Have a look at the flyer for the General Election launch rally of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC).
What catches the eye?
There’s lots of red on the flags in the photo. That’s good.
The venue, date and start time are impossible to miss. Always a plus we can agree.
Not even a moron in a hurry could be confused about the theme of the event.
The logo suggests unity and hints at the Olympics. Catching the zeitgeist.
Contact details are prominent, a sometimes overlooked essential.
It gives the names of the speakers and gives some details about them. Bob Crow, Brian Caton, Chris Baugh, Dave Nellist and Michael Lavalette. Just what you need.
Let’s pretend for a moment that the logo doubles up as a Venn diagram. One circle is labelled “white”, another “man” and the third “woman, not white and miscellaneous”. Into which overlapping circles would you put the four named speakers?
Now the teensy democratic deficit in TUSC might only be something that a small group of cognoscenti knows about. Sticking four white men on the flyer for a major public event is a pretty big public statement. If it were 1952 you might just be able to make an implausible case that the organised working class is all white men. It hasn’t been true for quite a while now and the balance of this platform seems antediluvian. Trying to offset it with a female chair probably only emphasises the problem.
Even the biggest fan of unreconstructed militant trade unionism accepts today that five white men just don’t reflect what the British working class looks like. There are some old traditions that are well worth ditching. This is one of them.





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