Good news!
Postal workers have voted three to one in favour of strike action (61,623 out of a total of 80,830).
See CWU website for further information.
More info about the struggle here.
Seán (has a great blog btw) gives a very good explanation of the struggle in the comments box.
I was trying to remember this afternoon why I joined the LP. It was way back in late 1984-early 1985 when I saw a quote from Tony Benn and this struck a chord in me. At the time as well I used to watch the television and gaze in amazement at the mass demonstrations against nukes. It galvanised me to join Youth CND and the LP. I suppose, as well, I wanted to part of something, activism with other people. I wanted to organise.
What made me reminisce was mainly due to this post. The arguments put forward in the post about the Convention of the Left and the demo on Sunday did trouble me somewhat. The demo especially was angry, dynamic and lively (on an aesthetic point it was the most animated part of the demo to take pix of), indeed there were slogans such as ‘Gordon is scum’… ‘Labour Out’… Yes, politically under-developed slogans and negative ones I grant you (I recall the more positive ‘jobs not bombs’…) but then people are possibly depressed, demoralised and disillusioned.
The attacks on young people has been harsh and punitive, the minimum wage is pathetic, education is expensive, unemployment is high, no real apprenticeships, learning skills etc. A supportive society not one that slings pregnant young women into a 21st century version of a Victorian home for ‘unwed mothers’….
Sometimes people do want to express their anger in slogans that reflect how they feel. Are we supposed to ‘police’ demos by telling people not to chant certain slogans? Yes, whole purpose is to take that undiluted anger and organise into constructive activism. But they were slogans. I don’t know (and don’t really care) how many were SWPers/SWSS members in the student section, or whether you can dismiss them as ‘middle class students’… Yes, it was loud and noisy but hey, it’s a protest.
And anger conveyed can come across as disorientated and chaotic, this being conveyed in the slogans. Will those slogans build the alternative to NL? No, they are slogans. The other thing is that people are angry, angry at being betrayed by this government who were swept to power after the traumatic period of 18 years of Toryism. Labour had such a massive unbelievable majority which they squandered on neoliberalism as opposed to transforming this society into something equitable.
Maybe those slogans were ‘ultra-left’ and not where we should be politically as the alternative to not voting Labour is something far far ugly and vile….Tories. The class enemies who have no qualms in shafting the poor, Labour has organic links to the working class and the trade union movement, and because of this has tensions, pressures and contradictions. The Tories, pure and simple, have their own class interests to defend.
When I think of NL I think of illegal and barbaric wars, destroying the benefits system along with the welfare state, contracting out, privatisation, bailouts for banks, MPs expenses, not repealing the anti-trade union laws, attacks on civil liberties that further encroach on our freedoms, more and more anti-terrorism laws, and on a personal level meeting people, alongside campaigning with, whose loved ones have died in state custody and being stonewalled and sidelined by the state. Banging up more and more vulnerable and powerless people in the prison system, using the prison system as a social dustbin, increase in suicides and self-harm, marginalising and stigmatising and vilifying people with appalling vile hideous oppressive ‘mob rule’ style justice in the guise of ‘community payback’ schemes…. Where NL plays to the right-wing populist press, indulges in state racism and continues to adhere to neoliberalism.
Undoubtedly, by christ I know it, the Tories will be far far worse in their turbo-charged attacks but in the meantime how the hell do you engage with people and tell them to vote Labour? This also for me depicts the wholesale sell-out by the trade union bureaucracy. The funding they have given Labour over the years shoulda had strings attached, such as spend money on the public sector not wars….etc etc.
But no, they bowed and scraped to the NL tune.
And what of the Left, since 1997 there have been one group or another stating that they are the ‘One’ and lead us to the promised land of bread and roses but instead it was the road to splitsville, with more added trauma. And then the next time….and next time….Groundhog Day. I want to see a viable transparent, democratic, honest alliance that doesn’t allow itself to descend into turmoil ‘cos one leftie grouping or another wants to gain supremacy (ditch the democratic centralism…that would be a start). If the Left is to survive then it has to shackle itself free of Leninist principles and party discipline…because, Toto, this aint a pre- revolutionary situation…..
Just finally….back to that demo. I know as a young pre-revolutionary energetic shiny raw (naive) cadre I woulda have liked running along chanting possible ultra-left slogans but that’s the thing about being a leftie youth there’s always a tinge of ultra-leftism and I wouldn’t want it any other way. You stop these people chanting these slogans (Though steer clear of the revo groups….it is an education, an apprenticeship if you like….. but could do without the mind fuckery) but you engage them into activism and debate. That’s how to change political landscape…..The way to counter disorientation, disillusionment and demoralisation is through open debate and political leadership.
The 14-15 year hopeful and idealistic me desired and dreamed of an equitable socialist society, I still do and will always campaign for that. Socialism such a simple idea yet some fucking hard to achieve…..
