As far as you can be certain about any early childhood memory I’m pretty sure that one year Santa Claus left me a box with some felt tip pens and pop out human figures that you had to colour in. There were two sets of characters. Some were cops and others were demonstrators and you were able to write slogans on their placards. I think I opted for ones which reflected local attitudes to the British army.
The point here is that some toy company thought that there was money to be made in selling “make your own demo” kits to fairly young kids. At the time you certainly got to see lots of them on TV and, even if you didn’t quite understand what was happening you knew that the cops were the baddies. You also knew that lots of people were really cross about stuff and were willing to fight the police and risk getting battered.
Something like that is starting to happen again. As a few recent reports on this site have indicated not just is a new movement being born it is also developing its own ways of doing things.
Let’s take a couple of examples.
There’s the wavy hand thing to show you agree with people. Apparently it can be a great time saver. Instead of saying “I agree with most of what’s been said” and going on to explain at length why you do, all you have to do is waggle your hands and risk feeling like a prat. For those of obliged to endure union meetings at which the same handful of people feel morally obligated to offer an opinion on everything from the choice of refreshments to something that made them cross on the news this morning it would be a blessed relief.
Then there is the visual impact of an event. You know it’s a real thing if lots of home made placards are in evidence. By contrast tons of pre-printed, neatly stapled ones with a well loved slogan seem to suggest either an attempt at astro-turfing or a cack-handed way of trying to suggest it was your idea all along.
Here is an expletive riddled account by someone who was at a recent student organised event.
“We were invited guests of the most radical activists in town. They had a very good structure worked out, announced at the start of the meeting. 1 hour of ‘open mic’ on what cuts are affecting your workplace, community, sector or whatever, and what fightback is occurring (if any). 20 mins tea break. 2 hours of strategizing about where next – first in relation to education and then the wider cuts.
Of course, it only works if people respect the agenda set. And then the f**king deatheaters started with their boring set speeches. Do they not get it? This is not a rabble that needs rousing – they are already more f**king aroused than the constitutional revolutionaries, whose main objective is to win this vote, or that position. Egomaniacs sucking the air and life out of the room.
The students were too f**king civil – very good at reclaiming space from the establishment but haven’t figured out how to defend their space from sectarians. All they could do was politely remind people to stay on topic.”
You can see why she is furious. If ever there was a moment when the vanguard is running behind the popular mood insisting on its right to lead it is now. Pretending that your small group is the only leaders a movement needs is downright delusional. This could just be one of those occasions when the best thing to do is to let the movement run free and develop its own momentum.
The time to bring in politics will come soon enough. If two hours are set aside for a discussion on strategy does it really hurt to let people who are exploring political action for the first time fumble towards their own conclusions? It’s certainly preferable to hearing six people in a row say exactly the same thing. Any discussion on strategy quickly brings up questions about civil disobedience, the unions and the Labour Party. They could be allowed to emerge organically rather than be shoe-horned in because it’s this week’s key agitational slogan.
From this comes the question of democracy. Any aspirant Bolshevik can win a vote at a meeting by having a large enough group of co-thinkers in a room. If I’d a tenner for every time I’ve seen it I’d pay Philip Green’s tax bill. It’s a rubbish method. The only way you really win an argument is by changing people’s minds or articulating what is on their mind. That’s not the same as winning a vote and implies deliberately being a proportionately small part of something large.Twenty trots do not make a mood or a strategic direction.
It’s a poor analogy but it’ll do for the moment. Much of the socialist left had its thinking changed to some degree by the women’s movement. In return it offered a rounded world view, an internationalist perspective and an historical understanding (well, let’s pretend). That was not the same thing as being the women’s movement and it’s true this time round as well.
Liam redux 
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