Why I'm tearing up my Labour party card

[mr blur]

Well, I've already torn mine up, but this piece by Colin MacCabe in today's Observer hits the nail right on the head:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1582965,00.html

"For well over a century the Labour party has provided a crucial forum where the marginal and the powerless could speak. You have ensured that this is no longer the case. The white working class of this country has lost its most important institutional voice as it undergoes the most brutal economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, it is clear that you yourself have no belief in any goal of real equality - the New Labour aim, Brown as well as Blair, is just to manage the underclass. Of course, there can be no debate."

[wurzel]

1. Why help Blair?

That is what you are doing if you quit the party. Blair is not the party. Blair is another Bill Clinton. These Capitalist Quislings are always with us. Get rid of the leadership, not the party. The only way to do that is stay in the party.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Because you give money to Blair to stay in the party

There must be a point at which you can't allow your money to voluntarily support someone like Blair. With none of the MPs willing to oppose Blair in a leadership election, a member can't do anything to get rid of Blair.

[wurzel]

12. Would you rather see the Cons back?

The Labor Party is never going to elect a Michael Foote as PM. It has have to compromise. The best that can be hope for is to make sure the privatization of social services stops. And that these services remain funded. Capitalism is going to stay in power for a long long time. It is the modern Roman Empire. All that realistically can be done is "manage" it to maintain a level of social interest. I detested Clinton. But I have to admit that he looks like a winner when compared to Bush. And they are the real alternatives in this Capitalist world.

[neweurope]

2. no goal of equality - just managing the underclass". Howe true.

The German Social Democrats are just like it. And I really cannot understand why it's the Left selling us out.

------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[WearyOne]

4. I understand but why not stay and work within..like Walter Wolfgang..

and help rid the party of the Thatcherites like Blair & 'New Labour"

[non sociopath skin]

5. It would be interesting to know whether Mr. Wolfgang intends to remain ..

... a Labour Party member.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

9. I think the Labour conference showed quite well...

...that those who wish to "change from within" don't really stand a chance. The example of Walter Wolfgang is hardly a good one, he was thrown out for speaking out against the Blairite status quo.

With a majority of around 66 seats, the next election is winnable for the Tories and I dread to think of what will happen to Labour if that happens as they don't really stand for anything these days. :-(

[fedsron2us]

6. What took him so long

I tore mine up when Bush and Blair invaded Iraq.

This article is spot on in so many areas. The following passage certainly echoes my experience

Old Labour used to run deficits to employ low-paid workers in the unproductive old public sector; New Labour runs deficits to employ highly-paid consultants in the even more unproductive new public sector. In the only industry that I know at first hand, the scale of government handouts is jawdropping. New Labour has created a new film body, the Film Council, whose overheads now exceed the production budgets of the very efficient bodies that it replaced. There is enormously wasteful duplication of government resources. Friends from every sector report the same story.

New Labour's mission seems to be to provide corporate welfare to the management consultancy and outsourcing industry by giving them the money saved from sacking low paid clerical staff, cutting help to those on invalidity benefit and screwing pensioners via massive hikes in the Council Tax.

<start socialist rant>

I suppose the real weakness of the Labour party even, before Blair, was the assumption that the state would be responsible for delivering socialism. In the process the government took over the support roles occupied by organisations such as unions and friendly societies that working people had set up for themselves. It did achieve great benefits for many poor people but the price was the loss of working class consciousness and solidarity. The workers never got within a million miles of truely owning the means of production. When hostile forces took over the government, as they did in the Thatcher era, those at the bottom of society found that they had little to support them when the state began to withdraw its assistance and to privatise the industries that had been taken into public control. This is still the case today. It is time that working people took command of their destiny and rebuilt the labour movement from the bottom up in such a way that vanguardist parasites like Blair can not abuse and exploit them. Unfortunately, I do not think it is going to happen until the current political, economic and social structures start to collapse completely.

<end socialist rant>

[mwooldri]

7. Well there are the Lib Dems...

of course I am biased but heck even I had a voice as a junior/student member in the party at that time.

Seems like to me that Labour is shifting right, Lib-Dems are shifting left and the Conservatives are shifting away.

[non sociopath skin]

8. My perception is that Labour is continuing to move right,....

... the LibDems are moving BACK to a position further to the right and that the Tories have yet to make the decision where on the right to position themselves.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

10. Good article, I agree totally with almost all of it.

But I have just one quibble, and it comes from this bit

The white working class of this country has lost its most important institutional voice as it undergoes the most brutal economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution.

Pardon me for asking, but how is the white working class different to the black or asian working class? Is one supposed to be good and another bad?

[mr blur]

11. Good point

I guess that at the time of the Industrial Revolution there wasn't a black or Asian working class - but you're right, it's a dumb statement to make about contemporary Britain.

[demobrit]

13. good on yer