Thursday, July 23, 2009

Good Trot on Bad Trots in Good Cause

My favourite Respect snout Mac Liam says it as it is - Check out the link to his post here . But why does he put up with such morons?


Posted on July 22, 2009 by Liam

Did you know that Simon Hughes is not a Trotskyist.? I can exclusively reveal tonight that the Liberal Democrat MP is not in favour of nationalising stuff under workers’ control and that this is the view of his party.

Who’d have predicted that? Eh?

Shocked I was. Shocked and stunned.

The Campaign Against Climate Change (CACC) organised a pretty good impromptu demo in support of the Vesta occupation this evening outside the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Phil Thornhill kicked off by explaining that the ice up around the North Pole is melting rapidly and that this might cause a very sudden increase in the planet’s temperature. To this he added that wind turbines are one of the ways which will allow us to generate electricity without throwing millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and that the CCC had been down to speak to the workers and support their occupation of their factory.

Next up was Darren Johnson on behalf of the Greens. He gave his full support to the workers and gave the sort of speech that Tony Benn would have given. He was followed by a spectrum of Trots pretending to be random punters while accidentally holding a copy of a left wing paper they’d accidentally just bought for the first time ever.

The only political figure with any national profile who thought it worth giving up an hour of his time to support a group of workers occupying a factory was Simon Hughes. The cops had decreed that no megaphones were to be used and I can’t claim to have heard too much of what he said but there was something about the importance of skills, something about windpower being a good thing and global warming being a bad thing. Not quite the revolutionary programme but not worth getting your knickers in a twist about. Applaud mildly and see who’s up next is the sensible reaction.

Gosh no!

“It’s a popular front!” “He’s just grandstanding!” “Let’s occupy the ministry!” “Are you in favour of nationalisation???”

This was a bunch of Trots flashing back to the time they’d given Heseltine, Hurd, Prescott or Straw a rough time in their students’ union except this time it was a real campaign in defence of real workers’ jobs. So instead of Simon Hughes speaking for three or four minutes the revolutionary vanguard spent twenty minutes exposing him as a dreadful reformist in front of the revolutionary vanguard. Then, when he was finished, some tried to carry on the argument convinced that the one of the best known Lib Dems could be won over to Trotskyism by a five minute hectoring. It must work sometimes.

CACC done good. It worked out how totemic this dispute is and organised a demo in support of the occupation. A chunk of the far left pursued its mission of convincing the world that nothing is more important than selling a couple of papers and getting one of your people on the microphone.

Derek Wall, who has a more positive outlook on life has given a slightly different account here.
Support the Factory Occupation

Public meeting

Speakers: Vestas Worker, Chris Baugh (PCS Ass. Gen. Sec, pc), Seamus Milne, Jonathan Neale

Friday 24th July, 6pm, ULU Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY

Called by the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group

(last night my UNISON branch Executive agreed to send a message of support to the factory occupation).

8 comments:

Charlie Marks said...

A rather more comradely approach would have been to politely ask Mr Hughes if he would support the IoW Vestas workers being helped to set up an enterprise which they owned - what with the Lib Dems being supportive of co-operatives, and all.

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid , Charlie, you assume they understand what "being comradely" means.

These people are merely cheerleaders of hate - an apparently febrile and lunatic troop under the direction of a Central Committee puppetmaster.

Sadly these loons are seen by far too many of our potential supporters as representative of 'the left'.

Citizen Barnet said...

Address the crowd for two or three minutes? You have the ratio the wrong way around. Simon Hughes is a national figure, and a bighead. He jumped up on the wall and addressed the crowd, and addressed the crowd, and addressed the crowd...

Democracy is not about boring people into submission. There were plenty of other people there with more interesting things to say, and he was just allowed to use this platform, and use this platform and use this platform... to promote himself.

I did ask him afterwards:
- did he support the occupation, yes or no. He said he supported the workers, if they thought that was what they had to do... a typically slippery politician's answer. He wouldn't have any platform at all if it hadn't been for those people taking their brave stand. I said it wouldn't have been in the news at all if they hadn't done what they had done.
- if he didn't support nationalisation what was he in favour of? Workers' control? In a way, yes, he was in favour of an employees' buyout.

If you support this occupation you should know that it was down to the work of a few far-left hotheads etc going to the Isle of Wight over a period of weeks, talking to the Vestas workers, building up their confidence that we are having this conversation at all.

Best wishes,
Vicki from Barnet

Dave said...

Hi John,

good posting.

Can't see the point myself, in inviting someone who's supporting the campaign and then publicly barracking him for not supporting the campaign in the right way. Or is that a definition of Trots approach to debate?

If people are fighting to save their jobs they presumably want all the support they can find. And have the discussion about precisely how the jobs are saved in a way which preserves unity as much as possible. 'Unity is Strength" however is a Union not a trot slogan.

And Vicki from Barnet. I agree that national political figures can rarely be accused of having small egos. But who is it that decides who has something more interesting to say? Anyone who has ever been to a Trot organised meeting and indicated their wish to speak until their arm nearly falls of knows the answer. You don't get called if they know your face and your politics.The Comrade from the Central Committee decides.I have to say also that Hughes' reply to you if you've quoted him correctly seems pretty direct. As a democrat I must admit it does piss me off a little when the Trot Left give lectures on democracy (which under democracy of course they have every right to do.)

Maybe I'm making assumptions Vicki but the approach and the fact you listed AWL, SWP and one other group when you posted on the other blog leaves me to wonder. Which one are you in. And sorry I've got no change for a paper.

Dave Draycott

Citizen Barnet said...

AWL. Have a look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFcAgS1XAF8, Dave, Charlie, and tell me that Hughes wasn't waffling interminably and that the meeting didn't need to be enlivened by some salient questions. We didn't rant at him, we didn't try to drown him out, we didn't shout 'off, off, off' - though God knows he was boring enough to deserve it. We asked him questions. We shouted them out from the crowd. And, by and large, he did answer them... eventually! That's politics isn't it? Isn't an exchange like that... democratic?

Derek Wall said...

can we just get on with the job of giving the Vestas workers some support!

John McDonnell has tabled an EDM to save Vestas. It has 13 signatures so far. Please lobby your MP to support this motion

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=39150

http://www.writetothem.com/

The following petition has been set up by FoE:
http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/vestas_petition_20414.html

And remember to sign the No10 petition:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveVestas/


More info: (from the save vestas blog, http://savevestas.wordpress.com/ )

Come to the Isle of Wight TODAY to join the community campaign:
We have set up a campaign for Vestas workers’ families and Isle of Wight residents to show their support for keeping jobs at Vestas. The families and communities campaign will be very important in keeping spirits up through this stressful time. For more details call 07775 763750.

PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION on Friday
Come to St Thomas Square in Newport at 5:30pm on Friday 24th July where we will be making a very public display of how we feel about the Vestas closures!

Charlie Marks said...

Vicki, I thought it was interesting what Hughes' says about municipal renewable energy companies, the need for an industrial policy etc.

Anonymous said...

ian gibson
i used to think he was good
turns outhe was ex swp
explains him being infantile and offering the seat to the tories