David Bishop

Being an ‘out and proud socialist’ is a frustrating thing. Not simply because we live in a Capitlist society. The most annoying thing I find is that when I speak to people about politics, the strange thing is people agree with like 90% of your basic message once you get past the whole, “no I’m not a Stalinist” thing. Although some are still convinced your a Starlinist pretending not to be, but some people are just idiots.

But yeah, this is the strange thing. Most people agree we should natiolise the rail service, the NHS is mostly a good thing, to keep the post office public, renationlise the Utlities, greater demcrascy, greater freedoms of liberty, womens rights, gay rights, etc etc. Yet here are living in an ever more Capitlist society. With less liberty and less public ownership then ever before! An age of farse you might say, a time where we give billions to the bankers who caused the mess we’re in and then we cut out our own vital public services to pay for it. It’s quite insane, no one agrees with this, yet it happens.

I frequently have this circler argument with my father. I assert we clearly don’t live in a demcrascy but he believes simply becase we have a ballot box that means we live in a decmrascy. I point out what I have just pointed out…”well yeah but why is nothing actually like the way most of us want it to be then?” “What about the millions and millions it takes to wage a poltical campaign?”

Of course to a certain degree it is correct. It would theoretically be possible to start a party and do all this. But the ones with power of course would not go down without a fight. You only need to see the insane war waged agaigst the Labour Party when it was a sort of Labour Party during the 30s by the mainstream media. Or in a whole host of countires when Socialist Parties have taken some sort of power. From smear campaings to all out war resulting in the deaths of millions.

So my point, people are not alone in thinking what they do. We all want a better world. The problem is if we have any chance of creating this better world we must organise and organise well. With strong solidarity through a new workers party. It’s simply uniting, if you never fight you certainly will never win, if you do fight, hey you might win! They will try and demoralise you. I was reminded of this recently during the Postal Workers Strikes. The BBC ran a whole segment of people talking about past struggles that failed, saying what’s the point, we never win. We don’t win all the time, it’s a war, you win some battles, you lose some. But, you must keep fighting as they will come back at you again and again until there’s nothing left to take. There are so many examples of the people winning, we still have an NHS, Universal Suffrage, the weekend! And many others. Workers of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains

I attended Socialism 2009 this weekend, my second time going. Was a lot of fun. On the saturday I attended the talk on “Fighting for Democratic Unions” with the speaker Rob William’s and Linda Taaffe. Then in the evening I went to the Rally. On Sunday I went to a discussion on the defence of Trotsky BY Peter Taaffe and in the afternoon on a talk on what now for the Left in Germany, the weekend was capped off with a Rally.

Fighting for Democratic Unions

Was a very good talk from Rob Williams who, most in the movement will know well. If not, check out his background here. Also Linda Taffee Spoke. The talk was a good one and outlined the outrageous actions of certain trade union leaders in the movement, the more I hear the more I can’t believe it. It makes you wodner why they joined the movement in the first place. The problem is bad trade union leadership tends to raise in dark days, which the 90s certainly was for socialism as well as trade unions. However we are now enetering a time that if we hope to stay above water, we need a fighting trade union leadership! The role of a leadership is to communicate to workers why action is important. No one wants to take action, strikes mean a loss of pay and a risk of losing. But, the bosses will forever come back at you so if you don’t fight you will lose, if you do fight you might win! You might not want anything to do with poltics but it’ll take a big chunk out of you if you like it or not!

The amazing thing is that in so many cases it’s the workers saying to leaderships we want to take action while the leaderships try to talk workers out of it, quite rediclious. Of course there are exceptions, the Prison Officers Association (POA), Fire Brigade Union (FBU) and the RMT are three examples of good unions, and by the way seeing massive growth in membership while the Unite and Unison Dinosaurs leadership fading away, and if we’re not careful taking the movement with them!

Saturday Rally

The rally on Saturday evening was good. It included three trade union leaders. The head of the POA and member of the Socialist Party, Brian Caton. The General Secretary of the FBU, Matt Wrack.  Bob Crow, General secretary of the RMT. Peter Taaffe, General Secrtary of the Socialist Party as well as Irish Socialist Party Member of the European Parliament Joe Higgins spoke.

All very good, passaniate speaches, esspially from the trade union leaders. Which, is always good! Bob used the S word too! That being socialism, I believe for the first time! Also he seemed pretty sure that the Union and Left Party Collation that started with the No2EU Campaign (under a new name of course, thank god!!!) will be seeding candiates in the General Election next year!

In Defence of Trotsky

On Sunday morning I went to a talk on Trotsky by Peter Taaffe. This was a very interesting talk, the Russian Revolution is a partcilar interest for me. Robert Service, a British Historian on Russia at Oxford University recently brought out a book on the life of Trotsky. Which is hard to find a truthful line inside it! It is nothing more then an ideological attack. Totaly indefensible, which has been proven. He refuses to engage the Party in any sort of debate on the accuracy of his book, and recently when he found out General Secretary of the Socialist Party Peter Taaffe was going to be speaking at the same conference as him in Russia, Mr Service pulled out! Another example of how we as Socialists have the truth on our side. We maybe small but we do have that! Our opponents refuse to engage us in debate and rather use their power and resources to rubbish us instead. You can crush a man but you can’t crush an idea!

What now for the German Left

Ok, I probably shouldn’t say this but… by the time I got to this talk I was very tired as I hadnt slept much the night before, coupled with drinking much more then I thought I had… I really couldn’t take anything in from this talk, so errm, yeah. I’m sure it was good though …

Final Rally

Had woken up a bit by this time, some good speeches from mostly Union representives including Rob Williams, Janice Godrich President of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). John Denton, Regional Secretary of Communication Workers Union (CWU), London. Mark Smith from the Vestas Struggle. Sean Figg from Youth Fight for Job Campaign and finally Hannah Sell the General Secreary of the Socialist Party.

All good, I was esspially interested to hear what John Denton from the CWU had to say with the recent call off of strikes for the time being. He seemed to be saying that the managers of Royal Mail have learnt their lessons and expected major victories for the Union when they go to negotiate again. I’m a little concerned though if calling off the strikes was a good idea, even if it might just be for a short period. I think these strikes poteitally could have been as major as the Miners Strikes in the 80s. You had a work force who were willing to do whatever it took, if the CWU don’t win everything they demanded then I worry what this could mean in the future, but we will see, I guess!

All round fun weekend, looking forward to Socialism 2010!

Playlist of a talk entitled ‘Why you should be a Socialist’, should be three parts!

A very good video, Jim posted on the Devon Socialist Party web site which shows Joe Higgin introducing the story ‘Mouseland’, it illustrates how politics works in an informative, funny way in cartoon form! Also congratulations to Joe Higgins he got in for the Socialist Party in Ireland, hurha!

Analysis of the recent Budget and Economic Crisis by Peter Taaffe, the General Secretary of the Socialist Party. The camera work is a bit bad, but it’s a good speech.

Quite a good explanation Marxist theory of the failure of capitalism by Rick Wolff an American Marxist Economist. Not sure I totally agree with this finial analysis of the software world but other then that I agree with him on most of his points.

Capitalism Hits the Fan: A Marxian View from UVC-TV 19 on Vimeo.

Here’s a video I came across a while ago but I don’t think I ever posted it, so I will now! It’s made by a group of Australian subversive artists called the Monochrom. Here’s in one of their many sock puppet videos. Here they explain Neo Liberalism in a nice way I think.

The Davos Debate

A came across this on you tube a minute ago and it annoys me mostly. It’s one of those projects that try and push the idea of real debate and an open fourm to discus ‘new’ ideas when it’s anything but. You just need to watch the videos and look at the polls to see how narrow the debate is, the discusions have been decided really. It’s just propghanda at the end of the day to say ‘hey look we have changed, we are good now!’, when they haven’t they are just trying to save their skins.

You know it’s nothing new either, Capitalists throughout our history have been willing to give up on their free market ideas in favour of regulation in the market if it means saving their little system, and a few years down the line they will be pushing for de regulation again in the market. It’s what we would call a ‘old boys network’, ’socialism for the rich’. The people at the top have no princpals, no idiology really, just greed. They don’t believe the rubbish they spew about the free market and capitalism being the best way to lift the world out of poverty and all that. The sad fact is that while class consciousness amongst the working class has gone down it’s clear from the events that have happened that the rich have maintained their class consciousness despite notions of a ‘classless society’ with Nu Labour. 

I suppose what concerns me and no doubt will happen is we will re brand the problem as the solution, unless people unite together and say no! Radical change is needed, and I believe that socialism is the answer, the system we have now doesn’t work, it’s clear the majority of the world live in poverty and capitalism has done nothing much to change that. When you take away the gloss they put on the system all it has done is create misery in the world.

But they use fear and lies to discourage the general population from any real change in society. Class Conciseness is the key. The solution really is simple, once the majority agree then there’s nothing they can do. The corporations, corrupt governments in the world only have the power because we allow it. If we all said, no, and took real democratic control then there is nothing they could do.

I went to one of the many protests today against Israelis sickening attack on Gaza. The size of the crowd was pretty good, didn’t expect that much for Exeter! While opinions differed here and there we were all united in the anger at the appalling actions by Israel, words can’t describe the sickening crimes committed by the ruling classes of that country. Funded by the United States, even using American Helicopters! Then we have Bush saying ‘they brought it on themselves’, speechless just speechless…

The labour movements in Israeli are very strong now, their is huge hatred against the government. The solution to this is the workers of both countries to unite and stop this ridiculous violence.