Well – I like the idea of discussing “Labour councils clashing with anti-cuts activists.”

Would it be possible to get a lineup of Labour councillors and activists on here? This is the point that I’ve been trying to raise again and again and I would like the opportunity to get into it without the whole things dissolving into sarcasm and terminal evil.

There is so much bitterness towards Labour on the ground – a lot of people feel they’ve been abandoned as Labour councils have signed cuts off. I would like to hear more about better rhetoric from the Labour leadership about fairer distribution. It is my view most certainly that Labour needs to be pushed firmly to the left and that that need not represent electoral suicide at this particularly painful point in history. Others will fall about laughing at that as they usually do, but it would still be good to have the opportunity to put this issue of abandonment to a few people who have made those cuts. Anticuts activists are extremely important. So are the people who use these services and want help (sometimes the two are the same).

I would happy take the role of laughable leftwing fantasist in such a dialogue.

Progressive? How about a strategy to win over 2 million voters more next time.

Technical point.

UK Uncut *is* actively working with unions. Tony Smith gave a speech to 400 Unite delegates a fortnight ago, and there were PCS union reps at the demo yesterday.

Also I’m in UK Uncut and an active member of Unite too.

Important technical point, though, Ellie.

The OP read as if anticuts activists were a separate group, when in fact they include TU members, members of the public who are facing service cuts, people who are likely to lose their jobs, etc. They all want and need something a bit better from Labour, which is why a discussion would be useful, if ultimately a train wreck.

Fun, though.

Interesting, Sunny. Part of the problem is precisely in the attempt to keep everything broad – in fact, fighting the cuts is going to entail lots of sometimes quite heated arguments between ‘progressive’ people.

Rowenna Davis’s questions sound most apt. It’s a shame they were not addressed. Many tasks of the anti-cuts movement will involve smaller groups of people being more practical minded, eg, labour movement activists getting together to talk about how practically they can work in the Labour Party, Labour councils, their unions, to effectively oppose the cuts.

To my mind, all these umbrella attempts to pull together the anti-cuts movement are flawed. I am very active in the anti-cuts movement in Barnet (I’m writing in a personal capacity here, but I administer the anti-cuts blog http://barnetalliance.org). I can honestly say that none of these things – Right to Work People’s Convention, Coalition of Resistance, National Shop Stewards Network, Progressive London – has made the essential work of mobilising and organising in my borough easier.

In fact, the contrary; the jockeying for position by organisations competing for the right to call themselves convenor of the whole anti-cuts movement has been an unseemly distraction from more borough-based activity, eating up another Saturday which could have been used in more practical tasks.

When such groups come seeking affiliation fees from local anti-cuts groups struggling to pay room hire charges, etc, that’s when I get really angry. The money spent on this conference on Saturday could doubtless have been better spent in localities. The speakers could have offered their services in localities: we could have used one of the core speakers in Barnet on Saturday, and so on, all around London and further afield.

Get real people!

The only strategy the Left needs is a communications strategy. If middle england, apathetic england and even wealthy england could be given the messages and facts that were being thrown around yesterday, we would have an easy job undermining this government. I think Ed Millibands performance so far has also made it hard to strategise – we should be depending on the leader of the opposition to oppose. Not hold press conferences telling us how awful it all is. We kind of know how awful it all is already. Can he please start shouting about the alternative? Why don’t high profile labour MPs go to events like this anyway to allign themselves with organised grassroots campaigners? A high profile MP who isn’t Diane would make a refreshing change.

I was at Pro-London yesterday, and I felt exactly the same. I was inspired and roused by the brilliant speeches – Len McCluskey, Weyman Bennett, Diane Abbot, Mehdi Hasan (bloody brilliant) and Ken Livingstone – but I also felt that it was all preaching to the converted. I wanted to ask a question/make a point, but unfortunately am too shy. I wanted to say that I think the biggest obstacle to getting the truth and message out there was the TV and print media. The print media is overwhelmingly right wing, some like the Mail, Star and Express EXTREME right wing. Then you have the Standard in London, responsible in my view for Ken’s loss in the last Mayoral election. Unfortunately I think the majority of people who read this shite believe it. It is printed again and again and eventually it sticks and becomes a truth, even though most of what is printed is lies and propaganda for the right. When you hear people from the EDL etc, they could be quoting straight from the Daily Mail. How is it that there is no popular (apart from the really lightweight and comic like Mirror) and influential left wing paper or papers? I’m not counting the Guardian, which has just a fraction of the popularity and influence that the Mail has and even the Guardian has a tendency to print rightwing bullshit too. What is needed is a well funded, easy to read, influential left wing paper or papers, with an excellent website that encourages those who like to read “gossip” articles to also be exposed to excitingly written articles on why this Tory government is getting it so wrong and what the consequences of their policies will be on the majority of people in the country.

Without our own popular and influential media, there will continue to be the ignorance, racism and right wing lies propagated again and again to the detriment of the left.

I also think that the BBC and Sky News are extremely right wing – recent example was their coverage of the student marches which only concentrated on the violence and not what they were marching for.

I also wanted to comment on how the Labour Party never attacked Cameron’s anti-multiculturalism speech and how it is always left up to a representative of the Muslims to attack such racism, making people think it is ONLY Muslims who object, which is not true at all. I gave up my 20 year Labour membership when they invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and will only vote for the Green Party now, so there is a huge fracture in the Left. As long as racist morons like Jack Straw are in the Labour Party, I could NEVER join or vote for them again. As long as MIliband doesn’t stand up for multiculturalism and defends Muslims in this age of Islamaphobia, I could NEVER join or vote for Labour again.

There was much to enjoy at Pro-London, to be among like minded people, but we will not get anywhere with non-like minded people unless the message/truth gets out there, and people have a viable alternative to the Labour Party to vote for.

That last comment about needing a proper leftwing media is so correct and so utterly what we need that I think I’ll have a little cry.

What’s the point of the great independent journalism and blogging people are doing if the left’s main hope in life is to get something published in the Guardian? Does my friggin’ head in.

Ed Miliband and the Labour Party are happy to have a cheaper welfare state …its the reason they are sitting on their hands whilst the rest of us lose our jobs and services …The TUC has their rally at the back end of March …jobs and services will be long gone by then …Coincidence ? I dont think so ..

@5 – I wasn’t at Pro-London so I can’t comment on it specifically, but I think your comments are very interesting, and from what I’ve picked up are probably reflective of the views of many local anti-cuts campaigners towards some of these purported national umbrella groups and mass anti-cuts conferences.

I’m absolutely certain that there’s at least a benefit, if not an outright need, for a meeting, conference, whatever, that can bring together local anti-cuts activists from around the country in one place to actually discuss what works, what doesn’t work, share ideas and experiences, and develop strategies.

It doesn’t need some grand national umbrella group putting its logo on it and hawking for affiliation fees. It doesn’t need rallies, plenaries or big headline speakers. It doesn’t even need an attendance fee – whoever holds it should swallow the cost in the knowledge that having as many local campaigners in attendance as possible is what will make that cost worthwhile.

All it needs are workshops and smaller discussions on specific issues, with perhaps a couple of introductory/facilitative opening speeches by local activists, and then maximum time for discussion and exchange of ideas between campaigners in different sectors in different parts of the country. Again, let’s hear what works, what doesn’t work, and why. Nishma Doshi’s session at Netroots on fighting the cuts with the voluntary sector was rather like this. It was excellent. By contrast, if we want to know what Polly Toynbee thinks, we can read her newspaper columns.

I’d like to think that it is not beyond the capacity of the Left to pull together a no-strings, no-recruiting, no-jockeying – in short, no-bullshit – anti-cuts meeting that will actually be of use to people such as yourself, campaigning in Brian Coleman country. It would be worth a hundred National United Coalition Against the Blah Blah Blah rallies with the usual tubthumping headline speeches.

If this is beyond the capacity of the Left, however, then from what you’ve said in your post, it’s perhaps best if the Left stops trying.

Sunny

I too enjoyed the conference, though from the sessions I saw, I have a different take as I thought there was plenty of discussion on strategy and especially how all our movements can most effectively challenge this  government.

For example throughout the day I heard people discussing how  labour councils deal with the fact that they are forced to carry out substantial cuts due to the tory’s slashing of their budgets cuts. Emily Thornberry explicitly and very powerfully  took this up in the last panel, ken did in the plenary with rowena davies and Jules pipe (and others) dealt with the point on them being tory cuts in the morning session.

More widely I popped my head in the student session which was addressing what next in terms of fight on education and NUS and interesting points were made in the tory mayor session on how to best defeat the tory mayor in 2012.

Of course some sessions are less focused on the “how” of campaigning strategy and more on the key intellectual arguments for the movement. For  example the “growth or cuts” economy session I went to was debating which are the best economic arguments against the government. But overall there was quite a lot of strategy discussion  – and, as you imply is needed in the movement and I would agree with – we need to ensure that we keep having such discussions both in  london to defeat Boris Johnson and more widely to best limit the damage this government

…the only problem with that, Lee, being that the train has already left in many respects.

There may be time to do something about the government’s plans for the NHS, but councils are signing off their cuts now. I think we need to have a direct conversation with some of the councillors involved and talk about their plans for reinstating some of those services, or finding extra revenue. There’s a lot of ‘poor us – we had no choice’ around the place at the moment, but I think that’s too easy.

The talking shops have their place I guess, but not if the main point of the exercise is to admire self-appointed “big-name” (kind of) luvvies. We need action – to agree the next moves for council, the NHS and whatever – and then to go for it. We’re all doing bits here and there with our protests, etc, but many are doing it alone.

This is precisely why I stopped attending conferences – they are now little more than “talking shops” to satisfy the egos of budding or actual luminaries in the Labour Party. The reality is they do little or nothing to win votes, protect services or guarantee worker rights.

It is always a problem with such events, the people you want to turn up never do. We had an anti-poverty conferance last year, and everyone you would expect to turn up did: representatives of third sector groups, a few academics and activists. I’d imagine the right have a similar problem; attendance being exclusively from the TPA, Migration Watch and the various right wing groups. I suspect quite a lot of them would like the attendance to be wider so they have a chance to spread their message. The same applies to us; I’d love to have a TPA staff member come to one of our events, or spend the day having me drive them around (you couldn’t do it by public transport) various areas that their policies are destroying.

Sunny, I must admit that I thought the conference was very positive, bouyant, and that strategies were talked about throughout the day! But it’s not just what we do that matters, it’s how we think about the challenges we face that leads to the right strategies to face them. Many of the sessions I attended at Progressive London helped me to do that.

Of course there are problems with how we respond to cuts when they are already occurring, or how we manage the dynamic between cost cutting Labour councils and anti-cuts activists. These are real and valid problems. A strategy for these issues however won’t be found by pretending that Progressive London wanted to be something that it didn’t, and then attacking them for not being it!

Hi Sunny,

I spoke in the student session at the conference on Saturday and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the discussion on strategy. All of the speakers and nearly all of the discussion focused on important practical questions such as how students should relate to the Labour party and the NUS leadership; the relative merit of negotiating and engaging with university management compared to demonstrating and taking peaceful direct action; and how to make the case for higher education to a wider audience. I also made a number of useful contacts that will be of practical help in the coming month.

All-in-all I found it a very useful event.

Sunny, I know we have had this discussion before. But I think the point you are still missing is just how big this cuts agenda is. This is likely to hit every town and every city, every district, and every public sector organisation. A ‘strategy’ in the way you seem to perceive it, cannot be successful= because this is not about a progressive agenda, not about the labour party and not about the left. TO define it as such automatically excludes pretty much anyone who needs to fight who doesnt identify themselves in that way.

SOmeone further up the thread said something about a communication strategy- and that seems entirely sensible. The work UKUncut is doing to link into the unions. Entirely sensible. But this is not a movement in the way you appear to think it is- this is lots and lots of people. Many of whom are not on the left, and will never identify themselves to be so.

So far one of the biggest difficulties, I and other people have faced is this endless assumption that this is fight to regenerate a progressive movement which is largely irrelevant. As well as the difficulty of Labour activists refusing to allow discussion of Labour’s role in this, and the heckling of anyone who quite justifiably sees Labour as part of the problem. THe dismissal of trots, anarchists, self appointed ‘authentics’, and anyone who doesnt fit your idea of what a movement should be.

People affected by the cuts, those fighting them cross the political spectrum and as the cuts begin to bit and people start losing their homes, and their jobs, and being pushed out of their communities- those people are highly unlikely to be part of the choir or to need a progressive movement to tell them.

If people who define themselves as progressive want to be part of this- then they could do worse than putting aside their political beliefs and sharing skills and resources with those people. Looking outside core political blogs for those people’s voices. Go to the blogs and forums of the unions, of the various professions, see if there are people whose voice you can get to a wider audience.

Offer to share what you have to help people fight- not dictate what they should and shouldnt be doing, what is constructive, useful, or condemning people who you dont understand.

You say you dont want to be preaching to the choir, but when people point out that they do not see this as a fight to get Labour reelected, or they dont see the part of the fight that should be(and isnt) occuring in Westminster as the most important thing, you dismiss them and you patronise them.

UKUncut has worked because an idea was put out there, and key events organised which others could copy. And they are. In the UK, in the US, in Australia and in Canada.

Everyone has their role to play in this, and some strategy by some central point is going to achieve what it has done so far. People feeling that their fight is being co-opted for the political aims of those doing the co-opting. Endless declarations and dismissals of people who dont fit your idea of what should be done-whether it be the trots and anarchists, those who are not being constructive by viewing Labour(who are NOT opposing the welfare cuts, or the cuts affecting people with disabilities, or the main HB cuts, or really many of the cuts at all)

Respect for difference, and communication with people. You have a platform- an exellent platform. You could use that platform to articulate the arguments about the cuts. Give voices to those fighting- which you do. But this endless speculation about the ‘need’ for a strategy -when the strategies that will succeed are numerous and depend entirely on the knowledge of those fighting their corner- is divisive and it is causing massive problems. It is causing fighting, and endless proclamations about who is, and who isnt in some movement that doesnt actually exist yet.

Someone whose concern is party politics or political activism cannot strategise on behalf of managers of a team they have never met- who are mounting legall challenges. You cant strategise for the people fighting to protect their services. You cant strategise for the women who now have to figure out how to stay in their communities. A manager of a ward, or someone who has just lose their ESA cannot advise someone on how to occupy a university.

What you can do is do what you do best- use the platform you have to share with those people. Allow links to be formed where knowledge can be passed over.

I am doing some work on linking activists skills with people who have never had to do anything like this- I know nothing about political activism. Neither do they. But by sharing skills with activists- they share the knowledge and experience they havd- the activists pass on the skills that they have. They understand the situation as it affects them- I understand other aspects of the situation.

You made a very insightful comment in a piece about Tony Benns coalition of resistance. You said that it could turn into an echochamber of the left. But to put it quite bluntly Sunny you dont have the knowledge of what is happening to decide a strategy. In fact noone does. This is too complex and agenda, operating on too many levels, affecting too many people.

A strategy might form, or a coherent movement as time elapses. But that time is not now. THe cuts are only at the point of being announce- their effect hasnt begun to be felt yet. That will change. Something may emerge organically- but it will not be dictated by a strategy decided by people who run blogs with tiny readerships. You have a role, you have a voice which could be useful- but this endless pontification about the need for every one to have a strategy completely misses the point of what is actually happening.

I wrote this- which is rather less rambling than the above reply.
http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2011/02/the-fight-against-the-cuts-will-be-one-that-demands-respect-for-difference/

Before we start looking at strategies- perhaps communication and respect for difference, and losing the assumption that the progressive ‘movement’ need to strategise for everyone. Instead use the tools you have to share with people, whose aims you share. IE fighting the cuts-without expectation that they choose the methods you deem appropriate, or share beliefs or priorities which you feel are appropriate.

Not creating factionalism, dismissing anyone you dont think is doing it right, and accepting your knowledge is limited in the context of a massively complex agenda.

I agree with scudderite
. If only the sheeple masses could be persuaded to read ‘left wing papers’ rather than ‘right wing papers’ then the world would be a much better place.
If Milne/Lvingstone/Clare Soloman could have unlimited access to the mass media than ‘literally’ the masses consciousness would change over night.
Lets hope brothers,lets hope.