Mark Steel on the SWP

[poster342002]

The mood in 1997 was primarily an anti-Tory mood

Indeed - and it was a peculier anti-toryism that was anti-tory party, but not anti-tory policies.

This has been a very bad decade for the left - in some ways worse than the prceeding years. Since 1997 there have been a large number of jingoistic and reactionary "national events" that have helped to shore-up rightwing and jingoistic attitudes: the Diana hyperbole, the Queen's Jubilee, the way almost every other year seemed to be some special war anniversary or other, the gaining of the Olympics, the London bombings ... all of those were events that favoured and engedered a popular mood to the right rather than left - nomatter how much the cod-left made facile attempts to "reclaim" any of them.

 

[durruti02]

I think things started to go awry when the SWP (along with much of the left) completly misunderstood the nature of the rise of New Labour.

I remember how most of the support for NuLab seemed to come, in my experienced, from the new breed of urban proffessional yuppies - individualistic, ambitious corporate ladderclimbers who were cheesed off with the "incompetance" of the Tory government, but by no means wanted any sort of notionally leftwing government to take over. All the criticisms of the John Major governemtn were that it was "inefficiant", "incompetant", "a mess" etc. Never that it was "unjust".

What these new yuppy-types wanted was an equally nasty, rightwing governemnt that was "competant" at the job. That's what New Labour offered, that's what they voted for and that's largely what they got.

The left, meanwhile, chose to interperate this ugly phenomenon as a seismic shift to the left in the psyche of the masses. They predicted a "crises of expectations" that never came because most of New Labour's supporters expected pricesely the rightwing policies they got and were pretty much happy with them.

It was this naive interpretation of the election of an overtly rightwing governemnt as some sort of widespread rejection of tory values that started my slow disillusionment with the SWP and the left as a whole. They were, it seemed, wilfully blind to the unpleasant reality of what was unfolding around them. There was and has been no "upturn" in working class militancy or resurgence of leftwing ideas - quite the opposite has happened. The last 10 years has seen the final - and possibly permanent - nails in the coffin of the workers movement and leftwing ideas as a whole in this country. I have never known people to be less receptive to them than they are now.

fair points but i disagree with your conclusion .. or maybe it is sematics .. i agree the left is stuffed but i do not think the basic progressive views are lost at all .. i think it is that peoples positive progresssive views are no longer associated with the left

 

[mk12]

i think it is that peoples positive progresssive views are no longer associated with the left

Yes I agree with this. And I honestly don't think there is anything wrong with this fact either.

 

[durruti02]

Yes I agree with this. And I honestly don't think there is anything wrong with this fact either.

a ha .. well that is the question isn't it .. are we right and or brave enough to try to create something new .. i think we should be .. as IWCA have tried

( if that is what you meant! )