Alternatives to Austerity

I've lost count of the underpopulated trade union-organised meetings I've attended over the last 10 years. But thankfully, Tuesday evening's event organised under the banner of 'For a Fairer North Staffordshire?' by North Staffs TUC, the local PCS and Pensioners' Convention turned out to be a public meeting the public wanted to be at. Around a 150 people attended to hear what a panel of speakers on the government's ideologically-blinkered austerity drive, and what we - the labour movement - should do about it.

The first speaker was inveterate activist Dot Gibson in her capacity as National Pensioners' Convention veep. Her contribution focused on the post-war settlement, which, she argued, was an outcome of the mass radicalisation that swept over a devastated Europe. Leading Labour Party figures were left in no doubt about the mood of the armed forces when they ventured out into the field. Likewise, Churchill and Keynes were packed off to Washington to ensure cash was readily available after the war to meet the rising demands of a working class unwilling to return to the miserable conditions of pre-war Britain. And so a bargain of sorts were struck - the Labour Party established the foundations of a fairer society in the hope it would buy social peace.

The Thatcherite 80s put paid to that. And yet, despite the crisis, the economy remains in hock to finance capital. The arguments about debt and deficit are ruses to justify a project that would see bits of the welfare state sold off, and what remains cut to bits. As working people and pensioners who will come to depend on it at some point in our lives, we are "all in it together", but not in the sense Dave understands it.

Simon Harris from Hanley Citizen's Advice Bureau went into the depressing facts of what the government are trying to do. He began with the observation that cuts to welfare will depress the local economy by £105M per year. When Stoke-on-Trent is hardly the northern Midlands' answer to Abu Dhabi, it does not have the strength to absorb such a shattering blow. He moved onto the Employment and Support Allowance benefit, which he characterised as "not providing either". Simon also went into the introduction of 'Personal Independent Payments', the benefit designed to replace Disability Living Allowance with a higher threshold and 80% of the present budget, and, of course, the much-trailed changes to housing benefit for the Under-25s. He also mentioned the move to Universal Credit, the benefit being steered through the DWP by IDS, which will see the collapsing of a number of individual means-tested benefits into one payment. Not only will this see tougher conditions and sanctions attached, it can only be applied for online - straight away cutting out those without internet access and basic computer literacy.

Jenny Harvey of Unison's North Staffs Community Health Branch tackled the effect the Tories are having on the NHS. Far from "protecting" it, their budget freeze is forcing through very real cuts in patient care and provision. And despite having some criticisms of Labour's management of the NHS, the expensive and unnecessary reorganisation is threatening to undo all the improvements made over 13 years of government. For Tories a hospital isn't a place for treating people: it's a cash cow to be raided by their wealthy backers in the private medical industry.

Roger Seifert gave a political answer to the problems set out by the preceding speakers. He argued we needed to diagnose the cause before we can apply the cure. The ills, he suggested, lie in Britain's imperial past and the ways being a hub of a global empire distorted and bent our economy in a particular way, tilting it toward dominance by finance capital. The relative openness of the British economy saw it significantly penetrated by American capital throughout the post-war period and beyond, leading to Britain being tied by a thousand and one strings to US foreign policy. This can be broken by an independent foreign policy, but economic sovereignty depends on nationalising the banks, heavily investing in industry, building homes and raising wages and pensions. These measures will out money in people's pockets and in turn drive further economic regeneration. Ultimately the state will have to be smarter about tax, dump costly projects like Trident (which, in Roger's view, is a means of funnelling tax payers' cash into American arms contractors anyway), turn our back on the EU and trade more with the emerging economies of the East and Latin America. I have to say I'd never heard the Communist Party of Britain's programme so eloquently put.

The evening's last speaker was PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka. Rather diplomatically, he suggested the weakness of the Labour Party was a problem, so it falls to the trade unions to provide leadership in the struggle against austerity. He noted the fiver year pay freeze on PCS members' wages had seen their purchasing power, and therefore standard of living cut by 20% since the crisis broke. He also mentioned the 1,800 NHS workers due to lose their jobs by 2015, the refusal to properly invest in infrastructure and, most scandalously, a £30bn cut to the welfare bill to provide for £30bn worth of tax cuts for the rich. Turning this around requires the implementation of many measures advocated by Roger, but an immediate aim would be the estimated £123bn in taxes that avoids the Treasury every year.

Moving on to Labour, he said he wished the party would provide an opposition, that they have to differ from the Tories and offer hope to the four million or so voters the party lost during the last government, and who didn't switch their support to others. Immediately, the best thing Labour can do is repudiate the public sector pay freeze. But if Labour doesn't move, the unions should. Mark called for a strong turn out for the October 20th demo in London, but also for it to be followed up with a series of strikes. If the labour movement meet the government with united opposition, it might be enough to move Labour on to ground similar to that it occupied in 1945.

There followed the customary questions and answers with the audience. We heard arguments against moves to regional pay in the NHS and elsewhere, the changing nature and status of care jobs, Tory lies over the deficit, the potential for cross-generational alliances (of which this meeting was an example), and the baleful role played by the LibDems in this most right wing of governments. Surprisingly, there wasn't too much in the way of Labour Council bashing (which is something of a past time in the local press). There was a little bit of silliness when former local Labour leader Mick Salih prefaced his comments on Community Asset Transfer by saying he was kicked out of Labour "for being too much of a socialist". The historical record remembers otherwise.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming message taken from the meeting was the need for the labour movement to stick together. The links forged in the organisation of this meeting certainly bode well for the future. But the elephant in the room was the political question of the Labour Party. As the one organisation in Britain that commands the affiliation of most trade unions, labour movement activists, and working class people in general, it is the place where a politically united movement against austerity can best be felt - and this is despite a programme that accepts some cuts and is administering them at the local authority level. The means are there for a politics that speaks to our people if it is grasped with sufficient vigour.

Cracked Conservatives

Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. One thing I failed to touch on during my short discussion about the Tories the other day is their lapse into political lassitude, or decadence. As a party in long-term decline, their decomposition is manifesting itself in an almost entirely negative programme for British capitalism. Sticking to their ludicrous deficit reduction strategy when every available indicator is sounding the warning klaxon is one sign of the historical dead end they're in.

However, Conservatism in the US of A is in an even more advanced state of decay. Witness these two examples:

After Arkansas State Representative Loy Mauch (R-AR) has been outed by the Arkansas Times for his pro-slavery, pro-Confederacy letters to the editor over the past decade. Mauch’s run for reelection this year is backed by the Arkansas Republican Party.

In letters to the Democrat-Gazette, Mauch vehemently defended slavery and repeatedly suggested Jesus condoned it:

If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861? 

The South has always stood by the Constitution and limited government. When one attacks the Confederate Battle Flag, he is certainly denouncing these principles of government as well as Christianity.

His other letters call Abraham Lincoln a Marxist and celebrate the Confederate flag as “a symbol of Christian liberty vs. the new world order.” He also organized a conference in 2004 praising John Wilkes Booth and calling for the removal of an Abraham Lincoln statue. Mauch has been supported mainly by contributions from the Republican Party and other Arkansas candidates.

And how about this fella?

A candidate for the Arkansas legislature, Charlie Fuqua, says children who don’t demonstrate “respect for parents” should be put to death, the Arkansas Times reports. Fuqua is a former member of the Arkansas legislature and has received support from the Arkansas Republican Party and two sitting members of Congress. 

Here’s the key passage from Fuqua’s 2012 book, “God’s Law: The Only Political Solution“:

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

Fuqua helpfully notes that “This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children.” Rather, parents would have to “follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children.” Fuqua assures the reader that, in his view, the procedure would “rarely be used.” The threat of death would, however, “be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.’

Complete originals here and here.

The articles say that Arkansas state Republicans have withdrawn their official backing for both candidates, so some residual semblance of sanity remains.

It almost makes you thankful we only have to put up with the likes of Gove, Gideon, IDS, Dorries, Aidan Burley, etc.

JK Rowling on Taxes

No time for a proper blog tonight, but thought I'd reproduce JK Rowling's thoughts on tax that have been shared absolutely everywhere. Hey, who am I to dispute the wisdom of the social media crowd?

I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.

You can take the woman out of the working class ...

I also understand her new book is quite good.

The Utopia of "Everyman" Toryism

It can't be very often you see the words "interesting piece" in conjunction with flash-in-the-pan social media celebrity "Luke Bozier", but this is one of those occasions. Luke Bozier has written an interesting piece on the Tories and how they strategically position themselves after EdM's well-received 'One Nation' speech.

His article on 'Everyman Conservatism' in today's Indy is a paean to one nation Thatcherism. He evokes a Toryism that was at its best when they connected with the aspirations of working class people up and down the land. With a dollop of Disraeli, he suggests Tories need to positively discriminate in favour of working class candidates (like him?); undertake a policy drive to find out what warms the cockles for proletarian and lower middle class voters; and lastly, a meritocratic makeover that identifies Conservatism with the virtues of hard work. Then the Tories have the best chance of clearing their true blue lawn of EdM's unsightly tanks.

If this is the line of march Bozier wants to pursue in the Tory party, then he has got an uphill struggle ahead. Unlike the clueless aristocrats that pass for Conservative leadership today, their forebears from Churchill to Heath quickly learned the lessons of the depression and the post-war settlement. They had to pursue policies that did not outright serve the naked interests of the rich and powerful to get themselves elected and ensure British capitalism stayed on the straight and narrow. Thatcher, and to a lesser extent Major understood this too even while they were dismantling the welfare state and carving up the labour movement. They appealed to a minority of working class voters (like my family) and convinced them they could look out for their interests better than their traditional party. It was just enough to keep them in power for a generation.

The Tory Party of today however is a very different beast. It appears all the lessons its best minds and activists learned during the latter half of the 20th century has fallen down the memory hole. Dave, Gideon and the rest don't even pretend to speak to or for the whole nation. The aspirant Tory worker who wanted dignity in employment, security in old age and a future for their families instead finds their party hammering their rights at work and eligibility to benefits, forcing them to stay at work for longer with less money at the end, and throwing their children onto the unemployment scrap heap (sometimes with tens of thousands of pounds in student-related debt). The connection that served post-war conservatism well has almost entirely broken down.

With nothing positive to say to this section of Tory support, Dave and co. have turned to divide and rule - employed vs unemployed, able-bodied vs disabled, non-claimants vs benefit claimants. The odd rhetorical flourish against the Maoists of Brussels and Strasbourg doesn't hurt either. Unfortunately for them, if you poison the well long enough truly foul things start a-stirring.

The Tories didn't get this way only because its leading cadre were born with the proverbial silver spoon. The Tory party as a whole is ageing and its grassroots associations decomposing. For a number of reasons it does not attract young political activists in the same way Labour does (whether careerist or not). The rot that is seeing it become an outright sectional party of the wealthy ultimately finds its wellspring in the counterrevolution Thatcher unleashed. The social solidarities her policies burst asunder eroded the activist base of the Tories as much as it did with Labour. But whereas Labour recovered part of its strength through the labour movement and being more in tune with wider political and cultural shifts, the conservative movement has floundered. All it has left apart from its withered body politic are the old boy networks and interlocking patterns of near-incestuous directorships.

As we have seen, the liberal make up Dave assiduously daubed the Tory party in was quickly wiped off after the general election. It's hard to see a worker-friendly makeover in the Bozier mould doing much better now the Tories are in full toxic effect. It would, in fact, be running against the grain of long-term social processes. And this is something that should have every socialist, trade unionist, and progressive person celebrating.

Marx on the Box

For anyone familiar with Karl Marx's profligate but cash-strapped life in Victorian London, starring in a BBC documentary series called The Masters of Money is enough to tickle your sense of irony. But as far as understanding the flow and power of money goes, Marx's opus remains unsurpassed nearly 130 years after his death.

While the other two programmes in Stephanie Flanders' series, on Keynes and Hayek respectively, were great primers to both those thinkers, it was always going to be Marx who would generate the greatest controversy and cause the hard-of-thinking to, if you can forgive the pun, see red.

As you would expect, a great deal of Monday night's programme was given over to explaining the basics with conservatives, Keynes-fans and leftists chipping in with their two penneth worth. So the programme early on establishes (with the assistance of Lego) how capital is compelled to drive down the wages of its employees to reap a maximum return, whereas workers themselves are equally compelled to resist and secure an ever greater slice of the pie.

This tension (Flanders' narrative skirts around the term 'class struggle') can play out in two ways. Workers can successfully prosecute their wage claims, which ups the cost of production and forces out of business those capitalists who cannot keep pace absorb their demands. Or it could tilt too far in the capitalists' favour, meaning workers as a collective can no longer buy back the fruits of their labour and the economic system as a whole plunges into crisis.

Where the last 30 or so years are concerned, the economic direction of travel has been a journey down the latter route. Real wages in the UK stuttered and then flatlined since around the turn of the last decade. In the USA it has been even more pronounced as the average pay packet has not grown in real terms since the mid-70s. However, productivity in America and in Britain has continued to increase, but has become disengaged from wages as a result of real world processes. Such as the declining clout of trade unions, employment legislation, the move from 'collectivist' to individuated forms of morality, technological change, and the acceleration of globalisation. All of these are symptomatic of what the Regulation School of writers on political economy argue is the move from one 'regime of accumulation' to another.

This, for Flanders, provides the backcloth for explaining the 2008 stock market crashes and subsequent recession and stagnation (see here for an elaboration of this argument).

Naturally, not all are convinced. Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation suggests that indebtedness was a feature before the crisis hit, and that the shock to the system intensified this problem and made suffering all the more acute. It was not, however, the primary dynamic in play (if not, then what was?) Madsen Pririe of the Adam Smith Institute suggests governments and central banks are to blame for flooding the financial markets in the years leading up to 2008 with cheap money for credit, mainly because politicians did not want to have to face the political effects of a sharp downturn. Personally, I cannot see how this argument renders the Marxian diagnosis null and void - rather, it underlines it.

The programme reaches the point where the utility of Marx for professional economics ends. There has always been a tendency in Marxist and Marxisant thought that has tried to prise Marx the analyst away from Marx the revolutionary, such as the 'Legal Marxism' movement of pre-revolutionary Russia, or in more recent time some adherents of the  'Analytical Marxism' school. And this impulse is on show here too. As former IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan notes, Marx is good for framing the terms of analysing capitalism, but does not have the "appropriate solutions".

What would be an appropriate solution? Flanders says that Marx's response is to get rid of capitalism. But replace it with what exactly? As she notes, it seems we are all compromised by the various stakes we have in the system as is, and that might be enough to see off any impulse to widespread insurrection. Not only that though, what alternative to capitalism exists? Marx did not specify what would come after except in the most general of terms. Where Peter Hitchens is concerned, asking if there is another way of organising society is akin to wondering whether there is an alternative to weather. For John Micklethwait of The Economist all that exists are different forms of capitalism, some more benign than others. For former Marxism Today supremo Martin Jacques no systematic alternative currently exists, but that will not always be the case. And for celebrity academic Slavoj Žižek there is no blueprint, it is up to us to find a new way.

The framing of this latter question is problematic. Flanders tells us throughout the programme that capitalism contains the seeds of its own collapse. The assumption is that capitalism decays irredeemably and a new way of organising human society wins out, that one stops and another starts. But that is not the case at all and is not how social change works. She notes earlier on that capitalist solutions to a crisis contain the seeds of further crises, such as the decline in real wages in the US staved off an immediate crisis of underconsumption thanks to the provision of cheap credit, in turn fuelled by the large profits accrued through productivity gains. 

Likewise, as Marx argued in The Manifesto against those earlier socialists who attempted to foist social engineering blueprints onto the nascent workers' movement, socialism is something that grows within capitalist societies. The gravedigger of capitalism is more than just the wage-earning workers and their labour movements. It also encompasses the development of cooperative businesses, welfare states, state-provided health services, state-led economic policy, and the opening up of ever greater areas of society to public scrutiny, democracy, and accountability. All these and more rest on principles that anticipate a society beyond capitalism and, crucially, are absolutely crucial for the stable operation of advanced capitalist economies. We don't need to fashion something new out of the muck of ages when parts of it emerged many decades ago.

Obviously, a lot of nuance has been lost in this one hour episode and I imagine the same was true of Flanders' treatment of Keynes and Hayek. Nevertheless 1.2M apparently tuned in, indicating something of a hunger for ideas that can make sense of the mess we're in. If you are looking for a way in to the often abstruse debates around economics, you could do much worse than catching The Masters of Money while it's still on BBC iPlayer.

Top 10 Dance Tunes of 2011

The blog maybe deader than England's chances at the European Championships next year, but in 2011 the quietude of its crypt was regularly disturbed by an array of top dance and electronica. As per tradition, here are the greatest tunes the year has brought us. May 2012 match and surpass it!

10. My House by Hercules and Love Affair

9. Graduation by Gemini

8. Promises by Nero

7. The Call by Raized by Wolves feat. Tom Smith

6. Another World (Shogun Remix) by Cerf, Mitiska and Jaren

5. Niton by Eric Prydz

4. Tears (Aurosonic Progressive Mix) by Headstrong feat. Stine Grove

3. Titanium by David Guetta feat. Sia

2. You Belong To Me by Bobina and Betsie Larkin

And number one is ...




That is all.

An Ex-Blogger, Blogs

Former regulars still knocking about may be disappointed this place has been left to the tumbleweed. On the other hand, some might find the lack of blogging a big improvement.

Unfortunately, my inclination to blog sputtered out at the start of the year (see here). This isn't because I've run out of opinions. It's down to the nature of the work I now do. While I'm not going to divulge a great deal about it, it does require writing thousands and thousands of finely-crafted words every week and demands the brain be fully engaged at all times. It's certainly different from the factories and checkouts of old, when I could just switch off; or my stints in academia where I pursued my research interests and theoretical inclinations. If you want to flirt with Marx's theory of alienation, for most of the week my thoughts are disciplined by and beholden to a power outside of myself. And so I find myself caught up in an alienating process, one that has left me too knackered and frazzled to spend evenings and weekends hunched over a computer composing yet another screed. Whereas politics used to be pretty much all I did, my species-being now finds fulfillment in sleeping, the pub quiz, and collecting retro video games.

While the days of AVPS blogging are over for the time being, there are a couple of projects I am involved in - one party political, the other a great deal less so - neither of which I cannot say too much about at present. Both require this ex-blogger to take up the cudgels again, albeit elsewhere and under my real name.

This place will not be consigned to the gnawing flattery of spambots, however. I intend to use this for reposting my odds and sods from the other platforms and maybe, just maybe, play host to a couple of pieces that do not fit the other two. And music videos.

So the time for writing the blog's obituary has not arrived, and may yet prove to be some distance off.

NB Quick plug: Don't forget to check out Collective Invective, the new(ish) blog by Lawrence Shaw of the NUJ and the ex-Trot Unicorn quiz cadre.

Eurovision Preview

We are less than a week away from the competition that really matters. No, I'm not talking about Stoke City vs Manchester City in the FA Cup Final but rather the intercontinental cheese fest that is Eurovision 2011!

As per the custom round these parts, this calls for a weary eye to be cast over this year's entries.

The one thing, the main thing that jumps out from this year's entrants is just how serious it has become. Dozy media bosses in Western Europe have finally woken up to the fact that East European countries win because they actually enter A-List acts with regional profiles. Take Alexej Vorobjov, Dino Merlin, and TWiiNS, for example. They are big names. It's all about the fame game and has nothing to do with block voting. Therefore this year, Western Europe has rolled out some very big guns indeed.

First up, Ireland is offering none other than X Factor irritants Jedward. Their tune, Lipstick isn't bad by their execrable standards. Though you have got to ask how their ropey vocals will stand up to the rigours of a live performance. Still, they have hokeyness on their side and should, if they get through the heats, pick up a fair amount of points from the UK audience.

Germany, having toasted their first victory in 28 years in 2010 are determined to hold on to the Eurovision crown. They're sticking with Lena who will be singing Taken By a Stranger. It's alright and the song shows of her strange mockney warble, but it isn't anywhere near as catch as last year's Satellite. But still, could her new found star power pull Germany through?

The UK has got its act together and plumped for someone that not only have us pommes de frites heard of, but have had success on the Continent too. I am of course talking about Blue and their choon, I Can. As entries go it is much better than the dross the UK usually embarrasses itself with. It sounds like a proper Blue record, not underpowered nasal Eurovision fodder. And (and!) because of European chart success, they definitely won't be doing a Jemini and disgracing our good name.

France, however, could pull off something of a coup with their entry. Sognu by Amaury Vassili is a Corsican operatic number that's actually quite good. Mindful of the People's Operatic Societies of the East under the late and unlamented Stalinist regimes, France could pull off quite a coup on the far side of the Danube. And people fed up with Eurodisco married to folky beats might give it a punt for its sheer freshness.

But by far the biggest beast of the Eurovision jungle is none other than Dana International for Israel. It doesn't matter her song, Ding Dong isn't as good as Diva, her 1998 performance was a culturally defining media moment. And with a fan base in practically every European country, by rights she should be a hot favourite.

Well, you would think so. After all, I remember thinking tATu would walk it in 2003. I have instead read the tea leaves and consulted the Oracle and believe the crown will go to either Lena or Eric Saade of Sweden. But expect very strong challenges from Ell and Nikki of Azerbaijan, Hungary's Kati Wolf, France, and, of course, our Blue.

And so, in tribute to Our Boys, here's the UK's entry:

Stoke Local Elections: Thoughts

Until approximately 2:30 Friday morning, Stoke-on-Trent was famous for four things: the pottery industry, Stoke City Football Club, Robbie Williams, and the BNP. But no more. As Labour powered to a 24 seat majority, voters across the city decisively turned their backs on the far right. All five of their sitting councillors were dumped out of the chamber, their challenges elsewhere came to nought, and the unashamedly racist England First (née the White Nationalist Party) could only make up the numbers as fascist also-rans.

This doesn't mean the city can be declared a BNP-free zone, as tempting to do so is. The 3.4% city wide vote mustered by the BNP downplays the scale of their support. In the 10 wards where they fielded a candidate, they polled 2,528 votes out of 35,467 cast, or 7.12%. Despite losing every seat, having an organisation falling apart at the seams, running no real campaign to speak of, and seeing a wedge of its soft support returning to Labour, the fascists are still polling at historical highs for the far right and the local rate is many times greater than their piddling national vote share.

The problem is many of the conditions that allowed the BNP to spread like a cancer through the city's body politic still remain. Persistent unemployment, welfare dependency, poor prospects, housing shortages, and further cuts form the noxious soup from which the fascists can draw sustenance. But they won't necessarily make a comeback in four years time for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, undoubtedly having a thinly-diguised outright Tory government at the country's helm blunts the animus the city's electorate has felt toward Labour this last decade. When it was in power it is hardly surprising some of the anti-politics sentiment it fed assumed radical right wing forms at the ballot box. And already the ruling coalition of the centre right has inspired left-wing street movements, though this has not (and is, in my opinion, unlikely to) make itself felt electorally.

Secondly, Stoke-on-Trent Labour has undergone a significant sea change. The faction fight immediately prior to Tristram Hunt's selection for Stoke Central CLP cleared out a ruling clique focused on resolutionary socialism, hobby horse obsessions, and bone idleness. This has allowed a new campaigning culture to take hold committed to rebuilding the local party and labour movement. And the initial results - 12 out of 14 constituency council seats, the disposal of the BNP, strengthening relationships with the trade unions, and a growing membership - vindicates our proactive approach to politics. Provided this strategy is deepened, and there is no reason to believe it won't be, the BNP and sundry anti-politics independents will have a very difficult time countering it.

The bigger longer term challenge for Labour is tackling persistent low turn outs. While this year is not significantly worse than the usual numbers voting in local contests (as second order elections, they tend not to "matter" as much), it can be dispiriting traipsing from door to door encountering (usually, young) people who are either indifferent to, completely alienated from, or say they do not understand politics. Some readers might like to think this is the outer shell of an immature bolshevism. In fact it is symptomatic of the accumulating break down of civic/political culture that has been ongoing as neoliberalism and deindustrialisation has ravaged the land. Celebrating it as a rejection of discredited mainstream politics is completely misguided - a socialist society cannot be built with ignorance as its foundation. Labour has to go against the grain and rebuild itself from the ground up, as an organisation that has a real community presence beyond the bi-monthly news letter and occasional knock on the door.

So while what Labour has done in campaign terms this last year is impressive, it is but the first step on the long road to the city's political rejuvenation.

Now, of course, something would be amiss if I didn't take the opportunity to comment on the far left vote. Standing as 'Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts', the local Socialist Party branch stood in six seats in surely what must constitute the biggest far left challenge in Stoke-on-Trent since, well, ever. The results were less than stellar and mirrored their outcomes elsewhere, which saw three sitting councillors lose their seats. In the city, TUSC polled 486 (3.8%) out of the 12,656 votes cast in those wards. While this isn't too bad in far left terms (the standard poll a far left candidate can expect is between one and two per cent), considering the scale of cuts forced on the City Council, this is pretty poor. To put things in perspective, town clown and friend-of-the-blog Gary Elsby polled almost twice the total combined TUSC vote. Or, to put it in even starker terms, this vote is less than what the SP achieved standing only in the old Abbey Green ward in 2006. Of course, I have no doubt the success of the campaign will be weighed in terms of x number of leaflets delivered, y number of papers sold, and z number of new recruits. But if you're in the business of building a new workers' party, which the SP claims to be, you will never convince the bulk of Labour-supporting trade unionists to break away on the basis of such trifling numbers.

With Labour's grip on the most politically conscious layers of the working class growing, it's pretty obvious where socialists should be.

Image credit: Pits n Pots

Blogging Imminent

It's been a busy old few months since I let blogging lapse and, of course, a great deal of nonsense has been cluttering up the interwebs in my absence. I think it's time to dust off the keyboard, flex them fingers, and begin again exposing the contents of my head to your reasoned scrutiny.

Well, not quite yet. Yesterday's hectic campaigning plus a near all-nighter at the local election count and a full day at work has left me almost as knackered as the BNP's immediate prospects in Stoke-on-Trent. Instead, have some music until a few thoughts materialise on the elections here, and the far left's totally unexpected dismal results.