Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Links. posted by Richard Seymour
Dead Men Left has a couple of blinding posts. First, a nice dissection of Johann Hari's idiotic recycling of anti-Respect nonsense here . Second, an interesting article on the recent poverty statistics from the Department of Work & Pensions here .News for Respect supporters. The East region FBU has stumped up a grand for the election campaign:
FBU regional official Adrian Clarke said “We invited Respect to our meeting before Christmas and following that we had a request for a donation. That has now been voted through.
"Several of us are already members of Respect, but what has made this kind of formal link possible is the decision by the FBU conference last year to disaffiliate from the Labour Party.
“Delegates to the conference were very clear that we do not want to retreat into apolitical trade unionism. The wider political issue is that a great many people have taken a long, hard look at the Labour government and have concluded that we have to build a new left in this country.
“While many people are talking about it, Respect is getting on and doing it. It has come in for criticism from Labour politicians. They fear that they are going to be confronted by a credible, left wing alternative. The continued attack by New Labour on the issue of pensions is being felt across the whole of the working classes but it is being pursued with extreme vigour particularly against public service workers including firefighters and control staff.
According to the Independent , several Labour MPs are going to defy Blair and stand on an antiwar and anti-occupation platform. A very clear consensus has formed around punishing Blair at this election. Take Dan Plesch's recent article as a case in point. Or former Foreign Office advisor David Clark in The Guardian , in which Blair is convincingly portrayed as "a weak man who bends to power" (and therefore, if the Left flexes its muscles...). Even Mark Seddon , the wet fish of the Labour Left, raises the spirit to call for a reduced Labour majority, as "it may be the last chance to save the Labour party for social democracy and from remorseless internal collapse". Then there is the existence of sites like Backing Blair , So Now Who Do We Vote For? , Strategic Voter and so on. The fact that the Tories are looking so miserable, so very very weak, helps enormously. We can have the confidence to assail that phalanx of arse-lickers and nose-tanners on the Labour back-benches, especially those who backed the murderous war on Iraq, without risking a Tory victory.
Finally, Tariq Ramadan has an excellent article in today's Guardian, calling for a liberal interpretation of Islam.