the dog shit politics panacea

Nazis do it. Greens do it. Even socialists do it sometimes. Every day graft, listening to people, asking them what they want, and putting in the work to try and get it for them.

The dog shit politics of making sure the little things are dealt with, and that groups set achievable targets, winning things that non-activist people are actually interested in. It helps build a rapport between people and political groups, and keeps people grounded in everyday life.

Left-wing or pro-working class groups should be at a natural advantage in this arena. In the first place they´re supposed to have a deeper understanding of the forces that are behind attacks on working class communities, so should have a better understanding of how to fight back. They don´t have the big disadvantage that far right groups do, in that they aren´t trying to peddle racism and they don´t have quite the pariah status that Nazis do.

Groups that have tried taking this approach have had varying degrees of success.

The group that made it the center of its political outlook, the IWCA, had a few early victories. It established bases in two London boroughs, Glasgow and Oxford, producing creditable results in the first three places, and steadily increasing their councillors to a high of four on Oxford city council.

Over time though the number of outposts shrank, as Glasgow withered away, Hackney left the organisation and Islington went quieter (is it still functioning?) and short-lived flurries of activity in Harold Hill and Thurrock seemed to disappear over time.

The IWCA´s trajectory seemed to prove that outposts could be built and people engaged, with good day-to-day community work, but that it was difficult to expand from that kind of base and that small-numbers of activists could become bogged down in electoral work and community campaigning.

The Socialist Party, a bigger, national organisation, has usually orientated itself in its day-to-day work towards the ´dog shit´ end of politics, whether that be in the trade unions or in community work. On the other hand it does have to wear its other hat as part of the Committee for a Workers´ International, being the historical consciousness of the entire international working class and all.

Over the past two decades they built significant local bases in Coventry and Lewisham, as well as picking up the odd councillor as opponents of NHS privatisation. The SP´s approach differs substantially from the IWCA, in that rather than seeing themselves as a sort of political wing of their communities, they have their own very tightly defined ideas on policy and theory, whilst still trying to attract adherents through practical everyday work.

Although the SP have had a degree of success where they´ve applied themselves in this way, the last year or so has seen them increasingly drawn into high-level trade union work in pursuit of the real long-term project - The Campaign for a New Workers Party.

Straight old-fashioned British Trots, the SP want a bigger sea of reformist workers to swim in, in order to win them over to socialism. Yet, as their rubbish attempt to stand in the last election shows, people won´t vote for you just because a workers´ organisation is involved. Their years of community activism, just like their trade union work has been unable to propel their wider ambition, and they remain restricted to historical footholds.

Which probably goes to show that whilst community activism can build a modest platform, it doesn´t expand your organisation dramatically unless you´re actually selling an idea that people want to buy into.

Meanwhile, a handful of anarchistically-inspired groups have also been doing similar sorts of activism, trying to engage people in everyday politics in a way that attracts them to the idea of a radically democratic society. Groups like Haringey Solidarity Group argue that they can make a real difference to people´s lives through campaign work and engage people in a different kind of political action.

I heard that the people behind HSG have maintained some sort of consistent organisation since the old Poll Tax Unions, which in itself is an achivement for a community group. The question is expansion. Community work is an end in itself, and on some level you´d certainly be happy to devoting your time to improving what you can for yourself and your neighbours. But there is still the question of putting yourself in a position to challenge things.

Groups that focus on elections often get sucked into to the constant, exhausting cycle of winning and maintaining representation, to the detriment of other work. However, groups without that focus often seem to spend much of their existence looking for things to get their teeth into. Without something to campaign on, activity can often dwindle and leave the same small group of people keeping the thing ticking over until the next significant issue.

Much of the energy that was going into groups like HSG has re-directed itself into the London Coalition Against Poverty, which with a broader focus and direct action case work to get stuck into, seems to be better at keeping people involved and occupied.

In terms of sustaining a permanent large-scale organisation capable of advancing the big aims though, the municipal anarchism model still seems to have a missing ingredient that prevents it from pushing on to the next level.

Another category of ´dog shit´ activists has emerged out of the disintegration of the Labour Party in the last few years. In Barrow-in-Furness, a 1997 splinter group led by the former constituency party chair stood in a by-election and lost their deposit. Subsequently they´ve taken a number of borough council seats and currently hold four, it might be more if they hadn´t had their own falling out and lost a load of seats to another independent splinter from the group. The all-women shortlists debacle that led most of the Blaenau Gwent CLP to leave, resulted in one MP and a bundle of councillors for People´s Voice candidates in the last elections (though many of them seem to have left for independent status subsequently) and school protesters took Gwynedd council off Plaid Cymru.

In the leftie news reccently were the Community Action Party, a mash-up of various political backgrounds, which until recently held 18 seats on Wigan borough council. They´ve split (obviously) and recently formed a People´s Alliance with the local SP and the Respect Party. George Galloway even came up to shake everyone´s hand.

The trouble these organisations seem to have is that being formed over local issues, they tend to subsequently split over them. They´ve also got very limited horizons, as well as an M.O. and a structure (in most cases semi-clientalist) that limits them in that way. The lack of resources is exposed in the homely, 1997 style websites.

They´ve got a lot of advantages though. Clearly they show up out of a need, and are identified with something that resonates with their electorate. There´s a meaningful and organic connection with the communities that throw them up, rather than trying to manufacture something out of nothing (and the ¨Save our XXX¨ campaign style doesn´t work if you haven´t got the links or the issue spot on - Colchester Save Our Bus Station did abysmally in local elections a few years back for precisely that reason).

But without broadening their appeal nationally, these groups will eventually outlive either their campaign or the particular local political figure that gave them life. Longer-term, only by broadening their appeal and linking with other groups can they sustain themselves.

The groups that are currently profiting out of community campaigning (the BNP and The Green Party) have a few things in common (aside from a shared love of rural idylls :P), firstly they have a significant national organisation that can sustain local groups all year round, stimulate new groups with resources, produce professional campaign material and maintain attractive, well-used and well-updated websites. This gives the outward impression of being permanent and modern organisations. They combine an organisational focus on the ´dog shit´ stuff, with the ability to intervene on national issues and throw out ´dog whistle´ sound-bites and policies to get new people involved and build up new groups. The two things necessarily compliment one another.

No group can have a national impact without both these elements in play, and that is the key to building something meaningful and permanent.

this was cross-posted from the awesome new meanwhile at the bar blog.

say what?

Switched on the radio today on my way home from work. Radio One Newsbeat it was, talking about a story I´d already heard that morning, about how only 2% of council houses were taken up by people born outside the UK and that it wasn´t true they got preference over indigenous families. (I´m not sure why they needed a survey to illustrate this, when firstly there is not a single council in the whole country for which "being foreign" gets you points for the housing list, and secondly it´s just completely obviously untrue. What, is the country supposed to be full of housing officers who hate white people or something?)

Well anyway, when this news item had finished missing the point that disminished resources inevitably lead to bitterness and resentment amongst affected communities, which fairly commonly is directed at people they perceive themselves to competing with (heaven forfend anyone mention that the real problem is that we have a massive shortage of affordable rentable housing in general, that could be solved by, you know, the state getting some for people), it moved onto a reaction interview from ... Nick Griffin!

Now, I know the BNP picked up a couple of MEPs recently and people threw a bit of hissy fit about it. But Jesus, when did this bloke get accepted by the BBC as THE representative of "indigenous Britain"? You couldn´t find a single other person, other than the head of the Nazi Party to interview about this? Not enough problems with our politicians doing everything in their power to racialise every issue, and set people against each other, the state-funded media station is giving the head of a far-right group a platform as national anti-immigration spokesmen on the drive time news! Someone please tell me this didn´t go on across the network, for god´s sake...

THE SKY IS FALLING!

The BNP get two MEPs and the whole political establishment wets itself, and Left starts hysterically throwing blame around for whoever may or may not be responsible.

Let´s get a bit of perspective here. Nobody really gives a shit about European Elections, hence the 34% turnout. It´s an insitution with fuck all power, that´s very far away and that nobody ever pays attention to. Unless it´s doing something we don´t like. Of that 34% turnout, the BNP managed to muster 6.4%, giving them the support of wopping 1 in 40 of those eligible to vote.

And the truth is, no-one who wasn´t a fascist yesterday, became a fascist today. Putting a bit of paper in a box doesn´t fundamentally change who you are. So, there´s no point wailing now about people actually voting Thursday, the views that they held on Wednesday. The problem didn´t happen when people put their hands up and said "you know what, this anti-immigrant/foreigner/asians party is for me", it happened over whatever the hell is wrong with our country.

Nor would swamping it with other ballots change anything. So let´s say that a higher turnout sends someone less nazi to the European parliament. It doesn´t make this country any less racist, it doesn´t mean that we´ve changed even one mind about how our society is or should be. It just means we´ve drowned it out with someone desperately clinging to some establishment party to show how they personally, aren´t racist, or are bothered by racism or something like that.

The sky doesn´t fall in because the BNP have MEPs. It changes nothing, other than re-iterating what people have been saying for years, the real job is making our country less of a breeding ground for those kind of views, and until people take that seriously then they´ll continue making headway.

this crisis is annoying, huh?

You wait 30 years for a crisis of capitalism, and when it comes you´re still not satisfied. I mean first off, for the most part, certainly the British Left, spent the last couple of decades intently staring at it´s own navel, fighting with each other, worrying about solidarity with villagers in South East Kurdistan, and generally doing anything except building a strong and lasting alternative to the political mainstream.

So, here we are in the midst of a big economic and political crisis and who benefits? The fucking Tories, the arseholes who actually designed the absurd economic system that left the UK so vulnerable. Now they´re getting to turn round and say, ooh, it´s Labour´s poor economic management you see. Of course, it´s no coincidence that the countries hardest hit are the one´s, like ours, that built in the highest degree of dependence on the finance, construction and retail sectors of the economy, and, not to go all shouty: THAT WAS EVERYONE´S IDEA, THE ENTIRE FUCKING POLITICAL CLASS, YOU DON´T GET TO DISOWN IT BECAUSE YOU AREN´T IN POWER.

Furthermore, it´s not badly managed, it´s not being taken advantage of by greedy businessmen (now, convenient hate figures, previously heroic wealth creators), the thing is functioning exactly how it was designed to. If you design a system in a certain way, and claim credit for it when it works, when everything goes wrong, you don´t get to just wash your hands of it.

Outside of the Tories, guess what, just like we warned when everyone was mincing around waving their lollipops about the war, the force that is probably going to explode over the next couple of truly depressing years will be ... fascism. Already the warnings are flooding in about the BNP getting to send off their little shaven-headed white power comrades to the European parliament. More than one anyway. Well, why? Why is it that form of extremism that´s getting play and not some variety of Leftism, or even, maybe, why not both. Because, the BNP have actually been on the streets doing ordinary everyday politics and, come the crisis that´s going to give them a base from which explode. The various groups of our side have spent the years complacently talking about a downturn as some kind of explanation for decline or stagnation, will now pay the price for neglecting the hard yards.

Aside from that, the protests that we´ve had over the past few months; the strikes, the demos, the throwing stuff at union reps. I mean. Nobody likes to say I told you so, but fuck me. Casualisation, agency work, subcontracting, privatisation. We said it made workers more vulnerable, we said it made them easy to fire, that in the end it was going to turn back the clock to Victorian labour relations, where we all go back to being in employment day by day at the employer´s discretion. We said the unions were fucking gash and wouldn´t, couldn´t do anything about this. And, lo, it came to be. Half the workers at Cowley were agency. How the fuck didn´t that get fought before the crisis? Why wait until employers don´t give a shit whether you strike or not? Why organise, why protest, when everything´s so bad that management don´t even care what you do? Why didn´t we do this shit when we actually had the leverage of being in boomtimes?

And bollocks to the boom, when was that? It´s not like we´ve all been living it up the last 15 years. Getting by, throwing a quarter of society on sink estates to rot in longterm unemployment and near destitution, other people watching their real wages slowly deteriorate, their pensions disappear, their rights eroded, their housing become prohibitively expensive, the cost of living steadily rising. Now what? Kicking millions out of work, probably millions more taking cuts or freezes. Everything still seems to cost as much, even though we´ve got less money. More jobless, more homeless, more cuts to the support system, more with less.

The question is: how angry are we, really?