BOB CROW’S vanity political party NO2EU had a predictably disastrous showing being beaten almost everywhere by ARTHUR SCARGILL’S vanity political SOCIALIST LABOUR PARTY which is only a paper organisation in reality. in Scotland TOMMY SHERIDAN’S past and present vanity parties failed miserably round the 1% mark while Galloway’s mob couldn’t even get it together to enter the fray. My spies tell me the Current SWP leadership is now in talks with Dave Nellist’s SOCIALIST PARTY about cobbling some agreement together – maybe they could call it the SOCIALIST ALLIANCE!!! None of this should bring ny joy to anarchists since we have proved incapable of mounting any coherent campaign as an alternative for working class people to turn to in opposition to the electoral process…..in reality I fear many comrades are too scared to go out and meet the beloved proletariat preferring the safety of anarcho-ghettos and keyboard warriorship thus leaving street agitation to the BNP. I will mention a couple of honorable exceptions – the WHITECHAPEL ANARCHISTS and the LEEDS AGAINST THE CRISIS group who sem to have no fear of meeting the punters on the street. If there’s any other sentient life out there let me know……AND HEREFORD HECKLER (sorry forgot you!)
June 8, 2009...5:16 pm
ELECTION DISASTER FOR THE LEFT IS NO JOY FOR ANARCHISTS
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19 Comments
June 8, 2009 at 7:00 pm
You forgot to mention LCAP, Haringey Solidarity Group, Hereford Heckler, IWW….to mention but a few more. Plus obvious the countless others that get on and do stuff
June 8, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Hereford Heckler crew deffinately aint scared to meet the punters on the street, trust me
.
June 8, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I dunno, our lot did well in Ireland (Socialist Party). Shame we’ve had little success replicating that result over here!
June 9, 2009 at 2:15 am
How could you be so naive?The words;”working class” should be struck from the anarchist dictionary.
When it comes to organising a street party cum protest that is half comical half panto act-anarchos are second to none.
When it comes to taking it to working class streets-they are nowhere to be seen.
But,then again,what are you going to take to the working class streets,only more empty sloganeering.
You don’t have anything to take there-so why bother complaining about anarchists being keyboard warriors?Maybe that’s where they feel comfortable.
Anarchists want to confront capaitalism globally-not locally.Which has its merits,but you will find that the BNP will always be miles ahead of you in the working class arena,because,amongst other things,all you have to do is vote for them.
How simple can you get?
June 9, 2009 at 9:00 am
Sunday night’s European elections were certainly dramatic. It’s difficult to say which is more shocking: the election of 2 BNP members or the incredible collapse of the Labour vote. We think that people were expecting the Labour meltdown as the government has been lurching from crisis to crisis for months. The apparent “rise” of the BNP seems to have caused the most amazement.
The election of any far-right party candidate is a worrying event. But we are not sure it’s as bad as the immediate reaction in the press makes out for the following reasons:
1. The BNP polled less votes in the Yorkshire/Humber and North West regions in 2009 that in 2005. They only gained seats because so many Labour voters stayed at home. This wasn’t a big rush towards the far-right.
2. The BNP got 6% nationally on a low 34% turnout. That’s only about 2% of the population.
3. The BNP did a good job of re-spinning their image in some areas and jumping on the anti-establishment bandwagon. They still only got 6%. The media and other parties will be wiser now. Not all of those who voted for the BNP will have realised what they stand for and might not share all their racist views.
4.We don’t think there is such a big surge in racist views as it might seem. There have been people with different opinions all along. A minority of people hold different levels of views that could be regarded as racist. Our media and politicians are ultra-aware of not being seen as racist and so tolerant people might not be aware of the opinions of some people. All that has happened is the views are now visible in the form of votes.
Here’s the result for North West
1. Conservative 423,174 25.6
2. Labour 336,831 20.4
3. UK Independence Party 261,740 15.8
4. Liberal Democrats 235,639 14.3
5. British National Party 132,094 8.0
6. Green Party 127,133 7.7
7. English Democrat 40,027 2.4
8. Socialist Labour Party 26,224 1.6
9. Christian Party-Christian Peoples Alliance 25,999 1.6
10. No2EU 23,580 1.4
11. Jury Team 8,783 0.5
12. Libertas 6,980 0.4
13. Independent – Francis Apaloo 3,621 0.2
We assume this means that if the Greens had got 5000 more votes they’d have got the 8th seat. No2EU got nearly five times that amount, so if they hadn’t stood and only 5000 of those who voted for them had voted for the Greens, then Griffin wouldn’t have been elected. .
That this might happen was pointed out before the election. Which shows that stopping the BNP getting an MEP wasn’t, as they claimed, the No2EU’s top priority. But while the Greens can complain about No2EU they can’t really complain about the result because they support and benefit from PR.
What worries us more is some of the areas where the BNP got their seats from. Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham all polled around 17% for the BNP. underclassrising along with others actually predicted that South Yorkshire might be good ground for the BNP last week. There has been a steady flow of stories in the region about immigration and asylum seekers over the last few years. We was certainly aware of a small but visible vein of racist views in the area when I grew up there. We have yet to live in an area where these views can be so widely and openly expressed. It might not have aggressive intent, but it is there and acknowledged by many people.
These are areas that have struggled to recover from the demise of the traditional industries and that have a lot of social deprivation. Neither The Conservative nor The Labour Governments The Far, Left Greens, and Anarchist have effectively addressed the problems of these and similar areas. We have seen the BNP target these kind of areas before with some success. Areas that have high unemployment and whose local councils struggle to meet the needs of local people. Political parties tend to compete for the support of Middle Class voters in more marginal constituencies. They do this because the Middle Classes tend to vote more often and are more likely to change their vote. Labour have been frequently accused of taking the votes of the working class electors for granted, especially in the traditional rock-solid safe Labour seats. Whether this is the case or not is a different matter. They certainly seem to direct all their spin and presentation on charming the middle classes.
It’s easy to see why people in poorer areas can become resentful to the perceived side-lining of their problems. The scenes of the ruling classes filling their pockets in the expenses scandal cannot have helped. This is where the BNP come in, playing on anger and fear by providing a scapegoat – non-whites. There may well be imbalances in temporary immigrations for some jobs, but studies have shown that it is not ethnic minorities that are making things worse for working class whites – the working classes suffer from discrimination as a group because of their class. Working class children find it harder to get into universities and generations of exclusion can create different expectations.The BNP creates myths that people in ethnic minorities are looked after better than whites that just aren’t true.
This paper suggests it is high numbers of working people in deprived areas in Barnsley who ‘aren’t getting the jobs’. The shop girl, white obviously, ‘got a job’, in a shop? The question is not globalisation or not. The question is whose definition of globalisation. What we mean by globalisation or what George Bush means.
But yes, the end of nation states. The free movement of people. we think it is the trend of history and inevitable. individual becomes family becomes village becomes town becomes province becomes country becomes world. Conversely we think there is something ugly about attempts to close borders, (no borders) carve up nations, restrict movement of people. Such trends are always ugly and always tied up with racism.
There’s all of the predictable hand wringing on this thread about why the BNP (and UKIP too – just gotta love the way some of you folks lump them together) did so well. There’s a continuing failure to understand why people are voting BNP (and if you’re going to write off the majority of UKIP voters as BNP elite, well you’re even more the architect of your own ignorant downfall). Many of you it seems don’t even seem to *want* to understand.
We imagine many of you who preached holier than thou fire and brimstone in the lead up to the elections actually encouraged a number of people to actually vote BNP simply because you told them not to, instead of engaging coming to terms and understanding how you The Main Stream Politicians Left Wing Greens Anarchist have failed them, how dose it feel?.
Rallies, marches, direct action against the BNP blah blah blah. Where are the rallies, marches, direct action against the criminal scum, drug dealers who terrorise many of the estates where the BNP might have scored many of their votes? Help with real problems? Suggestions that aren’t stuck in the eighteenth century? Helping people to protect them and theirs?
Nowhere to be seen. Many votes for the BNP and UKIP were cast out of frustration from people who feel that no-one is listening – its clear most of you certainly aren’t. Now sit up at the table and eat the shit sandwich – its what you fucking ordered.
{http://aboutpower.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/its-bad-but-not-that-bad/}
June 10, 2009 at 11:13 am
“Working class children find it harder to get into universities and generations of exclusion can create different expectations..”
And if you do all you get is a debt then no fucker will employ you anyway ( and then plenty of the middle classes hate you for it as do the Sun readers ).
But then there was plenty of nepotism and explotiation and fat working class people when I left school ( 1981 ) – Loads of us became a new underclass and the long term unemployed and homeless to be called scum by the middle classes and also by many of those working classes that had known full employment. Plenty of working class people exploited us too…( as they do the global south ) . Divide and conquer on a global scale. and too much telly….Oh dear the classifcations don’t quite fit…
June 9, 2009 at 10:11 am
Your last two paragraphs are THE reason why anarchists-who could make so much mileage on these estates-are totally envenomated.They don’t have the fucking bollox to confront the real issues.Could you imagine anarchists coming up against Totenham Man Dem-never mind the fucking BNP.
We’re all too scared to confront the real issues in these areas,because;
1.It’s racially sensitive
2.It is so much easier to organise around May Day and Anti-Capitalist issues
3.Your ‘Leaders’ ain’t got the bollox for it either.
4.Too many people draw their politics from books rather than reality-come on Ian,wade into this one.If I am being a totally useless negative twat on everything that I have been jawing on about for two fucking years on this problem,then I’ll happily fade into oblivion.
My main point on this is now one thing;
Ian,you have been around for yonks-What is your take on anarchists-and their very obvious inability to take advantage of the best opportunity in my lifetime to enter a power void and take advantage of it.
And I don’t want personal jibes against me and my inactivity used to neutralise what I am saying.
This is not about the success or fractional votes of the BNP.
This is plain and simple about just one thing;
We need to hit the streets with some working class relevance-or we might as well re-inact Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and kid ourselves that we want to incite an organised working class fight back…
Give me ya best shot….
June 9, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Ian, you left loads of groups out from your post, as Al pointed out in the first comment.
It’s also interesting that in your column in Freedom you castigate people like HSG (and all the others involved in the support group) for getting stuck in to supporting the Visteon workers, and not teaming up with spiritualist and Ken Livingstone fan Chris ‘direct line to the dead’ Knight. Given the limited time and resources what is it to be?
June 9, 2009 at 3:18 pm
“keyboard warriorship” can sometimes pay off…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8089102.stm
June 9, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Just got back from Westminster, someone hit me on the back of the head with an egg. The bastards!
June 9, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Class War – Barnsdale Brigade,
shame that one of The Pirate Bay, Carl Lundstrom, is a hugely rich neo nazi.-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Lundstrom
June 10, 2009 at 12:40 pm
We thought that Lundstrom was a ‘Pirate Bay’ defendant, and in no way affiliated to the ‘Pirate Party’. This from Hacker News…
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=647270
… does anyone have any more info on this?
June 9, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I rate what you say EHD!
June 9, 2009 at 11:42 pm
This is repetitive/more of the same, “why aren’t anarchists doing x, y z….”. Why is there some expectation that anarchists ideas are what millions of working class people want – its not, it never will be not atleast on how we define it. More anarchists talking to more people might bring down the sense of seperation that anarchists feel as anarchists towards normal people but it won’t bring people less seperated from anarchists. Why? because no ones interested in anarchism!
June 10, 2009 at 9:41 am
While wandering around the streets of Bristol yesterday, I happened into a minor street fracas whereby 4 guys dressed in classic ‘punk’ uniform, and wearing Mohawk hairstyles – and who had been drinking heavily were being moved along gently by the boys in Blue.
They all had the great big anarchist ‘A’ on the back of their well studded leather jackets, and looked pretty much the stereotypical anarchist-punk part.
Our ‘punk’ comrades were pretty good natured about it all really, and were telling the cops how Sid Vicious lives and that Anarchy was coming and that ‘come the revolution’ the tables shall be turned and it would be the cops and the rich’s turn to face the wrath of the working classes of this country.
All this was happening in a very busy public thoroughfare, and lots of shoppers and members of the public generally were pausing to watchwhat looked like a bit of street theatre.
The thing is that a lot of those onlookers were smiling and a enjoying the impromptu show, some even shouted out to the cops to lock the ‘punks’ up and give them a hosing down!
The lads shouted back drunkenly that anarchy was the coming new world order and that the public was blind to what was really happening in the country, and that the queen was a lizard, and that the English people generally was dead from the neck up!
During all this mini palaver the cops themselves were smiling mostly, and seemed to be enjoying the show that they wereclearly a part of, treating the lads like silly children almost, I was struck there and then at just how the public perception of anarchy in this country has sunk to some kind of an all time low in terms of anarchists ever being serious about real change in our class-ridden ’society’ which is presently ripe for radical change.
Who or what will be the catalyst for radical change at a time like this?
Can anarchists in this country be that catalyst?
Not if those lads we watched in Bristol yesterday are anything to go by ……….. sadly.
June 10, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Two posts that sum up exactly how irrelevant anarchism is, and always has been to ordinary people.
People are not interested in the slightest, just as Ales says. If they’ve always been apathetic towards major political parties then why should they feel any different to ultra-fringe lefties that have no real solutions. Solutions that belong to this century and not the 19th century. Solutions that apply to modern Britain and not 19th century Russian peasant life.
A lot of anarchists, as kipper reminds us, also live in some kind of timewarp, where you still have to be a punk to be an anarchist, and listen to bad music and dress like a tramp. Punk was 30 years ago for fucks sake, and with it hanging around anarchisms neck like a millstone no wonder modern people just stop in the street pointing and laughing. People dressed as cartoon punks in 2009 reminds me how close these two words really are; Anachronism and Anarchism.
June 10, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Ales, makes a good point – people are voting BNP because they have suddenly become interested in fascism, and they generally didn’t vote Labour because of some abstract interest in social democracy – they vote for (or support, or engage with) those organisations and movements that look like they are capable of articulating and realising their own demands.
Anarchism will never be more than an abstract political idea to the vast majority – that’s not to say it is worthless, far from it. But it’s what impact anarchists have in working with people to realise their demands, that matters.
June 10, 2009 at 4:54 pm
More interesting of course is the fact that upper class Freddie (aka Halfwit), a Big Brother contestant, on last nights show declared he ‘liked the way anarchists cooked food’. He was then asked ‘what’s an anarchist’ after a few seconds silence while searching for an explanation he replied ‘they are against governments’ He was then asked ‘are you an anarchist?’ he said he wasn’t but ‘I support them in their beliefs.’
Oh did I mention that Freddie (aka Halfwit) has hopes of being a Tory MP and is a member of the Tory party. Oops.
June 10, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Just to clarify.
I am an anarchists and think the package of ideas we promote as anarchism is a solid start if it were applied to solve the problems we are faced with – problem is that it is not. Not to contridict my self but the people voting BNP are not voting for self-organisation, internationalism and anti-statism – they are voting BNP because they see the BNP as radically different to the other parties because they have convinced them that they have a simple idea to solve their problems – repatriation!
I mentioned in my group meeting at the conference that the BNP needs about 4 seconds to communicate what they are for, anarchists need a 2 hour lecture to do the same without evening mentioning the conclusion! This needs to change, we need to have very concise ideas, concise consistent messages that featuring strongly in everything we do.
One thing is to remember that we can convey ideas that people are thinking about – unfortunately people don’t have time to think about these ideas they are too busy struggling to survive.