The beginning of my political life was moulded by a pessimistic movement obsessed with internal arguing and ranking the awfulness of each shite split within the left. If you’d just left school and were even vaguely interested in radical politics it made sense to join some sort of group, and a lot of the time it was the case that you’d join whoever got their claws into you first.
I speak to 18, 19, even 20 year olds now who take the piss that people my age, 24, were ever involved in organisations like the AWL, the SWP or the SP, but it was normal then in the absence of a socialist Labour Party and thank god, now we have it, it’s common sense to join that instead.
I’m jealous of anyone who’s young enough to have bypassed that pessimistic movement. I’m surprised so many of us have come through the other side of it full of hope with a willingness to keep moving forward, whilst recognising that there are still people to keep at arm’s length who are stuck in that past age desperately trying and failing to catch up.
Up until recently, a hangover of the same behaviours was visible in Manchester, where I now live. Meetings in boring rooms on boring topics that we’d all talked about a hundred times before with a top table of people who might have looked impressive on paper but we’d all known what they were going to say before they said it.
No one was putting on meetings because the meetings would be good and people would enjoy them, but cause they felt like they had to. Every week. And people felt like they had to go, people would actually give up their spare time to listen to a speech they’d heard before and make an identical intervention into a meeting they had the year before. Groundhog Day for Trots.
In the same way that you were made to feel stupid if you didn’t understand the dense, needlessly complicated literature these groups produced, if you weren’t prepared to sit through a 3 hour meeting about Gramsci’s writing straight after your shift at work before you’d even had any tea then you weren’t a serious socialist. You were uncommitted and untrustworthy.
Even AGMs and decision-making meetings felt so set in stone, people would look at you like you had two heads if you dared to change the set-up. Just because you’re used to a certain way of doing things doesn’t mean it’s the best method - why would we continue on the path the British left has been on for decades and think nothing needed changing? I guess because these groups have had decades of training for these routines.
In the arguments over OMOV which arose in the last couple of years, it was argued by some that giving more people a share of a vote would be less democratic. The real reasoning people were against OMOV is because groups of the left have had decades practise packing out rooms with people who agree with them. They have the facilities and time available to call as many people as possible to bully (carefully disguised as heavily persuading) them into voting the right way before a meeting - and to think this is more democratic than OMOV is a farce. I know all this because embarrassingly I used to do it - strictly on those terms.
Commitment and dedication to a movement, to getting a Labour government, is key. Commitment and dedication to boring everyone to death is unnecessary.
In Manchester, our recently set up Chorlton Socialist Club have been busy organising massive gigs in our local Irish Club with Dutch Uncles, Stealing Sheep and Aldous RH, political discussions with MPs and film showings about current issues. Our local Momentum group is putting together a couple of teams for a 7 a-side tournament at our local People’s Football Club, FC United, and organising mass visits to our local picket lines. It’s the most excited I’ve been about a local movement in my life.
Making politics fun encourages people to get involved and then stay involved. The number of people out of the 250 who turned up to our latest gig and approached me to let me know that they were now planning on getting involved in their local Labour Party branch or already had done was stunning.
The reason I’m writing all of this down is because admittedly, it’s cathartic, but also because I’m tired of people dismissing a movement they disagree with or aren’t a part of as Stalinist and devoid of worth. The same group of people exclaiming we have no basis with the “grassroots” just because they’re not involved. Imagine telling all the new, young people who turn up to our events they’re part of a Stalinist plot to keep Jeremy Corbyn away from “the left”, they’d laugh in your face or ask you what the fuck you’re talking about.
I had a realisation today about how satisfying and great it is organising events that people actually want to go to. Events that people tell their mates about and actually count down the days to. And it all seems so obvious now when you’re doing it.
