Yesterday I participated in two conferences, the "No One is Illegal/No Borders" conference on asylum and the Socialist Youth Network's annual conference. What struck me was the atmosphere of both conferences. The people who turned up to both were obviously committed activists but neither conference was the usual rally-type event. Instead of rhetoric both conferences were really open and hard nosed in their honest assessments of the current political situation and both concentrated on serious discussions of the potential strategies available to the Labour, trade union and progressive movement.
These conferences demonstrated the virtual irrelevance of the current debates being waged in the pages of the Guardian between the likes of Charles Clarke, Hazell Blears, Polly Toynbee and what's left of the Compass initiative in the form of Neal Lawson and Jon Trickett.
The young people that turned out for the SYN conference demonstrated an astute appreciation of the total disconnect between New Labour and the real world facing the current generation. They displayed a practical idealism which is lost on the remnants of New Labour. The politics they want to pursue aren't the boring and nauseatingly obvious public relations exercises rolled out by the Brown machine or the self serving academicised sophistry of Compass. It came across very clearly that the politics of today and tomorrow for these young people are based upon mobilising for direct action, linking up with a wide variety of social movements, maximising creativity in protest but also engendering undstanding by discussion, study and theory. The word praxis, the combination of theory and practice, was revisited and revitalised in our discussion at the SYN conference.
Literally a hundred yards away at the "No Borders/No One is Illegal" conference the representatives of one of those social movements were coming to the same conclusions. Discussions were focussing on the best methods for linking trade unions with asylum campaigns and bringing trade unions together in support of a high profile nationwide campaign to expose the brutality of the Government's asylum policies.
No matter how depressing traditional politics may be at present there is clear evidence of new stirrings of a new, committed, idealistic, action based but also thought based mobilisation taking shape.
18 Comments:
That's all very well John but these people will wake up to a Cameron government if they dont fight the real enemy, a nasty right wing bunch of hooligans who cant wait to inflict themselves on us.
This government may not be perfect but its a hell of a lot better than what went before.
2 things - firstly wel done John for being so on the ball that you blogged about the conference before me!
Second in the response to the comment above - as Mark Serwotka reported to a meeeting I spoke at on Thursday night Derek Simpson stopped a debate at TUC general council by saying we didnt need to talk about any of the issues that are facing our members the most imporant thing is that we elect a labour government for a fourth term!
Im sorry whilst I as a labour party member obviously want a Labour GOvernment for as long as possible - I am a socialist and a trade unionist at the moment the working class and young people are facing attack from this government and our trade union leaders are not just sitting back and watching it happen they are encouragin it by refusing to even condemn what NL are doing.
So I have litle sympathy for the the tories will be worse argument used as an excuse by our bureacracy to do nothing.
Of course the Tories would be worse but that doesn't mean we should put up with being treated like shit by the current government.
Mark Serwotka is an asset to the Tories, he might as well be a member.
Anonymous, this is what New Labour are like. I am on the panel for the Calderdale MBC in West Yorkshire but this year did not want to stand as anything other than a paper candidate. Quite happy to do that. And surely we all stand together at election time.....er,no. Found out this morning that my LGC Exec has been ringing up people who are NOT on the panel rather than have a left-wing socialist stand in a NO-WIN situation.What kind of "comradeship" is that? It's a disgrace and based purely on personal vindictiveness. No wonder young people are disillusioned with the Labour Party. I applaud the efforts of Marsha Jane and the SYN and look forward to a time when the idealism and commitment to sociailsm which young people have is welcomed, as it used to be, in the Labour Party.We cannot take this crap any longer.....
Absolutely agree Susan. Frankly the time for blind loyalty to the Labour Party is past. Quite apart from being anti-socialist, it actually damages the Labour Party. As John says, we are going to lose seats on 1st May because Labour MPs who have campaigned against local PO closures didn't have the courage, or the sense, to vote against the whole PO reorganisation.
I am a Labour candidate in the forthcoming local elections and on the doorstep I'm hearing lots of people who only vote Labour locally, or who want to vote Labour but have nothing but contempt for Brown. Here in Oxford, fortunately, one can be a notorious leftie and get selected!
Should I manage to win in spite of the Government, I certainly won't be following any disastrous nationally dictated line - I'll be representing working-class people, which is what the Labour Party is supposed to be for!
"working-class people"
err you mean the working class people who voted for Thatcher for years???
You might be happy in your dream world and enjoy having Cameron in power but I wont.
^ myth ^
Some w/c people were always Tories, but Thatcher's main appeal was among the middle class.
I agree with JM and co on so many things, but on No Borders this is a policy too far, it has absolutely no support in the country and in many ways, is gesture politics of the worse kind. Of course, asylum seekers should be treated fairly and deportations extremely limited
but a balanced immigration policy is both necessary and socially just to all. I also notice the Convention of the Left has been partly 'captured' by the No Borders groups, etc how will people who disgree with them be treated, I do wonder?
Also, I don't want to patronise but youth politics by its very nature can be a very transient affair, they also(with some exceptions) seem to have a marked preference for certain issues, racism, the environment, etc. I've seen it from the inside with many groups over a number of years.
We need to take on the day to day issues, housing, poverty, the awful
uber-blairite welfare reforms, the NHS, etc, not sexy, but very very importnat
And what makes you think that young people aren't discussing these things? Been at any meetings recently? Or seen the agenda of the SYN meeting John was blogging about?
in fact the majority of theagenda spoke about privitisation housing and homelessness around young people.
Not just fluffy international stuff we make a point of leaving that till the end of the agenda.
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