    Not looking too hot on that one Jim, the NPA campaign has been all but none existant outside of the university areas. Lack of resources and infrastucture at such an early stage I would imagine. Whereas the Left Front campaign has been “big” in comparason, lots of huge , well 2-6,000 audiences rallies, posters, leafleting et al.

    According to a poll I saw on TF1 last night Left Front was on 6.5 and NPA on 5. Green are doing well

    Seems that the dip in NPA levels, a drop off of 6%, seems to comprise of a small amount shifting to Left Front and big shift to Greens.

    The fact that their support is shifting to the Greens is doubling worrying. I say that not because I am anti-green per say but because Danny C-B has been some appauling things about how wonderful capitalism is.

    I was hoping that the NPA’s 11% was an anti-capitalist vote, but it appears not. I am sad to see the drop in support for the NPA and particulary that up to 4.5% has gone from an anti-capitalist party to a pro -one.

    Although I will be voting for the Left Front as I see it, rightly or wrongly, as a basis for a new left of PS centre. With the Alternatives, Left Party, the elements of the LCR around the United Left, and the MRC-basically the people who ran the lefts No campaign- apart from Olivier of course. As team they worked well together on the No campaign and this seems to be working on the ground very well for this campaign.

    Also rather worryingly reports are leaking out that all is not well within the NPA, non-aligned comrades who are not part of an organised faction are complaining, well to me anyway, that they are getting squeezed out of any decision making as NPA and ex-LO groups fight it out. None LCR comrades are already complaining about the NPA as an LCR tactical “fishing” exercise in public.

    Once again very sad if true, while I disagree with the NPA unwillingness to join a common left front this time round I was hoping that it would form a key rallying point for the Left outside of the communist and ex-left PS, which would mature into a strong voice that could be an effective counter weight/partner in a constructive allaince of left of the left. If they keep this up I am not so sure.

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  25. Foraging in the depths Avatar
    Foraging in the depths

    How is “personal abuse”, “rhetorical table-thumping” etc. Stalinist? Trotskyists do it a lot, often while glorying in their hostility to “Stalinists”.

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  26. ks Avatar
    ks

    yeh fair enough, ‘mentally damaged ‘wasn’t a good phrase to use! i didn’t mean any offense by it, everyone in society is mentally damaged to some degree of course, and capitalism is especially a very mentally damaging society.

    i’ve just been v annoyed at some of what passes for debate on the left, and some of the ‘characters’ who dominate this ‘debate’ and make it so hostile and confrontational for no apparent reason.

    i wonder if some prefer this style of slanging match and abuse to actually campaigning or building anything serious that can attract normal working class people to it.

    i think blogging and the internet has been a double edged sword for the left, i think maybe cdes are more abusive and hostile to each other than they would ever be in person (or at least i’d hope so…).

    true blogs allow some debate and information to flow, but i strongly suspect that blogs don’t really attract that many new people to socialist ideas.

    anyway lets hope a new spirit or co-operation and fraternal debate wins out!

    comradely greetings,

    ks

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  27. Jason Avatar
    Jason

    that’s much better! Your fundamental point was good that there is too much abuse on the left.

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  28. Fleabite Avatar
    Fleabite

    Gordon Brown and New Labour sinking fast.

    Unite the Left as never before.

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  29. Fleabite Avatar
    Fleabite

    Break with the Labour party

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  30. naturalchoicesnews Avatar
    naturalchoicesnews

    Great exit vote in France, 1 MEP for NPA, luckily the Red Front won 5. How can those left unity comrades win more than the sectarians? Time to re-think again coms?

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  31. pete shield Avatar
    pete shield

    sorry Jim, I hoped you were right on NPA and I was wrong. Sadly I was right, and NPA totally in a mess.

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  32. Informant Avatar
    Informant

    It would be very unwise to rely on Martin Ohr and the AWL for an accurate report on the Leeds No2EU meeting.
    Ohr’s account of a Cardiff NUT fringe meeting on the No2EU was one of the most inaccurate pieces of reporting I have ever read, even by blog standards. Although his own ntervention antagonised an audience which was 90 per cent in support of the No2EU initiative (including almost everyone else who spoke), he later claimed that the ratios were almost the exact reverse, with him being mobbed by adoring fans afterwards (OK, I’m exaggerating, but only a bit).
    Ohr even claimed, falsely, that CPB speaker Rob Griffiths had told him from the platform to “fuck off”!

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  33. bill j Avatar
    bill j

    Don’t worry about it, he’s in the AWL, that’s all you need to know.

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