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.