Evocations of struggle have taken the place of real and massive struggles that, unfortunately, do not exist. To the substitution of the strike itself. Our wordy agitators blithely move from the “strike” by proxy 2 the revolution!” There is no sit-in in places of production by the workers? So let’s occupy roads or squares… There is no general strike? Let’s make it into an “insurrectionary strike” and if not let’s “block the economy”, or “set out for. There are no strikes? So let’s go for a “general strike”. – and their Stalinist, Trotskyist and “autonomous” supporters are competing to see who is verbally more “radical”. Instead of acknowledging the failure or, worse, the lack of combativeness of the proletariat, and trying to understand why, the unions who present themselves as confrontational - CGT and Sud in France and FGTB-CGSP in Belgium 1 The absence of a favourable balance of forces (or at least one not openly unfavourable) is compensated for by the verbal escalation surrounding these sham struggles. They have become harmless caricatures of real class struggle.
They are represented in bastardized forms or their purpose is completely inverted. Once full of meaning for revolutionary proletarians, words such as “strike”, “indefinite strike” and “insurrectionary strike”, “class violence”, “revolt”, “blocking the economy”, “occupation of productive territories”, “sabotage”, “general assembly” and “direct democracy”, “the movement” and its “base committees”, are now emptied of their subversive content. I have their websites bookmarked and I wait to be persuaded.Recently, in France as well in Belgium, we’ve seen an outpouring of all kinds of slippery semantic hijacking of the meaning of many concepts and categories of the revolutionary workers' movement. This time Helen Goodman, will be defending the seat for Labour, Barbara Harrison is standing for the Conservatives, Mark Wilkes for the Liberal Democrats and Dave Brothers for Ukip. In the 2005 election they took 23.7% of the vote against Labour's 50% (the Conservatives were on 22.9% and Ukip 3.4%). The Conservatives used to come second, but over the last four general elections the Liberal Democrats have overtaken them. Labour generally takes over 50% of the votes cast. It went Labour in 1918 and, apart from the period of the 1931-35 national government, it has always remained so. The Bishop Auckland seat was first contested in 1885. I know that I must vote and that I must not cast my vote lightly. But after nearly 25 years of living in my fairly prosperous, mixed-economy street, this is the first time I have ever had a BNP leaflet put through my door. I don't know how I am going to cast my vote this time. I have in the past voted Labour and Liberal Democrat. I know that a flourishing democracy needs responsible, well-informed citizens. So, shame on me, I have largely stopped listening. (Personally, I favour proportional representation.)Īs the election race is about to start I am not engaged by anything being offered by the principal parties. It seems to me that our present democratic machinery is no longer fit for purpose and needs reform.
I am weary of turning on the news to watch politicians stressing how much more untrustworthy their opponents are compared with themselves. I am fed up with the way the speed of modern life has combined with our 24-hour media to dumbed-down political discourse. It seems to me that civilised government relies on broad consensus and pragmatism. I am uncomfortable with political ideologies that lead people to make dogmatic and exclusive statements.
Being middle class, I realised that, in many respects, the Conservatives spoke for "my" interests but I was repelled by the arrogance of Thatcherism and the free marketeers. I was up at college at the time of the Thatcher landslide victory in the general election of 1983. My mother was a great admirer of David Owen.) I was brought up to believe that decency requires that the comfortably off pay attention to the needs of those less fortunate. (My parents were committed members of the SDP while it lasted. I come from a family of Christian liberals. I have never been a member of any political party. I live in one of the "unexpectedly rural" parts, in the historic market town of Barnard Castle in Teesdale. I vote in the Bishop Auckland constituency, which the Guardian describes as: "Southwest Durham, ex-mining, working class, unexpectedly rural in parts." Most of its population is clustered in the former industrial and mining towns of Bishop Auckland, Speenymoor and Coundon.
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