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London branch also covered the Your Party rally in Brixton, but didn’t go in. Unlike the one in South West London, the various Trot groups were all there with their literature tables. One of them was the RCG (“Revolutionary Communist Group” who publish Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!) which, to be fair, is saying that it won’t be infiltrating the new party, and criticising its rivals who say they are going to:
We leafletted the beginning of the counter-demonstration today against the much bigger — perhaps 20 times bigger — one organised by Tommy Robinson. After the march departed we retired to a local hostelry. This to avoid being in the middle of any scuffles and worse between the two sides.
We also gave out a handful of leaflets to a some of those walking from Euston station to the Robinson demonstration. Discretion being better part of valour, the leaflet we gave them was a general one saying better get rid of capitalism. The two who reacted both openly defended capitalism, one saying that inequality was inevitable and the other that capitalism gave everyone a chance to become a capitalist.
That Robinson can mobilise over 100,000 while the SWP via Stand Up To Racism could scarcely manage 5,000 must mean something. Certainly that the SWP and the other Trotskyists who vie with each in calls to “smash fascism” are in no position to do this implement this stupid slogan.
As this article from thirty years ago pointed out:
“When it comes to brutality we are willing to come last. What the fascist needs is to be hit in those cerebral parts least used and most in need of life support. What the fascist needs, in fact, is to be educated by those who see him not as a despicable fascist, but as a bloody stupid worker.”
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-fascists-need.html
Another view from a non-Bolshevik:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/martov/1919/xx/sovietism.htm
Absurd suggestion from SPEW:
“Better surely that the Green Party is invited to affiliate to ‘Your Party’, as part of a federal structure that allows for the affiliation of trade union bodies, other representative community organisations and political parties, like the Socialist Party?”
The Green Party won’t do that and the new party won’t allow SPEW to.
SPEW is the Trot group likely to lose most from the formation of the new party. For a start, all their non-members who stand for TUSC will defect and they won’t be able politically to stand as TUSC, ie contest elections. They must be panicking.
We are going in 1905 of course. For the record here’s what we said at the time:
and
Went to a meeting of the YP yesterday evening. As it was in an area of London dominated by the LibDems (who control 3 of the 4 councils and have 6 MPs), and as members who had been to similar meetings in other parts of the country had reported attendances of only about 40, I only took about 60 leaflets. When I got there I found a theatre full with twice that number.
The meeting opened with a showing on a screen of Jeremy Corbyn calling for “peace and justice” and saying the founding conference would be held towards the end of November. This was followed by speeches by local campaign groups (Palestine, anti-racism, climate change, a strike of cleaners at a local hospital). Then the audience was broken down into small groups to discuss what the new party’s policy priorities show be. When they reported back the main ideas were support for Palestine, less wealth and income inequality, better public services, more money for the nhs, support for refugees, and people before profit.
The Trots would have been there but they didn’t reveal themselves though I presumed the speaker from Stand Up To Racism would have been SWP and the person who called for the new party to be based on the trade unions would have been SPEW. They were probably wise to keep a low profile as their praise for Lenin and Trotsky and the Russian revolution won’t get them very far.
Half way through and not advertised Zarah Sultana turned up. In her speech she said that the new party’s aim was to “materially improve people’s lives” by taxing the rich to improve public services. The Labour Party, she said, had betrayed its past principles and was “dead”; Starmer should be sent to the Hague for trial as a war criminal; she wasn’t interested in the contest for deputy leader of the Labour Party as the candidates had all supported the government’s policy. She was in fact surprisingly radical for someone elected as a Labour MP, calling for the new party to support demonstrations and strikes outside parliament as well as to get MPs and councillors elected. She favoured the new party being called “The Left” and said it should be organised democratically with provisions for One Member One Vote. It should also be “proudly socialist” She mentioned the S word three times which was three times more than anybody else at the meeting had.
A former deputy leader of the Workers Party said he was defecting to the new party (the new party and Galloway’s will be competing for the Muslim vote). The leader of the Independents’ group on Kingston Council said his group would be joining too. Maybe this new reformist party will do better than previous breakaways from Labour. Next year’s local elections will be a test.
Here’s the passage where Polanski reveals his opportunism (not that we really mind him not calling himself a socialist “in public”; in fact we welcome it since he isn’t one). He is clearly still the snake oil salesman the media are reporting that he was at an earlier period of his life:
“One member asked whether Polanski thought the Green Party was “explicitly a socialist party”. His response was, “On a personal level I agree with the majority of socialist principles”, and said that, “we are a left wing, left of centre party”. But he also clarified, “The reason why I wouldn’t say explicitly, yes, we’re a socialist party kind of in public and as a slogan is I think that’s going to unnecessarily put people off”.”
Meanwhile the Greens have elected an obvious political careerist (he started off as a LibDem candidate) as their new Leader, but one who has gone on record as claiming that the Green Party is a socialist party. More recently he has described himself as an “eco-populist”. Which seems about right.
Here is he is saying that the Green Party is a socialist party:
‘I agree with the majority of socialist principles’, Zack Polanski tells campaign launch rally
and, earlier, here:
In socialism won’t we all be riding around on free electric bikes or driving free electric cars?
Besides, with the end of the City of London financial district and of ministries dealing with finance, there won’t be such a need for people to travel into central London.
They are not former members but former Trotskyists who seem to have independently come to much the same conclusions as us.
Since he says “I” it might even be the view just of the author.
There won’t be many more of them than the average number of members of one of our branches.
They will be well aware of us. They have in fact been accused by those they were planning to form a “mass communist party” with of “SPGBism” (the plan fell through because they discovered that the others were dyed-in-the-wool Leninists). See the thread on this under Events.
It looks as if the Thinking About Socialism group are going to join the new party to try to put over what we can recognise as the case for socialism:
I don’t suppose they will be welcome unless they are prepared to campaign at election time for the new party and its programme of reforms. Which of course would compromise them.
This local by-election result from yesterday in an area just outside Nottingham is interesting.
CON 405 (28.6%, down 16.5)
RFM 400 (28.3%)
BA 275 (19.4%)
LAB 244 (17.2%, down 20.1)
GRN 70 (4.9%, down 6.7)
IND 21 (1.5%)BA is the Broxtowe Alliance, formed as a breakaway of councillors from Labour and presumably a candidate group for Corbyn’s new party.
If this result was to be repeated elsewhere both Labour and the Greens would have something to worry about.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewxrzq0489o
As this is just down from our offices in Clapham High Street I know the area too as a car driver and as a pedestrian. At one point the activist cyclist suggests that the side road in question (it is hardly an intersection) is a rat run, ie a short cut for cars. I can’t see from where to where. It is rather an exit on to a main road for those living in the area. Anyway, it is often closed at weekends. I suspect the problem for cyclists is that the main road is down hill at that point and that they inadvertently find themselves going faster.
He also omits to say that, at the pedestrian crossing with lights further back, some cyclists take no notice of the red light. But that of course is par for the course.
He says that the road was not built for cars. True, it was built for horse-drawn traffic including, being Clapham, omnibuses.
It seems that Trump is considering doing one good thing — abandoning the Orwellian Newspeak name of the department for war:
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-defense-department-to-department-of-war/
Here is the attitude of the so-called “Communist” Party of Britain (the Morning Star lot) to the proposed new party. In an article in the August issue of their paper Unity under the heading “Communists ‘broadly positive’ about the Corbyn/Sultana new Left Party”, its General Secretary, Robert Griffiths, writes:
“The experience of previous electoral initiatives on the left pose two other problems that will have to be confronted: firstly, the readiness of the ultra-leftist sects to infiltrate broad-based mass movements in order to divide them, pose as a ‘left opposition’ to the leadership and recruit from those they influence and mislead ….”
He doesn’t say how he thinks this problem should be dealt with.
