CommonSpace columnist Yvonne Ridley says the left in the UK must rediscover its radical, angry activism
I MOVED to Scotland more than four years ago because I was fed up with the directionless, socialist movements marching round in ever decreasing circles in England.
Even the much loved Jeremy Corbyn has failed to prick the Westminster bubble since he arrived as Labour’s leader. Yes, the Tories are in complete and utter chaos these days but that’s largely due to their own back-stabbing backbenchers, the Europe conundrum and looming tax scandals.
The rightwing has not been in so much chaos since Thatcher’s demise and still the English Left appears to have as much political clout as a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
The rightwing has not been in so much chaos since Thatcher’s demise and still the English Left appears to have as much political clout as a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
This weekend we saw manufactured outrage as a national anti-austerity campaign called for David Cameron to resign over his murky tax affairs. An emergency demonstration outside Downing Street on Saturday morning reflected a broad range of organisations including the respected People’s Assembly.
There was a credible turnout of folk all demanding the resignation of the PM over the ‘Panama Papers’ scandal and even the BBC turned up.
Why? What is so surprising about a Tory PM shuffling his tax affairs in a non too transparent manner – for that is exactly what the filthy rich do! It’s like venting faux anger at a vampire stealing blood from a black pudding factory or expressing surprise that the Pope is a catholic or that the Kennedys are gun shy.
If anyone should be standing outside Downing Street, screaming at the PM, it should be an army of tax investigators from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) demanding entry. Let’s hope and pray they’re going through the Panama Papers with a fine toothcomb right now to nail all the tax evaders, avoiders and fiddlers.
If anyone should be standing outside Downing Street, screaming at the PM, it should be an army of tax investigators from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) demanding entry.
So what should the left be doing? Hoping Cameron will go is not a strategy. The left should be getting angry, really angry on behalf of everyone else, from Redcar to Rotherham, from Sheffield to Port Talbot. Lefties everywhere need to stand up and rage against the establishment that holds us all in such contempt.
They shouldn’t be begging the rich for a few tax crumbs from the table but should be demanding a place at the bloody table! It was Malcolm X who once said: “Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”
The left needs to get angry; raging against a capitalist machine can and will bring about change if it’s done right.
Junior doctors, for instance, need to get really angry and withdraw their services for days if not weeks until they get what they deserve; and we need to support them in their anger even if it costs lives – they are being stiffed by the Tories, having their contracts re-written (which is illegal) and ground down by an NHS that is being set up by the UK Government to fail in order to privatise our wonderful healthcare system.
The left is all that the poor and the powerless have to fight for them while the powerful use the police, the media and the sneering elite to impose their control. People power can smash the system but not through 24-hour strikes and a few well behaved marches in the English capital.
What happened to the radical left? I believe it was defanged by the Blairites and given a peerage.
The left needs to get angry; raging against a capitalist machine can and will bring about change if it’s done right.
The best and most effective direct action I’ve seen in years came from the disabled lobby when people on crutches and in wheelchairs tried to storm the Westminster Parliament. Around a dozen protestors last year charged into the central lobby as Cameron was on his feet in the chamber trying to defend his government’s rotten policies.
It took more than 40 police officers – about as many who were in Downing Street on Saturday – to try and bring them under control. As direct action goes it was a superb and courageous example of people power. They kept up the momentum and by January this year the House of Lords voted against the UK Government’s plan to cut Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for people in the Work Related Activity Group from 2017.
It comes to something when you have to rely on an unelected bunch of peers to do something for the common people.
Unfortunately these days the anger from the Labour benches in Westminster is misdirected. Someone needs to tell them that the enemy is not the SNP but the Tories who are sitting in full view opposite. Yet day after day I’m told that the venom launched at the SNP from Labour MPs is more than palpable.
Young Mhairi Black humbled us all with her maiden speech as she reached out publicly to Labour, but it appears most of the MPs snatched her olive branch, snapped it in half and shredded the remains.
The left is all that the poor and the powerless have to fight for them while the powerful use the police, the media and the sneering elite to impose their control.
If only they could channel their contempt to the gloating Tories just a few yards away, but the truth is the majority have more in common with the Conservatives than with Jeremy Corbyn. His election alone, and the massive surge in the Labour membership, should tell them that English voters are desperate for real socialism.
These Labour MPs need to remember the SNP 56 were swept in to Westminster on a tidal wave of votes from the Scottish people who’d frankly had enough of a Scottish Labour party which was morphing into a pale imitation of the Conservatives.
Many of the trade unions are weak and ineffectual too – what happened to their anger? Once they were powerful organisations that raged so much when fighting for pay and conditions in the days when men and women earned decent wages, when the North of England and other regions were the real powerhouses for the working classes who had their choice of jobs in the coal, shipbuilding, steel and other heavy industries.
You just have to look at the amount of knighthoods, Empire baubles and peerages that have been liberally splashed around since the arrival of Tory Lite PM Tony Blair in 1997 to see that some of the revolutionary leaders who once stood around braziers showing solidarity with strikers sold out.
Unfortunately these days the anger from the Labour benches in Westminster is misdirected. Someone needs to tell them that the enemy is not the SNP but the Tories who are sitting in full view opposite.
Now we are in a situation where the most radical trade union today is the British Medical Association, which looks after the interests of junior doctors. It’s not just Cameron and his Eton mob who are out of touch with the working classes, it is England’s left.
When Iain Duncan Smith, chief architect and misery maker of welfare reforms, resigned he wasn’t forced to do so by the left. In the good old days of the radical left the IDS scalp would have been taken much sooner, but instead when it was time to go he fell on his own sword and is now being hailed as some sort of bloody hero in some circles.
Is the world mad? I bailed out four years ago and headed to Scotland where I heard rumours of independence and felt I might have a voice. Just the chance to cut free from the sleaze merchants and charlatans who sit in Westminster filled me with excitement.
OK, so the indyref did not deliver first time around, but it politically inspired lots of voters who realised that only people power can bring about real change. Having watched with joy the arrival of the SNP 56 in Westminster, I realise now that the only victory worth having in a referendum for independence is a landslide. Next time, I believe indyref2 will deliver that.
Many of the trade unions are weak and ineffectual too – what happened to their anger? Once they were powerful organisations that raged so much when fighting for pay and conditions.
And that is why I believe the SNP will not dare to take voters for granted and the governments of Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond have already been tested. Admittedly, I held my breath as the jobs axe started swinging over the Clydebridge and Dalzell steelworks, but the Scottish Government did intervene – and not for the first time – to rescue a national asset. This is what the Tories should be made to do for Port Talbot and all the other failing Tata operations in England and Wales.
What happened to the Scottish steel industry was not a one-off; a new buyer was found for the under-threat Ferguson shipyard in Port Glasgow by the SNP-led government and today the yard is winning public contracts, expanding its workforce and contributing to the economy.
Prestwick Airport was also put into public hands by the Scottish Government in order to ring fence more than 1,300 local jobs. It now contributes more than PS60m to the Scottish economy.
Chancellor George Osborne, who tried to slash our budget by PS7bn just a few weeks ago, was given a short, swift lesson in Scottish economics when tough talking Nicola Sturgeon refused to be mugged by the Tory government in Westminster.
The English left needs to return to the history books and start recycling its methods of resistance for the 21st century. It need not go back too far – 27 years will do it, when the poll tax was introduced.
It’s not just Cameron and his Eton mob who are out of touch with the working classes, it is England’s left.
For those too young to remember, under this system people were taxed rather than their properties and let’s not forget it was the Scottish Tories who first begged for the system to be introduced north of the border.
The result was a large scale mutiny where ordinary people rose up and refused to pay the tax. Their actions brought about the downfall of Margaret Thatcher and ignited the desire for an independent Scotland.
A total of 700,000 summary warrants for non-payment of poll tax were issued by the end of the first year alone and more than 1.5m people refused to pay. Political martyrs such as Tommy Sheridan emerged as a result of the anti-poll tax movement in Scotland.
It’s also worth remembering that the SNP backed non-payment while Labour’s then Scottish leader, Donald Dewar, sat on the fence by both opposing the tax but advocating payment.
South of the border, the radical left took direct action a step further and the riots of Trafalgar Square brought about its eventual abolition – because things happen when people get angry and when people get angry they bring about change.
The English left needs to return to the history books and start recycling its methods of resistance for the 21st century. It need not go back too far – 27 years will do it, when the poll tax was introduced.
While I’m not advocating violence or breaking the law what I am saying is England’s left has lost its way and is beginning to look about as intimidating as a bunch of Morris Dancers wielding tickling sticks, pig bladders and bells.
I watch the north-east of England laid to waste leaving those who toiled in the steel works, ship yards and coal mines to a life on the dole or having to uproot their families in search of work elsewhere. Tens of thousands of men were consigned to the human waste bin, unable to retrain and unwilling to work on the minimum wage while their kids looked at welfare as a way of life, becoming institutionalised in the process.
I remember marching in London in the 1970s and then going back home to County Durham a few hours later. I wonder what would have happened if we had stayed in London, camped on the streets and refused to move. Perhaps we could have changed things if we’d been more bullish, more resolute and less servile to the authorities.
This is the same fate waiting for Port Talbot and all the other steel towns which are on the brink of collapse. That is what the left should be planning – a large scale march and sit in lasting for days if not weeks; they must persuade people to rise up and demand a change, even forcing direct action on a government which, at the moment, couldn’t care less about the working classes.
Toppling Cameron isn’t going to achieve anything. The ranks of the Tories are filled with scores of Old Etonians who are more than willing to jump into the hot seat. What needs to change is the left and its radicalism because at the moment it is trapped in a wilderness with oblivion on one side and wastelands on another.
What needs to change is the left and its radicalism because at the moment it is trapped in a wilderness with oblivion on one side and wastelands on another.
Asking for the resignation of Cameron is not at all ambitious and shows a lack of imagination – the left should be plotting the fall of the British PM and his entire rotten government.
There’s already a petition in place – with more than 120,000 signatures demanding a General Election this year. With a great deal of public support already in place it’s time for the left to wake up and start thinking out of the box.
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Picture courtesy of Yvonne Ridley