I used to visit rural east Yorkshire regularly back in the early 1990s, but only because I then had a girlfriend whose dad owned half of it. Unless things have changed dramatically in the intervening years, there can be few spots on the planet less propitious for the propagation of the Trotskyist weltanschaaung.
Nevertheless, I have already argued on this blog that the far left should mount a challenge in next week’s Haltemprice and Howden by-election, rather than letting pro-death penalty Conservative David Davis get away with presenting himself as a principled civil libertarian.
I think highly of both Tony Benn and Bob Marshall-Andrews, who will be campaigning for DD. But it is tactically disastrous for the Labour left to lend moral support to the Tory right, in any and all circumstances.
Meanwhile, the obvious inability of either Respect or the Socialist Workers’ Party/Left List to intervene rather underlines the pretentiousness of their claims to be serious political actors.
Well, the list of contenders has just been published; after considering the claims of the 26 hopefuls, this blog formally endorses the Socialist Equality Party, British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
Who? Well, for the non-initiated, SEP are one of the splinters of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, possibly the biggest Trot group in Britain until it expelled its leader Gerry Healy in 1985 and split into at least nine fragments. Ask them their policy on any question, however complex, and it always reduces itself to ‘build the revolutionary party’.
Candidate Chris Talbot – pictured - is fresh from heading the list that triumphantly finished 18th out of the 18 parties that stood in the Welsh Assembly contest last year, securing 292 votes across the principality on a platform that even the most ultraleftist of my comments box regulars would surely find strong stuff.
It’s not a programme likely go down well with the good gentlemen farmers of the target constituency, who are not known for receptivity to the message of revolutionary Marxism. If the world revolution ever does kick off, I’d hazard a guess that it won’t be in Haltemprice and Howden.
Talbot will be extremely lucky if the number of voters willing to put a cross by his name in the seat reaches three figures. SEP will lose its deposit and finish behind the fascists, of course; but then hey, so did Labour in Henley.
In leftist theory, Talbot is engaged in is what is referred to as a ‘propaganda candidacy’; the idea is not to win, but to take advantage of the publicity opportunities offered by the heightened political interest around the by-election to raise the profile of the revolutionary party, and even to win members.
Very rarely, it even works. Geekier sections of the far left still get excited at the mere mention of the Neath by-election of 1945, where Jock Haston came third with 1,781 votes and gave the Revolutionary Communist Party an enduring foothold in South Wales.
Aficionados prefer to forget such cock-ups as Birmingham Stetchford in 1977, notable in Trot history for seeing Brian Heron of the International Marxist Group beat Paul Foot of the Socialist Workers’ Party by 494 votes to 377.
Nevertheless, some of the other runners make SEP look almost sensible. Lord Biro, who is standing in the Church of the Militant Elvis Party interest, does issue a formally correct call for the overthrow of the capitalist state, although sadly I suspect he is actually a reformist on other questions.
Mad Cow-Girl rules herself out of consideration by clearly being on the right of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Easy on the eye though Gemma Garrett of the Miss Great Britain Party indubitably is – she’s certainly got a popular front, know what I mean, fellas? – she does not strike one as the kind of gal who would be up for extended discussion of the class nature of the degenerate/deformed workers’ states.
It is to SEP’s credit that they are prepared to put in the work needed to argue for socialism – albeit of the fruitloop brand – in unpromising territory, in a by-election where the array of joke candidates underlines the devaluation of parliamentary democracy in recent decades.
They may be seriously mad, but at least they are serious, and they are clearly opposed to 42-day detention from the left. If I were on the electoral register in Haltemprice, they would get my vote.
Posted at 13:45, 3 July 2008
Comments (39)
What about the Greens? You may not agree with all their politics but at least they're on the correct side of the civil liberties argument without being David Davis, and they've got a chance of keeping their deposit unlike the Trot lot.
I was in the West Midlands at the time of the Stechford by-election, and a member of the IMG. We were all told to go there, and we covered the pavements with sellers of the enduring ltierary propaganda masterpiece, Red Weekly (where is that punning wit on the left today?). My enduring memory of the by-election is hearing a supercilious toff, Paul Foot, braying from a loud-speaker saddled on the top of a van. They drove past us a number of times I think.
Those who know the history of this one will recall that the reason why the SWP stood was to destroy the IMG's 'Socialist Unity' (alliance with some even smaller lefty groups) project.
How times change.
My memory of easy Yorkshire is as the place to try and buy some nourishment before reaching LPYS conference in Bridlington where all there was to eat was chips and vitriol to drink.
The article contains a pretty schizophrenic argument - they are mad but I would vote for them. But then reasoning that looks to be based on - they will do poorly so must be fruitloops - would certainly be described by any Trot as showing opportunist thinking.
If you want a lesson in apolitical dross just look at the Green candidate's website - http://shanoakes.blogspot.com - just what does she stand for?
And if you want a good example of politics - reporting, debating and organising - look at the international website associated with the SEP - www.wsws.org. I recommend their daily news email.
The WRP certainly were a lot smaller than Militant in 1985 and possibly many others, such as the SWP.
A lot smaller in no part because of their wrong politics - 'organise a General Strike' was the stock response to most things.
They'd certainly get my vote next week but I'd just be worried about the company I would be keeping.
Dave,
Whilst I sort of agree with your point in castigating Respect / Left List for not standing, except for the bleeding obvious fact that either or both would get well and truly trashed. Since May 1, it's been obvious that neither project is viable and so their decision to abstain from the bye election is neither here nor there. Anyway I digress...
Aren't you suffering from the mother of all moat and beam syndromes?
What about your party? Don't the Labour party have pretensions to being a national party?
Was Trotsky opposed to the death penalty then? Somehow I hadn't noticed.
"They'd certainly get my vote next week but I'd just be worried about the company I would be keeping."
So the South Paw Punch Party (leader : Punchie, membership: 1) didn't want to stand?
No, not fruitloop because small. Plenty of smaller Trot groups are (relatively)sane.
Just barking 'revolution round the corner' mad, by Healyite DNA.
Oh, and everyone else on the left - you included, I suspect - is denounced as 'middle class radicals' or even Pabloites.
Surely not even you thinks these guys are sane?
As risible as I find the SEPtics, if I lived in Haltemprice and Howden they'd get my vote too, and maybe my support if I didn't have anything better to do. They may be the fringe of the fringe, but at least their intervention means the socialist label will get an airing in an election of national prominence.
Linda Kronstadt! Brilliant. I thought the Swappies and MIGs had a go in Stechford because it was a high profile by-election at the time (and the NF were standing). Stechford was a different proposition than H&H - it was a run-down working class area. The fact that two far left candidates stood in the same place is sadly not unusual (even less so now)
When I occasionally used to read the WRP's press in the mid-late 1990s, their weekly "youth" rag, the "Young Socialist" (complete with all the telly and photos of the YS football league, discos, and graffiti, and the odd, out of place stuff about Libya and Iraq...hm, why could that have been included?) used to have a short-ish column written under the nom de plume (ahem) of "Lord Biro".
Is this the same Lord Biro standing in the election? That could explain both the SEP's candidature, and also the Church of the Miliant Elvis (Fourth Internationalist) Party's line on the state.
Anyway, I'm sure the many readers of this site who do have a vote will thank Dave for the advice. Who should they vote for?
The SEP; or Davis, or a supply teacher, or a resident of Bedale (North Yorks), or a UKIP man, or a fascist, or someone using the party name first used by Mosely, or someone from the 'Freedom Association', or another far-rightist, or an evangelical Christian ('far-right' I assume), or another 'Christian campaigner'; or David Icke; or the Green candidate; or Miss Great Britain; or Jill Saward, for whom 42 days doesn't go far enough; or one of the other single/no-issue "fruitloops" who are standing for no clear reason apart from too much money in the bank and slight self-publicity in their local weekly paper.
It was hardly a difficult decision, was it, Dave?
And: SPP, why aren't you standing? Over at your blog at southpawpunch.blogspot.com/2007/10/post.html there seems to be some connection between you and Yorkshire. And Haltemprice is part of the Borough of East Riding, according to the BBC. You would have got my vote.
I see that a "Solomon ("Simon") Punt" described as a "Respect supporter, Hoyland Nether (West Riding)" has signed the SWP's "An Appeal to Respect Members". ..."Solomon Punt" - that's a nom-de-plume my Facebook account ...
Are you running the SEP's campaign?
Stroppy, I've just appointed DZ as Deputy Party Leader - so with 100% growth in just the two hours since you wrote we should be the gov by Xmas.
I've no connection with Yorks, I was born in Lancs. The entry related to an unusually named SWP supporter there who I didn't want to be mistaken with.
And I'm not running the SEP campaign not least as they told me, outside the Mile End cinema being used for an early Respect meeting, that I wasn't any sort of 'revolutionary socialist'.
I appreciate that Labour Party members may find hardcore communist politics a joke, make them cringe a little, but it's interesting how they still would vote for such far Left politics.
But it's not so surprising to me that it would attract some who may feel sometimes uneasy about their Labour politics.
I was interested to read on WSWS (the website of the SEP) today that Australian troops are apparently being deployed against strikers in the Solomon Islands - http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/solo-j03.shtml
The ins and outs of Compass on myopic Labour blogs such as this or anti-colonial rebellion in the Pacific? I know what interests me, and I'm sure many other Lefts, more.
The lesson for me about the SEP candidacy is why did the Socialist Alliance, Left List and other formulations mess around with very wet Leftish politics to only to get 0.68% of the vote when you can tell the truth (sort of) and will probably get about the same electoral support in east Yorks - but that’s including ballot papers that you may want to hold with tongs considering the politics of those who have filled then in.
"And I'm not running the SEP campaign not least as they told me, outside the Mile End cinema being used for an early Respect meeting, that I wasn't any sort of 'revolutionary socialist'. "
How dare they, don't they know who you are?? The only true revolutionary. I hope they have been added to your extremely long list of wussy socialists to shoot come the revolution.
"Chris Talbot is fresh from heading the list that triumphantly finished 18th out of the 18 parties that stood in the Welsh Assembly contest last year, securing 292 votes across the principality."
That kind of says it all, really.
You're favouring a candidate like Talbot simply because he's far left, not because he's local or a prominent candidate (like Shan Oakes who is no. #2 on the Yorkshire and Humber list for the Green Party for next year's Euro-elections), or because the SEP has taken a nationally-noticed position (the Green Party's ongoing national and international opposition to ID cards, biometric data for border control, and detention without charge).
The idea that the SEP is more of an option than the Greens is probably the most sectarian thing I've seen on this blog.
Why waste your vote by giving it to SEP? These people are complete dinosaurs. Vote for the green candidate, she's a principled civil libertarian.
Mike777
Green Socialism @ Red Pepper
http://forums.redpepper.org.uk/
Ahh blesstheir cotton socks - how sweet
I appreciate that members of that Bown party members see all Trots as but madmen out on leave. But if you are a Labour ‘Left’ still, even through the fug of your politics, can you just not see that there is no echo at all from the witterings of the Green but at least a faint retort in the propaganda of the SEP - with their talk of jobs, education, antiwar and more.
I’d do my usual castigation of the Green candidate but there so little political on her site - all pub crawls and fetes. It all reads like the diary often written by the vicar in his parish magazine for his inbred rural parishoners.
I can but presume she will have some of the same politics as the Green mayoral candidate in London - a smattering of progressive measures (e.g. votes at 16) mixed with lots of green business friendly promises (see the Ecologist mag for a good snapshot, via the ads, of this nascent wing of capitalism, all taking more than a leaf from the PR route to mega wealth followed by Richard Branson, the hippy ant-establishment guy; Anita Roddick, the green and concerned businesswoman and more - all who rose through the wallets of gullible Guardian types. Carbon offset futures trading anyone?).
She may well also follow the London Green candidate with some frankly reactionary and truly fruitloop - like the industrial revolution never happened - ideas e.g. generate your own power - which would be incredibly inefficient and so, of course, fantastically expensive.
And how is not the Green vote also a 'wasted' vote, the definition of same usually being a vote for a party that stands little chance of being elected?
Stroppy,
I’ve now received a third expression of interest in the Southpawpunch party. The message was cleverly disguised as some Canadian pharmacy spam but clearly it was just rendered like that to get past any boss checking emails.
If we maintain that rate of growth - 300% a day - we will have more members than the population of China, by this time next year.
But even with those numbers it will only be sensible tactics to leave people like the SEP alone for now - it’s after the revolution that we eat our own children - but Labour types like you may want to choose a suitable headstone sharpish.
Bunch of time-wasters.
Back to the SEP. I would find it very hard to vote for them. Their international web-site, World Socialist Web Site, is mixed. Some good material, but plenty, and I mean plenty, of off-the-wall attacks on other groups. For some reason which escapes me, they seem to consider the term 'Pabloite' an insult!
As for the Greens: yuk yuk yuk. I am having my own personal war with them locally (re: slug and snail pellets), and since they side with the class enemy here (slugs and snails) I imagine their class position in the North is the same.
Well said, Coatesy. Like you we've got no illusions in the Greens either, here in Devon. They're a traditional touchy feely environmental pressure group who stopped camapigning against the war the day it kicked off. When I say campaigned, I mean pitched a tent in the town square, lit some candles and declared it a peace vigil. Support for anything of importance to the working class? You must be joking. Oh, and of course, the sinister undercurrent, tributes to that scumbag Henry Williamson and books about overpopulation. Scratch some greens, you'll find a fascist underneath.
As a fairly prominent Green Party member who went to court for breaking into a USAF base and physically stopping B52s taking off, I find the generalisations being bandied around here about GP involvement with the anti-war movement a bit hard to take.
Also, if you can find people who are members of the Green Party, now, who are 'fascists' after a little scratching, please let me know who they are.
Of course, if you are engaging in a bit of sophistry and making the Green Party responsible for anything that anyone who describes themselves as a 'green' has ever said, then thats different....
Matt
Also, if you can find people who are members of the Green Party, now, who are 'fascists' after a little scratching, please let me know who they are.
A significant proportion of those who founded the Greens' most successful party, i.e. the German Greens, were unquestionably from the far-right. I'm sure a few of them are still around somewhere.
I'd personally prefer unity rather than bitchiness, when it comes to standing against the Tories but as you asked:
"Also, if you can find people who are members of the Green Party, now, who are 'fascists' after a little scratching, please let me know who they are."
well, there was Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom?
no doubt you'll remember him? Holocaust denial, 9/11 crank?
I assume that his membership has lapsed?
Here he is: "You inform your readers that I’m some kind of neo-Nazi: sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t happen ever to have been interested in them, and my political track-record (which you can check) is the Green Party, CND and Respect, that’s all. "
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/2014#comment-11826
more on Kollerstrom
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/06/13/the-anti-bbc-whingers/
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/2014
and he's on PressTV as well, doing a holocaust denying gig there too
I'd personally prefer unity rather than bitchiness, when it comes to standing against the Tories but as you asked:
"Also, if you can find people who are members of the Green Party, now, who are 'fascists' after a little scratching, please let me know who they are."
well, there was Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom?
no doubt you'll remember him? Holocaust denial, 9/11 crank?
I assume that his membership has lapsed?
Here he is: "You inform your readers that I’m some kind of neo-Nazi: sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t happen ever to have been interested in them, and my political track-record (which you can check) is the Green Party, CND and Respect, that’s all. "
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/2014#comment-11826
more on Kollerstrom
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/06/13/the-anti-bbc-whingers/
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/2014
and he's on PressTV as well, doing a holocaust denying gig there too, still I'll bet he's an expert at re-cycling!
more on Kollerstrom
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/06/13/the-anti-bbc-whingers/
and Kollerstrom's on PressTV as well, doing a holocaust denying gig there too, still I'll bet he's an expert at re-cycling!
He's also not a member of the Green Party.
But don't let pesky facts get in your way, or anything.
As far as I'm aware, the only interaction he's ever had with the Green Party was nominating a local election candidate at some point a few years ago - and unless you are suggesting that we vet every single person who nominates a Green Party candidate (well over 20,000 people in some years), I don't think the entire Party can be condemned for that.
Matt
P.S. It should be noted that I am the first to acknowledge that the Green Party has its flaws and problems. I just get really irritated by the complete blanket dismissal of Greens, especially given that if one judged the far-left by some of the people who have been involved in it over the last few decades, we'd all be damned by association many times over.
As you'd imagine, people in the Green Party had a discussion about this when it came out that he was claiming to be a member. I've just dug it out. He has, according to all databases, never been a member of the Green Party. His only involvement appears to have been signing that nomination form in Camden.
Obviously I can't say for certain, but I doubt very much that when asking for nomations, our candidate asked 'oh, by the way, whats your view on 9/11, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories'...
Matt
"But don't let pesky facts get in your way, or anything."
Matt, you asked a very pointed question, you got an answer, so now don't complain about the results
you'll notice I didn't say he was a member of the Green party?? did you read what I wrote?
I led to expect better from the Green party people, less adversarial politics? or was that just a dream?
I am glad that he was never a Green and I'm sure we would willingly take your word for it, if you didn't come over as so arrogant and overbearing?
but there you have it, that's politicos for you (or is that public school indoctrination coming thru? it is so hard to tell the difference nowadays) :)
@Matt,
Fair play to you for "breaking into a USAF base and physically stopping B52s". Maybe the rest of your own personal politics are as good but that isn't the case for your party.
A correct Left party (of course, many Left parties don't do as they should) is solely geared around one aim - replacing capitalism with socialism - and analyses all questions through such a prism e.g. climate change - is the science good or just huckerstering by a group of capitalists; if we are to oppose it do we think private enterprise will deliver what is needed; what will the effects be on the rich versus the poor; will competition or co-operation and planning best solve technological issues.
The Greens, being a cross class alliance, miss this trick - anyone who can help climate change is promoted by them. They don't care whether you do it make a profit or for the public good so whilst some of it may work it just continues the unequal capitalist system with those rich most likely to ameliorate the effects of warming whilst also increasing their share of wealth (and the impoverishment of others into the bargain).
As a small example, domestic waste recycling is a good example of how non socialist policies may contribute to good policy objectives but also exacerbate class inequality.
Middle class families with cars to visit recycling centres and sufficient space to have different coloured recycling boxes in the house are not going to suffer the deterioration in quality of life that having smelly boxes in your flat for now two weekly collections mean as councils cynically use 'green' criteria to cut collections (like my energy provider writing to tell me they will be charging a £1 per paper statement from now on - not to increase their profits, of course, but to 'help the environment' ).
I’d suggest to you, if you are other actions are as commendable, then you would feel a lot more at home in a Left party than with the basically apolitical, slightly socially concerned Green candidate in the east Yorks.
SPP writeth: ``The ins and outs of Compass on myopic Labour blogs such as this or anti-colonial rebellion in the Pacific?''
Hm... So the grass is greener on the other side of fence. Maybe so in the comparison made. Are you proposing a demo or perhaps a sit-in at the embassy of the colonial power in question?
Dave;
I'm assuming either that you're joking, or that you brought back something pretty special from your last jaunt abroad. To go from near-as-dammit automatic support for Labour to endorsing some swivel-eyed Northite is pretty... umm... spectacular, shall we say! ;)
Personally I'd vote Green if I was in H & H. The candidate seems quite politically sparky and they're the best option on offer as a party.
"I assume that his membership has lapsed?"
"you'll notice I didn't say he was a member of the Green party?? did you read what I wrote?"
*scratches head*
Apologies for its length but these are essential extracts from the much admired Tendance Coatesite International's analysis of the Greens:
From the Green left, Derek Wall (Babylon and Beyond. 2005), offers a more developed economic programme. He is for “the rejection of exchange values” to reduce consumption and alienation.” (P 177) He considers that “markets can be embedded in society and state provision decentralised” (P 188) In line with the Green tendency to paint pictures of an ideal world Wall asserts, “While state provision can be humanised and markets tamed by the social, the more fundamental task requires that both the state and the market are rolled back. The commons provides an important alternative to both.”(P 183 – 4) Finally there is a vague call for a self-managed society, “individuals should control the process by which they produce goods and services.” (P 146)
No doubt this has been said before. But nobody, least of all a political party, can choose to ‘reject’ exchange values: capitalism cannot be overcome by asserting that ‘use’ is the guiding principle of the economy. One of the strengths of Marxism is its analysis of how the present economic system produces a range of real contradictions. Between those who create of goods to be used and those who benefit from the surplus wealth they produce. There is a gulf here that no amount of participative democracy, can reconcile. It is hard to see how Wall intends that. Corporations can be controlled, regulated, and embedded to sleep peacefully without the successful conclusion of a conflict over the very root of their power: divesting them of their property... Or does Wall intend to draw up a list of real use-values, which would be used to guide the economy, by decree. The only force that could impose ‘real’ needs has to arise form the economy itself, from the class struggle. That is the agent of change to Marxism, not a force for co-operative harmony, but one that divests the capitalists of their power and property. This is not about increasing the ‘productive forces’ but changing the social relations of production. .
These are, obviously, questions of a over-arching goal. What of the present? The principles of the Green Party lay down extremely ambiguous foundations for their day-to-day politics. The dream is that: all decent people can agree on freedom, equity (notably not the absent equality), saving the environment, and the planet. It is only dark forces, multinationals, states and military blocs, malevolent individuals that prevent them from realising their goals. It seems that conflict itself, the agonistic heart of politics, is at fault. This is not without effects. Anyone who has contact with Greens realises that their culture is marked by an aversion for clashes. We may wish that the aggressive wild things that pullulate on the far-left would end up in the nearest ditch, but is stultifying harmony preferable?
modernity,
I apologise if I came off as either arrogant, or overbearing. That, I daresay, is a response to many many online comments such as these ones. Comments which don't address the real and present weaknesses of the Green Party project (of which there are many!) and instead make sweeping generalisations about all Greens, accuse people of being fascists, and so on. I don't think that such stuff is likely to bring a reasoned response!
However, having said that, the responses after my comments are much more pertinent, so thank you for engaging.
My basic position is this - I am on the left, I believe in internal democracy in political parties, and my politics are basically libertarian communist. The options available to me are all either completely irrelevant to peoples everyday lives, massively centralised, or (very often) both. This is in no way attractive. I have chosen to join the Green Party because it has the internal democratic space for me to make strong left arguments and *actually influence elected politicians to the Left*. Indeed, for four years in Oxford it enabled me to *become* an elected politician and make left-wing arguments...instead of spending that time embroiled in the latest left wing bunfight, the collapse of the RESPECT project, or the left-wing tomb that is the Labour Party.
I don't claim that the Green Party is perfect. There are a number of things I would like to change about it. However, the key for me is that I actually, if I persuade enough people of my case and enough leftists join from outside, have the power to make those changes. Sheer luxury compared to most of the Left!
So thats my reasoning, anyway. It's the reasoning of quite a few people within the Party, so please please please don't generalise *all* of us as lifestylist hippies who wouldn't know left politics if it hit us in the face with a kipper...
All the best,
Matt
The Tories and Labour have come so close to being one party, why not go the whole hog and become one party I doubt we will notice the difference.
Matt, I thought you had gone to to the U.S?
Matt,
well, thank you for your apology, I was partly jesting in my comments which doesn't come over in a textural environment.
I shall keep an eye on the Greens for the future
however, if I wanted to wind up you I'd refer you to this http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2571 but I won't!
frenetic,
Change in circumstances - I am living in Lewisham now. Slightly less glamorous than California, some might argue...
Matt