Clare Short resigns Labour and goes Independent
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Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
Go on, Treelover, what do you think it means?treelover said:
And what is your assesment of the expulsion by the Labour Party of the Militant organisation and subsequent disloyal people, and of the positive things that Clare Short brought to the Party?
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
You don't give your age, Mallard, but I suspect you must have been born after the fifties and sixties not to have experienced earlier Labour and Tory governments. But you are likely to have lived through the 80s and 90s - was that better than now in your experience?Mallard said:
Mallard said:
If you really would have prefered a continuation of Major, or a government led by Hague, Duncan-Smith, or Howard, then that's your business. I certainly would not have.
Lock&Light said:
What we have got is worse and certainly a lot more right wing than the tories in the early '70's. When they are not bombing kids abroad they're indulging their darkest fantasies of stripping the last vestiges of civil rights of the populace here. If anyone killed socialism it was Labour a long time ago.
Mallard said:
Socialism would be nice. But it's not going to happen. In the real world the choice is between center-right or center-left. Two devils indeed, but I know which one I prefer.
Lock&Light said:
That's the politics of resignation Lock. I really don't think New Labour are centre left. It's a term used just cos it includes left by nostalgics. The government are way to the right of that in the vast majority of what they do. The choice you give is one of the many reasons people don't vote and will increasingly avoid the 'choice' on offer imo.
Mallard said:
If socialists were all to vote for socialism what do think they'd get?
The majority won't stand for it, and if you believe in democracy, you have to accept that, and make the best of it.
Lock&Light said:
Socialism, or have I missed something here?
Lock&Light said:
It's the politics of resignation again Lock. Make do, put up with it etc. Why when it's manifestly wrong? I appreciate there are very few idealists with any connection with The Labour Party but you sound totally resigned to a centre right government to me.
How do you define 'democratic' by the way? The majority of people didn't vote for the buggers and certainly don't seem to support the war or even ID cards but that doesn't seem to matter. Politicians seem to care less and less about representing the public or their constituencies and join the whipped in party line charade for their careers sake. An increasing number of people see through this as well as the rizla thin difference between the two parties and they will increasingly stay away from the polling stations in ever increasing droves.
Mallard said:
Yes, you do seem to have missed something. There simply isn't, never has been and never will be, enough of them to vote socialism into power.
Mallard said:
All my arguments are intended to encourage the promotion of left-centre government because of my total distaste for the alternative you suggest I am resigned to. Needless to add, I think you are wrong.
Lock&Light said:
Really? That's like arguing that we don't have the will or cash to fight NHS privatisation. They managed to set it up after a war. Bevan took on all sorts. The new mantra is right wing capitalism from Labour cos they've either gone to the dark side/value their careers or have simply given up any remaining principle. How can a party survive without any ideology other than 'slightly less bad rampant capitalism' and a 'vote for us cos the tories were bad in the '80's' approach?
Short on principles
Short on principles
Dear Clare,
Over the years, I have often struggled to convince my fellow members of the Labour party
to "stay and fight". Two hundred thousand members have ripped up their party cards since
1997. No issue caused more members to run away from the Labour party screaming and
stick pins in a small figurine of Tony Blair than the murderous invasion of Iraq.
Shortly before Iraq was flattened by the American army, you went on Radio 4 to denounce
Blair as "reckless" and promised to resign from the Government if Iraq was shredded
without a UN mandate. In doing so, you hardened the determination of Labour party
members and MPs to avert a catastrophe which threatened to (and indeed did) slaughter
hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
Of course (as you will be constantly reminded until what remains of the embarrassment
that is your political career goes down the plughole) instead of sticking by your principles,
you decided to make herself more universally loathed than Linda Barker at the height of
Curry's irritating advertising campaign. 139 Labour MPs had the guts to stand up to the
neo-cons and voted against the Government. You, on the other hand, went through the
same lobbies as Blair and the Conservative Party. By the time you resigned (just before
Blair got round to sacking you), Iraq was already a smoking pile of rubble.
Since then, you haven't stopped whinging about New Labour and its crap policies. Don't
get me wrong, New Labour's policies are crap. The problem is you voted for them... again
and again and again.
Take international development. It was you who linked foreign aid to privatisation of
public services. Even your Blairite successor Hilary Benn stood up to the World Bank and
refused to hand over £50m until it stopped promoting privatisation in the Third World.
When the people of Montserrat had the audacity to ask for more aid after having suffered
the slight misfortune of having their island destroyed by a volcano, you remarked that
"they will be wanting golden elephants next." Very compassionate. As Bernie Grant
remarked, you sounded "like a mouthpiece for an old 19th century colonial and
Conservative government."
And of course, let's not forget your role in witch-hunting and expelling the Left from the
Labour party. When Liz Davies was selected as a candidate for North East Leeds, it was you
who denounced her at Labour's 1995 Party Conference for being an unsuitable Labour
party candidate and for having a long record of causing "trouble and conflict". Oh the
irony.
It was you who so zealously demanded the expulsion of the MPs Terry Fields and Dave
Nellist from the Labour party. You later said that their expulsion "was right and all
reasonable people agreed with it."
Well, Clare, all reasonable people agree that you are a hypocrite, a sell-out, a traitor and
an all-round general embarrassment. Enjoy the irony of being eaten up by the same New
Labour machine that you were so instrumental in building and supporting. Go on, off you
go. Adieu. Oh, and do send us a postcard from political oblivion.
We're going to reclaim the Labour party without you.
Love and kisses,
Harry Perkins
Short on principles
Dear Clare,
Over the years, I have often struggled to convince my fellow members of the Labour party
to "stay and fight". Two hundred thousand members have ripped up their party cards since
1997. No issue caused more members to run away from the Labour party screaming and
stick pins in a small figurine of Tony Blair than the murderous invasion of Iraq.
Shortly before Iraq was flattened by the American army, you went on Radio 4 to denounce
Blair as "reckless" and promised to resign from the Government if Iraq was shredded
without a UN mandate. In doing so, you hardened the determination of Labour party
members and MPs to avert a catastrophe which threatened to (and indeed did) slaughter
hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
Of course (as you will be constantly reminded until what remains of the embarrassment
that is your political career goes down the plughole) instead of sticking by your principles,
you decided to make herself more universally loathed than Linda Barker at the height of
Curry's irritating advertising campaign. 139 Labour MPs had the guts to stand up to the
neo-cons and voted against the Government. You, on the other hand, went through the
same lobbies as Blair and the Conservative Party. By the time you resigned (just before
Blair got round to sacking you), Iraq was already a smoking pile of rubble.
Since then, you haven't stopped whinging about New Labour and its crap policies. Don't
get me wrong, New Labour's policies are crap. The problem is you voted for them... again
and again and again.
Take international development. It was you who linked foreign aid to privatisation of
public services. Even your Blairite successor Hilary Benn stood up to the World Bank and
refused to hand over £50m until it stopped promoting privatisation in the Third World.
When the people of Montserrat had the audacity to ask for more aid after having suffered
the slight misfortune of having their island destroyed by a volcano, you remarked that
"they will be wanting golden elephants next." Very compassionate. As Bernie Grant
remarked, you sounded "like a mouthpiece for an old 19th century colonial and
Conservative government."
And of course, let's not forget your role in witch-hunting and expelling the Left from the
Labour party. When Liz Davies was selected as a candidate for North East Leeds, it was you
who denounced her at Labour's 1995 Party Conference for being an unsuitable Labour
party candidate and for having a long record of causing "trouble and conflict". Oh the
irony.
It was you who so zealously demanded the expulsion of the MPs Terry Fields and Dave
Nellist from the Labour party. You later said that their expulsion "was right and all
reasonable people agreed with it."
Well, Clare, all reasonable people agree that you are a hypocrite, a sell-out, a traitor and
an all-round general embarrassment. Enjoy the irony of being eaten up by the same New
Labour machine that you were so instrumental in building and supporting. Go on, off you
go. Adieu. Oh, and do send us a postcard from political oblivion.
We're going to reclaim the Labour party without you.
Love and kisses,
Harry Perkins
Although a libertarian and revolutionary socialist myself, I can see a number of mistakes and wrong tactics made by Militant in the 1980s.
However, whatever the rights and wrongs of Militant, the way they were shoved out of the Labour Party was wholly anti-democratic and was part of the process, started by Kinnock and done in an even more extreme manner by the New Labour elite after 1994, of wiping out any pretense of 'inner-party' democracy within the Labour Party.
If you dislike the politics of Millitant, then why not argue, debate and struggle within the Labour Party to counter their ideas? Of course any democrat who is genuine in their belief in freedom of speech would do just that. But of course Kinnock and Co. were no democrats and like their New Labour offspring, were only interested in wiping out all alternative voices and ideas within the party and using the party as a electoral machine to win elections, no matter what the cost, so they can take the comfy and well paid seats of government and the power and patronage that come with it.
Militant did make the fatal mistake of shunning other progressive causes, such as anti-racism and gay liberation during their time in Liverpool and went for a strict and narrow version of workerism, abliet a version of workerism that was restrained by their inability to juggle the power of their local authority in Liverpool with other areas of the British state. This failure to reach out to other causes, movements and issues that took place back in the 1980s made them isolated outside of the Liverpool area and in the end they collapsed under their own weight of political isolation.
I also do not believe that the Labour Party can ever be used as an institution for working class resistance or for a social/workers revolution. However, despite my disagreements with Militant on this, I am not that sectarian that I would support the assualt they faced by the reactionary goons of Kinnock and Co.
Even if a left-wing group has shite politics, when the capitalist elite attacks them then it can be counted as an attack on all progressives and socialists/communists/anarchists. One day it's Militant that gets the attack, they next day someone else and this should not be supported in any way what so ever.
How do you know what the future of socialism or any other alternative to capitalism is going to be like?
Do you have a crystal ball or something?
More likely you have read way too many articles in the corporate owned media and the rants of every right-wing hack 'intellectual' from Francis Fukuyama downwards. Of course if you buy into the often outright dishonest propaganda of the ruling class, you will end up taking it as truth.
Hitler's propaganda chief, Josef Goebbels, made the point that repeating a lie over and over again will end up with everyone accpeting that very lie as the truth. Sadly, his method of deceiving people seems to be the norm in todays world.
Actually New Labour is in shit at the moment. Party membership is at it's lowest and the trade unions (never ones for radicalism) are now thinking of cutting their funds to New Labour. Add to that that New Labour has a good chance of losing the next election, it seems that the rotting corpse of Labour, far from being in 'good health' it's in it's last stages of decomposition.
Also, given how Blair, thanks to that cunt Kinnock, has turned Labour into the 'other' tory party in all but name, how on earth is that fucking better than a tory government, given they are both now political twins???
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Fullyplumped said:
what "deceit and deception" - Militants openly sold their paper, and argued for its ideas. Any influence came from being elected .
Unlike New Labour btw, which was an almost wholly unelected way of hijacking the party (Blair didn't announce he was to scrap clause 1V before his leadership election, no-one elected Mandelson etc.etc.)
When did a majority of labour members back a) the expulsion of Militants or - come to that - b) the expulsion of galloway?
It's all been a top-down stitch up. So don't bleat on about democracy - and as for electability, the voters of Liverpool consistently backed the Millies. Which is why Kinnock had to suspend democratic institutions like the local CLP's.
Badmammal is right - you can take or leave Militant's political approach, but you can't justify their witch-hunting on any principled basis.
articul8 said:
That is revisionism at its worst. In fact, it's simply not true.
TeeJay said:
Not really. If anything I'm saying that we have the choice between two awful conservative governments. The one in power is currently bombing people abroad in at least two countries, renewing/replacing trident, building a record number of prisons, demonising/criminalising people from abroad who want to live here, privatising the NHS, asking a debt collection agency to run our local comp, funding creationist schools, introducing biometric ID cards and supports the strictest anti-trade union laws in europe. What are they the alternative to, sanity?
Although I may have agreed with you 15 years ago I'm left thinking how is this better than the 'alternative'?
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
Militant claimed to be nothing more than readers of a newspaper. They lied. They were actually a trotskyist political party affiliated to a dodgy bunch of international trots called the Committee for another Workers' International. They became the spectactularly unsuccessful Socialist Party (but not of Great Britain).articul8 said:
The Party Conference agreed the National Constitutional Committee which investigated the Militant and kicked out the members of the entryist Party. Same as they investigated and kicked out Mr Galloway. This thing about a "majority of members" is a red herring.articul8 said:
The voters of Liverpool backed the Labour Party, not Militant. Once they were kicked out of Labour they had virtually no electoral success because nobody in Liverpool voted for them. That's democracy. Labour lost to the Liberals & Tories because Liverpool voters were sick of the way Labour had been infiltrated, but Labour got back in with a big majority once the stables had been cleaned. That's democracy too, as is the fact that the Lib Dems now have a commanding majority in the city but that is probably down to a very unattractive present Labour Party, not the presence of the Miillies! The Liverpool Militant leader Derek Hatton later pursued a career as a male model, and then became a local radio DJ.articul8 said:
The Labour Party regularly sorts out CLPs and District Party organisations when they become rotten - also happened in Birmingham a few years ago.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
I just noticed this rather ironic snippet (dunno why I can't sleep tonight!).
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, a Labour peer who was her deputy in the International Development Department, accused her of being a traitor, saying that her resignation was inevitable. “It is a bit like the final act of a modern Greek tragedy,” he said. He added that she had “bitterness verging on hatred” towards Mr Blair, even though he had saved her career as an MP. “She was threatened twice with deselection by her local constituency party,” he said. “It was Blair’s intervention that kept her on.”
Does anyone remember the circumstances behind the attempts to deselect Clare?
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Foulkes. 
articul8 said:
No-one could have had the slightest doubt about where Blair stood on the question of Clause 4.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Fullyplumped said:
What is dodgy about belonging to an international grouping of like-minded socialists?
Yes Militant were organised. But so are groups like "Socialist Appeal" in the party now - and I don't hear much in the way of complaint. The problem was the Militant was becoming popular - that's why it was stamped on.
A formal rubber-stamping of decisions already taken by a body the majority of which was looking to ingratiate itself with the new party leader is no substitute for a full independent hearing before rank-and-file party members.
Even people like Margaret Beckett saw it for the ridiculous show trial it was.
All the hugh and cry about "entryists" packing out local labour party meetings - was just the complaints of tired corrupt old CLP's which couldn't martial enough support for its tired old agenda.
As for Liverpool, people their knew full well what they were voiting for in re-electing the Militant-led (although the millies themselves never had a majority) council. They were re-elected with bigger majorities - and achieved substantial benefits for working class areas of the city - whilst the Labour party nationally was failing. And they could only be removed by legally banning them from standing for election.
The local Labour party has never recovered from having Kinnockite's undemocratically re-imposed. Which is no doubt why they aren't running the council now.
articul8 said:
That's how politics work. Blair had to be elected to do anything, and what he then did was make Labour electable.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
you are missing the point - Blair indicated he had no plans to meddle with the party constitution, and promptly set about doing it when elected. Only the first of a number of deliberate attempts to mislead (WMD in Iraq, top-up fees, taking dodgy loans for peerages).
We all know that governments habitually lie - but few have been as brazen about it. No wonder people are cynical and labour membership is at it lowest point for decades.
We all know that governments habitually lie - but few have been as brazen about it. No wonder people are cynical and labour membership is at it lowest point for decades.
articul8 said:
ALL governments have been as brazen about it. Nothing could ever be done if the voters were to be warned in advance everytime.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
That's what Trots and their fellow travellers REALLY hate! They hanker for the glory days of glorious principled opposition.Lock&Light said:
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
articul8 said:
Yeah but people should have expected it - after all Blair had previously said that he supported unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the EEC! I actually had the misfortune to deliver leaflets for him in the Beaconsfield by-election when he posed as a lefty.
The guy was a chameleon with no roots or tradition in the Labour Party. He just saw it as a route to a career. It amazed me that people think that he somehow changed over Iraq - he's always been a liar and an opportunist, not just since 2003. To some extent Kinnock or Hattersley were better - at least you knew where you were with them and they had a tradition in the labour movement, albeit a right wing shitty one.
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