UK Labour leadership contest - Corbyn supporter threatens 'purge' of Blairites if candidate wins

[C. Flower]

[QUOTE]

Ah here, look your attitude really annoys me on this.

If we are not politicians ourselves we have to make a decision on who is the closest representative to our beliefs. As Corbyn fits the bill for 75-80% of what I believe in, of course I have faith in him and believe he has a very good chance now of getting into government and radically changing things.

You would not be happy with anything on offer, that's clear enough.

You were equally dismissive of my views on Tsipras and of the chances that Syriza would transform Greece when it was elected. The problem is not in itself Corbyn - it is the extent to which reformist politics have been tied up in knots by the banking system and the unholy political and military alliance that serves it.

You are correct that I don't at present see any system politician who has realistic plan for moving to socialism. But of course, I would support people voting Corbyn in with the health warning that it would be another 'Greek' scenario unless they were prepared to push things further.

Unless we are going to get into politics ourselves, voters have to be educated and make sound choices as part of their political involvement. Ideally, unless you are an immigrant elsewhere like me, you will also join a Union or some movement and try and get involved in something.

Immigrants can usually join unions, if they are in a work place and immigrants have always been amongst the backbone of left parties. Their experiences give them a lot of political insight.

This is the same sort of abstract whataboutery we get from academic leftists on here at every election. Maybe you don't believe in elections or democracy or whatever but these things are tools to be used for our benefit if we elect people who best represent us.

What abstract whataboutery ??

I am a Socialist Republican but the sort of splintering eegitry we see here is why the Irish Socialists are still just as focused on SF as they are on attacking the FF/FG govt. Ireland will never have a party like Labour led by a man like Corbyn and given the nature of our coalition-based voting system our only hope is if SF and the Socialists work together. If Socialist voters at home have/had the sort of abstract indifferent and splintered attitudes you and AMH have we will be stuck with another century of centrist/centre right/occasional hard right rule.

I agree with you that the splintering is a problem. However, working together should never be at the expense of not telling what you consider to be the political truth. All kinds of alliances are made on that basis - of some agreement, some disagreement. The Labour Party in the UK is a maelstrom of debate and Corbyn has been in the thick of it.

As I expect you know, I've always argued against the SP SWP position on Irish anti-Imperialism (which is not the same thing as nationalism). Anti-imperialism is in my view an essential here if any progress is to be made.

Again, you seem not so much to be putting a counter-case to anything I say, as to be saying I should not express my views at all, as they are not the same as yours.

Ireland will never have a party like Labour led by a man like Corbyn

is a product of UK Labour, that is true, but his current position has come as a total shock there.

and given the nature of our coalition-based voting system our only hope is if SF and the Socialists work together

.

At certain points, they need to. But why should that entail never expressing the profound political differences that exist ?

If Socialist voters at home have/had the sort of abstract indifferent and splintered attitudes you and AMH have we will be stuck with another century of centrist/centre right/occasional hard right rule in

Europe, I would needlessly alienate many friends/colleagues

.

I think you should explain exactly what attitudes you are talking about (AMH and I probably don't agree on more issues than you and I do).

I don't like the attitudes of Fundamentalists in any context funnily enough.

Is there any limit at which you would say that a political party or politician has sold out ? Irish Labour Party for example ? Are you OK with everything they have done and not done ? Is there a right to comment on it ?

You could generally do with some Republicanism in your Socialist soup too.

If that is short hand for merging seamlessly with SF I disagree. If you are interested in anti-Imperialism of the kind that inspired 1916, then, what makes you think it is not in the soup ?

[Apjp]

A few points as some of what you say is just more abstract stuff which in effect means splintering to remain pure.

1. No, not all immigrants in every country can join a Union. I live in Poland, somehow I doubt there is even a legal right to do so here as literally nobody in the private sector is in a Union. When I am back in the Czech Republic early next year and I eventually learn Czech, maybe I will look into it there as that country is much more leftwing. I remember being approached by Green activists at work there asking me about it when I lived in Prague so I am sure they are more educated than people here on such things. The wages being 50% higher for my job in a Czech city called Brno, a city with similar living costs, may or may not reflect the better working conditions on offer for the Czechs.

2. Selling out is not the same thing as negotiating and forming a leftwing alliance. Raising the Irish Labour Party in this context is just ridiculous and irrelevant.

3. The Irish Socialists have a long way to come in recognising the tradition of leftwing Republicanism. SF are the default standardbearers in this regard as they represent the people of the North and a growing leftwing Republican base in the Republic. While they have an option to sell out to FF in the future, I doubt they will. They are strategically somewhat more intelligent than Labour and Adams to be fair is no career politician. Neither is Pearse Doherty imo. The real danger there is Mary Lou McDonald assuming control as she is very much a FFER in SF clothes imo.

4. Abstract whataboutery = Not supporting or believing in Corbyn because he does not 'go far enough'.

Generally I can see you have me beat for cynicism as well. Bravo, I take my hat off to you. In my short life I have had a lot to be cynical about.

On the religious thing I do not think you have to be anti-religious to be a Socialist. I meet Jewish people, Arabs, whatever, even tradiional Polish Catholics and we all live and let live. The only people I can honestly say I have a real issue with are Northern Unionists due to the obvious bigotry present in many of them, even the younger ones who go to no length to try and denigrate other Irish people when they meet us abroad. I find it very hard to tolerate that sect of people. In fact Ian Paisley Junior and Peter Robinson seem very reasonable and personable compared to some of the Belfast youth I have bumped into around Europe.

I am not free from prejudice but I am not of the view that being anti-religious is generally a good thing. Maybe in intellectual circles it is, but not in real life where we have to deal with many people of many different views and backgrounds.

[C. Flower]

[QUOTE]

A few points as some of what you say is just more abstract stuff which in effect means splintering to remain pure.

I am not sure that you read what I wrote. It appears not.

1. No, not all immigrants in every country can join a Union. I live in Poland, somehow I doubt there is even a legal right to do so here as literally nobody in the private sector is in a Union. When I am back in the Czech Republic early next year and I eventually learn Czech, maybe I will look into it there as that country is much more leftwing. I remember being approached by Green activists at work there asking me about it when I lived in Prague so I am sure they are more educated than people here on such things. The wages being 50% higher for my job in a Czech city called Brno, a city with simintilar living costs, may or may not reflect the better working conditions on offer for the Czechs.

I did not say that all immigrants can join a union. You are now saying there is no union to join - which is a different question. Unions did not build themselves and nor were they legal when they started.

2. Selling out is not the same thing as negotiating and forming a leftwing alliance. Raising the Irish Labour Party in this context is just ridiculous and irrelevant.

Again, I don't think you read what I wrote.

How is it irrelevant to raise the Irish Labour Party ? You seem to be making a case that any political criticism internally on the left is "splitting". If that is not what you mean, what exactly do you mean by 'splitting' ?

Do you think that SF should form an alliance on the left ? Do you think they have ever attempted to make one ?

3. The Irish Socialists have a long way to come in recognising the tradition of leftwing Republicanism. SF are the default standardbearers in this regard as they represent the people of the North and a growing leftwing Republican base in the Republic. While they have an option to sell out to FF in the future, I doubt they will. They are strategically somewhat more intelligent than Labour and Adams to be fair is no career politician. Neither is Pearse Doherty imo. The real danger there is Mary Lou McDonald assuming control as she is very much a FFER in SF clothes imo.

Are you not in danger of 'splitting' by criticising Mary Lou ? What is the difference between that, and me expressing my view on Tsipras and Corbyn ?

4. Abstract whataboutery = Not supporting or believing in Corbyn because he does not 'go far enough'.

Corbyn is not the Tooth Fairy, he is a politician who is part and parcel of the British Labour Party for many years. I am very happy to see him - as someone who at least opposed the Iraq war, ascendant in the Labour Party. I would be very happy to see him 'go f ar enough' i.e. put through socialist policies. However, the track record of reformist lefts is that in office they are either quickly martyred and disposed of (Allende), or back track (like Tsipras).

Not going far enough ? The Labour Mayor of London voted not long ago NOT to install fire hydrants in tower blocks. That is an example of "Not going far enough and it is not at all abstract.

Generally I can see you have me beat for cynicism as well. Bravo, I take my hat off to you. In my short life I have had a lot to be cynical about.

No, I'm not cynical. I'm convinced, on the basis of a lot of reading, observation and political experience that socialism is the only system that can bring about social equality and end predatory resource wars - and allow people to fulfill their potential. I'm also convinced that capitalism is in permanent crisis and heading for another round of war and banking collapses. And convinced that the one can replace the other - but there is nothing inevitable about it, and great pressures and physical obstruction put in the way of it happening, that would have to be overcome.

On the religious thing I do not think you have to be anti-religious to be a Socialist. I meet Jewish people, Arabs, whatever, even tradiional Polish Catholics and we all live and let live. The only people I can honestly say I have a real issue with are Northern Unionists due to the obvious bigotry present in many of them, even the younger ones who go to no length to try and denigrate other Irish people when they meet us abroad. I find it very hard to tolerate that sect of people. In fact Ian Paisley Junior and Peter Robinson seem very reasonable and personable compared to some of the Belfast youth I have bumped into around Europe.

I am not free from prejudice but I am not of the view that being anti-religious is generally a good thing. Maybe in intellectual circles it is, but not in real life where we have to deal with many people of many different views and backgrounds.

Being anti-religious and pro-science is not to do with not liking people from different backgrounds (anti-religious people in general accept people of all beliefs and none), it's to do with thinking that religion is a social construct, that the universe is material and real, and that our ideas are derived from our interaction with the universe (as part of it).

A lot of socialists have religious belief. Marxists don't.

[C. Flower]

Jon Snow, 69 year old newsreader, is being called on to resign. He does not deny that he was in Glastonbury singing "******* the Tories".

[DCon]

[C. Flower]

So, Corbyn, with his opportunism and coat-tailing of the racist UKIP vote, and his pie in the sky fantasy of a Brexit Road to Socialism, has delivered a good part of that potentially Labour vote to the Lib Dems, Farage, or staying at home.

Not an individual error or a personality I think: typical rather of British Socialism which has been deeply influenced by the position of the working class in Britain in having benefited from Britain's position as 'first comer' to capitalism, modern imperialism, and industrialisation, and the capacity and deep pockets of the capitalist class in Britain to pay relatively high wages and benefits to the working class, with the 'super profits' it gained from its historical position as a world industrial power. Now globalisation has completely changed the game, and the working class in individual nation states is very much weakened, and must make international alliances in the global working class to go forward.

[pluralist]

^ I think you are on the ball here, except that I don't think there's much in the way of 'opportunist coat-tailing' involved. Corbyn is and always has been in opposition to what he sees as the Eurocommunist tendency. His political views haven't changed in 50 years. He has always been associated with the Eurosceptic wing of Labour left. Of course his hardcore supporters view that as a good thing.

[GregTimo]

Sorry I find the latter conversation unreal. Assisting the battering of Corbyn and co from all sides , Guardianista style . If Corbyn were to go one side or the other in the Brexit issue he loses a lot of votes (esp with PR in the Euro election, where there is typically very low turnout in the UK). There isnt any perfect revolutionary path either . That would shrink Corbynism to sect size and dis-integration. Personally I am taking a deep breath and hoping there is sufficient turnout to give Uk Labour 25% or more . Farage is sadly a likely winner as the commentariat are too disconnected on their trying to will things different . UKIP won the last one so cuddly old Nigel is unfortunately likely to win this one too shorn of his nastier colleagues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_E...United_Kingdom