Monday, March 28, 2011

Confessions of a Gradualist

After the demonstration on Saturday & the silliness that followed from our 'anarchist' friends it dawned on me that I am more of a gradualist than I had previously thought.

It reminded me of a quote that I've noted down but for some reason didn't not down: "The greater the violence, the weaker the revolution".

The comments afterwards from people trying to draw similarites between a few idiots smashing up windows & scuffling with the police & Egypt also made me realise that if there's one thing that we really need it is a fucking sense of perspective. This is not Libya or Egypt. Yes, people die in police custody in this country. Yes, people get whacked about by police & sometimes its more about spite than about self-defence. Yes, the state does have a monopoly of violence but there aren't snipers on the roof or murderous attacks by supporters of Cameron-Clegg.

When you attend a demonstration in this country you do so expecting - at worst - to be kettled unfairly. So comparisons with movements in those countries where you are putting your life on the line in the name of basic democracy is a sad joke.

We are resisting cuts in a democracy. That democracy may have its problems but we have a ballot box we can use. And don't whinge about how 'all political parties are the same' because even if it were true you could get out there & found a party of your own. Or vote for one of the many, many electorally successful left-wing parties, like the SWP.

But apparently people don't feel change will come through the ballot box. Only a revolution will do. I'd ask these revolutionaries to take a look around & ask where the demand is for a left-wing revolution. It seems to me that it is the right that has been benefiting most from the financial crisis, which surely must make us on the left look around & wonder what the hell we're doing wrong.

The biggest crisis in capitalism since the pre-World War Two & the left has achieved...nothing much. If you can't convince people to get off their arses & vote for you then your revolution isn't going to be a popular one is it?

The press & politics might be stacked in favour of oligarchy but it isn't indestructable is it? Businesses might be avoiding tax but the best way to bring a business in to line is to stop buying their stuff.

I actually like UK Uncut. It has kept the issue alive, they're peaceful - whatever the press might have you believe - & they've been imaginative about some of their actions in a way that those people who think the way to get change is to smash a few windows, chuck some paint & try to thump a copper. We should build on their activities by boycotts.

So I believe you win by winning the arguement & through the ballot box. If we don't like our politicians, vote them out. Smashing shit up & hoping that people will rise up in your wake is vanity.

That doesn't make me a Tory.

I come from Buckinghamshire, the Toriest of Tory counties. My Mum & Dad vote Tory. Some of my best friends are Tories. But I'm not.

My dislike of the Tory Party is visceral & instinctive. It stared during the Miner's Strike, when I was 11 or 12. There seemed to be something wrong with a party that could laud Solidarity in Poland one day - that being a movement born from Polish Trade Unionism as much as anything - but treat its own workers like that. (I was a bit of a prig as a child)

My dislike for them has stayed the same ever since & it it influences my politics at a gut level. It's a willful political blindness, which I accept makes having proper political discussions difficult because in the end I don't like the Tory Party or it's policies for emotional reasons that I can't always articulate.

It's a weakness.

Articulating the alternative is essential if we are going to change things for the better & it is our inability to do that which has cost the left since the Berlin Wall fell. The internet gives us a better chance than ever to subvert the traditional media & get our message out there but we have to have an alternative that's more than empty slogans & broken glass.

We win when we win the arguements. Violence only hardens opinion & leads to more violence.

Rant over.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

History Repeating Itself

After yesterdays demonstration I dug out this quote from L.S. Bevington, Anarchism & Violence, Liberty Press, Chiswick, 1896


"Of course we know among those who call themselves Anarchists there are a minority of unbalanced enthusiasts who look upon every illegal & sensational act of violence as a matter of hysterical jubilation. Very useful to the police & the press, unsteady in intellect & of weak moral principle, they have repeatedly shown themselves accessible to venal considerations. They, & their violence, & their professional Anarchism are purchasable, & in the last resort they are welcome & efficient partisans of the bourgeoisie in its remorseless war against the deliverers of the people."


115 years later you have to ask whether much has changed in the behaviour & minds of some 'anarchists'.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

What's The Alternative

So who is going on the March for the Alternative on Saturday? And who has been asked 'What's the alternative?' or even been told 'There's no alternative?'

Who has been told that they're only marching to protect their own jobs, as if there's something wrong with being a bit fucked off about losing your job.

The question 'what is the alternative' implies that there is none, which is clearly wrong. The problem is that this isn't a March with one voice.

This isn't a March that's going to end with a list of agreed solutions & everyone singing off of the same hymn sheet. Partly because the people marching are not the people in charge & partly because the March contains many different voices: from those who would have cuts, but not front loaded as George Osborne has arranged them; those who would cut differently - especially Trident; those who would tax the wealthy more & cut less; to those wanting some kind of fully-fledged departure from capitalism & a full-scale revolution.

So what are the alternatives? Well, there's a lot. If you're that interested then you can read up what the TUC, what the Labour Party, the Green Party, the SWP & others say. The alternatives are out there you know.

Personally I know why I'm marching. Yes, these reasons might be based on blinkers of ideology but please don't pretend that decisions being made by George & co aren't being made on the basis of their own blinkered ideology rather than in the name of some 'neutral' national interest. If that were the case it wouldn't be nurses, Doctors, teachers, police officers, soliders, sailors & airmen paying the price for a recession created by a worldwide financial crisis caused by gambling bankers would it.

I believe in an alternative that includes focusing on growth before everyone starts going mad with the scissors; in cutting Trident not EMA; in not wasting £2bn on a re-organisation of the NHS that it almost certainly doesn't need; a Tobin tax to wouldn't break the banks would it? Fundamentally I believe in not cutting so deep, so fast.

I'm not saying I'd be proved right but I am saying that there are alternatives.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Priorities & How to Define Them

Osborne's comment about the budget for Libyan bombing coming from the Treasury Reserves reminds me of a quote, from Republican President Dwight Eisenhower of all people:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger & are not fed, those who are cold & not clothed."

You could have fun paraphrasing that for our present politico-economic situation.