Pickman's model
sunset spires and twilight woods
could you please identify those areas to which you allude?Fisher_Gate said:
labour cllrs joining the ruc
- Thread starter Pickman's model
- Start date
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
KeyboardJockey said:
Try reading one of Dave Hill's books - then tell me he's not serious about the working class.
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
KeyboardJockey said:
If you think he's one of the "committemen and time servers" try reading this:
http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/bolsharticle.pdf
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Fisher_Gate said:
You'll find some online papers he's written here:
http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/papers1.html
Read them - it's good stuff, not at all Labour 'timeserving'!
Fisher_Gate said:
Hill has definitely written some reasonable stuff on education and is a passionate hater of what Labour has done and is doing to education.
However, what Labour has done and was going to do should have been obvious to anyone with a brain since at least John Smith became leader.
I am surprised that Hill was a Labour member as I've met him on a number of occasions and his politics always seemed liked the usual 'shouty-trot' SWP speak that the former organisation always come out with. At the very least, I thought he was a fellow-traveller of the SWP.
I remember him about 3 years ago, hectoring a conference I was at that everyone should support a forthcoming ANL counter-demo of an NF march. When I suggested that the NF were not only irrelevant but probably being used by the police for trawling for information on the left, he didn't even reply but walked away.
Whilst above, I noted his writings on education, most of it was based on rhetoric rather than analysis. Indeed he told me and a couple of others at the same conference that he'd submitted a draft of a book to a publisher, only to be turned down due to the fact that he wasn't proposing any original research in the project. Hill's reply: "Why do I need to do research."
Edited for spelling.
Reading my local paper (Lancs evening Post) tonight - came across a letter by Respect local councillor Steven Brooks.
After some valid points about expulsion of Walter Wolfgang at Labour conf. it ends with the following:
"Please, in the next election, vote anyone but New Labour".
What so I should vote Lib Dem? Tory? BNP?
Ok, I know this is not Respect policy - but what a stupid thing to say.
Also, casts light on his motivations for joining up with Respect - sour grapes with local Labour party...
After some valid points about expulsion of Walter Wolfgang at Labour conf. it ends with the following:
"Please, in the next election, vote anyone but New Labour".
What so I should vote Lib Dem? Tory? BNP?
Ok, I know this is not Respect policy - but what a stupid thing to say.
Also, casts light on his motivations for joining up with Respect - sour grapes with local Labour party...
exosculate
a stagger with a beat
cogg said:
I'm not surprised - he probably thought you were loopy, what else did you tell him - the man in his local chip shop works for MI5?
exosculate said:
And it took you 9 days since my original post to come up with that witty reply? I'm impressed.
The NF is a tiny organisation with less members than Workers Power, which is saying something. It is over twenty years since it has had any impact in the real world. All it does is stage small marches and other equally pointless activities like its current campaign in Manchester (See today's Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,11981,1587739,00.html) that are inefectually opposed by equally small numbers of the SWP and its mates and usually end with a couple of lefties being arrested.
exosculate
a stagger with a beat
cogg said:
I only just read it. Don't dispute NF are pathetically small, will need evidence for the police spy network thing or whatever it is.
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Calum McD said:
It's not something I'd agree with him on - hopefully I'll be able to take it up with him on Tuesday night at the Respect meeting.
However it's no different from what your famed Preston Councillor, Paul Malliband, said when he famously resigned from Labour while still a candidate, calling for no-one to vote for them. [How is Marxist Paul by the way? Haven't seen or heard from him in a while.]
At least in much of Preston constituency voters will be able to vote Respect next May election - who will you be voting for?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Fisher_Gate said:
Actually there is quite a difference between "calling for no-one to vote for" New Labour and calling for people to "please in the next election vote for anyone but New Labour". The former is a correct statement of opposition to a vote for Blair's party, the latter is a call for votes for any and all of the other parties. Very sloppy of you.
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Nigel Irritable said:
That was because I couldn't quite remember the exact phraseology Malliband used - it was something like "You shouldn't support Labour candidates in Fulwood, as they are not interested in working for the benefit of local people". (I'll look it up next time I'm in the public library). It was left a bit ambiguous as to whether people should turn out and vote for the other candidates, but given his record as an active and founder member of the SDP, most people I know interpreted it as a call for a vote for the LibDems or Tories, rather than Labour (there being no other parties standing in Fulwood).
Both his and Brookes statements are wrong and confused (and confusing). But when Malliband resigned however, not only was his statement during an election period and on the front page of the LEP under headline like "Don't Vote for Me!" (cf Brookes letter was buried away inside), there was still a left wing presence in the local Labour Party and a local left wing MP (Audrey Wise). His resignation and particularly his call for 'boycotting Labour', was widely interpreted as a move to the right, not to the left The danger of an ultra left position on elections and Labour (like the SPs) is that it can accommodate rightism - I still advocate voting Labour where there isn't an alternative (and do so myself), as to call for abstention is a cop out tantamount to voting Tory.
Unlike the SP with Malliband however, I don't intend that Brookes statement should be airbrushed out of history - I shall argue with him and anyone else in Respect who agrees with him, in public if necessary, that it was a wrong statement to make.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Fisher_Gate said:
From your report of Malliband's statement there is nothing that we could conceivably wish to "airbrush" away. Calling for no vote to Blair's party is a straightforward statement of our policy. It is also quite different from a call for a vote for all of the other parties.
I realise that you are confused about the nature of New Labour and still have illusions in that party. I have to assume though that dishonesty rather than confusion is at the core of your apparent inability to perceive that calling for no vote to a particular party is not the same thing as calling for a vote for any and all other parties.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
Ah, "illusions".
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Donna Ferentes said:
Yes "illusions".
It's almost a left group cliche to talk about the illusions which sections of the working class have in some figure or movement or party. What's unusual about this discussion is that the only people under the illusion that New Labour is a working class party are a few of those very left groups themselves along with some trade union bureaucrats.
New Labour continues to get the majority of working class votes on much the same basis that the Democratic Party gets the majority of working class votes in the United States, but only a few bewildered sectarians really think that New Labour is a "capitalist workers party" in the sense once argued by Lenin.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
I'd have dropped the word "almost".
Similar threads
- Poll
