A Future That Works

A Future That Works
NO2aTory/Liberal coalition - Vote with your feet for an alternative to a neo-liberal economy and neo-conservative state Yes2aLeftFront and a Red/Green Left Alliance

Thursday 4 April 2013

If the Labour Party has now abandoned the welfare-state and social-democratic politics for the neo-liberal economy and neo-conservative state what's the left alternative and can the embryonic Left Unity group become the vehicle for a new historic bloc in Britain.


17 comments:

  1. Has the right time arrived when its necessary for a broad left movement to develop in Britain allied with the European and Scandinavian left parties lead by Pierre Laurent of PCF and EL and Gabi Zimmer of Die Linke and the GUE/NGL.

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  2. Ed Miliband became leader, promising greater democracy and empowering the party and rank and file trade union member, yet Labour is still controlled by the party elite enforcing Blairite Progress candidates on constituencies as candidates for the next general election. Left Unity is a grass-roots movement and appears to be building a momentum which the CPB, SP and SWP have no influence over, this is I suspect the reason the Morning Star has published the latest Landin article.

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  3. Now's no time to ditch Labour

    http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/131288

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  4. http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/131240

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  5. Anton Johnson's letter argues that grass-roots trade union activists can win Labour back as a social-democratic party ''Exploit trade union link to get Labour back'' I suspect this isn't possible.The hierarchy of the Labour, Socialist and Communist parties all see Left Unity as a threat which they want to kill at birth.
    Abandoning Labour is a risk which many on the left have been taking over the last decade and membership of the traditional left parties tends to prove to be equally as stifling and controlled by the party elite as the Labour Party, this is a genuine opportunity for disaffected left activists to build an alternative to the left-communist and former social-democratic parties.

    Maybe the crises of capitalism which has engulfed the globe since 2008 has created the material-dialectics for a historic bloc on the left and one created by rank and file activists take action themselves and building links with the EL and GUE/NGL. The traditional left parties have failed to seize the opportunity of forming a British version of the Front de Gauche and the Left Unity initiative has emerged to fill the vacuum.

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  6. Can Labour revive its democracy?

    http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/127140

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  7. In Conrad Landin's previous article he quotes Arnie Graf who says "The party sets its policy from the top to the bottom, rather than bottom to the top … the members weren't seen as leaders but people to do tasks" and statistics like in 1997, there were 405,000 - after 10 years of Blair government this was down to 177,000. We are still seeing party members leave Labour and looking for a viable left alternative, if the CPB, SP, SWP and other left-communist groups cannot provide a credible alternative to the neo-liberal economic policies and neo-conservative state, supra-state and global governance of the capitalist political and economic elite then maybe Left Unity is the British version of Die Linke.

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  8. Why Left Unity?

    David Wilson who is now the Left Unity organiser for Islington North reflects on the state of society that has led him to join up.

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  9. Our political system is built on massive corruption, obscene wealth in the hands of the 1%, racism at home, wars abroad and the deliberate rape and wastage of the earth’s dwindling resources. This is accompanied by, and necessitates, the steady impoverishment of millions of people as the welfare state is dismantled with ‘shock and awe’ attacks on the health service, jobs, pensions and benefits. The propaganda to cover all this is based on rich people paying rich people to tell middle class people to blame poor people.

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  10. Meanwhile, what do we get from the Labour Party? Ed Miliband’s father, Ralph, was right when he said that, “The belief in the effective transformation of the Labour Party into an instrument of socialist policies is the most crippling of all illusions to which socialists in Britain have been prone,” and went on to add, “… On the contrary, what it requires is to begin preparing the ground for the coming into being of an alternative.” His own sons are evidence of how right he was. One, a war criminal and the other ordering Labour MP’s to abstain on the government’s job-seekers bill and telling us that austerity policies would continue under a labour Government.

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  11. I am in my 60s and have spent my lifetime being told, “hold your nose and vote Labour.” We need a new political party of the Left to bring together those who wish to defend the welfare state and present an economic alternative to austerity. We need to build the broadest possible resistance to this government and this requires giving voice to those who have felt they had no way of expressing their anger and frustration. Labour Party members who left over the Blair wars and privatisation programmes, those who have not been involved in politics before, but are feeling the effects of the government’s cuts, those who have been involved in left-wing politics, but have retreated into isolation and despair.

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  12. Together, we must resist the attacks we’re facing and build a society in which the resources are owned and managed democratically. In other words we should place the Labour Party’s abandoned Clause 4 at the centre of our programme and campaign for its implementation; a “community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few; where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe and where we live together freely, in a spiirt of solidarity, tolerance and respect.”

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  13. This government rules without mandate. They had the support at the last election of one in seven of us and many of those who voted for the Lib Dems didn’t vote for the policies of this government. This means that their attempts to push ahead with austerity against the will of a large proportion of the population will have to rely on force to deal with dissent. Left Unity will have to be a party prepared to stand its ground, offer solidarity to the distressed and fight for a future, without which none of us have a future.

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  14. I am supporting Ken Loach in his appeal to set up Left Unity. In his words, “We have to learn to live together, because we are on a planet where the resources are finite. We are using them up at a rate we can’t sustain. We have mass unemployment. We have great poverty in our country and in other countries. We have to work together.”

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  15. http://leftunity.org/why-left-unity/

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  16. ''optimistic about Left Unity''

    ''I have been struggling to spot in my copy of the Star the emergence of the debate around the call for a new party of the left. Readers therefore may not be up to speed on Ken Loach's and Kate Hudson's call and the dramatic developments that are gathering pace.

    More than 7,000 have supported the call and more than 70 local discussion groups have been established.

    What is encouraging is that many of those involved are young and new to political activity. The energy and enthusiasm of those involved is different to the previous attempts to establish a new party of the left. I should know as I have been involved in all the initiatives!

    Clearly those involved hold the view that if you have a hole in your roof and your repairs keep getting blown off you don't give up, you get your ladders out again!

    I can further impart information that the party "Left Party" has been registered with the Election Commission.

    My local leftist party in Lewisham, People Before Profit, gained 23 per cent in a local by-election last week, suggesting patient work can create a space for a left alternative to Labour.''

    http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/131423

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  17. If we are to have a fairer world and avoid the people turning to fascism we need socialist parties that represents the class interests of the working classes across Europe and Scandinavia, if the social-democratic parties have abandoned this role, then we need an alternative alliance of left parties.

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