On electorialism and Jeremy Corbyn
I joined the Labour Party two days ago. Most likely there will be another Labour leader election in the coming weeks and I joined purely to vote for Jeremy Corbyn if this happens. So did my whole family. I understand that a lot of people, including some long opposed to involvement in electoral politics are doing it too.
At the same time I am constantly seeing comments critical of doing this, ranging from thoughtful to aggressive and sneering. I feel like I need to respond to them. For most of time people aren’t saying anything new. I am as critical of electoral politics as I’ve been for years. I’ve heard those arguments. There is no need to rub them in mine everyone else’s face over and over and over again.
I have an answer to every single argument arising from the current situation I have seen so far. Here they are. It costs £1.96. I do not have much hope in what it can achieve. I do not intend to commit any time or energy to it beyond filling the membership form and voting for Corbyn. I do not propose it it as a viable strategy. I do not want to make anyone feel like it’s something I expect them to do. There has been a substantial increase in racists abuse and attacks since the referendum, and I pledge if I witness anything I will respond to it. Filling in the membership form in no way decreases my willingness or ability to do that.
People who make those criticism speak with authority as if they knew what works. That’s clearly not the case. Radical organising hasn’t stopped prevent, the immigration bill, the housing bill, the trade union bill. It has done amazing things and helped in many individual cases. It saved lives. It always was and remains absolutely the right thing to do. But to speak as if there was a clear and achievable path from radical organising at the currently existing level to turning back the tide of shit that is flowing over everything is self-aggrandising and dishonest.
Few days ago 17.4 million people voted to entirely fuck over themselves and their future as long as they can see immigrants suffer more. Few more million voted on the premise they can have their future untouched but immigrants will suffer anyway. This was a vote against my friends, my whole family, our child who will be born in the next few days. It hasn’t woken me up to the existence of racism. I know people of colour experience racism in this country every day. Even though I am a migrant, as white person I am very privileged in that status, I am aware of that. At the same time as a Polish person I cannot avoid the feeling that, as well as racist in general, the leave vote was explicitly about my presence here.
The anti-Corbyn part of the Labour party and the media - this increasingly includes people who would have called themselves radical only a while ago - have decided this is an opportunity to get rid of him. His refusal to ‘take a sensible position on the issue of immigration’, in other words his refusal to pander to the racist sentiment, has been repeatedly cited as his failure in the referendum campaign, a prediction for the failure of Labour in the next general election, and a justification for the coup. Should the leader re-election take place, this is what I want to vote against. This is the only chance I will get to vote on a national level against racism and xenophobia being a plank in every election platform forever. I would like people to shut about it and let me do it.
