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Jon Cruddas MP - Speech to Labour Friends of Searchlight
Today we begin to discuss Labour's journey of change.
A party of organisers. Organising for a party of social justice and community.
We have Hope not Hate, London Citizens, the Christian Socialist Movement Labour Neighbours Projects, Compass, and many examples in various Constituency Labour Parties.
We must learn from each other.
We bring different methods but we are united in our belief that organising is the heart of politics.
Community is the strength of the people.
We are here to work together.
And we know that communities do not just exist. They have to be built by making relationships. We do not simply have a neighbour. We have to make ourselves someone's neighbour. In our neighbours we make a common life together. In our welcome to strangers we show our humanity.
Labour needs to be a party that lives by its values. I want to see a more democratic party with an actively involved membership. A conference that is strengthened and its agenda setting opened up. We need to turn the party outward to the communities we seek to represent.
We must create a party rooted in a culture of organising.
We organise to build relationships with each other for the common good: the living wage, a new playground, safer streets, affordable housing.
These local goals matter as they reflect our belief in a sense of neighbourliness, of duty and obligation, responsibility and solidarity. But how do they relate to the larger Labour Movement?
At the heart of all transformational movements is the politics of virtue - creating a life well lived.
Vaclav Havel said in ‘Power and the Powerless':
We must not be ashamed that we are capable of love, friendship, solidarity, sympathy, and tolerance, but just the opposite: we must set these fundamental dimensions of our humanity free from their "private" exile and accept them as the only genuine starting point of meaningful human community.
Organising is the struggle for a virtuous life of love, justice and compassion. These are relational qualities that we show to each other. It is the way friendship (comradeship) leads to reciprocity
Put simply, 'Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.'
And reciprocity leads to the ideas of justice and the equal value of all.
It is where ethics meets politics.
We are part of the tradition we can trace back to Aristotle- the desire to build the Polis - the community - the city - that allows humans to flourish. The Politics of Citizenship. Democracy has always been the way people organised against the domination of the market and became citizens.
The struggle for democracy teaches us to look at the world with new eyes.
Political struggle has always been the university of Labour. It is how we learn politics and become political leaders.
Not action alone.
Not theory by itself.
But action and theory informing one another.
A party dedicated to organising must also be a party committed to open minded thinking.
To a convivial culture of knowledge and education, of writing and speaking and conversation and laughter.
It means listening to what people care about and not what we think they should care about.
For all sections of the party, that's perhaps the hardest thing of all.
Labour has lost this kind of politics. We became a machine spinning stories to the media and pulling the levers of power.
The leadership retreated into the offices of state and lost touch with the people. In many areas we stopped organising and so we stopped learning and thinking.
And we stopped understanding the ordinary lives of the people and the sentiment of the country.
This afternoon we will hear from the leadership contestants. The contest is about more than 5 individuals competing for office. It is about the future of our party and the fate of our country.
The Coalition Budget threatens us with a new recession.
The Spending Review will report in October and the size of the cuts it proposes will be both unnecessary and devastating.
We are living in the eye of a storm.
The low paid, the poor, welfare claimants will pay for the greed of bankers and the inflated salaries of public service managers and consultants.
This is the politics of the Conservative Party who are the defenders of the property rights and prerogatives of the rich. It is the politics of the Lib Dems who have been lost to their free market fundamentalists.
They are soft on the banks, hard on the poor, and threatening to growth.
That is the basis on which we should take on this government.
But make no mistake the Coalition is a serious threat to the future of Labour.
The political realignments of this crisis could exclude Labour from government for a decade. This is the goal of the Coalition - a centre right majority for the next decade cloaked in the progressive mantle.
And make no mistake they are actively investigating new forms of community engagement and organisation.
But it will not succeed because we will build an alternative.
We will begin locally in our workplaces and neigbourhoods.
We energise communities
We engage in dialogue with people
We build new relationships
And so we create a new kind of Labour movement as part of a New Covenant with the People.
There are no short cuts to a Labour government of transformational change. What do we need to begin our journey?
First we need a leadership that will effectively oppose the Coalition and be able to embrace the political changes for Labour's revival.
It means being both sure-footed and open to uncertainty.
It means a politics of pluralism and alliances.
And it means a collegial, inclusive style that values good relationships and draws on collective wisdom
We need to change our party:
We need a new statement of our identity; our essential purpose; what we are for, to build a new language anchored in the ordinary lives and sentiment of the people
a new chair that is elected by conference;
a new commission on party structures and a renewed culture of organisation;
a comprehensive review of policy under a joint secretariat of Party Chair and Party Leader;
in a root and branch deliberation about Labour's future politics and policy strategies.
We must democratise the National Policy Forum.
For that reason if the position is created I would put myself forward for the elected chair of the party - to help build this plural, democratic Labour Party.
But we need more, much more.
Labour needs a new political economy.
We need a politics of the Good Society - to allow people to become genuinely fulfilled.
Mutualism, association and relationships are Labour values. Compassion our prime virtue.
We must take them back from the Conservatives.
Labour can be at the forefront of new economic thinking; engaging with new ideas in political philosophy and sociology; working out new approaches to society, the family and welfare.
If we combine organising and thinking together we will create a winning movement.
Second, we need our leadership to do two things:
dare more democracy
rebuild the economy of our country for a common prosperity
We have to take on the vested interests that have brought our country to its knees.
Rebuilding a productive and social model of capitalism means working together in partnerships, and for economic democracy.
There can be no democracy and no common prosperity in Britain until the banks are reformed.
The power of money is real and we need to build a real opposition based on democracy.
We need finance to help build the low carbon, sustainable economy of the future.
The banks that are 'too big to fail' must be broken up.
Employee representation on remuneration committees so that managerial prerogative can be challenged.
Cap interest rates on unsecured loans.
A regional and community banking system to bring credit to the people and capital to localities.
A financial transaction tax.
And tax justice - end corporate tax evasion and tackle price transferring.
A common prosperity means a regional spread of sustainable wealth creation.
Increasing demand by creating good properly paid jobs
Legislation for a living wage and equal pay starting with government public procurement contracts.
Pension funds investing in social enterprise, infrastructure development and green industries.
A major house building programme.
The mission of an organised labour movement is to make a common life between those who are divided.
The message our conference gives to the party today and to the 5 leadership contenders is:
We are making a new life anchored in a new politics of virtue.
Lets start the debate about how we will organise for it.
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Comments
on 29 July 2010, 6:19:37 PM
on 24 July 2010, 2:18:53 PM
on 24 July 2010, 2:00:18 PM
on 24 July 2010, 1:47:45 PM
Mr Cruddas is entitled to jockey for attention and influence all he likes and has done so assiduously for years. But to that end, his current chosen persona is that of the philosopher of virtue. He has been an active ‘new labour,’ proponent for years. His commitment to the neo-liberal economic and social settlement in practice, is as strong as that of any of the fellow insiders he now criticises.
Surely part of the Cruddas worldview is based on the intellectual commonplace that to defend the entrenched settlement, (and a nominally ‘Labour’ relevance to it,) ‘new labour’ must change. He rightly points out that with 200,000 fewer votes than Labour obtained in 1983, the May result was Labour’s worse result since 1931. In this context, he cannot really be surprised that his ‘new labour’ colleagues should seek to put distance between themselves and their policies in office.
Jon Cruddas is not naïve. Just because he sensibly calculated that his political prospects would be best served by his not accepting preferment from Gordon Brown, does not impart any particular merit to Mr Cruddas in his appraisal now, of those who did.
It is never a good thing for a jobbing politician, - perhaps especially a ‘new labour’ politician - to tout virtue one minute and criticism of colleagues with whom he has no differences of policy substance, the next. At the very least, those colleagues will be inclined to think him somewhat of an opportunist. - And at their expense.
on 23 July 2010, 7:40:46 PM
Evidence Suggest U.S.-U.K. Wars Increase Global Terror Threat
War on Terror or War of Terror?
By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO
Critical evidence from the British government and other sources suggest that the “War on Terror” has actually destabilized the Middle East and increased the terror threat throughout the globe. The former head of Britain’s MI5 – Baroness Manningham-Buller – finds that the Iraq war has dramatically contributed to the growing terror danger as directed against the United Kingdom and its citizens. Britain has been forced to double the budget devoted to investigating terrorist plots following the 2003 invasion. An official British inquiry into the proposed invasion warned of just such an increase in the terror threat. This means that the destabilizing affects of Western attacks were predicted in advance of attacks that were seen as illegal under international law (as British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg recently conceded) .
Buller’s confession is an admission that the war in Iraq has further inflamed anti-U.S. and anti-U.K. sentiment. When considering it along other critical studies, it looks as if the war has contributed to a greater hostility toward British foreign policy more generally among the majority of Middle Easterners, and among British nationals more specifically (Buller is most concerned with the latter group). She concludes that “a whole generation of young people” have been “radicalized’ by what is perceived as an attack on Islam. The Blair administration, Buller states, conceded that the war increased the terror threat at home: the budget increases for anti-terror operations were “unheard of, certainly unheard of today, but he (Blair) and the Treasury and the chancellor accepted that because I was able to demonstrate the scale of the problem that we were confronted by.” The growing threat to Britain seems all the more plausible in light of the 7/7 2005 terrorist bombings in London, which killed more than 50 civilians and were motivated by anger at the British invasion of Iraq.
Buller concedes what should be known by most in the U.S. and U.K. today – the terror threat has grown in the wake of the Iraq invasion, despite the fact that Iraq posed no real national security threat to the West. Buller admits that MI5 had refused to contribute to the intelligence comprising the British government’s dossier against Iraq’s “WMD threat” in 2002. The reason is clear enough: there was “no credible evidence” that Iraq was linked to the 9/11 attacks, and Saddam Hussein was “unlikely” to support any attacks against the U.S. or U.K. unless his regime’s survival was threatened. These conclusions were shared with the Bush administration at the time, and promptly ignored by a U.S. administration whose members had been set on going to war for more than 10 years.
Buller also discusses a point well known among critics of U.S. foreign policy on the left: the invasion of Iraq has actually served as one of the best recruiters for Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and loosely affiliated Islamist terror groups. As Buller describes with regards to U.S.-U.K. actions in Iraq: “Arguably, we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad.” In short, those throughout the Muslim world see the U.S.-allied occupation as motivated by imperial ambitions for oil; they see the torture and abuses in which American and British troops are responsible, and they are reacting critically. Targeting of U.S. and allied forces has become far more common now than it was prior to 9/11.
Buller’s MI5 based conclusions are not the first time it’s been conceded that the “War on Terror” actually increases the global terror threat. Terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank found through their own statistical analysis that the 2003 invasion was accompanied by an “Iraq Effect” in which terrorist attacks escalated dramatically from 2003 to 2006 (the time period when the study was conducted). More specifically, their report finds that: “the rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.” Subsequent empirical studies of the decline of violence in Iraq after 2007 demonstrated that the reduction came about, not because of the success of the "surge" in promoting humanitarianism, but because the ethnic cleansing in cities like Baghdad had essentially succeeded (with the help of U.S. troops disarming Sunni communities in the name of "counter-insurgency"), and with the Shia militias winning the civil war against Iraq's Sunnis (for more, see: httpCOLON//wwwDOTjuancoleDOTcom/2008/07/social-history-of-surgeDOThtml and dimaggio02272009DOThtml). In short, violence declined because there were fewer people to kill following the successful ethnic cleansing.
Additional journalistic investigation finds that the policy of torture and mistreatment at Guantanamo, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan (often directed against those whose terrorist ties were questionable to non-existent, but were nonetheless picked up in blanket raids in Afghanistan and Iraq) led to a further intensification of anti-U.S. sentiment in the Muslim world. As McClatchy Newspapers concluded in an eight month investigation in 11 countries, U.S. detainees were often kept “on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence…McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials in Afghanistan, and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program...This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers, or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S. backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants…many of the detainees posed no danger to the U.S. or its allies”.
Through its investigations, McClatchy found that “prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo…the investigation found that top Bush administration officials knew within months of opening the Guantanamo detention center that many of the prisoners there weren’t ‘the worst of the worst,’” as “it was obvious [from military administrators] that at least a third of the population didn’t belong there.”
American soldiers were often gullible in that they accepted “false reports passed along by informants and officials looking to settle old grudges in Afghanistan, a nation that had experienced more than two decades of occupation and civil war before U.S. troops arrived". The lack of connections of many detainees to any terror operations looks especially tragic in hindsight, considering that the torture visited upon these individuals contributed to their radicalization against the United States. As McClatchy reports, “U.S. detention policies fueled support for extremist Islamist groups. For some detainees who went home far more militant than when they arrived, Guantanamo became a school for jihad.”
The above evidence strongly suggests that the U.S. and U.K. primarily play a destabilizing role
on 23 July 2010, 12:26:58 PM
on 22 July 2010, 7:00:34 PM
On the other hand, a socialist joining Labour is (a) joining Newlabour; (b) implicitly supporting whichever reactionary goon is selected leader and will campaign for the Newlabour cabal by supporting Labour in the next election; (c) will effectively sterilise his socialist energy by locking it up in a party whose establishment and parliamentary majority is strongly hostile to anything socialist.
So that is the tragedy...neither option is acceptable, and neither shows any greater chance of a strategic success. So, honestly, I dont think Dugsie's choice is inherently any better than the other alternative, despite the arguments he makes for it. There is a big difference between an idea making sense, and an idea resulting in anything useful. The left in Labour did fight pretty hard on many things, but lost almost all of them, and did not make even the slightest dent in the Blairite Cabal's domination of the party. So now, when the Cabal is stronger than ever, and the left weaker than ever, why should staying and fighting have any better a chance than it has over the last 15 years ?
on 22 July 2010, 3:18:51 PM
Others could adopt this model. I haven't patented it.
on 22 July 2010, 3:00:07 PM
The reasons why the Left should stay/rejoin the Labour Party are similar to those given as to why the Left in America should join the American Democrats. - Appropriate, since the ideology and policy consensus upon which Labour is now constructed is in essence a synthesis the American Democrats and European Liberals; with a tincture of Christian Democratic moralism such as would appeal to those different parts of the Right exemplified by Blair, Cruddas and Field, for example.
There is little doubt now that Labour is now firmly a neo-liberal party. They have their own internal Right Left and Centre.
There is absolutely no sign of the range of socialist and social democratic opinion, who oppose the ‘new labour’ hegemony, either seriously influencing the party, or being willing to break free of it. Dugsie calls attention to the utter uselessness of the wilderness. If there were a principled, organised move to set up an ‘independent’ Labour Party with a Clause 4 constitution and a trade union link, I would join it immediately.
But in reality I think that such as remains of the Left in the Labour Party will fight were it can, leave the party in dribs, or stay and become inactive.
To look to the Labour Party as a class based vehicle of socialist democratic progress is honourably misconceived. It has no serious role in such a project. In effect it is now for socialist outwith the Labour Party, (where most of them are anyway,) to establish a socialist party, and draw socialists from the Labour Party and elsewhere, to them.
Sadly, there is no sign that anything like this is on the cards.
All we have is that cry of barbarian triumphalism: “We are all ‘new labour’ now.”
on 22 July 2010, 11:15:28 AM
If David Miliband wins the leadership election then socialists outside the Labour Party should join to oppose him. There is no way that they can oppose him effectively from ourside. Nor is there any serious prospect of an alternative socialist party being established, that I can see.
on 22 July 2010, 10:19:15 AM
wins the leadership, he will further alienate the left, rather than get socialists and social democrats to join.
Probably pushing them to the Greens and others. Lee, although i disagree with Alex Salmond on independance, he is at least a very efficient politician. Not only can he wipe the floor with the opposition in Scotland. He makes coalition and Newlabour politicians in westminster look positively mediocre, which is of course exactly what they are. An example being yesterday's PM questions, now did that inspire confidence?
on 22 July 2010, 6:51:23 AM
Did anyone see this really unfortunate photo of EdMil in the Independent ? Talk about the goon show:
httpCOLON//wwwDOTindependentDOTcoDOTuk/news/uk/politics/unions-back-miliband-junior-in-labour-leadership-battle-2032216DOThtml
Meanwhile, his nerd brother continues to prattle in the most incoherent and embarrasing fashion. Referring the the Blair-Brown tensions, Millitwit announced: "There is absolutely no way that the tension you have referred to will carry on. There is just simply no basis, tolerance or interest in that, because the historical record is absolutely clear – this party specialises in going out of office and then being out of office for a long time." Real leadership material !
on 21 July 2010, 11:21:56 PM
on 21 July 2010, 9:05:56 PM
on 21 July 2010, 6:26:15 PM
Its sad that the unions had nothing better to fall back on...their choice has been a non-choice. But it does hint at the gulf between the unions and the PLP (much larger than the difference between the brothers...not that that should surprise anyone). I know that I am commenting on a non-event, but only doing so because the Tribals are going to get all exercised and claim that the situation is "significant". It isnt.
on 21 July 2010, 4:31:21 PM
on 21 July 2010, 3:45:45 PM
Some progress at least.
Lee
The LRC is active, as you can see from its site. The question is, how effective is it ? The problem is one of exclusion, as John McDonnell was excluded from the leadership election. We need to improve the Labour Party's internal democracy. There are two organisations specialising in that, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Save the Labour Party. I would like to see a much stronger focus on policy.
on 21 July 2010, 3:19:03 PM
on 21 July 2010, 12:33:07 PM
I am always most willing and eager to be guided by you and to improve my grasp and understanding of reality on the left. So please continue to be my mentor.
on 21 July 2010, 9:49:50 AM
The context is all important here. We don't live in a socialist society. Nor is there any foreseeable prospect of achieving international socialism. Socialist principles can only be applied in a limited pragmatic way in a society dominated by neoliberalism. We are in defensive mode at the moment. I have argued for a socialist-informed social democracy in this situation. Your approach of defending the vulnerable sick and disabled and their carers is very appropriate to the reality of our times.
Lee's purist, rather holier than thou, attacks on the Labour Left are misplaced and indicative of a rootless approach to politics, as I have remarked before. The Labour Left is open to criticism for the inadequacy of its strategy and tactics, not for its existence. It is incumbent upon those who criticise Labour Party socialists to come up with an alternative approach, but they have consistently failed to do so.
on 21 July 2010, 9:18:52 AM
A lot has to do with the authenticity of the policy. One can imagine a decent socialist regime genuinely believing in a fair and just asignation of social responsibility and social benefit. If the administrative managers are callous bastards or sadists, they can still twist and distort the intentions, but administrative reform is possible, and the principles can be rescued.
In the case of Newlabour (and now the Tories), the authenticity behind their proclaimed intentions in encouraging return to work is highly questionable. In fact, having read a lot of Purnell and knowing Blair's innate sadism, I am personally satisfied that the motivations were utterly different to the proclaimed purpose. My guess is that the work law was motivated by (a) so strong a desire to punish welfare cheats, that the rights and safety of the innocents became secondary; (b) a desire to save money and pass the responsibility back to the individual; (c) a general goal of pulling out of a state-funded welfare state and privatising all these services...making them commodities not rights, subject to the market.
If these are your real intentions, whatever noble sounding bullshit you may spout about the goals, it will inevitably crowd out anything genuinely fair in the way the process is designed and implemented. And that what is happening.
The problem of authenticity (or the lack of it) is the central problem in British politics today. David Miliband has inherited the mantle from Blair of stating untruths and lies in defense of policy. He was exposed today by Alex Salmond, who quoted David Miliband's support for the release of Megrahi at the time. Now he is saying he was always opposed to it ? Why ? Because there is a vacancy up Obama's bum, and he has applied for the occupancy. It doesnt get lower and cheaper than DMil. He represents the lowest and scummiest level of British politics.
on 21 July 2010, 9:02:41 AM
Thanks for that Lee. It's really helpful to know that there's a reason that I am struggling with this.
It makes it that much more difficult to campaign if it isn't the actual policy that is wrong - it's just that you don't trust the people who are implementing it.
Aspiration of meaningful work open to every one - fine.
Sanctions on sick people for not succeeding - not fine.
Sick and disabled people face enough real challenges in finding and keeping work. What exactly do sanctions add except fear.
And the argument that the fit face sanctions so the disabled demand to be treated the same is taking equality a step too far.
on 21 July 2010, 5:12:22 AM
So what makes for the difference ? In theory at least (because many countries claiming to be socialist have been draconian and oppressive) what makes the difference is the adherence to the principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"...recognising the huge differences among people (in contrast to the media representation of socialism), and finding appropriate balance in a way that truly fits the individual. In a capitalist, especially neo-liberal society, the exercise is carried proforma with no genuine concern for people.
My mother is in a home suffering from the early stages of dementia. She is more able than many others there, and the wonderful people who run the home have together with my mother, found all sorts of useful things for her to do, including counselling and entertaining other residents. Its appropriate to her situation, makes her feel good, and useful to the small section of society in which she is living. It is being managed by caring and compassionate people who wouldnt dream of calling themselves socialists, but are behaving as such.
In summary, its not the principle of helping people to feel useful and make an appropriate contribution to society, which is wrong. It is the fact that in a neoliberal system, the concern is to hit the target, not deal appropriately with each situation.
It is ironic that the opponents of socialism love to portray it as reducing each individual to a cipher. In fact, America is the most conformist society on the planet, one that has made individuality toh peovince purely of the celebrity and elite, and has reduced the rest of the nation to undifferentiated consumer fodder. Watch a crowd at a baseball game talking the oath of allegiance, and you will know what I mean.
on 20 July 2010, 4:30:09 PM
But with rights come responsibilities. If the fit are required to jump through hoops and submit to harassment to find work then the disabled want to be bullied too.
Personally I always thought that for every woman who wanted to be CEO of a multi national and work until the last ten minutes of labour and go back to work the next day - there was another woman who found pregnancy exhausting and wanted to stay home with her childen. I don't think women ever worked it out except by deciding that no two women were the same.
Now I see disabled people who feel weak and unable shying away from the liberation of being told to go to work. Are they making a sensible judgement that their illness is too bad and they aren't going to thrive in a competitive workplace and it is the right choice for them not to move to work or are they just looking back to a dark age where the sick mistakenly sat at home secure on a disability benefit and came to terms with the reality of not expecting to work with disability.
How do you make the argument that all sick and disabled people are able to work and at the same time protect all the sick people who don't feel able and prefer to be treated as unable.
Please help.
on 20 July 2010, 10:44:33 AM
on 20 July 2010, 10:37:39 AM
on 20 July 2010, 9:50:37 AM
of america. Blair saw to that, apart from the two world wars, these two countries have never been so close ideology wise. All the answers it seems come from across the atlantic, according to most of our politicians. The welfare reforms, free market dogma, impotent politics, imperialist foreign policy. Cameron stating sycophantly that we are america's junior partner. Who voted for that? where does the four male contenders for the labour party leadership stand on this? I personally wish to see the UK strong in europe adopting social democracy. With long term planning for a modern 21st century society and social infrastructures. I doubt that adopting 19th century free markets and allowing charities to deputise for the welfare state gets us anywhere. Apart from further inequality, short term profit motives and bankers dictating how our lives are led. Anyone fancy being a junior partner in a Sarah Palin administration? damned if i do. Any answers Mr Cruddas and Co?
on 20 July 2010, 8:48:50 AM
httpCOLON//wwwDOTgeopoliticalmonitorDOTcom/afghan-heroin-the-cia
There are scores of even more detailed articles regarding CIA management of the herion trade, if you care to google
on 20 July 2010, 8:39:20 AM
Billy Bunter blustered in his predictable chinless fashion that that is exactly why Britain needs to remain in Afghanistan, and one could hear John Humphreys stifling his giggles. Utterly pathetic (although no worse than the speeches being made by Clinton and other idiots in Kabul). So why is it happening ? Cameron is not everyone's cup of tea, but he isnt a moron. He knows that America lost the war in Afghanistan before Obama took over, and that the situation will continue to get progressively worse. Why is he risking his own premiership on this failed piece of pith-helmet imperial dithering ? The answer is that he doesnt get to decide. That is done by the Establishment which is separate from and more powerful than Cameron, and which permits Cameron to govern as long as he does what the Establishment insists. Its much the same with Obama. He has to invent reasons for staying in Afghanistan because there are no obvious reasons that would naturally occur to him, and the reasons he is forced to give, are, as a consequence, absurd and humiliating.
Pith helmet imperial dithering was always done for the enrichment of contractors, and war is an essential part of both the US and UK economies. Hence the alarm today when Karzai announced that US contractors are the main cause of corruption and the killing of civilians in Afghanistan. It doesnt matter whether its true or not..its a challenge that goes to the heart of the system, and if he continues this way, he will be converted into Saddam Hussein and hanged from a tree outside the presidential center.
And then there is the heroin..the CIA...Ollie North...etc
.
.3.
on 20 July 2010, 7:05:01 AM
on 19 July 2010, 7:45:05 PM
I thought that you might like to know this.
I must admit that as a total political junkie, I want to read it. With a bit of luck it will start appearing on the remaindered shelves in a few months. Meanwhile, if the temptation proves too great and you decide to join Progress, I trust that you will post a synopsis here!
I shall be dropping hints into what I trust will prove to be receptive ears at the time of my next birthday.
on 19 July 2010, 6:16:26 PM
And that is what the Big Society is about. I have a right to decent mental health services from the government. I can't have a right in law to these services from MIND or Rethink.
Unless it is a right it is no use to me. However nice the voluntary provision is and how ever lovely the ladies are with the hats and tea - it isn't my right.
No one does noblesse oblige aswell as us.
on 19 July 2010, 6:01:12 PM
I agree that deference is an expression of power relationships. If the powerful dont get automatic deference, they will demand it (which is very bad taste, and luckily in England the need to demand it seldom arises). Like Paul, I doubt whether the desire to be deferent is hard-wired; but I am ready to believe that the techniques of how to be deferent may well be an evolutionary survival skill tempered by culture and custom.
At a philosophical level, it seems to me that what has happened is that following the industrial revolution, we had a brief (in historical terms) flirtation with universal entitlements. This was expressed politically through democratic institutions and trade unions, culturally by a period of liberal humanism and championing of causes, economically through progressive taxation and social benefits. Those who have always run the system, who have always had power, continued to maintain power, adding others (as need be) to their cabal. Power never really shifted, although at times it looked as if it might.
The plutocrats have never been monsters, at least not in the UK. They have always had a decently liberal outlook, not wanting people to suffer in any untoward way, and with an informed respect for the idea of a motivated and healthy work-force through which they accumulate their wealth and cement their power. They are willing to be quite charitable and nice, will even stop for chatties with the cloth-cap brigade, and even sponsor their children for a decent education. They have never been monsters, at least not in the UK. They are the product of Mill's decent liberalism.
But what they will not tolerate is the idea that the lower classes have entrenched social and political entitlements that could erode their power. That is out of the question. They will hob-nob with them, eat their sarnies and drink their beer, even giggle sweetly (as I am sure Aunt Polly does) when the red flag is sung. But they are the ones who give, and the neo-liberal era has enabled the plutocracy to reinstate its unchallengeable power and social status, mixed regrettably with awfully vulgar nouveau riche types like Tony Blair and Simon Cowell to whom they have to pander.
This return to the traditional liberalism of the plutocracy is what binds together all three mainstream parties today, and it is a powerful force. Listen for a moment to Cameron and David Miliband, and you will notice that both are willing to be awfully decent and give handouts to those who need it, although they jolly well hope the charities will helkp out too. No mention about changing the social structure. Nerds like David Miliband even challenge the idea that classes still exist (he remembers Maggie doing it so he thinks its a good idea to do it too...DMil is a replicant who depends on the accumulated ideas of others).
on 19 July 2010, 4:34:08 PM
'If you join Progress before 1 August 2010 you will go into a draw to win a signed copy of Peter Mandelson's new memoirs.'
I thought that you might like to know this.
on 19 July 2010, 4:13:27 PM
Absolutely. And Jon Cruddas expects to be the elected chair and then he is going to organise me. Organise. Organise. Organise.
I don't want to be organised. There are no principles there - except the very coded Marxism in one sentence that I thought I detected and explained to Lee but so heavily disguised I can't be sure. So I'm to be organised and not told the objective. That's a living hell to me.
Fortunately I don't do deference and won't co operate. But not doing deference makes me a very strange person. It's called a misfit.
Lee doesn't do it either and I don't want to destroy Lee's fantasy boyhood - that if he had been born to ride horses across English estates (I had a friend in Northumberland who lived in a tied cottage and the Duke of Northumberland used to jump over the garden fence on his horse and enquire after her health while his horse stamped on her vegetables) but even if Lee had been born to go to Eton he would have been the sort of boy that challenged the whole set up and got thrown out.
Most people fall under the spell of someone. And if Cameron goes on with the Big Society - then the parents and carers for example of the mentally ill can set up little enterprises to house and look after their own relatives - they do this any way now and the devil help the others! I could take the shilling and do that but I won't. Any thing run by the local middle clas with sharp elbows is always unbearable to me. But that is where the Big Society will take us.
on 19 July 2010, 3:36:43 PM
Surely that is fatalism rather than Deference, Frances? Deference is not all that strange. Deference has changed over the years and is arguablly pervacive; and whilst how the brain, the mind and social consciousness develops is critical to the role and content of deference, deference is not some imutable, some given.
It is certainly about power and an is important delination between those who have it and those who do not. One defers to the powerful, not the weak. The former not only have easier access to goods; but whatever those goods are, the powerful have a role in accumulationg and/or distributing those goods.
In ways most people would find astonishing, we defer to markets in ways we never did in our youth and early adulthood. Yet, Labour traditionally a party in oppostion to deference, but from it’s inception a recient of it, is now restructured and rebuilt explicitly in defence of (dare I say) a ‘new’ post industrial capitalism. But the inbuilt political construct and assumption is what it has always been: that the Many defer to the Few.
It is the role in relation to the decidedly unstrange phenomenuem of deference, that offers some insight into the premodominantly neo-liberal Labour Party we have today. On the face of it Labour is internally competative and democratic. It’s new pluralism of competative elites, does more acurately reflect the neo-liberal political economy and society than do those on the Labour Left. Critically, the broad expansion of the middle class, (in England in particular?) has seen the emergence of a ‘new labour’ middle class who in practice view those of the old liberal middle class who stood in solidarity with orgamised labour in the Labour Party, with varying degrees of contempt. Yet as the recent election campaign showed, and the current leadership campaign continues to show, Labour still expects deference rather than challenge and questioning, from wider non elite party and society. This culture of entittlement, with its necessary opposite of deference, pervades a ‘new labour’ middle-class closer to each other, closer to the Tories and closer to the interests of the market than Margaret Hilda good ever have wished for the Labour Party of her ambitions.
One can dismiss the likes of Neal Lawson and Jon Cruddas etc,etc, for the Rightwing corner boys they now are. But they and many of the ‘new labour’ elite show how the socilogically middle class have changed ecomomically, socially and politically; and the struggles in the ideolgical market place they must endure to gain attention and to exercise some degree power. A generation ago, they would have exemplified the solid, acrticulate, educated, politically committed working class of Left or Right upon which Labour depended for its decive politics and vitality. They would have taken on the snobberies and arrogance some of the less edyfying of the party’s middle class liberals displayed. Yet they and the neo-liberal political economy have marginalised or occomodated Labour’s traditional middle-class liberals; and some of the skilled, articulated and politically committed working class as exemplified by Messrs Lawson and Cruddas and others, have shifted decively to the Right.
Having so moved, part of their entitlement is the exercise of power; the Right to decide and set the agenda. In doing this they in practice reforce and demand that Labour as a whole- that the Many as a whole- defer to them. Deference is not strange in the least. It is not even a Tory vice as such. Nor is it the product of hard wiring
on 19 July 2010, 3:10:40 PM
Dear David, if I may call you that. It has come to my attention that since the arrival of the Klignon missionaries, a great void has opened up in the vortex, one which may yet see one Jon C slip through to sit at the side of the great earth mother Harri, she of little brain and many mobile phones. It doesnt need me to tell you (or perhaps it does because uncle vinnie wont) that the presence of something so radical as Jon C in the inner court could destabilise the very force that makes us all one (money), and raise in Islington and other popcorn pockets of our nations, aspirations. You know very well when we met, at your request, a year ago on Sheik M's yacht, that we agreed that aspirations are the greatest single danger to our way of life next to McDonald's fries and Starbucks banana-marmite latte with gobs of the good lord's sweat, being featured I might add, on Islington High Street... a sign of end of days.
For that reason and that alone (you know I am a person of staggering modesty) I offer myself as Lord Protector of the Realm and the Coalition Forces, with no demand beyond being able to bring my bat, Millie, and continue to enjoy my way of life. JC must be stopped at all costs. He has made no effort to satisfy the copyright requirements of the Westminster Common Book of Cliches, and is actually using the same cliches as Miliband Inc and your good self, something we all wish to avoid.
You can provide your answer by burning an effigy of Prince Phil in the upstairs grate at Number 10, just as Harold used to do, and I will watch for the sign from Primrose Hill just after midnight, if I can get the damn coffin open.
We are not too late to save our honour (money) and the future of the empire as we know it. With humble obsequiouses, Mandi
on 19 July 2010, 2:33:51 PM
Although we're traditionally right wing (or starboard bow), we know
the coalition is unsound because it is composed of two different
entities.A starship divided against itself cannot function,and
that's when we input our extensive effective and logical program.
Proceeding at warp speed nine we will arrive at New Erewhon by
(third) sunrise.Our thousand trained leaders will then roll out
the Super Islington paradigm as the chosen one waves from
his Lexus and the people cheer.Activating Chronos Anachronis
the conference will resume decision making,the unions become
fraternal,and rampant global capitalism be forced back into its lair.
Some Christian socialists believe in angels.But our proud Klignon
heritage,Sane,is to realise the Cruddas vision or perish boldly!
on 19 July 2010, 12:39:41 PM
Dugsie: Your reminder of my colonial origins are very timely. You are right: I grew up as a white under apartheid and I was the very unwilling recipient of deference, much of it insincere. I have never really known what it is to be British working class, even although my South African family was not rich by any means. In fact, I was once told by the chairman of the bank I worked for in London, that my lack of a proper class background would be a grave impediment to my progress beyond a certain point in the hierarchy. Talent and achievements would not compensate for an instinctive and inbred sense of my place in the social hierarchy, and without that I could not be trusted to manage lesser beings.
At the time I didnt have the faintest idea what he was talking about...I was just 26 and new from the colonies. Now I think I understand much better. It was pointed out to me that no one in my family background had held officer status in the admiralty, and none of my close relatives owned horses. The only faint hope for my future career progression could just possibly be to become a freemason, but even then it probably wouldnt help much.
I remember a more youthful and immature rant one night after we were displaced to Britain, shouting at my father that it made no bloody sense for working class people to vote for Thatcher. I recall his patient but pitious expression and his words that "until it makes perfect sense to you, you wont have the first idea what Britain is really all about." You and Paul, among others, have helped me understand better, but the colonial child inside of me has never been fully purged.
on 19 July 2010, 11:38:47 AM
Teachers, dyslexia specialists, psychiatrists, back to work contractors - the list goes on for ever. They all claim special powers and we defer to them.
The government will announce that it is going to reduce crime, teach the illiterate to read, stop the abuse of women, get kids from sink estates to Oxbridge. Then instead of sitting down head in hands and musing on the complexity of human beings and the impossiblity of achieving more than incremental success - an army of trained professional experts will appear and take the shilling and huff and puff around importantly claiming to be able to work magic.
The government is never going to call in an expert who says - no idea what to do - why not try common sense.
on 19 July 2010, 10:59:53 AM
'Why it worked with a cheap, clumsy spiv like Tony Blair is a mystery to me, one that no one has ever satisfactorily explained.'
It worked with Tony Blair because he has a posh public school accent. My paternal grandparents moved their family from rural Sussex to Croydon during the great depression, in search of work. They taught me, unconsciously, about the nature of deference. My grandmother told me that we couldn't manage without the gentry, because we wouldn't know what to do without them to tell us. I once saw my father tipping his cap to a social superior. My inchoate rage matured into socialist politics. Blair may seem a spiv to a sophisticate like you, but to the angels in marble he's a real gent. Or he was during the earl days of New Labour. You live in Scotland and know that Scottish public school educated toffs speak like English gentry. Brown's middle-class brogue could never compete with that.
on 19 July 2010, 9:41:22 AM
Although the Superman aspect of the US President goes back quite far (Kennedy was the great example), it came to its pinnacle in Obama's election campaign. The message distributed at the cost of billions to the US voters was that Obama's magic was in his "message of hope"...the NARRATIVE, and it was to be believed because Obama is Superman. Clinton, of course, has been the most successful in combining the cult of celebrity with the deception of the narrative, and he was copied closely by his infatuated disciple Tony Blair, who in turn has inspired Cameron and David Miliband. Every bit of rubbish and every lie Tony Blair uttered, as well as his tedious and tendentious narratives, was true because it was Tony Blair who uttered them and because he added that he was "absolutely convinced". Personally, I can understand why some people were taken in by Clinton as he does have some natural superman charisma. Why it worked with a cheap, clumsy spiv like Tony Blair is a mystery to me, one that no one has ever satisfactorily explained. You would think that the standards in Britain would be much higher than America. We would never here have put Schwartenegger, Reagan, Quayle, Palin, Bush in public office. And how David Miliband can be seen as worthy to inherit Blair's tattered, lie-stained mantle is also a deep mystery. He doesnt even look as if he believes his lies.
on 18 July 2010, 8:03:45 PM
‘The Narrative’ is more than just some ‘new labour’ cliché. More than a tiresome intellectual tick afflicting Labour’s anti socialists as if it were an uncommon cold to which only ‘new labourists’ succumbed almost as a rite of passage. Much more importantly it was and is a means whereby ‘new labour’ patronises and disempowers the working class majority. So politics is disconnected from the real lives of the Many and is recycled back to them as a series of stories and narratives in which they have an at best supportive, ancillary, secondary and dependent role in society: and indeed in their own exploitation.
Look at Jon Cruddas’s ‘narrative.’ At root it is patronising and shallow. It is a generalised feel good script. Any second rate public relations drone could have written it. Short on analysis, long on giving the listeners something warm and fuzzy with which to associate the name and next career move of Mr. Cruddas. There is no discussion of ideas; of the narrative’s content; or of how such content as there is was arrived at.
Yet at the very end we have an exquisite example of the profound arrogance that so animates ‘new labour’ politics. The narrative is taken as inherently virtuous, requiring no improvement or discussion of principle whatsoever. It is merely a long winded way of saying, “look at me; look at me; look at me.” All Mr. Cruddas requires of others is that they enter into debate with him on how his ideas are implemented.
on 18 July 2010, 7:36:53 PM
on 18 July 2010, 1:23:28 PM
Or even represented in the leadership contest?
After all Major ran against a Vulcan.
If you examine John's speech,curiously it is in modified Terrene\Klignon basic,a reaching out to the wider galaxy,a cosmic cry for help.
I think we should respect John's privacy over his traumatic abduction experience by the Harman mothership,and the probes he was forced to undergo.
All I will say is that when the blackness returns he mouths the mantra,"Do not do unto others what you would not want them to do unto you!"
And let that poignant phrase be our watchword.
on 18 July 2010, 1:08:00 PM
“Divisive and Uncomradely,” says Gordon Brown’s purveyor of spin, lies and bullying, - striking what he presumably thinks to be a high moral tone.
.
It is not that these people don’t get it. It is simply that they don’t care. They don’t give a monkey’s chunky for anyone but themselves. They have reached the ‘dog eat dog’ stage. Is it any wonder that Helena Kennedy was moved to expressions of real contempt during ‘Any Questions?’ Balls gives satire a bad name.
It would be an act of mercy to gather up every ‘new labourist,’ -every last one of them and leave them to rot in Afghanistan.
on 18 July 2010, 12:38:32 PM
Much of the speech is just establishing the picture of the sort of society Labour should be aiming for. Thus, it does not have detail. The policies come right at the end of the speech.
Some of the points from the speech taken out for criticism, below, are taken out of context.
In the speech, Cruddas seems to be responding to the current situation. He talks of virtue and one is reminded in what low esteem politicians have sunk to, not least - Labour politicians. Cruddas acknowledges that versions of what he is saying - about communities and mutual support - are being said by the other parties, but his point is that the other parties do not mean it, whereas Labour has given up on it.
I think the criticism of Cruddas that I understand more, is that which picks up on the aspects of him that reveal, perhaps, a continuing regard for Blue Labour. I have never heard of him undertaking any kind of mea culpa. He is not alone, it is true, in feeling the need to pretend that there were some good things in Blue Labour and, maybe, those who do that - pretend that there were some good things in Blue Labour, fear that there is somebody to alienate if they do no do that. Yet, it is a major weakness, in anybody, to carry on pretending that there was any point to anything Blue Labour did: The political landscape is still Thatcherite and going further than she went; and this was always the logic of the path that Blue Labour started on - Nuff said.
So whilst I think the speech patently not as bad as you guys paint it, I still do not consider Cruddas trustworthy: Too many people adhere too strongly to the rule of "never explain, never apologize"; and Cruddas does not always hang with a good crowd.
on 18 July 2010, 11:35:45 AM
So the next Labour wave won't bully and brief against comrades.
Has anyone told Alistair and Peter that one?
on 18 July 2010, 11:03:01 AM
..and David Miliband is the chosen messiah who will establish, Jon assures us, "A NEW COVENANT WITH THE PEOPLE" to save us from "THE EYE OF THE STORM". Brilliant ! Cant wait for the movie !
"Mutualism, association and relationships are Labour values." Really ? No other political party espouses "association" or "relationships" ? These are something uniquely "Labour" ? "Compassion our prime virtue"..we have seen that in bucketsful in Iraq, in Afghanistan, among the sick, infirm, and aged.
O, what the hell, there are better things to do with one's Sunday. I think I will go and read some Milton.
on 18 July 2010, 10:48:26 AM
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