John McDonnell on the future of the Labour left
Posted on Friday 25 May, 2007
Filed Under John McDonnell
An interview with John McDonnell – the leftwing Labour Party leadership contender unable to secure sufficient nominations to get his name on the ballot paper – appears in the latest edition of The Socialist. You can safely skip most of it. The interviewer’s impatience is palpable until he finally cuts to the chase:
Of course the crunch for you is the Labour Party. You know that the Socialist Party is part of the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party. We sympathise completely – we hoped you’d get on the ballot paper. We were saying to our supporters in affiliated unions that they should demand that their union back John McDonnell if he gets on the ballot paper, putting the likes of UNISON and TGWU on the spot. So what conclusion are you going to draw now?
What my campaign demonstrated was that, within the Labour Party and affiliated trade unions and beyond, there was massive support for the policy, programme and political perspective I was pursuing. So that gives me a lot of confidence, particularly about the new generation that has come in as a result of that campaign. But we fell at the stumbling block of the Parliamentary Labour Party, so that’s the target for the future.
But you don’t think it’s time to leave the Labour Party and join the campaign for a new party?
No, I still think the Labour Party offers us the opportunity of a mass workers’ party. But at the same time my campaign was completely non-sectarian, working across political campaigns and that’s the future. We want to see a broad united front on a whole series of issues and industrial struggles will be part of that.
Were they seriously expecting him to say ‘yes’, or something? Let’s leave aside the issue of whether or not the SP did put all of its limited but genuine weight in the unions behind the McDonnell campaign. I’ve heard it said that the attitude varied from union to union, although I personally have no way of knowing whether or not that claim stacks up.
Mostly these are predictable answers to predictable questions, purposely skirting the tactical issues that face the Marxist left both inside and outside the Labour Party. On the one hand, McDonnell’s failure to make the cut does mark a setback for any hopes of building a broad socialist current within Labour.
On the other, beyond holding an annual rally in London and putting on SP-dominated fringe meetings at union conferences, the CNWP’s raison d’être eludes me, despite my initial enthusiasm.
Much hinges on what McDonnell does now. He has accumulated a considerable amount of political capital as a result of his campaign, making him the undisputed leader of the Labour left. Trouble is, these days the job puts you in charge of a far smaller workforce than once it did.
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Sorry to be the bearer of bad news and that, but McDonnell’s failure means we are surely now witnessing what Trotsky might have called ‘the death agony’ of the Labour Left. True, it will be a long slow death agony, but the idea – put forward by McDonnell – that ‘the Labour Party offers us the opportunity of a mass workers’ party’ appears a rather dubious sounding one given the stranglehold the Brownities and Brownies now have over the Party.
As Dave’s favourite Marxist Alex Callinicos points out, ‘What this [McDonnell's failure] represents is a break in the political cycle running through the history of the Labour Party. Every previous Labour government provoked a major rebellion from the left against its betrayal of the hopes that had led to its election….the left used to provide powerful counter-pressures to its [Labour's] tendency to betray its supporters. But now that mechanism is broken. So is the Labour Party – and it can’t be fixed.’
If you guys don’t start organsing at local level so you get your people into town halls and parliament you’re finished. I hear that Katy Clark is the only campaign group member under 50. I think that says it all.
At 49, am I really the living dead????
I happen to know several LRC/Campaign group supporters who are all well under 40 and at least 3 are aiming for Parliament so I will do my very best to help them at constituency level.
Hey, I might even have a go myself before I die. Seriously, yes, we have to recruit but that’s easier if you have a focus and, as Dave puts it an “undisputed leader.”
I’m not pretending last week was not a major blow. The behaviour of the PLP shocked me in its utter disregard for the ordinary members and trade unionists.As I’ve said before, even at this very disappointing juncture the answer is NOT the Socialist Party or Dave Nellist’s latest daft adventure .In the meantime, can as many left comrades IN the Labour Party please start becoming councillors ( it’s not difficult) and applying to become MPs.Top tip: You DON’T need to be on the Parliamentary Panel. They have to ratify you afterwards but ANYONE who is a paid-up member can apply.
Susan, I am wowed by your optimism but if you don’t get some young blood into these institutions forget it.
I think the way forward is to organise public meetings, using trade union branches and campaigns to mobilise support and members, to debate what way forward under Brown- to look at how we can fight Brown’s privatisation policies, the pay freeze, racism and deportations and the continuing attacks.
We are organising such a public meeting in Bolton in July- and in my opinion the McDonnell campaign nationally should use the defeat to have a national series of meetings to look at how the socialist left can be revitalised. I think Respect- despite its abandonment of class politics- and the CNWP (despite its smallness) should also be invited along.
We need militant rank and file networks in the unions, linked to community campaigns, linked to the Labour left and the left outside of Labour to fight for class struggle candidates in the Labour Party constituencies or if and when blocked perhaps worker militants standing against Labour. I don’t think the Labour party can be reformed or reclaimed- but that’s not to say there are many Labour supporters who are genuine socialists and class fighters and we need to win these people. So in that sense I think McDonnell may have a point that the Labour party offers an opportunity of a ‘mass workers’ party’ (though presumably unlike McDonnell I think if any kind of fighting party emerged it would split the LP- Brown and his acolytes would make sure of that- and we definitely need to orientate to anti-privatisation camapigns, youth, migrant workers etc to get fresh blood and new fighters for the class, socialism and revolution.
Jason
Bolton NUT (though fairly obviously I guess in a personal capacity)
supporter of http://www.permanentrevolution.net
So more of the same then, Jason? Not a popular quotation source around here, I imagine, but please, seek truth from facts.
Jason,
There will be a series of initiatives coming up from the Labour Left in the aftermath of the John4Leader campaign. This will include setting up local groups and a variety of meetings and campaigns. Watch this space.
We will not, however, link up with groups outside of the Labour party. Some members of the small sectarian groups outside the party often have a great time in stressing the current weakness of the Labour left. That it is weak is undeniable; but it is weak in comparison to where it has been historically. In comparison with the hundred or so sects outside of the party, it is a political giant.
The Labour Left has thousands of members; it has around 30 MPs; it has dozens of councillors; it has a majority of the party NEC elected by party members; it has a solid base within the unions. We have a solid base within the labour movement – and yes, from the working class more broadly – because of the link between the unions and the party, and because the majority of the working class still support the party. We’ve just run a campaign which, while not ultimately successful, was the most influential and high-profile campaign run by the left for years.
Even the political influence enjoyed by unions outside of the party exists because of the continued existence of the Labour Left. PCS, for example, may be dominated by the Socialist Party (who blocked motions within th eunion supporting the John4Leader campaign). However, PCS’s political clout comes through the Labour Left – i.e. the parliamentary group run through John’s office. The same goes for the RMT and FBU. Were it not for that political presence, these non-affiliated/disaffiliated unions would (without any viable alternative) have entirely retreated into syndicalism.
CNWP amounts to a few hundred SP members and a few other signatories. Outside of PCS, it has no base within the labour movement whatsoever. Similarly, Respect has no base within the labour movement; has absolutely no support from the white working-class. To be honest, I don’t really think these sects represent much other than themselves.
I don’t think there’s anything to be gained from working with those sorts of sects – other than alienating members of the Labour party.
That’s not to say we can’t work with members of other groups by the fact we support many of the same campaigns – like the antiwar movement or the campaign for trade union rights, for example. But, because we have fundamentally different and conflicting strategies (i.e. the Labour Left thinks thinks that the struggle exists within the party), I don’t know how much further that can go.
I’d also ask why, if members of sects think the Labour Left is so irrelevant, they spend so much time trying to get us to “split” from the party and join them in the swamp?!
I think the problem with the way this is usually posed (and its reflected in Owen’s reply to Jason) is that organisational unity is raised above political unity. In other words, people say the LP’s crap, leave the LP and join us, and btw they usually accompany it with abandoning anything that makes them qualitatively distinct from the LP in the first place a la Respect, the SP, or the CNWP.
In which case as Owen quite reasonably points out, why should anyone in the Labour left leave a large reformist organisation in favour of a small one.
Instead I think we need to emphasise the political limitations of Labourism, i.e. why a Labourite political method prevents someone from adequately prosecuting the class struggle, and fighting for the interests of the working class. We shouldn’t be saying that a pre-condition for working together is leaving one organisation for another, but looking concretely at how we can co-operate together, building organisations that bridge the gap between the LP and outside, organising better more open and democratic socialist factions in the unions, campaigns etc. and starting a wide ranging debate around how we can build socialist forces in all spheres of the class struggle, including of course, within the LP itself.
‘Trotsky might have called ‘the death agony’ of the Labour Left.’
Snowball. Where did Trotsky say that? Yes he ‘might’ have said that but he also said many things in favour of working in reformist organisations.
He also had a lot to say about squabling micro groups infesting the fringes of the Labour movement.
My friend has come up with a blueprint for a new party. Read it here.
Miles,
This is why your plan would not work:
1) None of these 29 MPs will ever consider leaving the Labour party.
2) If they did leave, at the next election they would split the traditional Labour vote and probably hand the seat to the Tories. Either that, or most people would simply continue voting Labour as they always have – much like Dave Nellist’s fate in Coventry, for example. In other words, we’d go from having 29 leftwing MPs to 0 leftwing MPs.
3) No Labour-affiliated union would support such a new party (including Aslef). These MPs would lose any support they had from these unions – and indeed they’d be treated with outright hostility. That would be a dramatic change from the situation where MPs such as John McDonnell have strong support from within Unite, for example.
4) The only support base these MPs would have would be the swamp of squabbling sects that exists on the fringes of the labour movement.
5) What would be the point? We presently have these 29 MPs who at least enjoy a link to the labour movement. No, they’re not in a position to form a government. Unfortunately, neither would they be if they severed their links with the party. They would cut off from the labour movement before facing electoral defeat.
Yeah, it sucks to be in a party with a rightwing leadership. However, to leave the Labour party is nothing less than political retreat and would consign the left to complete and utter oblivion.
Take a union, for example. What if socialists in PCS had left the union under Reamsbottom on the grounds it was led by a thuggish, rightwing crook? All that would mean is the most dedicated socialists would leave, taking the principled socialist leadership with them, while the vast majority of less active workers would have remained behind. Then the chances of getting someone like Mark Serwotka elected would have been, well, nil.
Our attitude has to be: stay and fight, rather than run away and surrender.
And if that doesn’t convince any waverers, just remember – if you leave, it’s people like Snowball who will be awaiting you with open arms.
And if that doesn’t convince any waverers, just remember – if you leave, it’s people like Snowball who will be awaiting you with open arms.
Sorry, I meant Southpawpunch! I’m always getting you two mixed up. Tsch, silly me.
I don’t think leaving the LP would consign the left to oblivion. Frankly either within or without the LP the left isn’t exactly flourishing. That’s why the main question isn’t whether to be in or out of the LP, but rather what is the political basis of the left?
In other words for us socialists how do we best advance the class struggle? Which isn’t primarily a case of where we do it – but of what we do. After all there’s nothing really that different politically between the LP left, the CNWP, SP or Respect, they are all reformist organisations with a parliamentary strategy.
I think that’s the thing we need to question – the organisational question comes after the political one.
As Owen has already said, Bill, the Labour Party Left (albeit weak) is a thousand times bigger than the CNWP or RESPECT.
Exactly, and therefore, LP left supporters are not about to leave a big reformist organisation to join a small one, CNWP, Respect, SP etc.
I think that’s perfectly understandable and reflects the fact that discussing the organisational question above the political one is not the way forward.
I think we need to re-pose the debate, not in terms of which organisation are you a part of, but what do you do in those organisations. In other words stress that the key issue is a political one and then developing the organisations we need, ad hoc United fronts, campaigns or whatever out of that assessment.
In my view it means having a debate about what it means to be a socialist today, and how we can best advance socialist politics, in whatever arena of activity we happen to be active in (including the LP).
Once we’ve worked that out the organisational solutions will follow.
I’m not so sure that the Left is quantatively bigger in the Labour Party than outside that organisation.
As I wrote on my website – “A recent Sunday Times poll (so, yeah, take it with a pinch of salt) reported that just 9% of Labour Party members support McDonnell.
That would suggest a Labour Left of perhaps 15-18,000 (LP membership was 190,000 in 2004 – a fair few less now?).”
And whilst it sounds correct when Bill J says that it is necessary to seek political clarification (agreement?) before organisational unity, that’s never going to work. There is great political division between the revolutionary left e.g. SWP v SP, never mind including the Labour Left. There will be 57 answers to ‘what it means to be a socialist today’ – from reformism to centrism to communism
I support a strategy of calling for a Left of Labour party where all organisations have faction rights but where loyalty to the big party is also obligatory. I’d be a loyal party member of such a body even if the reformists had the majority. But I’d see limits to whom we would let in or at least ensuring they are accountable to the majority – otherwise you would have the situation, as in Berlin, where the actions of the reformist councillors discredit the whole of the Left organisation (can’t remember the name).
The Labour Party hasn’t once turned Left since 1982. I think it very unlikely that even a Bennite-type Left will ever again achieve the influence that it had in that period (and which was both limited and then destroyed). The McDonnell campaign was a very paltry echo of this, didn’t even properly start and was noticeably more to the right. The Labour Left is dead.
Frankly some like Owen and Cllr. Press are never going to see this. It’s not their politics. Time to stop wasting time on sentimental (or careerist) reformists and seek for organisational unity of all Left of Labour parties.
Call a meeting of all Central Committees. Admit we’re going nowhere. Form a joint body.
Or slowly die (like British anarchism).
This is what I posted on Miles’ site … also the post before for context, bloody global capitalism, gets everywhere …
Rodrigo said…
Oi, achei teu blog pelo google tá bem interessante gostei desse post. Quando der dá uma passada pelo meu blog, é sobre camisetas personalizadas, mostra passo a passo como criar uma camiseta personalizada bem maneira. Até mais.
[Ooops the links have gone, sorry ...]
26 May 2007 02:26
Chris Paul said…
Nice one Rodrigo! It is indeed a lovely post you’ve found on google and we will all be right over to buy our persoanlised Tee shirts when Brother Miles has finally recanted.
As Owen said, No! RMT and FBU do not “control” very many voters at all. In fact none. Or are you offering them as a fascist militia to kick the people to the ballot box? They have their own uniforms. What have the CWU ever done to you to be excluded from your plans?
This sort of day dreaming is not all that useful. In the event of PR coming in for Westminster I think there just might be scope for CLPs (not MPs) to form more identifiable blocks within the Labour party and to appear on ballot even using one of the Party’s registed names – rather like the useful Labour-Co-op brand, or the Lib Dem Focus Team – I can imagine Manchester Labour being a hit, and even Labour Campaign or Labour Tribune.
But clearly never standing against one another in a single member seat or in excess of the number of seats in a multi-seat constituency.
But I do doubt that even this milder madness would be tolerable or even electorally sound for a party whose strength is unity and shared aims and principles – even if these are at times (always really) contested.
“Left Labour” would be just that – gone – and the idea of different flavours of Labour contesting the same seats is anathema and would have electorally devastating results.
Get over it. Or go and order some amusing tee shirts and give them to co-conspirators.
How about my Meacher guillotine graphic with your head substituted, perhaps with a jesters twathat or clown make up and the slogan “Divided We Fall”? If you don’t I will. Though not necessarily at Rodrigo’s emporium as it must be ethical threads for such a project and Rodrigo tells fibs.
Southpawpunch: Suppose for a moment your estimate of the Labour Left’s card carrying membership is accurate at say 15,000 isn’t that still ten times bigger than Respect/SWP?
How many votes did the 29 MPs get?
How many votes did all the independent left candidates get put together?
How many votes did the 139 war rebels get?
Even on your own terms your wrong. And if the poll was carried out among self-selected internetees like myself on YouGov this is of course likely to distort the figures downward.
And I think it is fair to say that John draws the definition of the Labour Left more to the left than most other champions would.
4) The only support base these MPs would have would be the swamp of squabbling sects that exists on the fringes of the labour movement.
LOL is that a direct quote from Ted Grant, or adapted for your own purposes?
otherwise you would have the situation, as in Berlin, where the actions of the reformist councillors discredit the whole of the Left organisation (can’t remember the name).
I know that SPP completely expososes his idiocy everytime he takes some time off from PR consultancy and posts here, but the above statement is especialy ludicrous.
The idea that he feels qualified to pass comment on the actions of the PDS in Berlin, without even knowing the name of the organistion, but neverthelss decides that they are “discrediting the whole left” is infantile.
Indeed they are so discredited that they just won 8.4% of the vote in Bremen, winning far left representtaion in a West german regional parliament for the first time ever, they have 53 MPs in the Bundestag, and 70000 members. We should be so discredited.
Frankly some like Owen and Cllr. Press are never going to see this. It’s not their politics. Time to stop wasting time on sentimental (or careerist) reformists and seek for organisational unity of all Left of Labour parties.
Well Susan, that’s certainly told us!
LOL is that a direct quote from Ted Grant, or adapted for your own purposes?
How outrageous. Though given my background I guess it’s hardly surprising that I’m subsconsciously quoting Ted. Sigh.
SouthpawPunch sez:
Call a meeting of all Central Committees. Admit we’re going nowhere. Form a joint body.
Or slowly die (like British anarchism).
Guess which one is more likely? You were in the Socialist Alliance, right, Punchie? It went tits up in short order, and there is now zero chance of it happening again, the second time as even bigger farce than the first time.
You are effectively without a political strategy.
How outrageous. Though given my background I guess it’s hardly surprising that I’m subsconsciously quoting Ted. Sigh.
Your background is as a Grantite? Who knew? I sure didn’t!
Perhaps one should be a little less sneering about “trot microsects” then eh Owen? Particularly those like Socialist Appeal and the AWL that supported J McD’s campaign and which in the AWL’s case, and I’d imagine in the Apples’ as well, made considerable efforts to push it forward.
Comrade chairman and Comrades, as Ted Grant would have said. Seriously, I always thought Ted was a boring old bletherer and used to nip to the bar when he was speaking……only lasted in Militant about six months.
Southpawpunch is absolutely right. I am a sentimental reformist. I am unapolgeticabout that. was proud to be a part of John McDonnell’s “paltry” campaign and so were thousands of others. Sorry, mate. We’re not joining some no-mark sect.We are going to carry on campaigning. Your strategy is a joke, isn’t it ? All power to the Soviets!
Your background is as a Grantite? Who knew? I sure didn’t!
Oi! I’ve never been a card-carrying anything, though my dad was a Militant full-timer for years back in the day. Maybe it’s in the blood.
Perhaps one should be a little less sneering about “trot microsects” then eh Owen? Particularly those like Socialist Appeal and the AWL that supported J McD’s campaign and which in the AWL’s case, and I’d imagine in the Apples’ as well, made considerable efforts to push it forward.
I’m talking about sects which reject the Labour party as an arena of struggle and instead work with other baseless sects in an effort to build a super sect (not “super sex”, as I once put it, sounds much more appealing, I know). That actually doesn’t go for SA or AWL.
Take the Weekly Worker sect – they always strike me as the radical wing of the Liberal Democrats more than anything else. The issues that really get them going are, say, abolition of the monarchy, abolishing drugs laws or the age of consent. They write in a fairly pretentious and inaccessible way. They don’t seem to have any interest in working class issues. They don’t seem to have much time for Marxist analysis either – I remember their bizarre article on Saddam’s execution – entitled “death of a nationalist” which seemed to be a pretty regulation liberal rant about the evils of nationalism rather than any serious attempt to analyse the class basis of Ba’athism. However, my favourite WW front page still has to be (paraphrasing from memory) ‘US ruling class splits over Iraq: but still AWL opposes troops out’ (!!!)
To be honest, those sort of sects seem to be more in the tradition of 1960s/70s post-Marxism than anything else. Post-Marxists abandoned the working class as the vehicle of change and replaced them with oppressed groups – e.g. ethnic minorites, students, etc. Groups like the WW replace the working class with irrelevant sects with no base within the class, hoping that by sticking them all together, they’ll create a new vehicle for revolutionary change.
Probably not going to work, is it?
When I first moved to London long ago, my idiot North West friends and relatives asked, ‘isn’t it dangerous when you go out to clubs and the like?
And I replied, no, it’s a lot worse in small town England. Places like Lefttown.
In London, there’s no history. You’re not going to come across someone who you had a fight with in the bus station a few years ago. There’s no chance that you will meet your Ex’s now b/f who you used to know from the terraces and who is after your blood. There’s also no chance that you will meet those renegades you expelled or have your former Bennite friends pretend that night together ever happened.
You know you’ve got to stop going to those small town clubs. But still you go.
So now you may reckon your chances with Labour Left man or woman, hanging around near the dance floor. But they are only here, most probably temporarily, because the bouncers denied them entry into Gordon’s Wine Bar.
It’s too early to tell whether they will be let back in there later or are permanently excluded but that’s where they want to be. They hate slumming it here with you and whilst they may make conversation, any number you get from them will be fake.
They even tell you to your face ‘We’re not joining in for some no-mark sex’. They wouldn’t if you were God’s Gift, either (a mass Left or even communist party). They’re incurable reformists. Go and chat up someone else.
-
I’d say Left Labour isn’t (at say 15,000) 10x bigger than the non-Labour left. Maybe 6000 in all other organisations. And the average SWP member, for example, works 3x as hard as a LP type. And how Left is the Labour Left that includes cuts-making councillors and where McDonnell’s platform was no more left than Meacher’s?
And sure, there are very few Lefts anywhere, but electoral support isn’t a perfect measure of this, e.g. richer parties have the resources to do better than they would.
And yes, Dave, the end of revolutionary socialism (like the once large Temperance movement) is more likely than John Rees, Peter Taaffe, Alan Clinton et al getting into bed together. The conditions of capitalism will always create a fightback although that doesn’t mean a thinking and organised fightback will exist.
I’ve written a strategy – Organisational unity for starters. Sure, no-one’s listening but how is LP membership a means to a socialist world?
It may feel like onanism at present, being a Red, but maybe some foreign siren – speaking French, Italian or Spanish maybe, – will be along to rescue us Reds if we just hold out.
Like, I mean, properly mad
Yes: he clearly is.
As I’ve said before, one of things I love about being on the far left is how people can conduct disputes in a friendly way and not resort to using childish insults and personal attacks when they encounter an opinion different to their own.
This thread is a perfect example of this. As soon as SouthpawPunch comments people denounce him as an idiot who is mad, and obviously not entitled to an opinion as he works in PR, and rarely engage with his argument.
Really raises my hope for a future society based on the principles of co-operation it does.
Like, really unhinged.
Duncan Cash: As I’ve said before, one of things I love about being on the far left is how people can conduct disputes in a friendly way and not resort to using childish insults and personal attacks when they encounter an opinion different to their own.
Moralistic idiot.
You have to be part of a movement to properly and fully hate the fuckers involved in it.
Live in the real world Duncan and get off your high-horse. If someone expresses and opinion that I think is bollocks I have no fear in telling them so.
But to indulge your bourgeois sensibilities I will try to engage with Southpaw’s argument.
“It may feel like onanism at present, being a Red, but maybe some foreign siren – speaking French, Italian or Spanish maybe, – will be along to rescue us Reds if we just hold out.”
…..
No I just can’t do it.
I’m not sure if the proposed meeting in Bolton is more of the same as someone said.
Unfortunately there haven’t been many such meetings at all- meetings to be as open and inclusive as possible to see how we can fight the politics of Brown, to support rank and file initiatives and possibly including the whole issue of working class political representation.
Owen says there will be a series of meetings of the Labour left. Good. But then he goes on to say they won’t link up with groups outside the LP.
What does he mean by this? Of course as long as you are in the LP it is right and proper to have member only meetings- fair enough. But do you really mean, Owen, that you shouldn’t have public meetings inviting trade unionists and working class campaigners whether or not they’re in the LP? Surely, that is a mistake. Does it mean you won’t encourage Labour lefts to participate in the Bolton meeting and others like it?
I suspect Owen means that Labour lefts will not make organisational approaches to groups outside the Labour party such as the Socialist Party, the CNWP (nearly the same thing), Respect etc. Well if that’s the case then that’s quite understandable- but I would say that it is important to have public meetings in working class communities and to invite trade unionists whether in the LP or not and participate in wider trade union meetings. I think thta is at least part of the way forward and if actually done would not be more of the same- as far as I am aware it has not been done much at all.
Jason
Jason,
Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear – my mistake!
What I meant was that the Labour Left won’t link up organisationally with groups outside the party for fairly obvious reasons
We will continue to hold public meetings open to all – as we have done throughout the John4Leader campaign. There won’t be any retreat to the confines of the existing Labour party. After all, we’re hardly going to win people over if we exclude them!
If the new initiatives of the Labour Left are to be successful, we have to focus on campaigning within trade unions and working-class communities more broadly. Focusing on sending speakers to poorly attended CLP GCs (when most active party members have left) is not going to work.
I hope that clears that up.
Thanks, Owen. That is much clearer and to be fair your original post did say you would work with people in other groups.
Keep us posted and may be send someone to the Bolton meeting, though the date has not been finalised yet (e-mail me on jason2inethiopia@yahoo.co.uk for this, any other info or to give details of any meetings in the north-west or indeed elsewhere)
Cheers
Jason
What I meant by “It may feel like onanism at present, being a Red, but maybe some foreign siren – speaking French, Italian or Spanish maybe, – will be along to rescue us Reds if we just hold out.” was the possibility that revolution or similar, in say Argentina, could come to the rescue of us very isolated British reds.
I thought that would be clear but maybe it wasn’t.
Let’s face it, it certainly hasn’t helped him
Southpawpunch:
No saviour from on high delivers. Remember?
The idea that he feels qualified to pass comment on the actions of the PDS in Berlin, without even knowing the name of the organistion,
Pot Kettle Black in one, Andy. They’ve renamed themselves the “Linkspartei”.
Indeed they are so discredited that they just won 8.4% of the vote in Bremen
“They” in Berlin were the PDS, in Bremen, they were largely the WASG. I’d think a bit more before you click on “post” before going on about how knowledgeable you are compared to everyone else next time, Comrade.
@ Dave,
Yes, the sentiment you mention is correct. I’m not waiting for divine intervention or even a Deus ex machina. I’m saying that we should do what we can.
But we should also be aware that we’re not on our own, boundaries mean nothing to us and one succesful revolution anywhere would have the cachet to shake the 57 UK varieties into 1 (well 2 or 3 probably) – although no-one should just hang around waiting for that.
@ Duncan,
I agree.
@ Sad boy with the multiple names,
It’s called a metaphor. Look it up. Or m-e-t-a-f-o-r as it will be in your dictionary.
@ K-M-S,
I didn’t use the name because I knew it was complex and chnaging at that time. Something like the PDS became the PDS-Left which was merging with the WASG with the WASGs being critical of the PDS cllrs – or something. I know you will know it all.
P.S. I remember I won the Form Prize for doing my project on Karl Marx Stadt (everyone else did Hanover, Cologne etc). I got some great stuff from the DDR on a local ‘petrified’ forest and the Scloss. My German master confiscated the embassy literature as ‘propaganda’.
Punchie, I don’t have any objection whatsoever to you not having remembered the PDS/WASG/Linkspartei’s name. As you might have noticed (“Pot Kettle Black in one, Andy.”), I was replying to Andy’s comment, lecturing you on your supposed ignorance, while not being particuarly informed himself.
Incidentally, I had some (really politically terrible) stuff covering my German books – GDR “election” posters, I think. But they contained a reasonable amount of GDR propaganda photographs themselves – including Karl-Marx-Stadt’s Stadthalle, where the colours looked severely touched-up, like the postcards you could still get in county towns up to the mid-1980s.
@ KMS
Sure, yes I got that about the name – I should have been clearer.
Yes, I have a great photo of Stockport Merseyway Bus Station on my wall. Published in the 70s but ‘colorized’ with a few cars with running boards in the background.
You may not know but someone turned these shots into a bestseller or two in Britain, ‘Boring postcards’ or something. Lots of shots of Milton Keynes roundabouts in the 70s and the like.
On a serious note, I hope you will publish something on the Linkspartei on your new blog sometime. It would be interesting to hear what they are like in practice but also I suspect that it will be very relevant to this discussion.
As I understand it from the (former) West Germany area, a substantial body of support split away from the mighty SPD to form the WASG.
Something that is ‘impossible’ according to posts above although I think that proportional representation (as in Scotland) is a key factor and should be one of our most foremost demands.
Karlmarxstrasse
I am mystified by the point you are making.
I read the die linke web site regularly, and both Lafontaine and Gysi stressed that the electoral victory in bremen was related to the unification process of the two parties.
SPPunch did not say he was unsure what name the new party had at this juncture as it stands on the cusp of unifictaion, he said he could not remember what it was called.
In fact the PDS still exists and only last weekend completed its ratification vote of the unification process with the WASG, and the red red coalition in berlin is with PDS-die Linke, not with the WASG, who stood against the PDS in last years election (due to F*ck wit sectarianism).
Punchy was refering to the activity of this red-red coalition in berlin, and presumebaly the controversy about the privatisation of the Sparkasse. He further claimed that the PDS councillors had discredited the whole project – furthermore implying that the unification should not be taking place, becasue any regroupment had to be careful “who it let in”.
In fact Lafontane has made quite clear that in his view the linke should leave the Berlin coalition if privatisation goes ahead. This is clearly an area of some friction, as with the dessau declaration the PDS fraction leaders have spelt out their syupport for what we knew in England as the “dented shield” strategy instead – better to keep power and minimise the impact of the right’s attacks.
The fact that the new emerging unified party is able to have a democratic debate within a single organistaion over strategic issues does not discredit them, it is to their credit.
I still stand by the factt that SPPunch’s comments are ill informed, and KMStrasse is simply blowing smoke to obscure the real issues.
Southpawpunch,
Please, please tell me that you’re not a Stopfordian?
Owen
(Stockers and proud)
Blowing smoke? I’ve got a fuck-off smoke machine somewhere. Hang on, I lent it to you, Andy. Can I have it back sometime please?
I’m pleased to see you read the “PDS.Linkspartei”‘s website and are therefore so well informed as to Gysi’s and Lafontaine’s press releases. For the same reason, I presume you get all your infos about the goings-on in the Labour Party from the LP website, and what goes on in the SWP is always included in Socialist Worker? No? How come?
And Lafontaine’s position is not quite as simple as you make it out to be. He said something along those lines once – during an election campaign elsewhere, I believe – but he’s gone back on them since. When you refer to “privatisation”, you mean the privatisation of the state-owned bank, the Berliner Sparkasse, as used by about 52% of Berliners. What about the privatisation of the water authorities and most of the (now ex-)public housing in the city? Not a mumble about that. Some use, that Lafontaine.
And I have to agree with Punchy on the fact that the senators – not councillors – have discredited their own party. Not just in Berlin, but in Dresden, and in Mecklenburg too. Why do you think the WASG and their forerunners were formed, as opposed to their founders just joining the PDS? The PDS leadership must have a constant smirk on their faces.
I hope you will publish something on the Linkspartei on your new blog sometime.
I sure will. My WASG membership will be transferred to it in a few weeks.