Report from the spark that started the fire... posted by Richard Seymour

If you were present to see the spark that started the Great Fire of London and lived through it, you would consider yourself lucky. Tonight's meeting in central London, called "The Future of Politics" hasn't yet set the world alight. But from atomic ruptures come nuclear explosions, and this had to be compound molecular at least.

Salma Yaqoob opened, because she's the sort of person who isn't well known but should be. After a good deal of spiel about Galloway being kicked out of the Labour Party for representing Labour values and 'welcoming' George W. Bush to London , (20th November, don't forget), she outlined how, as she sees it, politicians of all parties increasingly toe the line of a tiny, unpopular minority - no, not the Tories (and for anyone who's just reading this tonight and doesn't know yet, Duncan Smith has lost his job). They represent the will of big business, multinationals and the rich. They take us back to Victorian-style capitalism (a sado-masochistic ass-fucking) and tell us it's in the name of modernisation. Therefore, since the mainstream electoral choice before us is "Bombs n Big Business New Labour", "Bombs n Big Business Tory" and "Reluctant Bombs and Wish We Were Big Business Liberal Democrat", we ought to be thinking about creating a new alternative.

The mainstream parties rely on our passivity, on the idea that we will forget, or that we will be compelled to vote for one of the main three out of "lesser-evilism" which is almost inevitably described as "realism". We are reinforced in our passivity and lack of confidence by the same story, retold in countless different and familiar ways, that There Is No Alternative. We now need to see ourselves as the agents of change. We really are "the other superpower".

There must therefore be a representation of that at elections, in the media, in the unions. We must build a new, electoral bloc, coalescing the parties and individuals of the left; a coalition that will combine grassroots activism with electoral strategy. Elections, it is true, are usually a short game - and we're playing a long game, because the fight against war and capitalism doesn't disappear the second you put your cross on a bit of paper. But even acknowledging the limites of elections, we must see the opportunities involved in making an impact in this way.

If the tiny, schismatic far right can set off a change in the political climate by taking a handful of council seats, we can certainly do much better. We must agree to work together on the issues that unite us, and not fight one another on the issues that divide us. Therefore, Salma Yaqoob says, I have distributed a document called "Principles and Unity" which talks about some of the ways in which the left can start a dialogue and overcome the divisions of the past. It isn't intended to be the end of the discussion, but the beginning of one. We should be able to build a broad movement which is not the product of a single party, or its plaything.

Different groups do have a different perspective, of course, and we don't wish to abolish those, but we must have an agreement for action. This will require open-mindedness and audacity.

Ken Loach was the next speaker, and after a couple of jokes that went down well, he repeated much of what Salma Yaqoob had just said. Then he talked about the idea of "reclaiming the Labour Party". The Labour party had always had a contradiction at its heart, he said, in that the only way it could deliver reforms in favour of working people was when employers could make big enough profits. The employers register their demands, what they require in order to be profitable, and those demands are now more extreme than ever - keep the anti-union laws, make them tougher, end welfarism, privatise what's public. Blairism is the extreme end of the cold logic of Labourism.

Reclaim the party? WHICH party? The Callaghan and Healey government, enthralled to the IMF and spending cuts, sending in the army to break up the firefighters' strike? The party of Kinnock, with its lethal bureacratic choking of what radicalism lay within the Labour Party? The party of Harold Wilson and attacks on "politically motivated" striking seamen? We see the agony of the Labour left in all this - they campaign with you to say no to war, no to privatisation, no to tuition fees, no to the neoliberal agenda. And then they say 'but you have to vote for all of that'. And where once the disenfranchised Left huddled around the warm flanks of the Labour Party, (Bennism), today's anticapitalist and antiwar movements aren't interested in Labour.

Therefore, if we fail to represent ourselves electorally, we just hand over voters to the hypocrites of the Liberal Democrat party. We must take seriously the costs and consequences involved, form a professional outfit, and "That's a real challenge for the Left".

George Monbiot offered consolations to the deposed Tory leader - IDS, RIP! Or words to that effect. IDS reminded him of the red squirrel, who until recently occupied an ecological niche in Britain, in the suburbs and countrysides. There were plenty of nuts for him to associate himself with. But the red squirrel's territory was slowly taken over and colonised by the grey squirrel, "a large, aggressive rodent with bright eyes and a bushy tail". And the red squirrel receded into the margins until there was nowhere left for him to survive but in certain decaying institutions.

Now, the Left needs to open its eyes wide to the massive ecological niche opening up for it. There is a huge space to the Left, which noone is filling. The reason we have not filled it so far is because the Blairite transformation of Labour came so quickly and hit so hard that it left some totally confused. This confusion can be registered that STILL, after everything that has been done to the, the main unions continue to contribute their funds to the Labour Party.

Many are cynical about democracy - they say it's a scam, and that the real decisions aren't taken in democratic institutions. That's true. It IS a scam, as presently constituted. The main parties conspire in making one another seem more interesting than they really are, and the net result is "the neutron bomb effect" - the structures of democracy remain intact, but the democratic life inside has died. We therefore need both an electoral and an extra-parliamentary party. Remember when New Labour were elected, they were so terrified of the Tories and their friends in the media that they rigidly stuck to the most pedantic Tory measures. WE have to make them that terrified. We therefore propose a coalition.

Yes, we have disagreements. And the 'splittism' of the Left is partially a result of the fact that we really do believe in what we say. But if we are to succeed, we must unite. And if a coalition isn't the answer, what is? Rousseau once said that the people of England think they are free, but they are not. They are free once every five years when they vote - thereupon slavery falls upon them. And looking at how they use that freedom when it falls upon the, he said, the slavery is well deserved. Our task is to prove Rousseau wrong.

A crowd of CWU reps were introduced and got an enormous, hammering, standing ovation. Tony Blair would kill to get an ovation like that - actually, if I recall right, he DID kill to get an ovation like that. Mark Dolan of the CWU told us that 30,000 postal workers across the length and breadth of Britain were out on unofficial action. That included most sorting offices and most branches. The rest were walking out as he spoke. This is a battle, he said, for the survival of the union. The management has reneged even on what limited promises and agreements it made already. It has attacked the union, targetted union officials for punishment. In Southall, some workers were asked to volunteer for some duties which they didn't normally do. When they said 'no', the manager suspended them.

We spent tonnes of money campaigning against the Tories and their privatisation agenda. Now we're paying for the Labour to do it instead!! Why do we keep giving money to people who shit on us? (He didn't mean it THAT way people! Get serious!)

He said that as far as he was concerned, the CWU should back Galloway wherever he stood, and appealed for everyone to support them, and got another standing ovation.

Linda Smith of the FBU related a few stories from the firefighters' strike, informed us that the disputes were not over and that Phase II of the 'pay deal' was likely to be voted down tomorrow, so expect more on that. John Rees, for the Socialist Alliance, read an article from the Sunday Telegraph indicating that plans for Bush and the Queen to have a triumphant procession along the Mall had to be abandoned because of the fear of antiwar demos. Other proposed events, such as a Bush address to parliament, were cancelled because of the fear of boycotts.

"And they say we didn't build a great movement? All we did was release on bloody press statement and suddenly a 'state visit' becomes 'bloke comes round for tea'!"

The next opportunity to punish New Labour will be at Bush's visit, but then we must build from there. Millions of working people are responding to decades long hurt inflicted by the neoliberal machine. You cannot do that to people and not expect a reaction. Inevitably, they will seek an alternative. Now, we have been given a window of opportunity that will last for months at best. If we don't start now, we won't start at all. Then we will be left with a liberal revival, or worse, a fascist revival. We cannot abandon activists we work with today, to the hands of the Liberal Democrats tomorrow.

Bob Crowe was most interesting in that you got to see why trade unionists actually voted for the man. He's a warm, witty man with real passion. This is obscured in the media news by a few illiterate sound-bites justifying the latest strike, featuring Bob with a minging scowl on his face. At this meeting, he was all bon homie and Labour history. He talked of how it was his union which had been crucial to the formation of the Labour Party 107 years ago. Tommy Steele of the National Union of Railwaymen argued at a meeting, (which Bob has the minutes of), all those years ago, for the formation of a Labour Representation Committee to address the fact that the working class were not being represented politically. Many backed him, but his opponents insisted that the only way to progress was to stick with the Liberals, that the working people of England would never break from the Liberal Party. They called Steele and his allies "splitters". Those discussions mirrored the discussions of today.

He pledged support for George Galloway in the elections, was scathing about New Labour, and said his union would stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone who would support them, including those Labour MPs who continue to fight for socialism and renationalisation of the railways, but the big picture was that he was going to support the SSP north of the border, his union would be giving the funds to them, and the hint was that if we built such an alternative across England and Wales...

Finally, Galloway rose to speak, like a lion in need of a good roar. He retailed a joke he has often told about the late Willie Gallacher, a Clydeside MP and Communist, but I won't tell you what it is in case you go to one of his meetings. He urged the left to build a "popular unity coalition" to oppose Bush, Blair and globalisation. We are in derelection of duty if we fail to take to the electoral battlefield against those who have hi-jacked Labour. The Prime Minister, he said, have committed "a crime, an appalling blunder" and it should be his political death. "He's on the ropes, we can knock him out, so let the bell ring!"

He announced that he would stand on a unity list of candidates across the country for the European election wherever it was thought that his candidature would be helpful. He repeated the theme of unity, and end to the squabbles of the past and roared "The People, United, Will Never be Defeated!" Following which he laid into Blunkett for his shameful response to the police racism captured on camera by the BBC. He laid into Jack Straw for sacking the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who did the world a sterling service by standing in the main square in the capital and denouncing that dictatorship. He told the world that the ruler of Uzbekistan had thousands of people locked away, many were being tortured, and some had even been boiled to death. This was the ethical foreign policy.

Nature, he said, abhors a vacuum. (Look, I've studied science and it fucking doesn't, okay? So stop saying that everyone. It's an old Aristotelian hand down, so shut it.) He said, nature must abhor a political vacuum most of all - all sorts of nasty forces can creep in - be they fascist thugs, or liberal hypocrites.

"But I must tell you, the slogan of 'reclaim the Labour Party' does not look promising." He told of how he knew he was finished when three senior Labour Party members, (Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Tony Woodley), appealed on his behalf - and the lady at the centre of the committee of three sat mentally knitting. Who saw, he wondered, the tear-stained people cheering on the warmonger Blair for seven minutes? 'Reclaim the party' did not look promising. He had only 9 months, of course, to prepare for the elections. "But great things can happen in nine months!" We need a rebirth of the Left.

Galloway rounded up his usual oratory tour de force with a quote that I seem to have heard somewhere before - "The great only look great because we are on our knees". Yes, I remember that phrase. Paul Foot once quoted it in a meeting some years ago. His version bears repeating:

"The great only look great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!"