Monday 3 December 2007

Funding fundamentals

This, apparently, is the Labour government's biggest crisis. The unfolding details of the murkily declared donations made by David Abrahams to various party high-ups are apparently going to deal Gordon Brown the sort of telling blows from which he will never recover. Funny that, I'd have thought deceiving the country into a senseless conflict in the Middle East in which hundreds of thousands have died might constitute a slightly more grisly lowpoint, but what do I know? I don't live in the Westminster Village.

Let's have some perspective: compared to the sleaze of the Tory years, and to many of the hideous wrong turns on actual social and economic policy of the past 10 years, the past week's shenanigans are small beer. But that doesn't mean they're not serious, and not an indictment of the way the party's higher echelons conduct themselves - they are, and they don't stem from mere individual oversights or misdeeds. They stem directly from the systemic political culture of New Labour, which revolves around the unquestioning, quasi-adolescent worship of rich, powerful people and the downplaying/ignoring of ordinary members' collective concerns.

Yet in picking through the mess and offering possible ways out, we need to be careful what we wish for. And we can always trust the Blairs and Browns of this world to draw the least desirable, least logical conclusions. Yup, Gordy's response to the problem of unaccountable, undeclared donations from private individuals is to crack down on declared donations from accountable, public organisations - trade unions.

You don't have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to see an agenda at work here, both from the ultra-Blairite right of the Labour party and the Tories, to use the current problems to attack the party's most transparent and consistent source of political and financial support. Now there's plenty of criticisms to be made of how the union-Labour link works (chiefly, to my mind, about the lack of accountability of union leaderships towards their own members over how they intervene in Labour politics, granting the party leadership the licence to do what it wants without any real mandate from their members - such as at the party conference democracy-shredding fiasco this year), but union support for Labour cannot be equated with Ecclestone/Abrahams-esque donations, reflecting as it does the aggregated contributions of trade unionists who opt to pay into affiliated political funds. Let's see businesses that back the Tories - or Labour for that mattter - ballot their shareholders in the same way.

Cynics may argue - understandably, to an extent - that the union-Labour link now delivers so little that what's the harm in breaking it alltogether? But let's not be deluded - an ending of the link would enable the party to charge even further rightwards completely unconstrained. Don't think New Labour can't go any further right - they can, and will. It would also be a gift to the Tories, which is why they're braying on the sidelines in support of such a development.

The other, equally ill-advised, option being given an unwelcome airing at present is state funding for political parties - again, in some quarters, because it would weaken the union link. An awful lot of constitutional liberals and policy nerds have embraced this one, but I can think of few more counterproductive and stupid solutions to our current political malaise.

To steal the language of the right for a minute, politics is a marketplace of ideas. If you can't survive in that market you've no God-given right to exist. If political parties can't generate a big enough membership and support base to sustain themselves - because they've become unaccountable and unrepresentative - then they've got something of a nerve to then ask the taxpayers (those very taxpayers who are voting with their feet by not joining, or leaving, political parties) to bail them out. Tax income should fund the machinery of the state, but the parties have to be independent, standing on their own two feet. Give them equal access to mailshots, and broadcast airtime, sure, but state funding would weaken their relationship with their members and, ultimately, their accountability to the wider public. Members of parties get a vote on how they are run (at least in theory); what sort of say would taxpayer-contributors get? It's a form of taxation without representation. State funding perpetuates the idea of politics as a spectator sport, paid for by the public but never played in by them.

Of course, we should acknowledge that the era of high-spending, low-participation politics produces lots of unsquared circles and the age of the Mass Party may be behind us, for now. But the way to restore faith and involvement in political parties and organisations begins at the bottom - more accountability, more inclusive forms of democracy and, we should be honest, less tribalism. But so much of the frenzied discussions of recent days could end in a bad situation being made even worse.

Tuesday 20 November 2007

The politics of non-politics

In the early days of New Labour, the leadership's approach was in many ways to attach itself visibly to "taboo-breaking" rightwing policies, in an almost shock-jock fashion. A calculated "fuck you" to the left, aimed squarely at the centre-right gallery. Remember, for example, how pleased with himself Tony Blair sounded when, way back in 1994, he defended his much-publicised decision to send his son to an opted-out school - as a defiant refusal to bow to the forces of "political correctness". They did this sort of thing a lot back then - on crime, immigration, welfare and others.

In their deeds, of course, Blair-Brownites still do, but the words seem different now. Softer, more asinine, more meaningless. This is largely because so many of the actual policies on which they initially prided themselves have proven not to be popular - and not just among the left. There's no populist enthusiasm in the country for PFI or the foreign policy disasters of the past decade, or even ID cards, so it's best simply not to mention them (while silently acqueiescing in their implementation. Dog-whistling on immigration isn't worth much either (aside from its rank immorality) as the Tories do that sort of ugly stuff with so much more conviction. Always have.

So the tack's been different in the late Blair/early Brown era. If you want to get on politically now, the best tactic is simply not to mention politics at all. This 'politics of anti-politics' was a notable feature of the recent parliamentary candidate selection campaign in my local CLP where, with only the occasional exception, the (many) contenders tended to shy away from airing specific opinions on the government policies they might actually have to vote on if they got the job.

Instead the emphasis was very much on being nice to children and animals, motherhood and applie pie, jumble sales and tea stalls, on a waffly "working for the community". Which is all well and good - you catch more flies with honey and all that, and this "community activism" can indeed be an approachable, imaginative and pleasant way of engaging people in politics and civic life in general. But aspects of how this approach is used trouble me a bit.

For one, there sometimes appears to be an implicit positioning of "community activism" as something separate from "politics". This is a false distinction. The instincts that lead people to set up charities, support local libraries and run family fun days are or should be the same that cause us to protest about wars or go on strike. It's all politics, and the key is striking a balance between the micro and the macro - and making the links between the two.

And I can't help detecting a bit of a New Labour ruse in drawing implicit unfavourable comparisons between this sort of community stuff ("good, worthy, in touch with the community") and wider political - and sometimes, inevitably, oppositional - campaigning ("unrepresentative, nerdy ranters in draughty meeting rooms above pubs") as if they're completely different things. They're not. And we shouldn't fall for it, and let ourselves be portrayed in this light.

But the politics of non-politics reflects something else - an emotionally brittle, infantilised fear of honest discussion and disagreement, the idea that any difference of opinion constitutes "a damaging split", that no one - the electorate, political party members, the media - can cope with people getting things out in the open. And it serves to marginalise, confuse and make people feel powerless. Because the people who actually do hold power have an only too pronounced sense of the politics they want. And the issue-dodging that characterises non-political campaigning gives them a clearer run.

People can actually cope with political disagreement. I once had a furious drunken row about Blair with one of my best mates' dad at a New Year party, which culminated in him calling me a dickhead, and me giving almost as good as I got back. Some of the others present, unaccustomed to such robust exchanges of views on public matters, were somewhat taken aback - assuming a boundaries-breaching breakdown of cordial relations - but the next day there wasn't an ounce of recrimination or lost respect between us. We still got on fine, and still do. Funnily enough, while history has absolved me on the arguments I made about Blair that New Year more than a decade ago, only one of us is in the Labour party now - and it ain't him.

Thursday 2 August 2007

The medium isn't the message

Will people ever calm down about the allegedly world-changing capacity of the internet? Well when I say "people" I really mean members of my own profession, many of whom seem to be gripped by a perpetually childlike wonder at every development in cyber-interactivity, while taking rather less notice of its actual substance. It's time we ditched both the techno-evangelism of the web's cheerleaders and the apocalyptic doom-mongering of those who think 'citizen journalism' will Destroy Our Noble Profession. Both exist in numbers within my own profession and union, and it's time for a sober perspective.

Especially as it's leading to a type of journalism that struggles to distinguish between woods and trees. Take this story in today's Guardian, or this one last week about the US and Democrat presidential contest. Yep, the apparently fascinating thing, even to an audience mostly fully conversant with their way around the web, is that it's taking place on the internet. Well fuck me ragged. The world stops on its axis. The fact that the actual content of these online debates offers little evidence that the US's domestic politics, or anywhere else's, is becoming any more representative, any more relevant, any more radical as a result of these technological advances doesn't seem to matter. That establishment politicians are merely trotting out their same old tired old trials and triangulations in an extra medium seems no longer to matter to the besotted technophiles.

The internet is a useful tool - politically, socially and personally (I've learnt a lot from some of the forums listed on this blog, and met some thoroughly decent people), but it's precisely that - a tool. A means, not an end. Sometimes it seems people forget that.

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Saloon bar socialism in NY

I'm not one for kneejerk anti-Americanism (much overused and misused though that word is) but I never imagined that I'de be out-leftied in a casual pub discussion in the Goddamn United States of America, but in Rocky Sullivan's, a down-at-heel Irish boozer in Central Manhattan, I found possibly the most resolutely leftwing pub I've ever been in while on holiday in New York last week.

It's a belter of a place - sure, it's dark, dingy and the toilets are a bit of a state but the place hums with righteous argument, not in pretentious chin-stroking fashion but in a hearty, engaged and boozy way. When I first got chatting to the barman, Chris, about the Irish peace process I was expecting the standard cartooon republicanism with which Irish-Americans are often, and sometimes unfairly, associated (this is a place with a fair bit of Celtic, Free Derry etc paraphernalia on the wall after all). But no, your man's main criticisms centred on the insufficiently class-based nature of Sinn Fein's politics and how they just weren't leftwing enough.

We moved on, along with assorted other local barflies (including a Bush-ite who was comprehensively blepsed in a row about Iraq), to union rights, the Middle-East and even John McDonnell and the state of the Labour party. It's the sort of amenable yet diverse place you could stay in until 4am without realising it, which is what we did. Rocky Sullivan's also hosts debates, meetings and live music from rollicking good-time pub bands.

Alas, I was told the bar is closing at the end of July, a victim of The Man's high rents and brutal economics, though I'm assured it will be reopening in Brooklyn. Let's hope so.

Fine jukebox too - my selections: It's Gonna Happen - The Undertones; Follow the Leader - Eric B & Rakim; Christmas in Washington - Steve Earle; Novelty - Joy Division; Waiting for the Great Leap Forward - Billy Bragg.

Thursday 5 July 2007

Alan Johnston - free at last

Nice to return home from a holiday to a piece of uncomplicated good news - the release of BBC Gaza correspondent (and NUJ member) Alan Johnston. There's much to say about this, from a political and journalistic perspective, but in the meantime, great news.

Thursday 14 June 2007

Bald men fight over a comb: the Labour deputy leadership contest

Not the most inspiring of contests this, and one difficult not to approach with a certain grudging bitterness about the cowardice and control freakery that characterised the leadership coronation.

But anyway, Jon Cruddas deserves to win because he's the closest to non-dogmatic yet palpably Labour values (not 'old' or 'new', just Labour) - confronting a smattering of issues that Blairism has either ignored or been on the wrong side of: social housing, poverty and inequality, rights for immigrant workers, opposition to trident replacement. His response to the BNP's presence in his consistuency was also pretty impressive. I don't totally trust him, but he's the best of a poor bunch.

Beyond that, it's all about tactical deployment of votes to prevent Johnson and, particularly, Blears, a woman seemingly incapable of an original thought and whose demeanour of a demented training awayday 'team leader' has a nails-down-the-blackboard effect. That, and her dogmatic, not-for-turning obeissance to the Blair project.

So I went: 1 Cruddas; 2 Harman; 3 Benn; 4 Hain. And that's yer lot

The Short answer

If Gordon Brown wants to eliminate waste in the public sector, perhaps he might want to take a look at how some of the councils most loyal to New Labourism operate, such as Tower Hamlets Council who last month agreed to pay an out-of-court settlement to press officer Eileen Short ahead of a scheduled unfair dismissal employment tribunal.

The damages the council has had to pay aren't likely to burn huge holes in local taxpayers' pockets, but they might nonetheless want to question how their council got itself into this position. The answer lies in a familiar blind ideological faith in outside private consultants, the attendant unaccountable politicking this generates, and a comprehensive contempt for their own staff and trade unions.

Eileen, a press officer specialising in education, was the victim of a ridiculous bogus restructuring of the council's communications department in September 2005, in which she was forced to effectively reapply for her own job, since the reorganisation created various new 'press officer' posts. She duly applied to be assimilated into one of them. No one else did. She didn't get the job. And despite a subsequent dispute involving Unison and the NUJ - including three and a half days of strike action - she lost her job in January 2006.

So why was she forced out? Outside of her work, Eileen was active in the Defend Council Housing campaign, and was a strong opponent of the council's crude attempts to railroad tenants into voting to transfer control of their estates to less accountable housing associations. This was denied by the council, who themselves admitted that Eileen's outside campaigning had had no adverse impact on how she was performing at work, but, well, they would say that wouldn't they? And, as Private Eye reported, the fact that the council's then chief executive was Christine Gilbert, wife of former housing minister Tony McNulty, was also an interesting incidental detail.

But the nasty victimisation of a housing campaigner wasn't the whole story either. The saga epitomised the negative and destructive role that private consultants can play in public authorities, bringing not the efficiency and dynamism heralded by their Blairite cheerleaders - but instead unaccountable and politically-motivated chaos. Eileen was dismissed shortly after the council's communications department had been taken over by PR consultancy Verve, whose head honcho Lorraine Langham had managed to move smoothly from contract to contract throughout her many years with Tower Hamlets. A Verve consultant sat in on the interview panel that denied Eileen her job - so the company's protests that the dismissal had nothing to do with it were laughable. And throughout all this, the communications service provided to the media with the public's money inevitably suffered.

The failure of the strike to win Eileen her job back was demoralising for staff, but the payout and cave-in by Tower Hamlets has been some consolation. (She got a job back at the Town Hall last summer anyhow, when Respect's gains in the council elections made them the second party in the borough and thereby entitled to appoint a political adviser; they appointed Eileen.) Happily, the council's press officer posts are now back in-house and Verve and Langham are no longer on the scene. A battle lost, but a war (at least partially) won. And strikers' willingness to stand firm has certainly made the council think twice about picking such a fight again. This should be an example to others. And to union leaders.

1982 and all that: pop's golden age?

This year is the anniversary of 1982. People did different things then, lived different lives, to paraphrase Chris Morris's Day Today spoof of witless 'reminiscipackages'. At present, of course, the reminiscence industry is busy churning out 'Falklands: 25 years on' retrospectives. Sends an instinctive shudder through lefties of a certain age, all this, I'd imagine - that conflict being commonly cited ever since as the motor for Thatcher's 1983 election landslide and the hammerings of the Left that followed.

But bollocks to all that. Let's concentrate on the good stuff from that time, specifically the pop music. It's been said that great pop music can inspire tumultous social changes, but I've never bought that line. It's surely the other way round - tumultous social changes can inspire great pop music. And this is one of the reasons why the early Eighties were such a fascinating period in the history of our popular culture.

Of course, there's a huge amount of subjectivity at work here. That this was the period when I first started following the charts and buying records (Madness singles, mainly, from scrimped-together pocket money) certainly informs my fondness for the music of the time. Yet I'm less fond, now, of the era when I was actually most going to gigs, clubs and buying albums by the shedload (the early Nineties). I was clearlier a cannier judge of a tune at 11 than I was at 21. The early Eighties rocked. The early Nineties didn't.

Much of the era's vibrancy is exhaustively documented in Simon Reynolds' masterly Rip it Up and Start Again, which argues, rightly, that 'post-punk' was actually far more important than the initial punk uprising. Things really got interesting when the ideals and sounds that inspired punk were blended with the other pioneering sounds of the era, such as disco, electronica and hip hop. All had their roots in the late Seventies, but from very different starting points, geographically and sonically. Most importantly, all had their moments of utter greatness. Punk v Disco was always one of pop's most pointless stand-offs. To take sides would make as much sense as cutting off one of your ears. And the likes of Talking Heads, Blondie, PiL, Gang of Four understood this. Throw in yer Two Tone acts and yer complete one-offs such as Dexys and you have a scene set for one of pop's high-watermarks, which is what 1982 was. A year in which there truly was something for everyone.

So here's five very different, very diverse reasons why 1982 was so great.

1 Party Fears Two - The Associates
Scotland rocked in the early Eighties. Or rather it didn't, and thank Christ. By the late 80s, much mainstream Scottish music had slipped into a slough of bombastic mediocrity typified by the likes of Simple Minds, Del Amitri, Deacon Blue and co. Earlier in the decade, however, the sound of young Scotland (Altered Images, Orange Juice and co) was playful, experimental and infused with a gloriously expansive pop energy. These elements were never more majestically combined than in Party Fears Two. There's loads going on here - the expectant opening synth chords, the infectious piano riffs, bass, string and synth sounds going all over the place - all topped off by Billy Mackenzie's awesome vocal histrionics, which could be about everything or nothing; a cry of despair or hope. A song that it's impossible to tire of.

2 The Message - Grandmaster Flash
Much early hip hop lacks the slick expert production sound of the likes of Dr Dre, but what it lacks in polish it made up for in innovation, lyrical dexterity and righteous anger. The Message has been much lionised in subsequent years (it was never a massive hit at the time), but rightly so - a compelling state-of-the-city lament for New York urban decay, and the best political record of the period. It's something of an indictment of these times that a record as powerful and indignant as this now sounds so dated. It still hits the spot, though.

3 Inside Out - Odyssey
Eighties soul is terribly undervalued, and even within the story of the soul/disco/funk of the time, Odyssey rarely get much of a mention. More popular in Britain than in their native New York, they produced a string of cracking singles notable not just for their polished and soulful tunes but the heartfelt yet emotionally mature lyrics. Few break-up songs hit the spot like their 1980 hit If You're Looking for a Way Out, and few betrayal songs are as accomplished as Inside Out - six sublime minutes that stretch keyboard, string and bass arrangements to their emotional limit. And it manages to be magnificent despite the fact that Louise Lopez's vocals are slightly off-note for the duration.

4 Say Hello, Wave Goodbye - Soft Cell
Soft Cell can sometimes be written off as mere ultra-camp electro-disco tarts (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that), but there was always a hell of a lot more going on in their best work. Marc Almond was an expert conveyor of angst, loneliness and despair. Indeed, it was key to their considerable chart success. If their cover of Tainted Love (notably inferior to Gloria Jones' northern soul original) made their name, its more downbeat successors - Bedsitter, Say Hello, Wave Goodbye and Torch - saw them give full vent to their capabilities. Say Hello... is the pick, a heartfelt lament for an opposites-attract relationship gone horribly sour, complete with orchestral flourishes and compelling choruses. Those who think electronic-based music can't convey emotion have always been fools.

5 Ain't No Pleasin' You - Chas'n'Dave
Not an ironic choice this, honest, much though the Kings of Rockney have of late been appropriated by the Hoxton set since Pete Doherty started bigging them up. OK, so Ain't No Pleasin' You doesn't slot into any of the categories or trends mentioned above - and wouldn't have got remotely close to even a cursory mention in Reynolds' book - but it's still a great sing-a-long slice of pub white soul. A male "I will Surive" if you will. More personally, and perhaps pathetically, much of my affection for this song is down to its recent embrace by some Leyton Orient fans - and its association with the spontaneous pub party on the night we got promoted in May 2006. Belting it out it in a big arms-linked scrum at a karaoke on that delirious evening is one of my happiest memories. Sentimental, sad, but true.

Saturday 19 May 2007

Enemies of freedom

One of the most important campaigns being run by our union at the moment is against attempts to water down the Freedom of Information Act. More details from the Campaign for Freedom of Information here. Note too, that only one of the people who stood for either leader or deputy leader of the Labour party supports the early day motion opposing attempts to neuter the Act.

Meanwhile, today - a day and a bit into the fresh new era of "listening" and "being humbled" ushered in by Gordon Brown - MPs vote to exempt themselves from the already inadequate strictures of the FOI Act.

Here's a list of those MPs who voted this madness in. Apologies for the Mail link (I won't make a habit of it) but there's some people in there who really ought to know better.

Wednesday 16 May 2007

A party afraid of its members

So John McDonnell has conceded, having failed to get the 44 MP nominations needed to trigger a ballot of the Labour party's members and affiliated trade unionists. John fought an honest and upfront campaign, with policies on many issues (such as trident replacement and the Iraq war) that more than a hundred Labour MPs agreed with him on and rebelled on. But when it came down to it, very few of them had the guts to nominate someone who shared some of their views. Other bits of McDonnell's programme were perhaps further to the left, but to not allow members a contest is, frankly, a disgrace.

So Labour will line up at the next election not with a properly elected leader, like the other parties, but with one "elected", basically, over dinner in a poncey Islington restaurant 13 years ago. For this was where the facts on the ground of Brown's candidacy were created. And Brown has now succeeded in bullying and manipulating his way to the top job, with the help of a parliamentary party afraid of its members. Are we really that scary? Do they really despise and distrust us that much?

I get a fair bit of flack from mates for being in the Labour party, though I stand by my membership. With the Blair era coming to an end, there was and is a space within the party and the labour movement for imaginative and democratic discussion on changing the outlook and direction of the government. Blair-Brownism (for they are one and the same), in as much as it can be dignified with being called a political philosophy, *is* on the decline, intellectually and as a political and popular force. That hasn't changed. Nor has the progressive outlook of large numbers of people in the party; there's still probably more decent progressive socialists in the Labour party than there are in those parties further to the left. The only other one that really looked like making inroads, the Scottish Socialist Party, has imploded, and the left looks as weak as ever, outside and inside the party.

Yet the ideas put forward in McDonnell's campaign aren't weak and aren't, mostly, unpopular. We all need a good think about how to reconcile this gap between popular policies and unpopular (or relatively unknown) actual political movements. McDonnell, for his part, came across well during the campaign - articulate and impassioned without being smug and hectoring. Such a contrast with Brown himself, whose campaign leaflet came in the post today. Its aims were as vague and fluffy and platitudinous as the worst Blair produced - "Britain number one for education... every child the best start in life... an NHS that earns the trust of patients and staff... no pragmatism just soft-focus meaninglessness. We'll hear no more, I suspect, of the "Blair-Brown split" since it was never a political wrangle.

Meanwhile, I hope the intra-left recriminations and gloating are kept to an absolute minimum in the aftermath of this, and that we aim our fire where it belongs - on the spineless cowards of the PLP and the chief coward and bully himself, Gordon Brown. That's one thing he's got in common with George Bush already - neither came to power in a proper election. What a start.

Sunday 13 May 2007

Blair bows out....

And amid a customary flurry of substanceless self-justification, and amid a cacophony of really rather tedious punditry. I'd challenge even the most earnest political nerd to read any of the "Blair's 10 years" supplements without feeling the sharpest urge to take respite in some juicy pointless gossip about Kate Moss or Lilly Allen or Pete Doherty.

And now Brown awaits, offering the odd hint of better things (parliamentary approval for any decision on war, a beefed-up constitution, though details are still vague), but amid much the same blether about remaining New Labour, not "going back 20 years" (the Blair/Brownite stock response to any criticism from the left is to accuse critics of living in the past; given New Labour's own evident obsession with the past perhaps it is they, not us, who are the ones fighting yesterday's battles).

So we need a contest. That the Labour party should elect its leaders seems such an obvious and basic democratic point it's depressing it needs to be made. It's also entirely predictable that the same point doesn't bother many political pundits, locked as they are in their "choppy waters for the government" sub-Day Today Westminster village court-gossippy world - compared to which, frankly, what the Sugababes and Girls Aloud are up to *is* more interesting.

Anyway, here's the letter in yesterday's Guardian that I and 339 other people signed, asking the Parliamentary Labour Party to be so decent as to permit us this contest. Don't hold your breath.

Thursday 3 May 2007

Sing when we're losing

I love days like last Saturday. Leyton Orient were comprehensively outplayed at home by Nottingham Forest but, more importantly, other results ensured that we stayed up in League One, an eventuality that seemed highly unlikely back in September and October. So we were all happy.

And, with the weather glorious, it all provided a perfect backdrop to a languid day of drinking and socialising in the Birkbeck pub, followed by some magnificently raucous and shamelessly uninhibited karaoke later on. Loads of people I hadn't seen for a while stayed out, and we all went home overly refreshed but basically happy.

It's the delightful little mundane details of bog-standard days and nights like this that are why I wouldn't want to support any other team. Much sentimental nonsense has been written about football clubs as communities - small football clubs especially - but there's definitely something there. The most eclectic, eccentric and uncategorisable gathering of people I know is the one with whom I watch Leyton Orient matches. It's also one of the friendliest and funniest. Matchdays in the Birkbeck are what socialism should be like.

Which is why the idea that supporters of small clubs are 'jealous' of clubs such as Chelsea, Manchester United etc are so absurdly, ignorantly inaccurate. They're welcome to their pre-ordained, predictable, overpriced charade of a league.

Thursday 26 April 2007

Hey Meacher, leave your bid alone

In recent decades both the Labour and Conservative parties have reformed their internal structures to limit the power of party conferences and their 'rank and file' membership. The mostly unspoken reasoning for such reforms was an implication that whereas party conferences tended towards infantile insularity and internecine bitchiness (among wild-eyed far-lefties in Labour's case, blue-rinse bigots in the Tories'), parties at parliamentary level and beyond had a broader outlook - "governing for the country, not just the party", as Blairites might put it.

Well, in the Labour party that situation (always an unfair caricature in any case) has now been comprehensively reversed - with the childish, parochial backbiting coming from the PLP while the poor bastard membership waits for something approaching an intelligent, focused leadership contest. Alas, it's not just the bullying tendencies in the politically barely distinguishable Blair and Brown camps throwing themselves into this circus - it's spread to the 'left' too, in the form of Michael Meacher's incoherent and spectacularly stupid bid for the Labour leadership.

For eight months now we've had a declared left candidate, John McDonnell, who's steadily built a campaign through touring the country, hooking up with a wide variety of campaigning groups, trumpeting the principled positions he's taken on a range of key issues over the past ten years. Then along comes Meacher, trampling over the same political ground, only with a much less consistent record - what with having voted for the war, Foundation Hospitals and ID cards, owning loads of houses and subscribing to some of the reactionary 9/11 conspiracy theories - proclaiming himself to be the 'left's best hope'.

Still, there was an outside chance it would stay civil and we would be able to take at face value Meacher's argument that he was better placed and better experienced to pick up a few more 'soft left' votes than McDonnell, until in the Guardian yesterday he decides to lay into McDonnell, with an evidence-free diatribe about how many more MPs he's got nominating him, even though he's refused to name them all. Unsurprisingly, McDonnell's asked for a bit of clarification. All of which must be a huge boost to Brown's plan to bully his way into the top job without a contest.

It's a sorry charade, and an indication that the most infantile part of the Labour party is the parliamentary party itself.

Thursday 19 April 2007

The role of the left in the trade unions

"Why are you spending my union subs on all this political shit?"

This comment will not be unfamiliar to any left-leaning union activist. Those hostile to the left in unions, or to the concept of trade unionism in general, love to portray politically strident trade unionism as a diversion from the 'bread and butter' issues of ordinary members. It's an easy and cheap crack to portray union leaders and activists as out-of-touch vanguardists pissing it up with Hugo Chavez while local workers at the chalkface are neglected.

Easy and, of course, not really true. But we need to be careful, not least because we're still - most of us - at the stage where our main goal remains the simple recruitment of members in a workplace climate in which many people are just not accustomed to a trade union culture or, dare I say it, consciousness. Mud sticks, and we must deal carefully with what's slung in our direction.

So why do we need Left unions? Here's some rambling late-night thoughts:
1) We're part of civil society. Sometimes the Left is prone to getting bogged down in debates about affiliations and 'correct lines' on remote-sounding issues. But political trade unionism should be about our role as citizens and workers. Trade unions are a vital, vibrant part of civil society; what's more, we're one of the largest and most democratic vestiges of cicil society still standing after Thatcherism kicked the shit out of most alternative centres of democratic power. As part of that civil society, we have a right to voice concerns beyond what colour bog-paper we should have in the toilets. The Iraq war affected us, racism affects us, poverty, bad housing and attacks on civil liberties affect us. As long as our policies on these issues are decided democratically and transparently, we've a right to speak out.

2) The principle of collective action. Unions are at their most effective when they try to work around this basic outlook. Low pay, long hours and other abuses are best tackled immediately and collectively, rather than through loading individual casework on union officials (vitally important though this can be in other matters). The left in unions should promote strong collective responses to problems, and solidarity with people in other workplaces, taking on the argument that "they're nothing to do with us". They are.

3) Community action. Local campaigning organisations such as TELCO in east London offer one example of this, unions such as Unison and the T&G joining up with other community groups, religious groups etc to promote quite all-encompassing (and 'cuddly' and sellable) ideas about helping the weak and marginalised. Aside from the altruism and moral rightness involved, it also gives a union a visibility to people who may never have had any encounter with unions before (and this is as likely these days to include the very poor as the very rich)

4) Internationalism. We must tread carefully on this one - this is about more than shouting 'justice for the Palestinians!' on demos, it's about making links between our situations here and others there. An obvious point, perhaps, but the simpler this point is made the better. It isn't, always.

5) Don't hector people. Never with the hectoring - it bores people.

Wednesday 4 April 2007

Questions of identity

I've noticed that there's another poster by the name of "E10 Rifles" on the Guardian's commentisfree site and various other lefty blogs. Despite the fact that he/she appears to share many of my politics (McDonnellite labour left etc), he/she is not me, though it's not inconceivable that we may have regaled/bored the same pubs with our saloon bar socialist blather. I don't actually live in E10 either - I'm a mile or so up the road.

Gyms are for Tories

They are aren't they? Sanitised, narcissistic temples of preening self-worship, perfect for an atomised overworked society. Everything about them puts me off - the strutting; the individualism; the clunking, sexless bump'n'grind by numbers R'n'B tunes that are often piped in; the, er, fact that I'm a bit scrawny and not very good at lifting stuff.

Socialist exercise comes from team sports or running. Playing football or cricket or whatever involves collaboration, helping people out, working towards a common goal, the inevitable sociable drink afterwards. Running, meanwhile, gives you a chance to commune with surroundings, dodging dextrously through crowds of American tourists on the South Bank or slaloming around geese on the River Lea towpath, finding out new little hidden highways and byways of your neighbourhood.

The gym session, by contrast, is geared for a society where overwork and being time-poor is seen as normal. It's of a one with the stresses and strains of eating-lunch-at-your-desk culture. Come the revolution, their days will be numbered.

Friday 23 March 2007

William Morris Gallery under threat

The borough I grew up in (and have recently moved back to) can't boast enormous amounts in terms of cultural heritage; it's a tatty, non-descript place in many ways, but it has its charms and character. And a couple of good little museums and galleries, the most noted of which is the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, devoted to the works of the pioneering socialist, designer and poet, whose opening hours Waltham Forest council now intends to restrict drastically. This is classic example of creating cultural facts on the ground - reduce opportunities to visit, and you can argue that not many people want to go.

I don't go a bundle on a lot of Morris's designs myself - a tad too twee, to my untutored eye - but as a political figure and socialist he was a big deal and someone an area such as ours should be proud of. It's depressingly unsurprising that a Labour-led council should be enacting such cuts (WF is a hung council with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power), more depressing still that a Labour leader of the council should be reported as dismissing campaigners against the cuts as "a middle-class elite". But an ignorance of history and a contempt for their own movement's heritage have long been badges of New Labour honour. And it's a nasty, sneaky trick to pit spending on culture against spending on schools and social services, especially when the bill for private sector consultants is so high.

The petition can be signed here

Urban fairytales

In the winter of 1981-82, the local newspapers of east London were all agog with stories of the mythical "Hackney Bear": my hazy memories of this, as an 11-year-old, were that there had been a number of sightings of a bear on Hackney marshes, stomping in the distance across the unkempt scrubland at dask and dawn. My uncle worked on the Hackney Gazette at the time, and at every family gathering he'd bring us updates. It was thrilling stuff, the area's very own Loch Ness/Yeti story, and covering the story must have been the very essence of what local journalism is about.

Of course, it turned out to be a bloke in a bear costume, playing a hoax and taking the piss, as was a pale imitation that apparently appeared a few miles west a couple of years later, the Hornsey werewolf who "stalked" Highgate Woods; it was just an oddball kid who went to my mate's school. But one can only salute the pointless indefatiguability of both the bear and the werewolf.

Another slice of inexplicable non-wacky weirdness from my childhood concerned a bloke who waited at our bus stop going to school throughout the autumn of 1983. Throughout the term, he'd turn up at the same time, as straight-laced and suburban-looking as they come: shirt, tie, overcoat, briefcase, copy of the Telegraph - but no trousers. He maintained this kecks-less state for months, never looking around for attention, never speaking to anyone, provoking suppressed sniggers from us but surprisingly little wider reaction. Wonder why he did it?

I'd like to think that these sorts of pointless traditions are being maintained - though it's actually the opposite of the sort of contrived wackiness of a David Brent or Colin Hunt off the Fast Show, which has been so regrettably nurtured by Comic Relief and their ilk. No, the bear, the werewolf and the trouser-less commuter were part of a richer scene, which preferred anonymity and got on with it. Truly, a scene without heroes.

Wednesday 21 March 2007

Prudence is a progressive cause

News24 is currently dribbling on about Gordon Brown's last budget as chancellor, so I've switched over to the cricket, since the ways budgets are reported are as boring as they are banal. Strikes me on first reading as an incongruous mix of regressive and progressive with - as is Brown's wont - his main priorities being to chuck a few juicy bones to the high earners in the city.

Many epithets have clung to Brown over the years, a bafflling number of them undeserved (such as the idea that he is significantly to the left of Blair), but "prudence" is another. The cheerleader for the high-mortgage madness that is PFI, the provider of a blank cheque for war, the man who's presided over a high-personal-debt economy still gets hailed as "prudent".

And the left should be attacking him, and prevailing rightwing economic orthodoxy in general, on the issue of prudence far more than it does. We're as well placed as ever to call in turbo-capitalism's failure to manage finances sustainably. It's time to turn the well-worn accusation of the right that socialism can't balance the books on itself.

Funnily enough it's football - one of the most short-termist, money-grasping, ineptly run industries around - that's taught me this. Having been involved in, and written about, supporter activism and the politics of the game, one of the most recurring themes is just how unsustainable is the model of management that's run riot in our national sport over the past 15 years. Money swills around at the top, the competition becomes farcically unequal, prices skyrocket, and clubs plummet into debt. For the small clubs, this means frequent flirtations with bankruptcy as their own running costs, dragged up from the top, exceed income; for the top clubs it increasingly means murky embraces with third-party investors, private equity (as at Manchester United and Liverpool), and the alienating process, for fans, of seeing the distance between themselves and their clubs grow more and more remote. And others have spent themselves senseless in chasing a fraudulent dream (such as Leeds United) It doesn't work.

The game, beneath its shiny veneer, is warped, decadent and quasi-corrupt. Its unregulated, unaccountable turbo-capitalism is incapable of balancing the books. And increasingly the arguments of supporters groups and other progressive campaigns rest around this fact. We're the ones arguing for prudence, for democratic community control of clubs, for published accounts to be open to full scrutiny, for a different more sustainable model. And out in the real world, we should be doing this too - over privatisation, PFI, the costly and wasteful use of private consultants in the public sector, haranguing the Brownites and Blairites for their waste of OUR money. If this sounds like the sort of language monopolised by rent-a-rant columnists to slag off the "PC brigade" or whatever, then it's time to drown it out by pointing out that the real wasters, the real piss-takers, the real profligates aren't those who argue for decent wages for public sector and other low-paid workers but the people much higher up. Prudence is a progressive cause.

Sunday 18 March 2007

Reclaiming the Seventies

I've never liked the use of terms such as "old Labour", painting as they do people who believe in basic social democratic tenets as luddites, nor am I the sort of lefty that thinks we can or should simply go back to the norms of those times. But I wonder whether a bit of historical revisionism isn't urgently needed around the Seventies. Because rarely can history have been so successfully and deafeningly written by the winning side as it was around this period.

A few months back I was having a pint with a mate (like me, a Labour left-ish 30-something) and we ended up chatting about how successfully yer Thatcherites and then yer Blairites have monopolised political narratives of that decade - that everything that went wrong during that period was the left's fault. Yet its most cataclysmic economic events - the oil crisis following the 1973 war in the middle east and the mental inflation it spawned - cannot remotely be blamed on the "unreconstructed old left". That's not to say the left didn't need to change in some ways, but that's almost a different debate. Ditto the "industrial militancy" of the time, which, with a few celebrated exceptions, seemed to be unions, led by more "moderate" people than those who lead unions now, clamouring for their members' pay to keep track with inflation - the equivalent of nurses asking for 3 or 4 per cent a year today. And of course all the "dead unburied" stuff was either gross exaggeration or outright lies.

It's also worth arguing that the Seventies compare well to the Sixties too. A lot of the celebrated political envelope-pushing of that decade (the over-romanticised '68 generation and all the rest) seemed a middle-class thing and didn't filter down to the mass of the population until the 70s, which was when you saw enormously important movements such as feminism making real, practical advances. These were also times when ideas around worker co-operatives and new approaches to municipal socialism were being kicked around. Inventive stuff. It would have been a good time to be political, I've always thought. Look at pictures of a football crowd in 1965. It's still blokes in suits, deferential, conformist. Look at one in, say, 1973 and it's part of pop culture - anarchic, too violent for sure, but radically changed.

The trouble with the cultural nostalgia industry, of course, is that it filters out a lot of the interesting and awkward and conflicting stuff when telling its stories. So the Sixties is reduced to Swinging London, Woodstock, Mick Jagger swanning around with Marianne Faithful etc - all the capitalism-compatible stuff that's easily sold and resold and consumed and reconsumed. And the Seventies has been 'niched' as this kind of era of unreconstructed naffness. Life on Mars, for example, is an excellent programme but I wonder whether it isn't reinforcing some quite lazy stereotypes about a decade's unreconstructed neanderthalism.

I'm not talking from any great experience here. I was involved in none of the Seventies' struggles, what with only being born in 1970 and not being bothered about much more than collecting football stickers and playing cricket during the decade. But I've talked about this sort of stuff to my folks, who in their 20s and 30s and not massive well paid, managed to afford a mortgage early on and bring four kids into the world during this decade, and their memory of the Seventies isn't remotely that it was a "grey, grim" decade. Unemployment was much higher for the entirety of the 80s after all. So while there's no going back the 70s seem due some historical revionism? Not least in order to stop the Right banging on and on about it all the time.

And the pop music was better than it's given credit for, it was a golden age of cinema, and Orient twice knocked Chelsea out of the FA Cup. What's not to admire?

(A version of this was first posted in August 2006 on the onetouchfootball messageboard run by When Saturday Comes. Debate here

Blogtrotter

This is my first post on my first blog. The significance of the blogosphere is, like many things connected with what is still quaintly described as new media, a subject of much hyperbolic debate. Some think that it Completely Changes The Way We Conduct Our Lives, altering totally and profoundly the way politics and society and many other things operate. Others might argue that it's just another outlet for the same green-ink brigade/radio phone-in windbags to shout over the top of people. Most people in the world don't even have a telephone, after all, so are we breaking down old barriers, old equalities, or reinforcing them on new terrain. So the very subject requires a certain sobriety of perspective that isn't always present among either the cheerleaders or the doom-mongers among my own industry (journalism).

But the interweb's a great thing and amid the self-indulgence and the nerdiness, and political bitchiness, there's undoubtedly loads of good thought-provoking blogging out there, and it'd be nice to get among it.