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.

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.

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.

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.

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.