Wednesday 12th December; Steve Albini is back in town for the first time in over 31 years. Shellac are playing the Boiler Shop and my goodness, they were every bit as brutally powerful as you’d expect. We didn’t get End of Radio, but we did get Albini making an impassioned call for us all to cast aside any noble or ignoble principles, any doubts or disagreements and vote Labour the next day. His words were received rapturously and the 50 or so people I would call friends in attendance at the gig, like it was the late 80s / early 90s Egypt Cottage or the original Riverside brought back to life, put aside the gathering apprehension we’d endured ever since the election was called, and tried to believe a better, kinder future was possible. After all, we knew that the Labour Party, however timorously bureaucratic and factional it is by nature, represents the only workers’ party of significant size and influence in this country.
Sadly, the
wave of progressive support for opportunity and the healing of the deep wounds
of divisive austerity didn’t materialise and the Tories wiped the floor with
us, for nefarious reasons I’ll later expand upon. For the first time in my
life, after years of denying its existence, I’m now forced to accept that I’ve
been living in a complacent, cosmopolitan, lefty bubble that stands almost in
diametrical opposition to the ideology of so many former Labour voters. However,
and this is crucial, simply because a sizeable chunk of the white working class
has deserted Labour at this time, it does not mean the policies advanced in
this election were wrong or need to be jettisoned in a wrongheaded race to
appeal to authoritarian populists by abandoning our core, red line beliefs.
In
attempting to win back the support of those who abandoned Labour for the far
right failed gambit of the Brexit Party or even the Tories, we should
demonstrate why their embracing of racist and sexist attitudes is unacceptably
wrong, on class rather than moral grounds. Reactionary politics have always
been the preserve of the ruling elite and have never provided solutions to
problems of poverty, unemployment or any other social ill for our class. The
problem was in our tactics as a whole and the matter of Brexit, however
unpalatable it will be, and specifically the man who was supposedly leading us.
We will laugh for decades at the hideous presumption of the non-entity Jo
Swanson that she could be Prime Minister, but how will history come to regard
the Corbyn era? Was Jeremy any more credible a candidate to be First Lord of
the Treasury? Not in the eyes of all our opponents and probably at least half
of our party, both inside and outside Westminster.
As I write,
the RMT have successfully closed the whole of the Tyne & Wear Metro down
for 48 hours, standing up for workers’ pay, conditions, safety and job security.
Their struggle is our struggle and I offer uncritical and unstinting support to
them. Unfortunately, the current parlous state of political consciousness among
workers means this dispute is viewed with growing hostility by inconvenienced
shoppers, party goers and the supporters of Newcastle United. Enraged by this
strike, they do not hold central government to task for the chronic lack of
investment in the service over the past decade, nor do they excoriate the
feckless and deceitful management who deviously seek to blame the consistently
appalling level of service on the RMT, rather than their own incompetence. This
whole situation acts as a microcosm of current English and Welsh politics,
whereby the attitude of ordinary working class people to other working class
people is at best antagonistic and at worst virulently reactionary. Undoubtedly,
Scotland and the Six Counties are on a very different trajectory to the rest of
the UK these days, which I’ll again address later in this piece; suffice to say
voters in those regions, in large numbers, rejected the BBC bullshit machine
and voted with clear consciences, in the most part, for socially progressive
and inclusive policies.
Meanwhile,
in England and in Wales, voters, in the face of repeated lies of greater and
greater magnitude, demonstrating the contempt in which Johnson and his party
hold the working class, were prepared, and in many cases displayed great
enthusiasm, for voting in the kind of scabrous charlatans that only previously
existed in speculative fiction. This can all be demonstrated by the events that
have unfolded since they were granted a significant majority; proposed
legislation will enable a no deal Brexit, with workers’ rights jettisoned with
immediate effect, the reneging on a promise of a universal living wage, a
gerrymandered Boundary Commission to ensure a Tory stranglehold over England in
perpetuity and, with no sense of irony, a promise to remove the right to strike
for transport workers. This should act as no surprise to any of us; the Tories
are our enemies. Nye Bevan’s analysis that they are “lower than vermin” has
been the truth since he first uttered the phrase and will remain so forever.
So, how is it, in the face of an incompetent, corrupt, arrogant set of
rapacious, evil thieves that the Labour Party, our mass, workers’ party, failed
so dismally to provide even a token show of opposition in the recent election?
Comrades,
and I use the term advisedly, the inescapable truth is that, tactically, we got
it very wrong during these last few years. It isn’t enough to look outwards and
apportion blame on the shoulders of the usual targets. This election result
must be seen as more than the product of vicious right-wing media propaganda
brainwashing those too stupid to see through this broadcast blanket of bullshit
and willingly accepting the lies of the Tories going unchecked. That may well
be part of it, but the attacks on our movement have always been part and parcel
of our struggle against the evils of capitalism. We’ve had these things before;
from the 1924 Zinoviev Letter to Piers Merchant’s despicable anti-Semitic abuse
of Nigel Todd in 1983 and on to the unspeakable lies of the establishment,
painting Jeremy Corbyn a racist or a supporter of the long-disbanded IRA this time around, our
opponents have a clear track record of smears and innuendo. We should have been
prepared for this fallacious character assassination; ready to respond with
ineffable logic and policies to wrest the agenda back to the reality of the
hellhole our society has become, not cryarsing into a social media echo chamber
that it wasn’t fair what the baddies were saying. Capitalism isn’t fair and if
you can’t find a way to calmly and eloquently explain your position, the
opposition are halfway past the post already.
Throughout
the campaign, the electorate were persuaded by the media that, other than an
unwavering focus on Brexit, where Labour had completely ceded the argument long
before the election started, policy could be replaced by personality as the
main battleground of this election; the bumbling, incompetent, venal oaf in
charge of the Tories was somehow rehabilitated as a well-meaning eccentric of
the old school, while the veteran peace campaigner was stigmatised and
slandered as a racist, terrorist supporting anti-Semite. Yes, it was a tough
old battle and we never laid a glove on the Tories. The whole campaign was
marked by reactive attempts at firefighting and fence mending, as we were on a
hiding to nothing from day one for three main reasons -:
-
Brexit was
the number one issue in the election, however much we tried to make it about
the NHS. The simplicity of the Tory slogan Get
Brexit Done was as effective as their 1979 strapline; Labour Isn’t Working. We didn’t have a credible policy; Corbyn’s
Lexit tendencies that had shown him to be half hearted at best about the idea
of a second referendum, left us as the ones dead in a ditch. We appealed to
neither Leave nor Remain in significant enough numbers to hold onto the seats
we already held, never mind trying to push on for a majority.
-
While our manifesto
was a document designed to save the country, it was presented in such a
haphazard and inconsistent fashion, so as to seem almost made up on the spot.
Did the electorate really know what we stood for? Without an effective
figurehead to champion our key policies, our voice was muffled, indistinct and
without credibility.
-
The hardest
thing to face up to is that Jeremy Corbyn was hated across the country by
ordinary Labour supporters, as opposed to his veneration by post 2015 party
members, though his repeated undermining by influential figures in parliament
didn’t help. Without question, if he had stepped aside in 2017, perhaps for Dan
Jarvis or Yvette Cooper (and I almost can’t believe I’ve just typed that), we
would be in power now.
At this
point, I must state that Jeremy Corbyn is a good man. His main trouble with his
attempts at fulfilling his job description of trying to become Prime Minister
is that he isn’t a natural leader. Yes he’s an ideas man and yes he would be a
no-brainer as party president, as opposed to the shifty, boorish Ian Lavery,
but he wasn’t a leader. The baggage of his contacts with Sinn Fein were a
positive boon to the likes of me and many of my cosmopolitan elite pals who
unquestioningly support a United Socialist 32 County Irish Republic, but didn’t
sit so well with Bill the brickie in Blackburn, whose nephew had been blow up
in South Armagh. As regards Brexit, a simple yes or no by the whole party would
have sufficed, back in 2016 preferably. Don’t forget, on the day after the
referendum, Corbyn told May to trigger Article 50 there and then. If that was
to have been our policy, all well and good; many of us would have been appalled
and sought to change it, but at least it would have been a line in the sand. Something
people would have understood, rather than having to unwrap layers of obfuscatory
rhetoric from a timid proposition that satisfied no-one. The received wisdom
that grappling over the EU would tear the Tories apart has taken on a grim hue
when we look at the raw data of elected members and a closer examination of
their allegiances.
The Labour
Party, from 2017 onwards, amidst the farcical political stasis in parliament,
committed electoral suicide by the unforgivable lack of clarity in our stance
on Brexit, though it was sadly repeated so often in many different policy
areas, that it was to be our downfall. Frankly, Corbyn stalled after the
surprisingly encouraging performance last time around and eventually began
rolling back downhill at breakneck pace after 2017; that was his high water
mark and if he’d stepped aside then, for whomsoever, we could have built on the
protest vote of the previous election to take us to power, because he simply
hadn’t a clue what to do next, other than say what he’d been saying in the
previous 2 years. So, we blew it and, in staying where he is until the New
Year, Corbyn shows he still hasn’t a clue about leadership.
Frankly,
while we were right to put our faith in his policies, we were wrong to have any
trust in his judgement, regardless of the empty words of the wealthy, tendentious
Bolsheviks in their £350k houses, who’ve never so much as delivered a leaflet,
much less taken an active role, sniping at long term party members, including
both defeated and elected members for questioning Corbyn’s performance. His error strewn performances during the
campaign made it almost seem as if his heart wasn’t in it as polling day drew
closer; Brexit was a minefield and even our greatest achievement, the NHS,
wasn’t discussed with sufficient clarity or gusto. We haven’t even touched on
anti-Semitism yet.
No I don’t
think Corbyn is anti-Semitic, but I do think the reek of 70s student politics
in the BDS movement and Maomentum’s tacit prolongation of the Trotskyist
touchstone of an international Jewish banking conspiracy ruling the world
(which is about as credible these days as David Icke’s theories on shape
shifting lizards in Buckingham Palace) were not helpful, either in the party or
the wider community. The media portrayed Corbyn as anti-Semitic and his twin
responses of ignoring the issue or whispering mealy-mouthed apologies did not
wash. The time to respond was two or three years previously when the
accusations began to fly. However, I’ll state it again; Corbyn is not an
anti-Semite, a racist or a proponent of the Armed Struggle, despite what many
seek to believe. Sadly, he isn’t a leader either.
Looking
north of the border, it is clear that Nicola Sturgeon, despite the tasteless,
chauvinistic, personal sneering, courtesy of predominantly English reactionary
right wingers, knows exactly how to run her party. Of course the sub judice rules around the elephant in
the room that is Alex Salmond’s impending trial for sexual offences helped her
no end, but a return of 48 of the 59 Scottish seats is a major triumph. The
Tories hold 6 rural seats; covering huge swathes of empty land and the Lib Dems
have 4 which, Edinburgh South West apart, are similar tracts of Caledonian
tundra. That leaves one single seat in the whole of Scotland, in Edinburgh
South, in the hands of the Labour Party.
It shows, in comparison to the SNP’s strident, clear message and
articulate, focussed leader, we have become an irrelevance for a country that
rightly wishes to be afforded the chance to cut all ties with southern
neighbours whose values are utterly different and considerably less community
based than those in Scotland. Scotland should be an independent Republic and a
member of the EU. I fervently hope this to be the case, though I’d counsel
against expecting it any time soon, as Johnson is such a contrary bastard he’ll
deny a referendum just because he can. This would not necessarily be bad news
for Sturgeon and the SNP, as the imminent social privations that Brexit and 5
more years of Tory rule have in store will simply harden the resolve of most
Scots that they want out of the sordid Eton Mess that Britain will become.
Across the
sea, the DUP’s idiocy came to bite them on the arse. Even their only
functionally literate member, Nigel Dodds, got his cards in North Belfast as
Belfast’s mayor John Finucane, son of the Republican solicitor Pat Finucane who
was murdered by collusion between British occupying forces and Loyalist
paramilitaries, swept him aside. Belfast South was taken by the reanimated
SDLP, where the Shinners stepped aside and saw Claire Hanna ensure only a
single Loyalist representative from the City at Westminster. Even then Naomi
Long of the Alliance Party was a hair’s breadth away from ousting the DUP
candidate. However, cross community pro EU politics prospered in the affluent
exurbs. The intriguing and principled Sylvia Herman retired, allowing Stephen
Farry of the Alliance Party to take North Down. While the DUP, already being
demonised for their lack of enthusiasm for the return of Stormont, may be the
largest party with 8 MPs, they trail the pro EU bloc of 10 other MPs. It is an
inescapable fact that Johnson’s Brexit deal will do more to advance the cause
of a United Ireland than 30 years of the Armed Struggle ever did. A 32 county
republic is nearer now than at any time since 1920 and it would be nice if the
100th anniversary of partition was marked by reunification, even if
that sticks in the craw of a certain strata of Loyalists.
One of the
things that struck me most about this election as it played out on social media
was the virulent hatred of Corbyn by former members of the armed forces. I
ended up blocking half a dozen people on Facebook for their shocking takes on
British democracy. Perhaps I’m being naïve in not realising that the type of
person prepared to carry weapons for the state is probably not the sort who is
likely to comprehend the nuances of Jeremy Corbyn’s contact with Gerry Adams
and Martin McGuinness back in the day, or indeed his membership of the Troops Out Movement. That said, even I
was taken aback by the endless trumpeting of slogans calling him a traitor or a
terrorist, demanding his imprisonment or execution, by seemingly ordinary
people who, if you scratch the surface, outed themselves as rabid fascists,
ready to take on democracy if the vote went against them. Frankly, it frightens
me that the British state is able to plant such fomenters of hatred in the
community; they are the potential white Mujahideen in our midst. If social
unrest escalates, watch out for their action. They are the ringmasters for the
disaffected stormy petrels of the right and 1,000 teenagers waving Not My Prime Minister placards in city
centres on cold winter nights won’t have a chance against them.
Undoubtedly,
the biggest and worst lie the right-wing establishment was allowed to
repeatedly trumpet was the idiotic and offensive claim that Corbyn, a man who
has spent his entire adult life fighting racism and injustice, is a racist. He
may be many things, but he certainly isn’t that. However, the myth became
accepted as reality, while enormous swathes of Labour’s natural support
abandoned, hopefully temporarily, politics based on class consciousness and
collectivism, in favour of the repugnant ideology of racial politics. And you
know what? Outside the big cities where
the progressive, educated, multi ethnic, multi-racial, socialist elite are based,
after all I’ve said in this article, I can understand exactly why the white
working class have abandoned us.
After three
years of being told they were thick, racist meatheads whose opinions didn’t
count because they weren’t the same as ours, and I hold my hands up to being
one of the worst exponents of such intellectual snobbery, the denizens of
Blyth, Consett, Stanley, Spennymoor and a hundred other economically and
socially blighted, isolated small towns did exactly what they did at the 2016
referendum. They told the established order to fuck off. The difference being
that in 2016 it was the whole political order they set their sights on, whereas
in 2019 it is solely the Labour Party who have been humiliated. While there is
the temptation to laugh at the scores of balding, middle aged white working
class men who will die on the streets, of COPD, Type 2 Diabetes or any one of a
string of lifestyle related cancers, as their darling Boris will abolish social
housing and sell off the NHS, there is no worth in vicious Schadenfreude I’m afraid. From our perspective, my sympathy for
Diane Abbott, a black, female Cambridge graduate, incessantly derided by white,
working class men for being stupid (yes, a Cambridge gaaduate), is bottomless.
Additionally, I’m heartbroken for Laura Pidcock, who I would have loved to have
as Party Leader if she’d been returned, and dear old Dennis Skinner who’ve lost
their seats, but both of them would tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the
time to mourn is over and the need to move on, in a more inclusive and
thoughtful manner is upon us. As the Pop Group said at the end of We Are All Prostitutes; “this is the
point where despair ends and tactics begin.”
Other than
Brexit, our manifesto was a document designed to save our country, full of
policies that, in isolation, are far more popular than those of the Tories on
the same subjects. However Corbyn’s performance, the Media circus and the
omnipresent, looming spectre of Brexit holed us below the waterline a good 18
months back. For the future, we must not abandon our socially progressive,
egalitarian policies and principles, but we need to find a way to express how a
better future is possible, in the face of 5 more years of grinding Tory
austerity. We won’t abandon the voters who abandoned us; we must seek to
reconnect with them and show, with the greatest of respect, how they’ve backed the
wrong horse, for the good of themselves and the country as a whole. Who should
lead us? Good question, but I’ll take the Fifth on that until the New Year as
Marxists can show we’re as nice as Christians at Christmas, especially in your
local.
Wednesday 19th
December; the Tynemouth Lodge Christmas Party, where the go to pint is that
liquid ambrosia, Bass. Hughie Price has had The Lodge since 1983; in that time,
the Bass has remained an unchanging, perfect pint, almost utterly unknown
outside of the NE30 area, except for devoted connoisseurs of Real Ale who swear
by its potency and power. It is the beer that reminds me most of the perfect,
unchanging, impossibilist position of the dear old Socialist Party of Great
Britain. Sadly though, the future years will need us to understand why people
opt for Carling and John Smith’s…
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