Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

IWCA - playground lefties

cockneyrebel said:
This story about Oxford Council backing the postal workers:

http://www.iwca.info/cgi-bin/iwcanews.pl?record=18

is interesting as it's one of the first times I've seen the IWCA comment on trade union struggles. Maybe a change in tact from that point of view?
Click to expand...

Most IWCA members I know are involved in unions, either as shop stewards or workplace reps. It's just that it's never been seen as the be-all and end-all politically. One of the IWCA councillors was a union rep in Oxford when he was working as a postman and was unfairly sacked -- he took it to a tribunal for dismissal on the grounds of trade union activity but lost on a technicality.
 
butchersapron said:
Here's a brief list of the leading articles:
Click to expand...


You missed out "Drain the swamp" which deals with Muslims in Britain and concludes:

With this level of segregation replicated in many northern towns and cities it can hardly be said that multiculturalism has failed. On the contrary is is working only too well. The options though limited are perfectly straightforward. Essentially it can be boiled down to a straightforward societal choice. Either we continue to widen the swamp, or stop now, and begin the political process of draining it.
Click to expand...

What exactly is meant by "draining the swamp"?
 
Most IWCA members I know are involved in unions, either as shop stewards or workplace reps. It's just that it's never been seen as the be-all and end-all politically. One of the IWCA councillors was a union rep in Oxford when he was working as a postman and was unfairly sacked -- he took it to a tribunal for dismissal on the grounds of trade union activity but lost on a technicality.
Click to expand...

I never said otherwise to be fair. It's not just that the IWCA hasn't made trade union issues the be all and end all, it's more that they seem to largely ignore trade union issues in terms of as an organisation as a whole. This statement about the postal strike is the first time I've seen the IWCA comment on trade union issues (although granted I could of missed stuff).

In terms of the questions that butchersaprons posed. Firstly how does the IWCA see itself spreading in terms of the IWCA "model", when after ten years it has no base outside Oxford and a couple of other places. And secondly, considering it is a model which has been tried and tested in the past, how will it avoid just being co-opted into reformism on a long term basis?

Also as social housing is such a crucial question I still don't get the IWCAs stance on it, despite many answers on it from people like Louis Mac. You say that there should be protected places for local people, but I still don't get how that would work in practice?

Council's and housing associations already give you extra points for being on the housing list for different lengths of times. This either means giving you extra points or if it is a banding system then you get priority within your band depending on length of time waiting. As this is already the case what would the IWCA change? Surely it doesn't mean that time waiting on the list would put you above someone in more need? And if not, what does it mean?

As said, I have had answers on this in the past, but still haven't got to grips with what the IWCA mean in practice.
 
cockneyrebel said:
...

Also as social housing is such a crucial question I still don't get the IWCAs stance on it, despite many answers on it from people like Louis Mac. You say that there should be protected places for local people, but I still don't get how that would work in practice?

Council's and housing associations already give you extra points for being on the housing list for different lengths of times. This either means giving you extra points or if it is a banding system then you get priority within your band depending on length of time waiting. As this is already the case what would the IWCA change? Surely it doesn't mean that time waiting on the list would put you above someone in more need? And if not, what does it mean?

As said, I have had answers on this in the past, but still haven't got to grips with what the IWCA mean in practice.
Click to expand...

Quite. When used in the past housing allocation policies of the sort advocated by IWCA have led to claims of racial discrimination (unintended maybe but discriminatory nonetheless) particularly in areas with mobile populations and significant numbers of refugees/immigrants - many of whom are also working class people and no less deserving than those in long term/settled communities.
 
Red Leicester said:
You missed out "Drain the swamp" which deals with Muslims in Britain and concludes:

With this level of segregation replicated in many northern towns and cities it can hardly be said that multiculturalism has failed. On the contrary is is working only too well. The options though limited are perfectly straightforward. Essentially it can be boiled down to a straightforward societal choice. Either we continue to widen the swamp, or stop now, and begin the political process of draining it.
Click to expand...

What exactly is meant by "draining the swamp"?
Click to expand...

Seems pretty straightforward to me. 'The swamp' is a term used by Ismail Patel to describe the political area in which racial differeneces - usually encoded as cultural differences - are emphasised and which then appear as the central unchanging key poltical issues thereby sideling class as an organising or analytical concept.

This seems to be the long term aim of both the 7/7 bombers and their ideological comrades and the ruling class verions of multi-culturalism with the result of increasing racial/social segregation (on top of the econimc segregation that even the rich are now starting to worry about) and the inability to bridge the gap in class terms.

'Draining the swamp' refers to an approach that is prepared to attack this state of affairs and that realises the importance of putting class instead of race or some timeless culture in the driving seat as regards political aims and orgnaisation - to combat both the states plans the increasing alienation of many young muslims from progressive (for want of a better term) politics.
 
Attica said:
. 15 years, and they have 3 groups and 3 councillors.
Click to expand...

Another dead end for the Left i'd say.
There are some things the IWCA says that are good.
But to be honest, they have not escaped from the classic leftie top down approach to politics.Anybody who had close contact with the holy trinity who ran RA and AFA will know that they saw themselves as an elite.
Different from other left groups in that the self selected elite could fight their way out of a paper bag. But similar problems of ego and petty rivalries.

One person ( MoF) led RA effectivelly for years fairly pragmatically and then when he was pushed aside by the holy trinity they became more and more dogmatic and more and more like the people on the left they saw as enemies.
 
cockneyrebel said:
In terms of the questions that butchersaprons posed. Firstly how does the IWCA see itself spreading in terms of the IWCA "model", when after ten years it has no base outside Oxford and a couple of other places. And secondly, considering it is a model which has been tried and tested in the past, how will it avoid just being co-opted into reformism on a long term basis?

Also as social housing is such a crucial question I still don't get the IWCAs stance on it, despite many answers on it from people like Louis Mac. You say that there should be protected places for local people, but I still don't get how that would work in practice?

Council's and housing associations already give you extra points for being on the housing list for different lengths of times. This either means giving you extra points or if it is a banding system then you get priority within your band depending on length of time waiting. As this is already the case what would the IWCA change? Surely it doesn't mean that time waiting on the list would put you above someone in more need? And if not, what does it mean?

As said, I have had answers on this in the past, but still haven't got to grips with what the IWCA mean in practice.
Click to expand...

Cockney, as you say, LouisMac et al have tried in the past to explain this all and at great length. To be honest I don't really have the time to go into all this and I also don't think I could explain it any better than they have explained it in the past. Sorry if you think this is a cop out but life it too short and too busy (leftie student types to sit and moan about and that sort of thing). Just posted to clarify the union thing really. Oh, and we've got four councillors, not three.
 
tbaldwin said:
Another dead end for the Left i'd say.
Click to expand...

istockphoto_808455_broken_record_with_blank_label.jpg


:)
 
Dennis the truth is that many people see the kind of politics you seek to push as about as useful as a broken record.
You can hide your head in the sand and pretend its not true. But it is true and you know it.
People are not going to flock to organisation that want to tell them waht to think about every issue. People are not going to join organisations where they are treated worse than they would be in their workplaces.
They are not going to join "Socialist groups" who think that Socialism is something to be handed down to the grateful masses.
 
I for one found the article good, but I still hold the same criticism of the IWCA that was published in Freedom sometime ago.
 
The article was crap, it had no purpose.

bit like this thread

btw IWCA has three councillors
How many does the SWP have ?
How many does wespect have?
how many does the BNP have ?

have you guessed what the voting pattern is yet kids?
 
brasicattack said:
The article was crap, it had no purpose.

bit like this thread

btw IWCA has three councillors
How many does the SWP have ?
How many does wespect have?
how many does the BNP have ?

have you guessed what the voting pattern is yet kids?
Click to expand...

Er, pretty poor all round.
 
Charlie Drake said:
Pedant's Corner: The IWCA have 4 cllrs - the latest being Jane Lacey elected to Oxford City Council in May 2006
Click to expand...

The other three are up for election next May. In two of the wards, the IWCA failed to win the other seat in May 2006, by a long way in one (Churchill), and in the third their majority was just over 100. However, they will have the incumbency factor in their favour in May.
 
butchersapron said:
'Draining the swamp' refers to an approach that is prepared to attack this state of affairs and that realises the importance of putting class instead of race or some timeless culture in the driving seat as regards political aims and orgnaisation - to combat both the states plans the increasing alienation of many young muslims from progressive (for want of a better term) politics.
Click to expand...


How?
 
Sue said:
Cockney, as you say, LouisMac et al have tried in the past to explain this all and at great length. To be honest I don't really have the time to go into all this and I also don't think I could explain it any better than they have explained it in the past. Sorry if you think this is a cop out but life it too short and too busy (leftie student types to sit and moan about and that sort of thing). Just posted to clarify the union thing really. Oh, and we've got four councillors, not three.
Click to expand...

I'm afraid that much as I respect the posts made by Louis, Past Caring, yourself and others in the past about the IWCA approach to housing, the arguments just don't convince, as explained by CR above. Campaigning about prioritising local links within the existing community above other forms of housing need may sound good on the insular doorstep, but the effect of the campaigning is to divide longterm locals from incomers, and I have no reason to believe that's a good idea. In any case all they really propose is a tiny tinkering with the existing housing allocation points systems in use by councils up and down the country, and chimes with recent noises being made by NULab.

Butchers asked earlier how they could spread their localism-above-all-else model to "areas with majoriy tranisient populations " and the answer is, of course, that they can't because the model is necessarily divisive. Especially when the housing policy is coupled with a sustained critique of multiculturalism and the use of this curious and iconic word 'swamp'.

I won't have the time to discuss this either, not for a few days at least, so this is a post and run for which I apologise, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking this way.
 
Red Leicester said:
How?
Click to expand...

So you understand what it means now? That there's no racist element to it, nothing dodgy?

Well, i suggest that the way that the IWCA or similiar groups such as HI have operated will give you your answer - working around the common self-expressed needs of the local working classs and stressing the collective nature of these rather than the differences stressed by those who want religion culture or race on the agenda. Gettting practical results on that basis, demonstrating that muslim communities share more material interests with their working class neighbours than they are being toild by either the state or the more extreme of their co-religionists.
 
newbie said:
Butchers asked earlier how they could spread their localism-above-all-else model to "areas with majoriy tranisient populations " and the answer is, of course, that they can't because the model is necessarily divisive. Especially when the housing policy is coupled with a sustained critique of multiculturalism and the use of this curious and iconic word 'swamp'.
Click to expand...

Well, if you're right on this - and personally i don't think you are - then there's at least two things that will need to be mentioned or brought up

1) Just how many communities actually are made up of majority transient populations?
2) What proportion of the working class is in social housing and so affected by this approach?
 
butchersapron said:
Well, i suggest that the way that the IWCA or similiar groups such as HI have operated will give you your answer - working around the common self-expressed needs of the local working classs and stressing the collective nature of these rather than the differences stressed by those who want religion culture or race on the agenda. Gettting practical results on that basis, demonstrating that muslim communities share more material interests with their working class neighbours than they are being toild by either the state or the more extreme of their co-religionists.
Click to expand...
How could any progressive-minded person object to any of that?
 
newbie said:
I'm afraid that much as I respect the posts made by Louis, Past Caring, yourself and others in the past about the IWCA approach to housing, the arguments just don't convince, as explained by CR above. Campaigning about prioritising local links within the existing community above other forms of housing need may sound good on the insular doorstep, but the effect of the campaigning is to divide longterm locals from incomers, and I have no reason to believe that's a good idea. In any case all they really propose is a tiny tinkering with the existing housing allocation points systems in use by councils up and down the country, and chimes with recent noises being made by NULab.

Butchers asked earlier how they could spread their localism-above-all-else model to "areas with majoriy tranisient populations " and the answer is, of course, that they can't because the model is necessarily divisive. Especially when the housing policy is coupled with a sustained critique of multiculturalism and the use of this curious and iconic word 'swamp'.

I won't have the time to discuss this either, not for a few days at least, so this is a post and run for which I apologise, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking this way.
Click to expand...

Hello newbie - by ignoring local links you would be dividing long-term locals (who will know each other whatever the vagaries of the housing allocation system) from incomers; they will see their attachments and contributions to the community (which are necessarily different, if only chronologically, to that of the incomers) being discounted. They will see them selves as different in a disadvantageous way.

Moreover, if it is ok to ask the long-term locals to take a step back down the housing waiting ladder (which is effectively the demand being made), then why isn't it ok to ask the incomers to recognise the long-term locals' historic housing need? Unless the local links are in some way recognised/prioritised, then it could easily appear to the long-term locals (and with some material justification) that they are the ones being asked being asked to make sacrifices, without them deriving any reciprocal benefits. Such a perception of 'one way traffic' is genuinely divisive and potentially very dangerous.

Moving on: in response to the criticism that this is just a tiny tinkering, there is the answer (often given on here) that what we need are some immediate victories (albeit small ones), not more ultimately disappointing rhetoric about unfulfilled long-term desires ( e.g. build x council homes, remove the right to buy...). The latter without the former just shows those using the rhetoric to be ineffectual, and if they continue to be ineffectual then they will become irrelevant.

Lastly: I wouldn't be too scared of words. I used to be (being a student in a department of cultural and community studies in the late 80s early 90s it was a bit hard to avoid!), but increasingly it seems to me that we have moved a long way from the late 20th century concern with the determining effects of language. The swamp isn't the process talked up by Margaret Thatcher in her pre-election appeal to the racist vote; using the word won't make people part of such a process. The swamp is a metaphor for the potentially dangerous spaces that the mainstream approaches to anti-racism (going under the banner of multiculturalism) have made available/encouraged between communities; communities identified on the basis of a confused blurring of the categories of race, ethnicity and culture.

Cheers – Louis MacNeice
 
Louis MacNeice said:
......

Moving on: in response to the criticism that this is just a tiny tinkering, there is the answer (often given on here) that what we need are some immediate victories (albeit small ones), not more ultimately disappointing rhetoric about unfulfilled long-term desires ( e.g. build x council homes, remove the right to buy...). The latter without the former just shows those using the rhetoric to be ineffectual, and if they continue to be ineffectual then they will become irrelevant.

.......
Click to expand...

hmm
it seems to me that the IWCA have learnt from history a bit
wasn't 'Island homes for Island People' introduced on the Isle of dogs just before the BNP were elected in the early 90's by the lib dem councillors for that 'neighbourhood'
as i remember it was widely condemned on the left for pandering to the far right, but the left were wrong it was actually an 'immediate victory' :rolleyes:
 
Moreover, if it is ok to ask the long-term locals to take a step back down the housing waiting ladder (which is effectively the demand being made), then why isn't it ok to ask the incomers to recognise the long-term locals' historic housing need? Unless the local links are in some way recognised/prioritised, then it could easily appear to the long-term locals (and with some material justification) that they are the ones being asked being asked to make sacrifices, without them deriving any reciprocal benefits. Such a perception of 'one way traffic' is genuinely divisive and potentially very dangerous.
Click to expand...

Glad you've come onto this thread Louis.

But I still don't understand what the IWCA mean in practice. It is already the case that council's give you extra points, or extra priority within your banding depending on your time on the waiting list. So what more are you suggeting?

Are you really saying that time on the waiting list should be prioritised above ALL other factors? So a family on the waiting list already who is slightly over crowded but been on the waiting list for five years should be prioritised over a homeless family with medical needs who has only justs come into the area? If this is the case then it seems an insane way to run social housing.

1) Just how many communities actually are made up of majority transient populations?
2) What proportion of the working class is in social housing and so affected by this approach?
Click to expand...

I don't know the answers to the first question, but would suspect that it is more and more. I know nearly all my family (nuclear and extended) used to live within a few streets of me. Now many of them are a all around the country. I'd suspect that the "flexible labour market" now means that stable local communities are becoming fewer and fewer.

In terms of the second question don't about 70 or 80% of people own their own home now? Because of right to buy the pressure on social housing is greater than ever. Where I worked the housing stock had gone down from over 50,000 in 1980 to about 25,000 now. Which means that how you define priority is even more of an issue.

On the issue of liberal multiculuralism the IWCA are far from unique. Permanent Revolution and Workers Power have always criticised the idelology of liberal multiculturalism. But while I agree with Louis that language is not static and the be all and end all I can never help thinking when I read IWCA articles on that kinda topic that the language they use bends the stick a bit too far, the article on slavery being an example. There was nothing essentially wrong with the article but I just felt it bent the stick too far in terms of playing down the race angle, even though class is the central factor.
 
cockneyrebel said:
Glad you've come onto this thread Louis.

But I still don't understand what the IWCA mean in practice. It is already the case that council's give you extra points, or extra priority within your banding depending on your time on the waiting list. So what more are you suggeting?

Are you really saying that time on the waiting list should be prioritised above ALL other factors? So a family on the waiting list already who is slightly over crowded but been on the waiting list for five years should be prioritised over a homeless family with medical needs who has only justs come into the area? If this is the case then it seems an insane way to run social housing.



I don't know the answers to the first question, but would suspect that it is more and more. I know nearly all my family (nuclear and extended) used to live within a few streets of me. Now many of them are a all around the country. I'd suspect that the "flexible labour market" now means that stable local communities are becoming fewer and fewer...

...On the issue of liberal multiculuralism the IWCA are far from unique. Permanent Revolution and Workers Power have always criticised the idelology of liberal multiculturalism. But while I agree with Louis that language is not static and the be all and end all I can never help thinking when I read IWCA articles on that kinda topic that the language they use bends the stick a bit too far, the article on slavery being an example. There was nothing essentially wrong with the article but I just felt it bent the stick too far in terms of playing down the race angle, even though class is the central factor.
Click to expand...

CR - here's the IWCA policy on housing from our manifesto:

The IWCA is committed to:

* The restoration of social housing to meet local needs
* The fight against council house privatisation and social cleansing
* Working with tenants who voted for stock transfer to ensure their new landlords deliver on the promises made
* An end to ‘daylight robbery’ where the government takes billions of pounds from council Housing Revenue Accounts each year
* The restoration of the ‘sons and daughters’ policy
* The capping of rents in the private sector
* The payment of an ‘empty homes tax’ for those private properties deliberately kept unoccupied​

As you can see it is a mixture of immediate doable stuff e.g. the 'working with tenants' and 'restoration of the sons and daughters policy' stuff, set alongside more long term aspirational goals. The sons and daughters policy is a way of addressing desires/needs for family continuity/support. If such desires/needs are not seen as legitimate then that should be clearly stated and the outcome of the decision you set up is straightforward enough. However, if keeping families together (and the support, care and enjoyment they can provide) is seen as a legitimate desire/need (and therefore policy goal) then it seems a bit perverse to seemingly rule out a means of pursuing that goal before you've even started.

As an aside if you go down the route of only allocating housing on the basis of immediate physical need (as suggested by your medical example), it only serves to strengthen the position of social housing as a residualised sector for those who have failed to use 'owner occupation'. Having social housing as such a residual provider, leaves it wide open to attack on the grounds of it being a financial burden on one (deserving) part of the population, and a morally corrosive gift to another (failed) part of that population. Social housing, if it is to have a future, needs to widen the remit of its aspirations, not narrow them.

Turning to the language 'thing': my quibble was not about the static nature of language, but rather about it's presumed ability to determine subject positions. I used to buy into this notion pretty strongly, but increasingly I see language (or more precisely its determining effects) as being something that can be overcome; certainly more readily overcome than more obviously material constraints such as ill health and poverty. Given this, have a look again at the articles in question and think about how you are using the language to produce certain feelings of unease (and therefore might use them differently), rather than how the language is making you feel.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

tony.c
Lucy Powell's time is up
Replies
22
Views
339
brogdale
brogdale
S
Change in UK Law for the elderly... Please help
Replies
23
Views
888
hash tag
hash tag
Yossarian
Car ploughs into people at Liverpool parade, 26th May 2025
21 22 23 24 25
Replies
737
Views
26K
Pickman's model
Pickman's model
O
A Plea to the Left from an Ordinary Man
14 15 16 17 18
Replies
533
Views
10K
redsquirrel
R
brogdale
The 2025 Labour Party Deputy Leadership contest
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
165
Views
5K
PTK
PTK
Back
Top Bottom