Someone clearly knnows nothing about Communist Students and is reacting agaist the word ‘communist’ as due to the history of the 20th century it has unwanted connotations. The CPGB and indeed the Communist Students which is about 50/50 in terms of CPGB/non-CPGB intervenes and gets involved in as many left campaigns as possible and see’s the Labour party, and hence the SYN to which you allude, as a good thing – it brings socialists together (proper ones that is, not social democrats) where they can do the most good- in the Labour party. Why you’d rather be torn than commit, along with many of the good memebers of Communist Students and SYN, to Socialism eludes me and your glib remarks do not strenghten your argument or even provide one.

I have moved the discussion of this issue to my blog at http://southpawpunch.blogspot.com/2007/01/red-portal-sell-out-of-week-polls-icon.html

See also a letter at http://southpawpunch.googlepages.com/leftportal

I will copy the above points to my blog as well

It would be good if any further points on this issue could be made there so we can keep the discuussion in one place.

Speaking about political activity,

Why is the pro-war movement dead?

For example during the last few years the Stop the War Coalition have organised mass demonstration after mass demonstration, where tens of thousands of people have turned up and hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for troops to come home. By

contrast the ‘Euston Manifesto’

and the general prowar movement is

always reacting to events and putting on

a defensive position. What position

should it take or should it quietly fold up?

Please reply?

ftssoldier.blogspot.com

http://www.edwardsaid.org

Speaking about polical activity,

Why is the antiwar movement dead?

For example during the launch of

Euston Manifesto of which 600

people turned up. They raised

£1350 and have 3100 Signatures

to their “Manifesto”. By

contrast The Stop war Coalition

and general antiwar movement is

always reacting to events and putting on

a defensive position. What position

should it take or should it quietly fold up?

Please reply?

I’ve done a post on the subject, perhaps you could do one as well, just to clarify what we have so far (my post was a bit rushed).

You can choose how many emails you get a day. If you have no social life you can get an email everytime someone posts but I prefer the daily round up where you get one big email with most of the posts from that day.

I’d go for UKLN but this shouldn’t exclude us from promoting the idea wherever we can.

I’m guessing that UKLN would be best as it will have mailing lists, ability to post threads etc.

(My slight concern about it could be that it would one of those groups that send you loads of emails.

You get up early in the morning to see if you have received an email of sweet nothings from someone and open your email box only to find 91 postings about ‘socialist’ Cuba.)

It’d be a huge task. Minimum 20 volunteers, some with IT knowledge? But libcom.org have done it.

Do we agree on UKLN? One place is best.

“I remember this is very much what we were hoping to achieve with the Socialist Conference (which begat the Socialist Movement, which turned into the Socialist Network, which didn’t really go anywhere). About the only lasting achievement of that entire scene was Red Pepper (which isn’t nothing).”

I remember this from the mid-1990s – was “sort of” around their co-ordinating committee, and then it all disappeared. Does anyone else recall this era, and the people involved?

I’m all for a general portal. At the moment the unions are our only hope. The Left movements within individual unions need some means of keeping together – and not via Galloway’s party. Or Red Pepper, for that manner. Worthy but too much like a student mag.

Who’s talking about a “retreat into the internet”?

And besides, given the choice between the internet and an organisation combining ex-members of Oxford University Labour Club and the CPGB youth section, I would be personally torn

In terms of it being a lot of work, I’m a student I’ve got loads of time on my hands…

There AWL lot seem to have a fair few students who blog as well and I’m sure they would be willing to get involved.

We could try and be really modern and go for a website where people submit their own meetings and events. Might get a lot of spam that way though.

I think, hope, that we can avoid the sectarian bloodbath that this could be by contacting people individually rather than contacting the organisations directly.

That said, it’ll probably piss off some people on some central committee.

Will does pop over here so should see this.

I can though send him an e-mail and get him to look at the post. Who knows though what he will say, he is not known as the twisted genius for nothing.

This does though seem a lot of work and I can see there will be issues of people not having time or groups not wanting to pull together.

Not meaning to sound doom and gloom like Dave