Unionist Training Manual

Hat-tip to Alan...

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New Space for Ism?

i52cover.jpgIn the new SLR John McAllion takes on Tony Benn about the left and sectarianism. Reading it it seems just such a cul de sac of tired old leftist thinking. Two old men arguing over the price of cheese while the world hurtles forward unlistening...

"Six months ago, Tony Benn opened the Labour Representation Committee's National Conference and AGM in London. The theme of his address to this gathering of Labour Party socialists committed to strengthening the link between their party and the trade unions, was "The Future of the Left".

As ever with the veteran left-winger, he looked back over a lifetime of political struggles to illuminate and to set in a historical perspective the struggles facing today's generation of socialists. The main thrust of his argument was how, in these times of great economic crisis, it was necessary to give working people confidence and hope that socialism did have answers to the many problems besetting them on all sides.

It was vintage Tony Benn except for one passage where he suddenly turned to denounce what he termed as "sectarian socialism". It was here that he lost his usual clarity and objectivity. He singled out the then recent result of the Glenrothes by-election, claiming that Tommy Sheridan had polled just 87 votes and the SSP 212 votes. Here, he argued, was conclusive evidence that there was absolutely no future in trying to produce a "pure socialist party", no future in trying to challenge Labour from the left.

He ended with a joke about his favourite left sectarian newspaper, the Workers' Weekly. On page one it called for socialist unity, while on the following five pages it denounced every other socialist and left-wing group that dared to disagree with it. His Labour Party audience erupted in laughter at his caricature of the loony left lost in its own political extremism and irrelevant to the struggles of workers in the real world.

When I came across his speech on the internet, I was initially angry and upset. While still in the Labour Party, I had backed Tony Benn in all his campaigns against the Old Labour right and the New Labour neo-liberals. I had fought for many years beside him in the Campaign Group of socialist Labour MPs. Now, here he was heaping ridicule on me and the tens of thousands of other socialists who had taken their fight for socialism outside of the narrow limits of New Labour and the British Road to Socialism." Read more here.

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European Goal of the Season

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Looking for Something Better?


Bored by the expenses fiasco? Disenchanted with all political life? Turning cynical and bitter? You need this tonic from our musically gifted friends over at Aye We Can...

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