Harry Paterson is a socialist activist from Nottingham where he has spent his political life. His first book, an excellent history of the 1984-5 miners' strike in Nottinghamshire, Look Back In Anger was published this summer. You can follow Harry on Twitter here
- Do you regularly read blogs? If so, which ones?
I do. Yes. Your own, of course. Richard Seymour’s, too. I dip in and out of the hilariously-named Socialist Unity from time-to-time. Although far less frequently than I once did.
I used to be a big fan of David Osler’s blog before he shut it down. He’s a good mate is Dave, despite us being about as far from each other politically as it’s possible to be – while both occupying the space known as the far left. He’s a thought-provoking and skilled writer.
I’m reading a lot of Scottish indy-oriented blogs, currently. There’s an energy and passion in the country, at the moment. Huge swathes of working class people engaged in and energised by politics as a result of the independence question and that’s reflected in some great blogs.
I’m an addict of Mick Wall’s blog as well. For those who don’t know, Mick’s a music journalist, broadcaster and author. One of the biggest names in that particular world, as it happens. He’s also a close personal friend and he often makes heavy use of allegory and metaphor in his blog entries. I have a lot of fun deciphering those and working out to what and whom he’s really referring. If at all! Where Mick’s concerned Freud’s famous maxim is often very apposite; sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.
I’m also an avid follower of a number of columnists; Matthew Norman at The Independent is a huge favourite of mine. One can say what one likes about his politics – and I often do – but as master of the language there are few better.
Seamus Milne is another. Seumas brings out the fanboy in me and I was truly humbled and honoured that he was so supportive of my book and rated it so highly.
Owen Jones would be another. Again, politically he and I are poles apart on many questions but I kind of think of Owen as ‘one of us’, you know? Despite his frequently awful wishy-washy old Labour liberalism, I take an odd kind of avuncular pride in his success. Seeing one of the original UKLNers graduating to his current status – heir apparent to Tony Benn – always makes me smile.
- You write quite a bit at The Sabotage Times. Have you been tempted to strike out on your own blog-wise?
Well, I’ve had my own site for quite a while but a constant stream of technical problems has meant keeping a regular online presence has been difficult. I’m currently \here where I write about politics, music, culture, life and anything else that takes my fancy.
- Do you find social media useful for activist-y-type things?
Aye, very much so. I’ve mentioned UKLN already but that was an eye-opener for me. It really was ground-breaking. These days, I don’t see how any political activist can function effectively without social media. Facebook, for all the slagging it gets, is an invaluable resource for networking, keeping current and exchanging information and ideas. I have furious and thought-provoking exchanges on my own wall almost every day. Ditto, Twitter; although for someone like me keeping things to just 140 characters is a challenge I feel I’ve yet to meet successfully! Of course the danger with these things is that they can be a substitute for effective engagement in politics; there’s still no worthwhile alternative to getting into the real world and interacting with real people.
- Who are your biggest intellectual influences?
I’d say Lenin would be number one, although I’m no slavish devotee. I thought Rosa Luxemburg, for example, taught the old man a couple of very worthwhile things.
- What are you reading at the moment?
I usually have three books on the go at any one time. Usually a non-fiction work, a crime thriller and something a bit more obviously literary.
Currently, I’m doing Blumenthal’s Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, the latest Jack Reacher thriller from Lee Child and I’m seriously enjoying Gorky Park, which a friend gifted me, recently.
- What was the last film you saw?
An awful Brit gangster ‘thriller’ called St. George’s Day. These days, despite previously being a very passionate lover of cinema, I find TV is where the real kicks are at. I think since The Sopranos broke the mould and showed what could really be done with the medium, it’s revealed mainstream cinema to be tired, dull and formulaic. Breaking Bad, Damages, The Shield, The Wire, Spacey’s rejig of House of Cards, Mad Men and countless others, have taken TV into entirely new areas. I’m definitely much more a TV man, these days. The 70s were mainstream cinema’s golden era. TV rules now.
- Do you have a favourite novel?
There isn’t a hope in Hell I could pick just one. Not a chance. Some of my favourites, which I’ve read and re-read countless times over the years, would include: The Picture of Dorian Grey, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Brideshead Revisited, Animal Farm, Stan Barstow’s Vic Brown trilogy and more contemporary fare like IG Broat’s The Master Mechanic, Nelson DeMille’s Spencerville and Marcel Montecino’s The Cross Killer and Big Time. And anything by Ian Rankin, James Joyce and Brendan Behan and the other great Irish writers; I’ve very wide-ranging and eclectic tastes with a serious weakness for crime fiction.
- Can you name an idea or an issue on which you've changed your mind?
That’s a great question! So few of us do change our minds, or if we do we certainly don’t admit to it. And there’s half the problem with the appalling Brit left right there.
Yes, I can think of at least three areas here; Scottish independence, over a ten year period or so, has seen me swing from opposing it to positively and openly supporting it.
Feminism, too, once saw me dismissing all of it as a ‘petit bourgeois deviation’ or a ‘distraction from the class struggle’ – like any good Brit Trot white man should – to realising it’s an incredibly diverse and wide-ranging field. It’s the jazz of politics, really. Some of it is groundbreaking and worthwhile and should be taken very seriously. That took me to intersectionality and while I wouldn’t claim to be entirely convinced by all it yet, I feel these things have enriched my thinking and my politics. Let’s face it; women’s oppression is something generations of men have only ever paid lip service to. If they even went that far. Look at the current celebrity abuse scandals and then on the left we’ve had Gerry Healy, the Sheridan mess and the SWP debacle and it’s clear we have a long way still to go on these questions.
Finally, Dave Osler quipped that I’m the only Trot he knows who moved to Stalinism after the fall of Stalinism. It’s typically amusing nonsense of Dave’s but it does make a serious point. Despite my education and training in the Trot tradition, I’ve ditched a lot of it, these days. Similarly, it’s been a long time since I was able to pretend that the USSR was a historical crime or the grotesque aberration devoid of all moral, social or political worth that the likes of the AWL et al, would have us believe.
I think there are a lot of Brit left political compasses that are still in need of resetting. Socialists should stand with the oppressed and as a very simple rule of thumb you’d think that would be a sound foundation on which to base your politics. Sadly, much of the left can’t seem to manage it. All this so called third camp bollocks and the like ends up objectively depositing its supporters into the camp of pro-imperialism. Just look at the AWL and Israel/Palestine. Beyond dreadful, frankly.
- How many political organisations have you been a member of?
Labour, Militant Tendency (then the rebrandings; Militant Labour, Socialist Party), plus a sort of affiliation to/with the CPGB for a bit.
I’m currently a member of Left Unity, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition.
I’m probably closest to the RCG/FRFI mob, politically, and they get a sub from me, but I’m not a member; they have no presence in my area.
- What set of ideas do you think most important to disseminate?
That we can be our own agents for change. All history is the history of the working class or its ancestors. We make history, we change history and we can shape the future. We need to destroy the idea we’re merely the passive recipients of whatever ‘great men’ – it’s always bloody men – decide to do.
- What set of ideas do you think most important to combat?
Apart from the obvious – racism, sexism etc – the one that really sets me off is the justification for the greed, cruelty and inequality of capitalism as being somehow an intrinsic part of ‘human nature’ so, therefore, this is as good as it gets. We can aspire, as a species, to nothing better because we’re ‘naturally’ greedy and ‘naturally’ power-hungry. It really is such infuriating bollocks.
- Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major influence on how you think about the world?
Absolutely. Lenin’s State and Revolution was seismic in its impact on my eighteen year-old, post-miners’ strike self. That’s the big one for me, right there.
There are others, of course, but they came later.
- Who are your political heroes?
Lenin, Arthur Scargill and Rosa Luxemburg are the obvious ones who spring to mind. Also, despite differences with their respective politics, I’ve got a lot of admiration for the moral integrity and sheer unbreakable guts of Nelson Mandela and Bobby Sands.
- How about political villains?
Thatcher’s the obvious one for my generation. Ariel Sharon and then Netanyahu would complete the Unholy Trinity. Pitiless monsters, all three of them. But it’s a long list. Tony Blair, both the GWBs, Pinochet, Hitler, the Bullingdon mafia, Ian fecking Paisley and so on and so forth. International class traitor Gorbachev and the worm Kinnock never fail to arouse my ire, too.
- What do you think is the most pressing political task of the day?
Actually getting people engaged and involved in politics in the first place. Has there ever been a period when so many were so alienated, disconnected and actively turned-off?
- If you could affect a major policy change, what would it be?
If I could only have one, I’d be very tempted to introduce a Leninist maximum wage. Or the complete abolition of the monarchy. Banning, outright, zero-hours contracts would be cool, too.
- What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world?
The USA and Israel tie for top spot.
- What would be your most important piece of advice about life?
Feed your family before you buy your whisky, always tell people how you feel about them; both your loved ones and your enemies, always stand your round and never, ever cross a picket line.
- What is your favourite song?
Like picking a fave novel, this is impossible to answer! I’m a music fanatic, have about 2000 albums and listen to music every, single day of my life. Just one song? Jesus! Off the top of my head just three of my faves would be A Town Called Malice by The Jam, Strange Fruit by Billy Holiday and Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd.
- Do you have a favourite video game?
Never been big into the gaming, as it happens. Although my wife and I had an intense spell twenty-odd years ago now where Streets of Rage 2 and Speedball 2 on the old Sega Megadrive were ridiculously compelling.
- What do you consider the most important personal quality?
Saying what you mean and meaning what you say.
- What personal fault do you most dislike?
Treachery, cowardice and/or greed.
- What, if anything, do you worry about?
The future for my kids. OK, they aren’t scaling chimneys, being forcibly conscripted into African militias or ending up raped and trafficked by monsters but there’s never been a period in my lifetime when prospects for young people have been so bleak.
- And any pet peeves?
Millions. I’m a perennially angry and cantankerous auld bastard. Bad manners, messy eating, finishing food or drink and leaving the empty containers in the fridge, ‘drivers’ who stare blankly at each other at roundabouts because no one can grasp the simple rule that you give way to traffic from the right, 4X4 bullies tailgating me at 90-plus miles an hour. I’ve pulled off motorways and followed these bastards for miles until the killing rage eventually dissipated or, unfortunately for them, they stopped their vehicle and I caught up with the fuckers... What else? Spoiled tantrum-indulging bairns, weak parents, the hypocrisy and futility of recycling, selfish bastards who park across two spaces at supermarkets, people mistreating books and anyone who, in any way, is rude, selfish and ignorant toward the elderly. I think I’d better stop now.
- What piece of advice would you give to your much younger self?
Fight less, drink less and listen more. Much more.
- What do you like doing in your spare time?
Spending time with my granddaughter and the rest of the family, reading, listening to music, following Alloa Athletic, drinking whisky, playing chess, poker and pool and attending gigs and concerts.
- What is your most treasured possession?
My books, albums and my hi-fi which comprises a Cambridge Audio class A amp, Cambridge Audio DAC Magic digital-to-analogue convertor, tuner and a pair of Acoustic Envelope three-way bi-wired floor-standing speakers.
- Do you have any guilty pleasures?
As a confirmed hedonist I don’t think any pleasures should be guilty. That implies we’re cowed by cultural snobbery or bourgeois mores. Having said that – and I can’t believe I’m outing myself here – I’m not proud of the couple of Barry Manilow albums that have inexplicably made it into my collection.
- What talent would you most like to have?
I’d like to be able to dance. I’m lucky in that I’m naturally musical. I’m a long-retired classically-trained trumpet player and I’ve been in a string of rock and covers bands, playing guitar and singing, back in my distant youth, but I can’t dance for shit. At all. My feet are entirely independent of my central nervous system and simply can not follow instructions. If and when my kids get married I’m going to set new lows in the horrors of dad dancing.
- If you could have one realistic-ish wish come true - apart from getting loads of money - what would you wish for?
That all the people I love live long, happy and healthy lives.
- Speaking of cash, how, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money?
It would change my life enormously. What’s the point otherwise? I’d pay off all my family’s and pals’ mortgages and debts and then I’d think very seriously about how to use the cash to further various worthwhile causes. I’d like to supply the Palestinians with some serious weaponry, for example. Let’s see those Israeli butchers waging war on a level playing field for a change. Once that was sorted, rebuilding schools, hospitals and so on would be a great use of my vast stack of smackeroonies.
- If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be?
Brendan Behan, Oscar Wilde and Mae West or Billie Holiday.
- Your history of the miners' strike in Nottinghamshire - Look Back In Anger - is a must-read for every trade unionist. Did you find it a challenge to put together?
That’s very much appreciated. Thank you. Honestly? Not at all. The miners’ strike was my political baptism. The single most influential event of my political life. I knew it inside out and felt, still feel, incredibly passionate about it. In many ways, it was already written years previously, internally, and once my publisher said ‘go’ it was really just a case of letting the words pour out on to the page. Of course there was a lot of research, fact-checking of dates, names and places and so on and the many first-hand interviews with the various protagonists took a lot of work. There are few things more soul-sappingly tedious than transcribing but the narrative spine, if you like, was as natural to me as breathing. It really was. I knew what I wanted to say and exactly how I wanted to say it.
- And has it changed your life?
Well, I can’t retire just yet and it doesn’t look likely next week, either, so not really, no; not in any meaningful material sense. Seriously, though, it has in ways I never expected. For example, I did a lot of promo work once it was published and the exposure seems to have kick-started an unexpected career sideline in punditry and talking headery. I’m getting constant invitations from TV, radio and press to appear on debate shows and so on to offer my twa bob’s worth. It’s mainly regional stuff and Jonesy needn’t feel threatened any time soon but it’s been a definite change to my normal routine.
The biggest change, though, has been of a personal nature. The feeling of satisfaction, euphoria even, when you finish writing a book is like nothing else I’ve experienced. Knowing you’ve done something maybe only – what? – ten percent? Twenty percent? of humanity has done is quite a spooky realisation. Then the fear of being a one-hit wonder kicks in! I’m near to closing on deals for two more books which is both brilliant and terrifying! It’s a whole different thing to my day gig of music journalism.
- Lastly, as a non-Labour labour movement person do you think they will win the election next May?
I certainly wouldn’t say I was a ‘non-Labour movement person.’ A non-Labour Party member is much more accurate. There’s a great deal more to the movement than just the bloody Labour Party!
I can see them just winning but without an overall majority. But that’s now. I could just as easily see, by next week, say, Miliband throwing it all away and letting the Tories back in.
There's a toxic purple blot on the electoral landscape. Even Madagascan lemurs knew Douglas Carswell would vault his by-election. Marrying a generally well-liked, rooted MP to an anti-politics insurgency was always going to be a rocket from the Clacton crypt. And so the kippers have their first elected member, but what a strange fish he is. UKIP's odour of prejudice and small mindedness does not attach itself to Carswell. Don't get me wrong, his politics are bunk. They are tasteless warm ups for oligarchy with democratic-sounding trimmings, but racism and sexism are not morsels you would find among his unappetising dish. Carswell's politics were not cooked up on the Great Bigot Bake Off. Quite how his idiosyncracies would sit with the dog whistles and despair of the dominant stop-the-world brigade remains to be seen. If UKIP don't get a wider breakthrough next May, I'd venture to say "not very long".
Meanwhile, in Heywood and Middleton UKIP gave the Labour Party kittens by running it extremely close. Seeing a 6,000 majority collapse to merely 600 is far from a comfortable experience. And so in some quarters its panic stations. We need to listen!" "We need to talk about immigration!" "We need to nationalise the top 100 monopolies!" First off, there are a couple of local factors in play. As Paul notes, there was a whiff of shenanigans gone awry in the selection of Liz McInnes. Such stuff doesn't matter at general election time, but it absolutely does when it comes to by-elections which, as we know, are susceptible to protest voting. With Brewer's Green trying to stitch it up for Harriet's mate, they paraded Westminster cynicism in front of a northern electorate not generously disposed toward it. And if it was not for the Labour machine cranking into gear, well, the consequences don't bear thinking about. The second was the local campaign focus on the NHS. All very worthy and no doubt chosen because received UKIP wisdom is privatise the lot, but it's ostrich-like behaviour to avoid countering UKIP's racist nudge, nudge, Labour-are-the-paedo-party attack lines. If Labour want to win it needs to try leading on issues. Including difficult issues.
The actual result was much closer than anyone forecast but I am not at all shocked UKIP turned in a credible second place. As noted before, the Corby by-election in 2012 was the last time we enjoyed "normal politics". Since then, regardless of incumbency, UKIP have come strong seconds in every parliamentary by-election. Number twos they may be, they have managed to successfully transform themselves into a catch-all, populist anti-politics protest party. Just like the BNP at its height, the political content as such doesn't matter to your casual UKIP voter. What it represents is a middle finger to "them", a transient moment of asserting power and presence. When you want to give official politics a kicking, you grab for the closest steel toe-capped boots to hand.
What can we do to mitigate UKIP's appeal to our people, and start reaching out to other voters who've previously not given Labour time of day?. Having pushed 'more Tory than Tory" literature locally here with mixed results, the national party are also doing the same. The problem is that ex-Labour voters may respond, but the bigger prize for UKIP is monopolising the large working class vote that does not vote Labour. Likewise the finger-wagging liberalism of the SWP's 'Stand Up to UKIP' front is as patronising as it is counterproductive. No silver bullets and holy water can slay it outright, the battle to contain and smash up UKIP wherever it gets a toe hold is a slog. A long-term slog. Simple, hopeful messaging, good policies and fewer clueless ex-wonks as MPs and candidates are a start. But the street by street, house by house scrap we have to have cannot work without showing that politics can work. When Labour pledges, for example, to have 200,000 houses built per annum by 2020 it had better deliver. An £8/hour minimum wage in the same time frame - meet and exceed it. And as it has been promised as a day one act, the abolition of the bedroom tax should be the first item of business before a Labour-ruled House. If Labour in local government is sticking up for people rather than blandly passing on the cuts, it needs to shout about it.
Even that is not enough, however. A weak labour movement and an impoverished civic culture mutually condition one another. If Labour wants to win, if Labour want to rip out the anti-politics rot it needs to stop acting as one dull, technocratic option among others and remember that it is a movement and a constituency in wider society that is also the repository of the general interest. Until that happens, for all the time this simple insight is "forgotten" by the great many of Labour activists and politicians the longer and deeper UKIP's poison will sink.
Health emergency in West Africa? Who gives a shit. Until the last month or so, that pretty much summed up the attitude in Western newsrooms and policy-making circles. After all, when is there not some kind of health crisis blighting the people of Sub-Saharan, central and southern Africa? HIV/AIDS is an ugly shadow cast over the fate of entire nations. According to the UN 1-in-20 live with the disease, with over 15% of 15-49 year olds infected in some countries. As awful a social disaster and human tragedy this is, it pales next to Malaria where, despite falling infection rates, it kills a child every minute. Meanwhile, diarrhoel infections carry off approximately 1.5m African kids every year. So yeah, there's been outbreaks and rumours of outbreaks before but as long as it never threatened our green and pleasant, few but concerned journalists and far-sighted public health experts were banging the Ebola drum.
There's politics too. Successive governments make big deals about protecting the overseas aid budget. While Dave's parading of development cash smacks more of "not all Western governments!" posturing, there is precious little the department has done to challenge lazy journalism and the festering little Englandism it stokes. This is a politics that says Britain has no place helping the poor in developing nations when states there are building infrastructure and investing in future proof industry. This silence has helped engender an utterly toxic politics around aid questions paralleling home grown scrounger discourse. In the early stages of the Ebola outbreak, intervening decisively across Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea required the kind of mobilisation we're only now seeing. The difference then, of course, that a great deal of political capital would have been staked without an obviously tangible outcome. No one is thanked for curbing a small-scale outbreak, especially where African lives are concerned.
And now, it's almost too late. The experts say our posse of barely-functioning states, Western military and medical personnel, and transnational NGOs have 60 days to get the outbreak under control before the contagion runs amok. With many blighted communities going "off-grid" and refusing to cooperate with what limited authority there is, and the drip, drip of infections outwith the region - including a likely Ebola death in Macedonia - it all smacks of the TL,TL syndrome (too little, too late). Given the scale of the disaster unfolding and the historical debts France, Britain and the US owe Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia respectively, more resource and more volunteers should be poured into the region.
Meanwhile at home, there is very little governments can actually do to face down Ebola. The much-vaunted screening splashed across the evening's bulletins are more about reassurance than public health. Remember, the disease takes 21 days to incubate before entering its most infectious - and lethal - phase. There's no breathalyser, no tricorder, no bloody speak-your-tropical-disease machines. It's just going to be an infrared scanner and medics with multiple choice questions. As the government flag up these "robust" protective measures, it's also emphasising how "well-equipped" Britain is to deal with Ebola infections. We have the procedures, the beds, the infrastructure and the expertise to deal. If it turns up on these shores? Nay problem. We are not Liberia.
All that might be true. If the government says it, of course it is. But beware unintended consequences. Sensibly we are being warned to seek medical advice/attention as soon as we present symptoms. Unfortunately, initial symptoms are fever, headaches, joint and muscle pain, and a sore throat. Last week I had the dubious pleasure of contracting freshers' flu. Guess what symptoms I was exhibiting? It's not beyond the realm of possibility that a few more confirmed Ebola cases in the UK could spark a stampede at walk-in centres, doctors' surgeries, A&Es of people suffering nothing other than the seasonal sniffles and shakes. Better-to-be-safe-than-sorry could touch off an almighty winter beds crisis, complicated by a decreased lack of capacity to catch Ebola sufferers. What a shambles.
And there we have it. Western complacency and the toxic politics of overseas aids has, in Britain's case, raises the possibility of an entirely avoidable health care meltdown. It's the kind of situation the word 'omnishambles' was invented for, but one in which misery will be reaped. Not laughs.
Clegg could have said "no one likes us and we don't care." Reviled by the Tories and Labour in equal measure is the lot of the Liberal Democrat. But now you're scrapping with the Greens for fourth place, and your main competitors are them and Farage's pint quaffing, poison-swilling rabble; this year's party conference might have had a touch of humility about it.
Nah. There was none. LibDems can "hold their heads high" said Clegg in a speech rivalling the late Tony Cliff for volubility and official enthusiasm. Promising a shopping list of policy from a welcome pledge on mental health waiting time to yet another raising of the basic tax threshold (what relief for those already taken out of tax?), and some stinging points against Theresa "Koba" May's embarrassing lurch into authoritarianism, Clegg was keen to put clear yellow water between his party and the Conservatives. Best not talk about how the LibDems have enabled the grotesque waste of taxpayers' cash on backdoor NHS privatisation, or their robust defences of the hated work capability assessment, or the bedroom tax then, because if they're not careful, sharper voters might make the connection.
The idea of the LibDems forming a government is as fanciful as finding mathematical literacy in George Osborne's brainpan. And yet the polls being the polls, Clegg knows that some pre- and post-May political footsie is in order. Hence the continued LibDem frame as the sensible small cog in the big machinery of government. If you took his rhetoric seriously, British politics is not unlike the 1930s. Polarisation is under way. Only hooking up with the liberals will prevent the Tories from privatising the air. Likewise, if elected to serve with Labour any socialism of nationalised railways and wind-powered gulags will remain ensconced in Red Ed's imagination.
In truth, there wasn't much in the conference's policy content that indicated who the LibDem leadership would prefer to romance. A conscious effort at appearing as something other than the Tories' mini-me, perhaps. Which is just as well for them because, forget the polling numbers, the LibDems are set to do better than their projections would have anyone believe. Scraping six and seven percentage points in Ipsos/MORI is rubbish for morale, yet in *actual elections* - namely the local authority by-elections I've been tracking for a couple of years - the LibDems scored a respectable (for them) 11.8% of votes cast in 2013's by-elections, and in the three quarters since they have polled 10.1%, 11.1% and 14.3%. As these elections "don't matter" and are more likely to register a protest, they might indicate LibDem electoral support shows greater resilience than suggested by YouGov et al.
Therefore, it's my sad task to report that political folk who are looking to see the LibDems crucified next year could well be disappointed. And, even worse, your party might cut a coalition deal with them too. So while for Dave or Ed, their speeches this year could be their last. But Clegg? He could be back for another disingenuous turn in 2015's conference season.
Oblivion is a shuffle, lurch, and crawl away for the Conservative Party. Even if by some dark miracle they are returned to power next year, the terminal crisis enveloping them cannot be sidestepped. Either the hard right lunatics decamp to an ever-so-pure and ever-so-irrelevant electoral lash up with the purple people bleaters, or they don't. And for as long as they lay claim to Toryism, so the Conservative Party will be permanently hobbled. Yet things aren't too great for Labour either. Demographics, economics, and culture are chewing up the Tories. But they're doing the same for Labour too.
Consider the big shocker during the referendum campaign. Honourable members, party workers, activists and trade unionists who trekked north were deeply shocked by the awful state Scottish Labour was found to be in. As the SNP boast of passing the 100,000 member mark Scotland's former ruling party is languishing on something like 5,000 members. That's just utterly, utterly pitiful. Local conditions have a role to play, but when stagnation and decline is too often the lot of Labour parties outside of London something else is going on. Just as the Tory collapse cannot be stymied by a few more canvassing sessions and new returns entered into Merlin, so it is true with Labour. Keeping calm and knocking on doors is not sufficient to see off the shadow on Labour's lung.
I've blogged loads about changes to class and culture in Britain these last 30 years. The working class as more or less cohesive networks of communities institutionalised into the political architecture of post-war capitalism has gone. The bedrock of the Labour Party that provided it generations of politicians who did their internships at the coal face of life has largely melted. As the political economy underpinning the structural foundations of British Labourism turned to dust the communities of solidarity they sustained frayed and drifted apart. The labour movement remains. But the labour movement as a counterweight and repository of hope for something different and better, that's more an idea than a reality, unfortunately.
New Labour can profitably be read as an attempt to overcome this structural weakness in labour movement. And the means it chose was rather novel. Making a virtue of necessity, the "old Labour" of industrial politics was interred under Tony Blair's stairs along with inconvenient trade unionists, the "S word", and anything that smacked at all of, ugh, working class people. In came the slick presentation and reaching out to swing voters. Workers vanished, hard-working families proliferated. Blair's New Britain was a "young nation" unconcerned with the socialist muck of the past. Economic efficiency and social justice were to be the twin pillars of a modernising government that would be in power forever. This was the third way to the New Jerusalem.
The problem was New Labour was only ever a superficial electoral construct. When the wheels came off after Brown ducked an election in 2007, and then capitalism rudely reminded the former iron chancellor that it can and quite possibly could go bust, the electoral coalition - that had come to look a bit threadbare by 2005 - frayed and unravelled in 2010. Far, far more problematic was the kind of constituency New Labour tried to build itself while in power. Temporarily British capital's government of choice as the Tories knocked lumps out of one another, Blair and Brown tried to make this affiliation permanent. Hence no meaningful finance regulation. Hence the pro-business homilies and exaltation to "enrich yourselves". Hence the mania to open up public services and the NHS to more and more marketisation so a parasitic section of British capital weaned on the taxpayers' teat could profit from New Labour largesse. While this was going on, workers' rights were retarded; new folk devils among working class people were picked out and panicked about; the minimum wage held down and, yes, the continued offshoring and gutting of manufacturing; casualisation; the closure of pension funds; only now do Labour's leadership belatedly recognise that doing nothing was perhaps not the best of ideas.
New Labour was a product of labour movement weakness. And it sought to deal with it by compounding that weakness. So the problems afflicting Labour heartlands across Britain isn't because policies failed socialist purity tests: if that was the case, the likes of TUSC would be running Labour close, not Elvis Loves Pets. It's because they broke up and dispersed working class communities and solidarities just as sure as Thatcher did. No wonder she thought New Labour was her greatest achievement.
Here's the easy/difficult job. Labour can arrest its decline. Catastrophe can be averted. And, what's more, doing so is a less arduous job than the rebirth by fire awaiting the Tories. But it requires nuanced, smart politics. Here's the challenge. For Labour to dominate the 21st century it needs to, first of all, not attack its own people. Not too difficult is it? If our most vulnerable can't depend on the party that was set up to represent them to not deny them the resources they need, then who can they rely on? It's not just about benefit cuts, Labour needs to be alive to the toxic consequences of successful markets. Where markets exist in public services, they provide bumper profits for the few off the back of lower standards, lower wages, atomised workers, insecure working. Is that a price worth paying for some abstract efficiencies target? No, it is not. Likewise, throughout the wider economy as a whole Labour need to turn an unsympathetic ear to British business who've had it all their way for far too long. Workers representation on boards, yes. New rules on hire and fire and union recognition, new rules on tribunals, permanent and temporary working - stuff hardly redolent of Trotsky's The Death Agony of Capitalism but have the effect of reversing the disaggregating effects 30 years of marketisation have had.
Let's get more ambitious. It's time Labour staked out what the labour movement really is. Our movement is a broad tent of workers and consumers. Everyone from the well-heeled professional and the celebrity, to the call centre worker and the disabled should have a place with us. It is a community founded on the need to labour and the sets of material and political interests flowing from it. The labour movement's interests are coincident with those of the vast majority of people who live in Britain. Our interests are the universal interest. But the Labour Party only represents everyone because it is a party of workers, by hand or by brain.
Labour is a parliamentary party. Labourism is the marrying of the interests of the labour movement to constitutionalism. But let's be honest, there's been plenty of constitutionalism and not enough marrying it to our interests these last 20 years. And the price we've paid is horrific. The terrified and deeply anxious society we live in now is because New Labour did nothing to address the economic and self-security of the great mass of our people. Small wonder there are CLPs hanging like rotten scraps in the wind, and that Labour are seen as part of the Westminster problem - not its solution.
As it stands, the present policy platform on offer shows a bit of an understanding of Labour's nature of threat, but scant awareness that punitive policy and continued market madness will do the party in the long run. Those are the stakes. Either the leadership wake up - a doubtful prospect, alas - or it's up to the rank-and-file of the labour movement to push this settlement through the party.
Once again, you either do politics. Or politics does you.
It's tempting. You see the insurmountable difficulties besetting the Tories, and their feeble firefighting efforts, and all you want to do is point and laugh. Heaven knows how much fun I've had doing it these last couple of years. Unfortunately, there is something spoiling the sport. The Grim Reaper is busy hacking chunks off British Conservatism, but if you look in his pocket notebook you'll find that Labour is next in line. That's right. The remorseless grind of long term economic, cultural and political change is just as surely against the Labour Party too.
More of that another time. The crisis at the root of British Toryism is two-fold. Demographically, it's an old white people's party. It has little positive to say to younger cohorts of voters. The one genuinely progressive and popular policy of its time in office - equal marriage - precipitated the debarkation of thousands of blue rinsed bigots into the arms of them smelly old kippers. Politically, its organic links to British capital have also withered. Thanks to the Tories' opaque networks of dining clubs, front groups and the like it's much harder to see where the money comes from. Then again, it's not difficult to infer from the kinds of policies they push who is stumping up the cash: the socially useless rentiers of the City, the gruesome gang of hedge fund wideboys, property speculators, and (whisper it) Russian oligarchs and shady Sheikhs. JCB's Anthony Bamford and his Midlands Industrial Council fly the flag for good old "productive" capital, but that's it. The Tory Party is funded and owned by finance, the superficially dynamic but most short-termist section of British capital.
How did this happen? The blessed Margaret did it. If Toryism wasn't congenitally stupid it would revile her for what her politics have meant for capital's tested 'A' team. Thatcher's class war policies of the 1980s were an offensive that successfully subordinated ever greater sections of social life to the dictates of capital. Education, welfare, recalcitrant working class communities, the lot. It worked, after a fashion. Only seldom-read bloggers these days call into question the business domination of everything. But it was more than the pesky miners and the labour movement Thatcher brought to heel. The "civil war without guns" was preceded and followed by mass closures, mass sackings, mass privatisations. Tory class war was a blunt force trauma inflicted on the body politic. But the working class were not the only losers. Whole sections of British capital, nominally public owned and not, went up in smoke as the chimneys came crashing down. The British coal industry - the most advanced in the world - and its supply chain, gone. Steel, gone. Ship building, gone. Then came the rest - textiles, pots, manufacturing, all went. And with it a whole load of small and medium sized business vanished. The total composition of British capital rooted in domestic manufacturing collapsed. That the Tory Party began its long collapse as Thatcher rolled out her social programme is no coincidence.
Nor have the Tories been able to recover. New Labour's prawn cocktail offensives successfully annexed a section of British capital for some time, and how they were handsomely rewarded with PFI, more marketisation of public services, academisation and light touch regulation. Yet they couldn't be held onto forever. Banal neoliberalism, the unthought assumption that markets are just groovy, were shown to be anything but barely a year after Blair retired to spend more time with his bank accounts. In politics memories are short, but both Brown and Darling appeared genuinely pained by having to slam down emergency regulation and intervening to save the system from eating itself. If Brown really did save the world from an even more catastrophic depression, he cut a reluctant saviour. British capital showed the Labour Party its gratitude by withdrawing support in time for the 2010 general election. So fickle.
By and large they haven't gone flooding back to the Tories. Labour's pale pink social democracy is not palatable, but neither are Dave's increasingly dysfunctional party. The bulk of British capital is something of a floating voter. Suspicious of Labour's tax plans, and modest regulatory and wage control ambitions it does sniff new opportunities - but at the price of bigging up workers? On the other hand, Dave offers tax cuts and no regulation but ... the EU referendum promises instability, and ongoing UKIP issues could destabilise the party while in office. Nor will the Tories be intervening to smooth out the markets and generate more business opportunities. What a bind.
And that's the Tories. Demographically and culturally out-of-step, their hock to finance makes them economically dysfunctional to the interests of British capital as a whole, and toxic to everyone else. Yet as they thrash around in mindless agony there remains an outside chance they could crawl their way back into office. As the truism goes, you either do politics. Or politics will do you.
Eddie Truman is a long-standing activist from Edinburgh who cut his political teeth in all the major political battles of the 1980s and early 90s. Latterly he was very active in the Yes movement. You can follow Eddie on Twitter here.
- Do you regularly read blogs? If so, which ones?
I've read Richard Seymour's for years and have learned more from it than all my formal education put together; yours, and Lallands Peat Worrier's.
- You did used to blog many moons ago. Why did you stop?
Events.
- Have you ever been tempted to give it another try?
Yes.
- Do you find social media useful for activist-y-type things?
Indespensible. Although I do constantly despair of clicktivism, sign this Change.org petition and you can save the world.
- Who are your biggest intellectual influences?
In later life probably the feminist avenger, fought so many battles alongside her, value her opinions more than any other, the sharpest of political minds. I had the good fortune to meet and become a comrade of Heiko Khoo during the miners strike and beyond. Spent endless hours discussing socialism, Stalinism and much more with him, including several stints in police cells.
In the bigger picture though, it would have to be Trotsky. In the world I grew up in, the Cold War, Trotsky was the man who explained how we got here and how socialists should understand the Soviet Union and the crimes of Stalinism.
- What are you reading at the moment?
Antony Beevor's D-Day. I've read countless volumes of military history since I was about 10 years old. Beevor is great because he's such an easy read but is no sycophant to orthodoxy. He records relentlessly the total fuck ups of the Allied commanders whose decisions caused the unnecessary deaths of 100s of thousands of Allied troops.
- What was the last film you saw?
Pippa had The Lorax on earlier, absolutely fantastic explanation of capitalism and envirnmental catastophe for kids.
- Do you have a favourite novel?
We never had a telly when I was a kid because our parents were ideologically opposed to it so I spent loads of time reading books. I had a period of devouring Russian novels which I remember with great happiness; Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov's short stories.
The novel that changed everything in the world I lived in at the time was Trainspotting.
- Can you name an idea or an issue on which you've changed your mind?
Prostitution.
- How many political organisations have you been a member of?
The Labour Party, Militant Tendency, Scottish Militant Labour, Scottish Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party.
- What set of ideas do you think most important to disseminate?
Socialism.
- What set of ideas do you think most important to combat?
The patriarchy, fascism, racism.
- Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major influence on how you think about the world?
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. Absolutely extraordinary.
- Who are your political heroes?
I'm kind of post political heroes these days, in younger days it was the usual pantheon of those the Trotskyist left deified.
Looking back I think it's probably a political and rock and roll hero in one; Joe Strummer.
- How about political villains?
Thatcher.
- What do you think is the most pressing political task of the day?
Build a socialist party of the working class free of the shackles of Labourism.
- If you could affect a major policy change, what would it be?
Ban all cars from cities & towns.
- What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world?
Environmental destruction.
- What would be your most important piece of advice about life?
Don't inject drugs and try to stay out of jail.
- What is your favourite song?
Wichita Lineman
- Do you have a favourite video game?
Civilization. Currently V with Hulfgar's Industrial Warfare Mod.
- What do you consider the most important personal quality?
Love for your fellow human beings.
- What personal fault do you most dislike?
Can't keep my mouth shut when some moron comes up with the anti immigrant, racist, bullshit. It causes problems.
- What, if anything, do you worry about?
Male violence.
- And any pet peeves?
People who don't observe Edinburgh bus etiquette. Stand in the quue, when a bus comes ask the person ahead of you if they want this bus, give up your seat on the bottom deck to someone who looks like they need it more than you do.
- What piece of advice would you give to your much younger self?
Injecting heroin was a really fucking stupid thing to do.
- What do you like doing in your spare time?
Sweating in the steam room at Victoria baths.
- What is your most treasured possession?
A Cambridge Audio CD player, preamp and a pair of Wharfedale powered speakers.
- Do you have any guilty pleasures?
Your taste in music.
- What talent would you most like to have?
To make everything better for everyone.
- If you could have one realistic-ish wish come true - apart from getting loads of money - what would you wish for?
An N guage Graham Farish Class 101 2-car DMU in BR green.
- Speaking of cash, how, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money?
Get a house with more than 1 bedroom for 2 kids, 2 adults and a dog to live in.
- If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be?
Malcolm X, Raquel Welch & Bill Shankley.
- You were very active in the Yes movement. What do you make of the 45'ers?
As one of the 45%, the Yes campaign was absolutely extraordinary, a genuine mass movement that mobilised people in a way I've never seen in Scotland before. A different movement to the poll tax and the industrial battles around the miners strike.
This was a movement that brought to the fore every single issue of the day in Scottish society and related it to the national question. Poverty, nuclear disarmament, the position of women in Scottish society, the economy, health provision. Everything.
After a historically high turnout it was defeated.
There is a widespread feeling, while not buying into the absurd It Was Fixed truthers narrative, that feels the referndumn was won by a tsunami of threats and scare tactics.
The elderly were told their pensions would be under threat, Poles told they would be deported because Scotland would no longer be a part of the EU.
Even to the extent of Scots wouldn't be able to access NHS services for critically ill people.
The consequences of the defeat were completely unpredicted and took everybody by surprise, a movement by tens of thousands into the pro independence parties, primarily the SNP.
What happens now, who knows? Hundreds of thousands of Scots who had never been involved in politics before discovered street campaigning, canvassing, flash mobs. Whatever the battles are that lie ahead there is a huge actiivist base ready to be involved.
- Overall do you think the referendum campaign has made politics in Scotland friendlier to socialist and radical ideas?
Yes I do, genuine socialist and radical ideas, not those of Scottish Labour which you have to remember dominated every aspect of Scottish politics and life for decades.
Thankfully conference speeches don't win general elections. There is no denying that Dave's final performance at the Tory party's annual gathering was masterful. It oozed the prime ministerial, that much exalted but seldom-attained quality. His speech was passionate, confident, coherent. Apart from an untimely Freudian ("... these are the people we resent"), Dave acted the part well. He did what he is genuinely good at: putting on a show.
As delegates pack their bags and fish forgotten prawn vol-au-vents from their pockets, those not thinking forbidden UKIP thoughts might have a spring in their step. Dave pitched the Tories as the party for everybody, as a trade union for the stalwart hard-working people of Britain. They are the party of social justice, the one who will abolish youth unemployment by refusing social security assistance to anyone aged between 18 and 21; the party who makes work pay by taking more low earners out of tax while clobbering them with £500 worth of tax credit cuts; and lastly the party intent on rewarding hard work by raising the 40p tax threshold to £50k/year, handing yet another tax cut to Britain's 15% wealthiest people. If social justice is the redistribution of resource from the poor to the well off, then no one can touch the Tories.
In many ways, Dave speech was pitched to the middle ground. The thing is the Tories haven't a clue what that middle ground looks like. The way IBS punched the air when Dave paraded his tax cut for the rich tells you that that's where they think middle Britain is, and it's not at the average and median wage of around £24k. On the tax credit cut too. Osborne defended this on Monday by suggesting the majority had brought into austerity and would be happy to do their bit. And this is the man many Tories hail as a political genius. It doesn't take a particularly canny operator to note that while the rich gain, those of more modest means will be covering the bill. Here's some news for Osbo, Dave, and their hired Australian help. The centre ground is sceptical of Europe, immigration and social security, but is to the Tories' left on job security, tax, privatisation, the NHS, house building, pensions, the minimum wage and a good deal more. Unfortunately, that centre ground is also mired in fatalism, hence no slam dunk for a Labour leadership determined to softly step its way to victory next year.
What Dave delivered today was a speech that wallowed in British patriotism, a celebration of our country as a collective endeavour embracing everyone. Yet despite himself this was a core vote speech. And even then, the core who are swinging or have swung to UKIP will find nothing here to dissuade them from supporting the purple people bleaters. As Matt Goodwin notes, a few tax bribes will not buy off UKIP support. They are for the most part deeply anxious, anomic, and ill at ease with what they think Britain has become. Forget the economy. It's that sense of self-security, stupid.
Can we take anything from Dave's speech? Yes. If Labour have a so-called "35% strategy" then this is the Conservatives' 15% strategy. It signals the hard limits of the Tory imagination and their incapacity to overcome the organic crisis afflicting British Conservatism. A good speech, yes; but a loser's speech all the same. The general election next year is Labour's to lose.
Most read this month were:
1. British Trotskyism and Scottish Independence
2. An Open Letter to Yes-Voting Socialists
3. The UK's Would-Be Assassins
4. Seven Leftwing Reasons for Staying With Us
5. The Spectrum of Misogyny
For the umpteenth time, a post about that most relevant of movements, British Trotskyism, emerges victorious in the page view wars. It never ceases to surprise me how much of a market, if it could be described as such, exists for ruminations on its comings and goings. Well, I suppose there's an argument to be made for regarding ex-Trots as Britain's biggest politics tribe.
It has been a very busy month round the blog all told. As most of the left in Scotland were aboard the independence bandwagon, socialist arguments against separation were few and far between. I guess this blog was one of the handful putting forward that view.
Everyone deserves a second chance, so here are a couple you may have previously missed. What Next for Politics? looked at official politics in the immediate aftermath of the referendum and how it impacts the fortunes of the Tories, Labour, UKIP and the so-called '45 Movement'. The other is a bit more weighty and also has a question to ask: Does Globalisation Breed Nationalism?
