Jim Jepps

Adventures in political dreaming

Interview with the AWL

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by the AWL about “Left unity” which you can find on page eight here (pdf). For your convenience I’ll reproduce it below. It’s an editted version of quite a long chat, but it doesn’t particularly misrepresent the conversation so I’m happy with it.

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Jim Jepps is the Camden organiser for the Left Unity initiative launched by Andrew Burgin and Kate Hudson and backed by Ken Loach. Jim is a former member of the SWP and then of the Green Party, which he left recently. He spoke to Martin Thomas of Solidarity about the initiative.

Syriza shows that radical leftist politics don’t have to be fringe politics. People will vote for left politics, if they’re done in the right way. That means being inclusive, and to some extent being populist.

Obviously, Rifondazione, Die Linke, Front de Gauche, Syriza all involved having had a mass Communist Party in those countries, and drawing on those traditions, the personnel, and sometimes the infrastructure. We’ve never had that here, so our route to a broader, pluralist left party has to be different.But I don’t think British people are particularly different from German or French people.

Q: We would welcome a British equivalent of Syriza, though we don’t see one emerging any time soon. But anyway, without waiting, we in AWL try build a left organisation that can do the job of DEA or Kokkino in Syriza. That’s necessary whatever happens. The leadership of Syriza has been pulled into the centre.

JJ: Any left regroupment has to be as broad and inclusive as possible. We have to find ways of working together, in particular where we have tactical disagreements. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be red lines. If there was a war like Iraq, for example, it’d be very difficult to see how you’d accommodate people who supported that war.

Q: We favour an arrangement where we can unite in action where we agree, and debate where we disagree. We advocate local left forums in which the left debates its differences openly and does enough in unity to be a visible force, socialist, aligned to the working class, and not just “against austerity”.

JJ: The left should be a rich place ideologically.It’s true that we often dumb ourselves down to lowest-common-denominators.
I favour a looser idea of democracy. A “winner-takes-all” approach, where anyone who disagrees with a decision after it’s been taken has to shut up and lump it, isn’t helpful.

Most people who are to the left of Labour in this country are not members of organisations. One of the key issues we face is how to empower those people. The left organisations, the Trotskyist organisations, don’t have a monopoly and their models are not the only way the left has to be. In order to have a richer political environment, we have to have spaces for other people to breathe.

In previous unity projects, independent people have felt like they’re a stage army for the existing groups.

Q: But there are limits.If a left movement or party which prides itself on being easy-going gets representatives elected to offices in trade unions or in local government, those representatives can say “this is an easy-going organisation, you’re not going to tell me what to do with this office,I’ll do it my way”

JJ: The Red Green Alliance in Denmark has an interesting model, where they have a very permissive culture at the bottom and a very strict one at the top. All their governmental representatives are expected to vote in line with agreed policy.I’m for slightly greater permissiveness even at the top.

I’d want to see maybe six policies that are absolute bottom lines, where you’d say to an MP “we don’t care what you think personally, this is how you vote on this issue”, and just be looser on everything else.

The RGA commits its MPs to voting a particular way on everything in its manifesto, which I think risks alienating some people who might be uncomfortable with certain aspects of policy.

Q: What are your realistic hopes for the new Left Unity initiative?

JJ: I’m a pessimist at heart, from experience of previous projects in this country. But what I like about Left Unity is that it’s said “let’s start a discussion”. It hasn’t launched a new party, it hasn’t said “here are our big names, come and be their follower”, it’s just said that we need a discussion on building a new left-wing organisation in this country.

We’ve had 8,000 people sign up to be part of this. That shows the potential. I’m not sure where it’ll go. By the end of the year we’ll have
a much clearer idea.

Q: The LU project looks like “unity for splitters”, in that many of those involved are people who’ve split from the Green Party, or Workers’ Power, or Respect, or the SWP, or whatever, and want something big and quick to replace their old group…

JJ: We’re all splitters on the left! It’s true that some people who leave groups are simply people who find it difficult to be in organisations. Some of those people are coming towards Left Unity, and maybe if it’s successful then in three years’ time they won’t be involved any more…

But if that’s a characteristic of the left as a whole, we’re probably doomed. In general I think we can get on with each other if we develop a better culture, and get rid of that “winner-takes-all” attitude.

I don’t think the people who’ve left the SWP are just looking for an SWP mark 2. There’ve been floods of new ideas in and around the International Socialist Network.

Q: Over the last ten years there have been about eight different unity projects which have failed. What’s different with this one?

JJ: Those projects didn’t all fail for the same reason.

The Socialist Labour Party was very different from the Socialist Alliance, and Respect was a very different kind of organisation again. The left collectively made very different mistakes with each of them.

There’s a tendency to blame the SWP, which is understandable, but it lets everyone else off the hook.We could all have done better in the Socialist Alliance. I think the fatal blow was struck when the Socialist Party found a reason to leave, and their absence left no counterbalance to the SWP.

It’s too early to say what kind of organisation Left Unity will become. We’re hoping it won’t look like any of those initiatives. But each of them had successes.

The Convention of the Left was commendable in its modesty, in just setting out to get everyone in a room talking to each other, but if you remain amorphous and ambiguous for too long, there’s no reason to continue. You end up being so worried about taking controversial decisions or doing things that not everyone agrees with, you end up doing nothing.

Left Unity has the most to learn from the Convention of the Left in terms of that modesty, but we have to nail things down and move on more quickly.

Our Left Unity group in Camden is planning to campaign against the “bedroom tax”. We’ll do a showing of Spirit of ‘45, set up an email list, hold more meetings, continue to talk to each other and learn from each other.

• Left Unity: http://leftunity.org

Interview with the AWL was published on May 2nd, 2013, under the headings , , .



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Accidental Death of an Anarchist on iPlayer now

What a pleasure to discover that a radio version Dario Fo’s great play is currently available online. Adapted by Jeremy Hardy and with Adrian Edmonson as “the maniac” it’s a great romp. You’ve got a week to listen, well worth the effort.

Listen here;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01s63cx/Dario_Fo_Accidental_Death_of_an_Anarchist/

Accidental Death of an Anarchist on iPlayer now was published on April 28th, 2013, under the headings , .



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Political figures on Thatcher’s death

A few statements that caught my eye, think what you will;

The ANC statement is, I think, fascinatingly magnanimous.

Gerry Adams comments on Thatcher’s death in a very clear way.

Ed Miliband sends his “deep condolences” and praises her “dignity and courage”.

Nick Clegg, full of praise.

The NUM’s obituary finishes with the words “good riddance”.

Argentinian war veterans are less than impressed.

Peter Tatchell on a heartless legacy.

Kate Hudson of CND on the cold war legacy.

I rather liked Neil Kinnock’s tone.

 

To add a few interesting piece (in no way an attempt to be comprehensive);

IsThatcherDeadYet.co.uk — We Started It. Here’s What Happened.

The Evening Standard tries to rally punk to Thatcher’s case.

Verso books has a nice little thought piece.

Dear Glenda, thank you! (Video)

 

Political figures on Thatcher’s death was published on April 8th, 2013, under the headings , , .



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Remembering Thatcher in numbers

There’s only one thing I was keen to say, which is this – here are her satisfaction and dissatisfaction ratings through all the years of her reign. You can read it in conjunction with this piece from Counterfire on Thatcher’s timeline if you like.

The two points where her approval ratings were higher than disapproval also happen to be the two times she called a General Election. Coincidence.

thatcher polls

Remembering Thatcher in numbers was published on April 8th, 2013, under the headings , , , .



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The left needs infrastructure

You don’t have to go back very far to see that ‘once upon a time’ the left had a modest but actually existing infrastructure of buildings, clubs, printing presses and other physical ‘stuff’.

One of the building blocks of the European left right now is the significant amount of halls, shops, headquarters and resources that they have at their disposal, often left over from now defunct Communist Parties. When left regroupments have taken place in Italy, France, Germany and Greece – for example – they didn’t have to start from scratch, there was a physical legacy to draw upon, as well as a political one.

 

 

housmans05

What have we got?

In the recent past most towns had Labour clubs for instance where left leaning people could drink, where unions and campaign groups held meetings and they served as a kind of cultural hub for the left in the area. However the nineties saw these clubs sold off and shut down, with a few honourable exceptions.

Bradford’s 1 in 12 club, set up in the 80′s from a local claimants’ union is one example of the left producing a permanent feature on the landscape still there thirty years later. Impressive stuff.

Possibly the most consistent left resource across the country are the Quaker meeting houses, which are a great asset for the left (and the community) in towns and cities up and down the country, I believe most of these were set up in the 19th century, what legacy is our generation of leftists leaving the next?

The Crossroads Women’s Centre in Kentish Town serves a similar purpose for a different demographic, and the threatened Women’s library serves as a well used archive for the feminist movement.

The anarchist-influenced movement “often” set up squatted social centers and the like. I’ve always admired that get up and go. The downside is that in my experience these can become downright repellent places to be and those squatted spaces do not tend to sustain themselves over long periods of time. In this sense they are very much of a piece with Occupy whose audacious taking of public space was also sadly accompanied by a degeneration into a less than safe space.

 

 

Further reading

We have a few booksellers and publishers like Bookmarks and Housmans, Pluto Press or Zero Books – as well as a smattering of leftist newspapers of varying quality like the Morning Star, Peace News and Socialist Worker. Publications like Red Pepper have a wider, fresher reach than most left papers but their combined circulation doesn’t come anywhere near the poorly performing Guardian.

firebox

Firebox hosts meetings from a wide range of organisations

Personally I wish we had more left-wing publications, all be it with a higher journalistic standard, but right now the ability of your “ordinary person in the street” to regularly come across a diverse left press,even online, is far lower than we need for a healthy and rich movement.

Organisations like the SWP outsourced their printing operation years ago and, outside of specialist feminist publishers like Persephone Books we don’t own much of the means to produce and distribute literature.

 

Doing as well as reading

It doesn’t stop at the written word though. Groups like Red Rope (socialist walking and climbing club), the Woodcraft Folk (for right-on kids), Food Not Bombs, Critical Mass, or more recently left run food banks do exist, and are great, but they are few and far between. It’s a long way from the socialist cycling clubs, gymnasiums, libraries and like that the British left was once able to sport.

There are a few remaining lefty theatre groups, choirs, and bands but mercifully few of us are forced to sit through any agitprop these days. Where once the left looked towards a thriving cultural scene that it owned and controlled now we have to content ourselves with left field films and TV that falls through the cracks of the corporate hegemony.

 

Where do we go from here?

While I couldn’t list every relevant resource it seems to me that there’s enough around to show that it’s more than possible to build infrastructure that’s of use to the left, campaigning organisations and those lost souls looking  for a place to be. There’s also not so much of it that we can say it’s easy to do.  Each and every example I’ve given here has been created with blood, sweat, courage and imagination – and I guess we need more.

The most recent example shows that leftist infrastructure does not have to be tatty, amateurish or difficult to engage with. Yes, the excellent Firebox. A Trotskyist cafe in Camden just round the corner from Kings Cross, if you’re in the area. While the group who set it up, Counterfire, have specific views on the shape of the world it hasn’t held them back from throwing the doors open to a whole range of organisations across the breadth of the left. The cafe finds itself serving a dual purpose as a general left hub, with very nice cakes, and an invaluable organising space – that they have created out of almost nothing.

Firebox shows that when the left makes an imaginative leap it’s hard work can produce something well beyond an extra recruit here and there – building a well used space that develops real political relationships. There’s depth there and I like it.

For me this means two things. First, I’d like to see Firebox survive (go to their site, they have ways you can help with that) and keeping all these resources financially viable is a job we should all help with where we can. Second, I’d like to see more of this. Not necessarily coffee shops, of course – and from a plethora of traditions – but the experience of the past shows we can leave the left richer than we found it. That seems worth doing.

The left needs infrastructure was published on April 1st, 2013, under the headings , , .



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Ten years after: an international moment of hope

Ten years ago something like 30 million people took to the streets across the world in what was an unprecedented international day of action against the looming invasion of Iraq. Not only was this kind of international demonstration unprecedented, in places like London, New York, and others it was the largest ever demonstration to take place.

This annoying placard was very popular

Three million people marched in Rome, one and half million marched in Madrid, over a million in Barcelona (and dozens of other major demonstrations across Spain), half a million marched across France in numerous demonstrations, 150,000 in Melborne, 100,000 marched in Montreal despite the fact that temperatures were below -30 degrees c! I could go on.

The Italian “pace” flag became popular in this country because of the phenomenal success of the anti-war movement there, leading to the ousting of Berlusconi (who?) and the withdrawal of Italian troops. The Spanish movement also managed to take down their government and withdraw their forces although in many nations, like France and Germany, the governments the anti-war mood was so strong that they felt unable to send troops anyway so understandably their anti-war movements were more modest.

 

Lessons from Europe

The situation was different in Europe. France and Germany had not participated in the war and both Spain and Italy had center right governments so it wasn’t necessary to invent a new anti-war party in any of these places to ensure their troops stayed at home.

The job of ousting Labour over the war could not fall to the pro-war Tories and the Lib Dems strangely felt they had to support the war once it had started so no pre-existing Parliamentary party (in England) could muster a defenestration, although in Scotland we did see a decisive shift in the balance of power.

The shape of the anti-war organisations in Spain and Italy were very different. In Spain (and the US) there was a multiplicity of anti-war groups/coalitions, in Italy there was no ongoing umbrella group at all. This is quite different from the UK where one group, the Stop the War Coalition, became the national spokesperson and organiser against the war and independent groups were, however reluctantly, pulled into its orbit. All were successful models in my view and it does show there’s always more than one way to skin a cat.

 

Blair and Bush survived but were not unscathed

In Febuary 2003 Senator Obama made his famous speech against the Iraq invasion that shot him to national prominence, Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy spoke at the London rally and I even recall a high profile Tory speaking at a StWC national event. The movement against the war was broad by necessity. I personally know card carrying Tories from where I lived at the time who attended the monster demo - when it’s that big it has to be politically broad and those who think those numbers could have been turned into a general strike or whatever are, I think, indulging in wishful thinking without evidence.

Sadly the US and the UK were not able to knock out their leaders but, I think, it’s a mistake to regard the legacy of the anti-war movement in the English speaking world as one of simple “failure”. It is true that with incredible successes the left also found frustration at the fact that their own groups and currents did not seem to be seeing rewards, the Labour left if anything shrank and the SWP’s London based leaders were angrily insisting that the organisation was in a period of historic growth whilst not releasing the membership figures. Ten years on we see just how thin those claims were.

Without that movement it’s perfectly possible that Iran would have been bombed by now, and we may have seen wider interventions in Asia or Africa, possibly even South America, although my thoughts are that would be less likely. I certainly believe we would still have troops in Iraq. That movement saved lives even if it did not stop the invasion.

Where we go from here is a more difficult question. The West’s appetite for new military interventions is growing again but there is no mass anti-war movement to oppose them. If we’re serious about the future we’re going to need to do some serious thinking about how we mobilise popular opinion against new wars in the middle east and Africa or drone strikes in Pakistan because what we have right now can only be part of the solution.

 

Interesting contributions on the anniversary (tiny selection); Medhi Hassan, Owen Jones, Andrew Murray, Chris Nineham, Salman Shaheen, Kate Hudson, Reconsidering the march that failed.

Ten years after: an international moment of hope was published on March 25th, 2013, under the headings , , .



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Five links on pornography (and one extra)

Five links on pornography – no theory, just interesting information and sometimes useful articles;

    • A study of 10,000 porn actors, revealing surprising results, with infographics, breakdown of tastes and what porn stars really look like (it’s not how you think) – jon Millward
    • Who speaks for women who work in the sex industry?  Melissa Gira Grant - Guardian
    • Photos of porn actresses before and after make up. As a way of understanding that nothing is real this is very helpful, aspiring to become something that doesn’t exist is going to make you cry - Melissa Makeup
    • How anti-porn measures have hit gay rights. Never use a sledge hammer crack a nut - Paul Canning
    • A report of an 1832 strumpet. Horrifying account of a sailor coming home from the sea - Cat Meat Shop
    • And one for luck – this time on prostitution, not porn;
      • Why Comic Relief’s claims on prostitution have put me off donating. Brooke Magnanti - Guardian

Five links on pornography (and one extra) was published on March 16th, 2013, under the headings , .



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Wordle search for lefties

As I’m having difficulty finishing the three or four half written, vitally important pieces I’ve got in the pipeline I thought it was time for a little light distraction.

Can you identify which popular left-field websites each of the follow word clouds are taken from? I’ve removed a few names and things that really give it away but, I think, they are all guessable. There are no trick or obscure sites (obscure to lefties that is) so anyone who’s been around a little will at least know what the sites are even if they aren’t regular visitors.

Answers at the bottom;

1.

wordle

2.

wordle

3.

wordle

4.

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5.

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For the answers highlight the area after each number (text in white).

  1. CND
  2. Counterfire
  3. Green Party
  4. Socialist Review
  5. Socialist Unity

Wordle search for lefties was published on March 11th, 2013, under the headings , , .



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How the SWP talks to itself – in numbers

This weekend’s crisis summit of the Socialist Workers Party is nearly upon us and it will, no doubt, mark the beginning of the end of this period of turmoil for the party.

Members have contributed to a pre-conference discussion bulletin (pdf) and at 108 pages it is a surprisingly interesting read. It is a thorough and useful and serious account of how members feel about the crisis their leadership has plunged them into (to see all the articles you could possibly want on this go here).

Considering we’re talking about an organisation in 2013 which has just mishandled an allegation of rape it’s written in very interesting language, a language that I think many might find more alienating than enlightening. Is it really helpful to quote Lenin at length in a discussion about whether close working colleagues are the appropriate people to investigate and pronounce on extremely serious allegations?

Are long dead quotations a help or a hindrance when debating whether there has been a specific lack of accountability and transparency in an organisation? Honestly, even if you thought Lenin was a nifty guy who got a lot of things right what possible relevance does conjuring up his specter have? I think the way in which many (not all) of these contributions is framed is extremely instructive.

 

Here are the numbers;

Cliff (founder of the SWP who died over a decade ago) 51 references.

Lenin 84, Leninism 49, Leninist 41

Trotsky 35

Marxism 51, Marxist 71

Marx 17

Zinoviev 13, Kamenev 6, Engels 2, Luxemburg 1

Democratic Centralism 87

Stalin(ism) 13

Dialectic 4

 

That’s 525 references in all to individuals or ideas that are completely irrelevant to the issues in hand, and when deployed are almost always about giving some sort of unearned weight to either satisfaction or dissatisfaction as to how the current crisis has been handled. Talking about the dialectic is a way of not talking plainly and clearly about why the crisis is happening.

A few references here and there would be nothing worth noting but when you average almost 5 such references per page for over a hundred pages it is more than just a slip of one idiosyncratic hand, we’re talking about a style of political speech completely reliant upon holy texts and ritual. There  is quite a difference between being informed and inspired by political figures and ideas and actually feeling obliged to reference them in situations where they simply are not relevant.

I guess it’s easier to talk about well rehearsed theories than it is to get to the meat of what is happening today. This language inadvertently excludes those who are not comfortable in an academic environment while only adding the appearance of depth. I can assure you that none of the references to Lenin actually added anything to our understanding of the crisis.

 

Other numbers;

Rape gets 185 mentions and there are 64 mentions of the police. Sadly most of the latter are actually about police violence on demonstrations, kettling and the like, aimed at reinforcing why people should not go to the police despite the fact that there is a substantial qualitative difference between the role of riot cops and the investigators of rape.

The term legal advise shows up zero times but lawyer does four times, including in an extremely useful piece written by lawyers on how internal investigations into serious criminal offenses without involving the police may in fact be a criminal offense in itself exposing the organisation to worse consequences than those they sought to avoid.

Working class is mentioned 144 times.

Non-party figures that show up are Julian Assange 11 times, John Rees 7, George Galloway 6, Lindsey German 5, Chris Bambery 3, Tommy Sheridan 2, Clare Soloman 1 time only.

Feminism shows up 101 times (almost once a page) as members continue to debate whether feminist ideas are alien to or can be part of the Marxist tradition.

Social media? Facebook 46, Blogs 36, Blogging 10, and Twitter 8. Myspace 0.

How the SWP talks to itself – in numbers was published on March 6th, 2013, under the headings , .



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Ice cold in Eastleigh

It’s not often that a piece of news leaves Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage both celebrating but there you have it.

Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Liberal Democrat Mike Thornton 13,342 32.06% -14.44%
UKIP Diane James 11,571 27.80% +24.20%
Conservative Maria Hutchings 10,559 25.37% -13.93%
Labour John O’Farrell 4,088 9.82% +0.22%
Independent Danny Stupple 768 1.85% N/A
National Health Action Iain Maclennan 392 0.94% N/A
Beer, Baccy and Crumpet Party Ray Hall 235 0.56% N/A
Christian Kevin Milburn 163 0.39% N/A
Monster Raving Loony Howling Laud Hope 136 0.33% N/A
Peace Jim Duggan 128 0.31% N/A
Elvis Loves Pets David Bishop 72 0.17% N/A
English Democrats Michael Walters 70 0.17% -0.33%
TUSC Daz Procter 62 0.15% N/A
Wessex Regionalist Colin Bex 30 0.07% N/A

I’m slightly surprised at how badly Labour did to be honest as their previous outing in Eastleigh had lost them 10% of the vote since 2005 and I thought a good slice of those voters at least would come back into the fold. It clearly demonstrates that the poll boost they have received nationally is extremely thin and where someone else can push themselves in as the party of opposition that boost just evaporates.

We’ve now had Labour massively increase their votes in safe seat by-elections but here, where Labour are not so strong, they’ve made no headway. This bodes an ill wind for Miliband who needs to be able to win new seats in 2015 not just increase his majority in seats he already has. Not that he’d ever have won this seat.

The Lib Dems are celebrating a mere 14.4% drop in their poll rating – well done them – and the big news, of course, is that a weak, inconsistent and off message right-wing Tory simply legitimised UKIP who were able to leap ahead at an incredible rate.

Of the others only the right-wing independent made any dent at all and surely it is time to accept that TUSC should get a name that reflects their politics rather than an anagram no one has ever heard of. Oh, and the results are a clear vindication for the Greens who decided not to waste money standing in order to get less than 1%, which they surely would have. Good for them too!

Ice cold in Eastleigh was published on March 1st, 2013, under the headings , , , .



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