Die Neue Zeit
2nd December 2010, 21:50
http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2010/11/lewisham-town-hall-stormed.html
In my experience over the last few years of doing stalls and speaking to hundreds of people on the streets and their doorsteps there has been an undercurrent of anger, but an anger tempered by isolation, impotence and hopelessness. You can strike and protest as much as you like, they'll never solve anything. Indeed when I was in the Socialist Party one comrade called this 'proxy consciousness': a disillusionment with, irreverence toward, and alienation from official party politics married to a fundamental lack of belief in one's ability to change things. Many a conversation took place where someone would agree with your points about class, inequality, New Labour, pensions, banks, NHS and whatever, but after they'd leave with a nod of the head and wish you good luck. They were issues people cared about, but they didn't see them as issues they should take charge of and fight for: that was what we, "the activists" did. And how could it be otherwise after the defeats of the 80s, the throwing back of working class consciousness, the collapse of a world-wide alternative to capitalism (despite its obvious problems and grotesqueries), the expunging of socialism from everyday politics and the successful sell of consumerism to millions of atomised people?
Nevertheless the combustible material was there and now it is being touched off. I can't remember who said students are the advance guard of the working class, but the support and solidarity the 10.11.10 protest and subsequent days of actions and occupations have inspired is bleeding into wider layers of the population. As Kate notes, "everyone on the protest saying they're inspired by students".
It does also mean the labour movement and the left have to up its game. I'm sure it's the same for many others reading this: up until this year really - and leaving aside the build up to the Iraq war - my experience of the period has been a series of small-scale set pieces. A strike here. A campaign against a closure there. Struggles have been isolated with little in the way of mass expressions of solidarity. But now all bets are off. Class struggle, previously subterranean has now exploded out into the open. Confidence is building rapidly, especially among younger people and no one has the ability to shut it down. A new carnival of protest has ridden into town seething with energy and vitality. For many people who've been knocking around the labour movement for years, the sudden explosions of activity are as strange and alien to us as it is to the raw demonstrators and occupiers who are tasting activism for the first time. And while this is an unfamiliar situation to us, it is doubly so for the powers that be. As tonight's scenes from Lewisham repeat themselves over the coming weeks and months ahead, the discomfiture of having a movement breathing down your neck will be felt by politicians from all parties who vote to cut, however reluctantly they may do so.
The left has to adapt and win this new movement to socialism by persuasion, passion and above all politics. That is the acid test the situation demands. It is how we will be judged by the movement before us and the generations who come after us. Are we up to it?
The interesting parts are Loz and Boffy's comments:
This has led to a general lack of participation in democracy, even in unions where that participation is actively encouraged and nurtured such as in mine.
There are so many reasons behind this - and cannot just be put down to some abstract idea that the leadership is poor...people are working longer hours around 24 hour shift patterns and cramming more into their lives, with the multitude of media and entertainment distractions around us now that actually isolate more than unite.
Actually, the problem of participation is not new. I did a review of a new book on the Co-op recently in which the issue was being discussed back in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's. The German SPD, which was by far the biggest, and most effective Workers party of the last century even at its height had few people attending its Branch meetings other than a few activists.
Thoughts?
In my experience over the last few years of doing stalls and speaking to hundreds of people on the streets and their doorsteps there has been an undercurrent of anger, but an anger tempered by isolation, impotence and hopelessness. You can strike and protest as much as you like, they'll never solve anything. Indeed when I was in the Socialist Party one comrade called this 'proxy consciousness': a disillusionment with, irreverence toward, and alienation from official party politics married to a fundamental lack of belief in one's ability to change things. Many a conversation took place where someone would agree with your points about class, inequality, New Labour, pensions, banks, NHS and whatever, but after they'd leave with a nod of the head and wish you good luck. They were issues people cared about, but they didn't see them as issues they should take charge of and fight for: that was what we, "the activists" did. And how could it be otherwise after the defeats of the 80s, the throwing back of working class consciousness, the collapse of a world-wide alternative to capitalism (despite its obvious problems and grotesqueries), the expunging of socialism from everyday politics and the successful sell of consumerism to millions of atomised people?
Nevertheless the combustible material was there and now it is being touched off. I can't remember who said students are the advance guard of the working class, but the support and solidarity the 10.11.10 protest and subsequent days of actions and occupations have inspired is bleeding into wider layers of the population. As Kate notes, "everyone on the protest saying they're inspired by students".
It does also mean the labour movement and the left have to up its game. I'm sure it's the same for many others reading this: up until this year really - and leaving aside the build up to the Iraq war - my experience of the period has been a series of small-scale set pieces. A strike here. A campaign against a closure there. Struggles have been isolated with little in the way of mass expressions of solidarity. But now all bets are off. Class struggle, previously subterranean has now exploded out into the open. Confidence is building rapidly, especially among younger people and no one has the ability to shut it down. A new carnival of protest has ridden into town seething with energy and vitality. For many people who've been knocking around the labour movement for years, the sudden explosions of activity are as strange and alien to us as it is to the raw demonstrators and occupiers who are tasting activism for the first time. And while this is an unfamiliar situation to us, it is doubly so for the powers that be. As tonight's scenes from Lewisham repeat themselves over the coming weeks and months ahead, the discomfiture of having a movement breathing down your neck will be felt by politicians from all parties who vote to cut, however reluctantly they may do so.
The left has to adapt and win this new movement to socialism by persuasion, passion and above all politics. That is the acid test the situation demands. It is how we will be judged by the movement before us and the generations who come after us. Are we up to it?
The interesting parts are Loz and Boffy's comments:
This has led to a general lack of participation in democracy, even in unions where that participation is actively encouraged and nurtured such as in mine.
There are so many reasons behind this - and cannot just be put down to some abstract idea that the leadership is poor...people are working longer hours around 24 hour shift patterns and cramming more into their lives, with the multitude of media and entertainment distractions around us now that actually isolate more than unite.
Actually, the problem of participation is not new. I did a review of a new book on the Co-op recently in which the issue was being discussed back in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's. The German SPD, which was by far the biggest, and most effective Workers party of the last century even at its height had few people attending its Branch meetings other than a few activists.
Thoughts?