The politics of the left in the UK

[french frank]

The Gang of Four didn't stay though, did they!

They were 'moderately socialist' at a time when another factor was what was represented (and, gullible me, I believed it! ) as 'militant unionism' with 'Red Robbo', where it did seem as if the leaders were trying to bust a system which wasn't ready to be busted. For the GoF under the liberal-leaning Jenkins there was the possibility of an attractive cooperation with the pro-Europe Liberal Party. They didn't need much persuasion to go.

[Flosshilde]

Why has the Left such a dismal record in providing a credible socialist alternative?

Do they? Or does the media have a dismal record in not explaining it?

But I won't offer any more explanation than that, as I'm sure you can do so yourself.

[Flosshilde]

How many forms of socialism are there? Or should one just accept that it contains a spectrum of views and the way in which it is brought into effect makes the difference.

All the same thing, really.

"Red Ken" had a lighter touch which did have popular appeal (though demonised by the right), whereas Militant went to the extreme where it became autocratic and authoritarian.

Which could be seen as two different forms - as S_A says, Ken made sure there was grass-roots involvement (which I experienced first-hand throught the GLC Lesbian & Gay committee, & the way in which County Hall was opened up to the commun ity)

made it impossible for the 'Gang of Four' to stay and fight their corner

They could have stayed if they wanted to - they flounced out because they were being marginalised (especially Owen), then when their new party failed they moved in on the Liberals. Gang of Four? Parcel of Rogues, more like.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

fascinating review of 'Capital in the 21st Century' shortly to be released here

the ballot box will not prevail over the might of the Squid and its cronies .... the politicians have to be more frightened of the people than they are of the gangsters and their record of yielding to Murdoch and dacre is not encouraging if comes to taking on the really big money .... how can we frighten the politicians? or change them for braver more radical souls?

[french frank]

They could have stayed if they wanted to - they flounced out because they were being marginalised (especially Owen), then when their new party failed they moved in on the Liberals. Gang of Four? Parcel of Rogues, more like.

Why should they have stayed? The SDP had huge swings in the popular vote in their favour, with people saying they wanted something new.

And 'their' party didn't 'fail': they had more members, officially, than the Liberal Party.

Should no one ever leave a party if it departs from what they believe in? The 'tribal' nature of party politics in the UK is part of the problem.

But your comment is, nonetheless, revelatory.

[Serial_Apologist]

They were 'moderately socialist' at a time when another factor was what was represented (and, gullible me, I believed it! ) as 'militant unionism' with 'Red Robbo', where it did seem as if the leaders were trying to bust a system which wasn't ready to be busted.

That's interesting, because Red Robbo was in the Communist Party - a party which, by the late 1970s, had left all notions of revolutionary change and socialism way, way back in the 1920s, in favour of the reformist idea of electing Labour on a left-wing programme supporting single-issue campaigns ("The Broad Democratic Alliance" - a new name for Popular front) - which, their "Marxism" should have informed them, was impossible, would have been inadequate.

[Serial_Apologist]

Should no one ever leave a party if it departs from what they believe in? The 'tribal' nature of party politics in the UK is part of the problem.

I don't think it was a question of the LP departing from what they or anybody else within it believed in. Would the SDP founders have stayed in the Attlee government? I rather think not. What was acceptable to them by the 1970s was the way in which Wilson and the right-wing leadership had maintained control over the movement. But the left was a very small rump by the early '60s, asnd did not really reawaken until the late '60s focus on opposing America's war on Vietnam. The issue at that time being ignored was the uncompetitiveness of British capitalism, owing in part to a complacent management that had acted as if the sun would never set on the Empire long after it had gone, focussed on non-investment domestically in production, and capital export, and in part from a belief on the reformist left in the bountiful capacity of capitalism to deliver higher living standards forever via new technology, longer leisure hours and consumerism. All that came into question as British capitalism forced cuts in jobs and welfare as part of restructuring to make what would be left of industry internationally competitive.

[french frank]

I don't think it was a question of the LP departing from what they or anybody else within it believed in.

Well, it did culminate in a manifesto deemed by some of its own members to be 'the longest suicide note in history'.

Would the SDP founders have stayed in the Attlee government? I rather think not.

Mutatis mutandis, I'd have said they would have been very happy with it, though how one can judge how they as adults in the 1980s would have reacted to what happened in a totally different context when they themselves were children, I don't know. For me, Attlee has been the best PM in recent times, his government also the most radical and 'socialist'.

Apart from Owen, whom I prefer to ignore, they were not right-wing dinosaurs - Jenkins was (in my view) the most enlightened Home Secretary, and not a bad Chancellor.

[Serial_Apologist]

fascinating review of 'Capital in the 21st Century' shortly to be released here

the ballot box will not prevail over the might of the Squid and its cronies .... the politicians have to be more frightened of the people than they are of the gangsters and their record of yielding to Murdoch and dacre is not encouraging if comes to taking on the really big money .... how can we frighten the politicians? or change them for braver more radical souls?

I always thought the finest challenge to capitalist logic lay in the few alternative plans drawn up by shop stewards combines, such as the Lucas Aerospace Combine, in the 1970s, because they challenged management redundancies, not with protectionism in the teeth of the logic of non-competitiveness, but with plans of what could be produced to be sold profitably that was socially useful (as opposed to armaments or associated technologies) while at the same time preserving indigenous skills. Mike Cooley, shop steward invoklved in a lot of this - whose "Architect or Bee? The Human/Technology relationship" still proudly adorns my bookshelves - was later taken on by Ken Livingstone to advise on GLC industrial policy in the early 1980s, and Tony Benn fought in the Cabinet for these ideas to be taken up for subsidy by the Callaghan government. What defeated them was their neglect by the Healey/Callaghan leadership, who could rightly cite trade unionism as being about wages and conditions, not management, being put to them by left and Communist Party trade union bureaucrats wedded to what Marxists would call "economistic" impositions limiting of trade union militancy. A terrible waste of a constructive opportunity that could have neutralised the negative right wing press portrayal of militancy and extremism and played a rehearsive role in the transfer of power to shop floors, offices and communities.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i met and heard Mike Cooley talk a most impressive and practical man i thought ....

with the left it was not the policies but the wolf pack behaviour; some of the schisms referenced above were [and still are] nasty, and so were the hard nuts in the union i was a branch sec in ...

i agree wholeheartedly with comments from ff on the SDP founders and regard the fusion with the liberals as a catastrophic error but the milk is spilt now ...

we have to frighten the politicians or they will never take on the gangsters

never mind political analysis see also this!

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, it did culminate in a manifesto deemed by some of its own members to be 'the longest suicide note in history'.

Mutatis mutandis, I'd have said they would have been very happy with it, though how one can judge how they as adults in the 1980s would have reacted to what happened in a totally different context when they themselves were children, I don't know. For me, Attlee has been the best PM in recent times, his government also the most radical and 'socialist'.

The Attlee government followed the monumental collective effort of seeing off Nazism and fascism. The lesson for the ruling orders, many of whom had been sympathetic towards fascism in the '30s, namely that the breaking down of class barriers previously thought essential to running an efficient economy had proven invaluable in the latter endeavour, was transferred to peacetime reconstruction: a welfare state to ensure a healthy, productive workforce; new housing to alleviate conditions propitious to revolutionary propaganda and unrest, so you may well be right there.

Apart from Owen, whom I prefer to ignore, they were not right-wing dinosaurs - Jenkins was (in my view) the most enlightened Home Secretary, and not a bad Chancellor.

You're right about Roy Jenkins too - his tenure coincided with the halcyon period of the 60s when the ruling class threw in its lot with the consumer society and its values.

[Serial_Apologist]

never mind political analysis see also this!

One of the accusations sometimes directed at socialism's "utopian impractibility" was inefficiency. OK, ran the argument, we can maybe, just maybe accept that your ideas don't automatically lead to dictatorship, necessarily; what we cannot accept is that a society in which everyone was consulted on everything would ever come to any decisions. Nothing would ever get done! In fact, such a society could codify decision-making - at what levels, how often, etc etc, the same way capitalism can to some extent control freedoms. To me the beneficial effects of bottom-up democratic decision-making, inclusivity aside, would in fact consist in slowing things down. There would be no rush to out-compete some competitor with some product with deliberate inbuilt obsolescence, but a lot of recycling, and a lot of inner-directed creativity and resourcefulness, I believe, which would be much less wasteful of irreplaceable resources. People wold start to like each other, too, once the material basis of mistrust had been removed - it would be cheaper tio live together in larger aggregations than as at present in houses made of ticky-tacky, etc. That way we could keep warm with less energy expenditure! And think how much more we could save once we'd recovered from being told somewhere else was always the place to go to escape!

[MrGongGong]

http://games.usvsth3m.com/how-leftie-are-you/

this is more telling

http://www.politicalcompass.org/index

(NOT serious at all )

[Serial_Apologist]

(NOT serious at all )

Quite: Stalin left-wing? I don't think so!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

the right people should have the power