Keyboard warriors of the world unite

A Brave New World?

Last week I attended a  talk in Swansea given by a gentleman called Mike Klein on digital activism. Mike who hails from the States but who now, very sensibly in my opinion, has made Swansea his home is the former presidential campaign manager for Congressman Dennis Kucinich. I have to admit to being a little sceptical about this whole digital activism thing prior to this talk but Mike gave me plenty of food for thought some of which I hope to share with you here.

Anybody recognise this?

Although this is a bit of a generalisation in the past life was more homogenised and centralised. People tended to live and work in one place, often for much of their lives and would get their news and information from a few sources as well: what was said at work, through the BBC and maybe the church. Today however we live in a very different world where people throughout their career often move from job to job and where populations are a lot more geographically mobile and where we are bombarded with information and views from many additional sources such as the plethora of television channels and social media platforms. In this multicultural, multifaith, multi voiced brave new world it would seem reasonable to argue that traditional forms of social and political activism need to be rethought.

In the past ten years, particularly since the launch of the IPhone in 2007, there has been a massive change in the way we use and interact with the media. In 2016 71% of the UK population owned mobile phones, up from 39% just four years earlier and among under 35 year olds the figure in over 90% and as of 2015 the smartphone is the most popular way to access the internet   Research has shown that more than a third of all adults (34%) use their smartphone within five minutes of waking up, a figure that rises to almost half (49%) of those aged 18-24.

A386 anyone

It would seem that the traditional model of people catching up on what is happening in the world by switching on their radio or television in the morning or reading the newspaper on the way to work is rapidly being replaced by people switching on their mobile phones and accessing their social media accounts. Any political or social movement that fails to engage with this change is at risk of going the same way as traditional newspapers seem to be going.

Love him or loathe him, and no prizes for guessing which one I do, but President Donald Trump has utilised this change in the media to great effect. Just 7% of the US population use Twitter although nearly 90% are aware of it and although I don't have hard statistics to hand I am pretty sure I am on safe ground to argue that the percentage that have read a Trump Tweet is also around the 90% mark as his Tweets are often faithfully reprinted word for word in various other forms of media.  I'll ask you to reflect yourself; now you may or maynot be on Twitter but it's a pretty fair bet that you at some point have read a Donald Trump tweet. Twitter has given him to opportunity to bypass the traditional filters and spin associated with more traditional forms of media and talk directly to the people and whatever you think of that it has worked, he made it to be president even against the odds.

Labour and The Left in general are not in a good place at the moment, there is no denying it but it would also seem true that we are bound to lose the next war if we use the same weaponry, tactics and strategy as we used to lose the last one.  Times they are a changing and while there is still a place for the old door to door door knocking and face to face interaction (for as Mike pointed out in his talk quoting that clansman of mine Tip O'Neill "all politics is local") the day of the keyboard warrior is now upon us and getting our message out there using these new forms of media is more important than ever otherwise we will become left behind and be seen as out of touch, particularly by the young who are our hope for the future.

I say, I say, I say,when is a Trotskyite not a Trotskyite? When they are an ordinary Labour party supporter.

Following on from my blog last Friday this week I have heard the word Trotskyite all over the news and social media. Supposedly educated people have been using it as shorthand for the worst bogeyman of rampant left wing supporters of Corbyn determined to take the party and country in to oblivion.  On last night’s Channel 4 news Michael Crick and Cathy Newman were goading Corbyn supporters to say on air that they were real life “trots”, which to be honest was somewhat reminiscent of McCarthyite era witch hunts.  All this is part of the overall poor quality of debate that there is around the Labour party leadership hustings.  People on both sides are lazily entrenching themselves in over simplistic caricatures of those they disagree with and what should be lively and enriching political debate is descending in to smears and personal attacks.

 

Let us look at this term Trotskyite. What does it mean? Surely you don’t need a Ph.D in philosophy to understand that the word denotes someone who follows the ideas of Leon Trotsky  (1879 – 1940).  Now I won’t bore you here with an online treatise  as to the ideas of this important and influential political philosopher (who just for the record I don’t agree with but I am interested in what he had to say). However, at their most basic Trotsky believed in a one party state and the need for the global spread of communism.  Now putting it as simply as that is that what all these people who are being called “Trots” believe in? Are all those people who are attending public rallies which Owen Smith sought to characterise as “Momentum” rallies, do you think that is what they want to see in this country?

 

This is the man himself Trotsky whose name is often taken in vain

To return to the rally I attended in Swansea last week, which was the subject of my last blog.  Now I have been active in community and grass roots political organising in the South Wales area since the early 1970s.  During that time I have worked alongside anarchists, evangelical Christians, socialists, Labour party members, Catholics, Jews, Communists, Liberal Democrats and many many others of various other political and philosophical persuasions (Can’t honestly think of many Tories though, but there have been a few) I might not have agreed with their religious or political persuasion but they were good people who wanted to see an improvement in society and to be honest that is good enough for me.  When I attended the rally last Friday I knew many in the room and had known them for many years.  They were teachers, social workers, nurses, the unemployed, community development workers, the sick, office workers, steel workers, miners and business people. Over the years some of them might have been in various political or religious groupings as by the very fact they were at this rally they were proclaiming the were people who believed in something, whatever that might be.  I’ll tell you what they weren’t though, and that is “Trotskyite” and to characterise them as such is quite simply wrong.

Just WTF Corbynistas and Trots ???

Right I haven't blogged for a while as to be honest couldn't think of anything I particularly wanted to blog about but recent events have been winding me up a tad and there are a few things I would like to get off my chest.  As we all know the post #Brexit referendum fallout has precipitated a leadership election in the Labour party as indeed it did in the Tory Party before.  While the Tories managed to achieve this somewhat bloodlessly Labour seem intent on tearing themselves to pieces over it to the extent that it looks like it is becoming an existential threat.

As part of this leadership election process the respective candidates Owen Smith and Jeremy Corbyn have been taking part in debates, meetings and rallies as part of the hustings process.  All very well and good. If we must have a leadership election, which by the way I don't think that we should, then these are the sort of events the candidates should be having.

Last Friday Jeremy Corbyn organised events in Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea the town of my birth and where I still have lots of family and friends and the city where I currently reside. From my contacts on social media I could see that the Merthyr event had gone well with a carnival celebratory atmosphere.  With that information in mind I looked forward to attending the evening event in Swansea.

I was not disappointed. There was an excellent turnout and a great feeling to the event. Lots of old friends and comrades were there such as Phil White, Tyrone O'Sullivan and @llanelliriots so it was great to catch up with some really good people who for years gave been grassroots activists in the area. Both Tyrone and Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the event.  Both are leaders in their own way but they both talked about that this election and socialism in general is not about leaders but it is about mutualism and establishing a grassroots movement that takes everybody in the community along with it.

My mate Tyrone :-)

Unsurprisingly for such an event a number of us who were attending stared to Tweet and post on social media as to what a positive experience it was. Oh if we did !! As soon as our tweets and other postings went out they started to climb out of the social media woodwork. The doubters, the naysayers and the downright nasty and offensive, who mostly hide behind anonymous twitter accounts.  They had comments like "they are all just a bunch of commies and Trots" or they are a "cult" following their "great leader". At the very least they were saying "we had rallies like this with Michelle Foot in the 1980s and that didn't bring us electoral success."

 Now I am long enough in the tooth and thick skinned enough to expect such sneering from Tory supporters or those not sympathetic to Labour but many of these detractors claimed to be Labour??!! This is what was quite simply beyond me.  It was a good event where like minded people were able to come together and share ideas.  I heard some very good discussions going on on the night and it was great to have the opportunity to take part. I'm not saying that such events in themselves are going to win the general election for Labour and anyone that does is simply deluded but what planet of negativity are people on who simply decry such events and mock and deride those who attend? Anyway, it was not a general election focused event it was a Labour leadership event primarily aimed at those who are already Labour supporters.

If you ask me socialism is about, mutuality, fraternity and solidarity, it is about realising that the greatest strength of the human race is its ability to act as a society not just as a collection of individuals pursing their own interests. If people feel there is no value to us all coming together and sharing ideas and thoughts then I am sorry but in my eyes they are not socialists.

The Day I Went to See Jeremy Corbyn

Let me get this clear right at the very beginning of this blog in that classic McCarthyite response ; I am not, nor have I ever been a member of  ….. any political party. Although I have been interested in politics since a teenager and I have flirted with various political organisations, I have never felt captured enough by any individual politician or party to actually join up as a member.  My political activism has always taken the form of organising activities and attending rallies and meetings .

 Although my politics has always been broadly left wing I always found my personal beliefs and opinions at odds with the likes of say the Socialist Worker Party or the Labour Party.  Although influenced by the ideas and writings of such great Labour stalwarts as Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevan and I was lucky enough as a young man to be represented by that Labour legend S.O.Davies  party politics never had any allure for me. 

At election times I have tended to vote Labour as broadly I suppose I support them more than anyone else and up until the last general election I have always lived in a Labour constituency but on occasions I have voted for other parties.

In February this year I had attended the Welsh Labour Party conference in Swansea, not as a party member or supporter but because my work had sent me.  Ed Milliband had been there and quite a lot of the other Welsh Labour party hierarchy and it had struck me how staid, static and smug they were in their skins and quite confident at the time that they were poised to return to power.  Obviously, as we know now, that was not to be the case.

Following the 2015 general election I felt increasing disgust with the UK election system due to the blatant political machination of the media, who were obviously supporting particular powerful  elite interest groups and an electorate that seemed to be becoming increasingly self-cantered , isolationist and frankly xenophobic, hence the growth of dreadful parties such as UKIP. 

When the Labour party leadership contest started I was sort of vaguely aware of Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper but really had no idea as to who Liz Kendall or Jeremy Corbyn were.  If you had asked me at this point who I would have supported I would have unhesitatingly said Andy Burnham.  However, as the contest developed, although I have to admit it was not something I was following too closely, my opinions started to change.  I quickly started to realise that although I had no idea as to who Liz Kendall was her utterances seemed completely at odds to what I thought Labour was.  Obviously the party had changed quite a bit from last time I had paid any attention.

What really bought the difference to the candidates home to me was the welfare vote in July. Harriet Harman the interim leader of the party had said for Labour MPs to abstain???  WTF was that all about??? Yet another attack on the poor of this country and the leader of the supposed party of the working people of this country is saying to abstain??? At least one of the candidates Corbyn had the courage to vote against it.  That is the first time I remember him coming to my attention.  It was also the time that Burnham and Cooper started to go down in my opinion. Why, if they were against austerity did they not vote against this attack on the poorest in society?

Increasingly the name of Corbyn was being brought to my attention mainly through the attacks the other candidates and others within the party were directing toward him. What was it about this man and his politics that they were so afraid of particularly considering he had been an MP for so long? I did a bit of research and reading about his background and history and saw that he wasn’t the ordinary Oxbridge PPE party apparatchik, he was someone who had stayed true to his values all his life, something that seems incredibly rare these days.

I began to talk with friends, colleagues and on Twitter about the upcoming Labour party leadership contest and other people were picking up on the difference of the Corbyn campaign.  I said I had some sympathy for his approach and people urged me to sign up either as a member or supporter to vote for him.  I did seriously think about it but decided I would have been a hypocrite as I had never been involved in the party before and who was I to say who should be their leader.  My attitude was, let them pick their leader and then, if they pick Corbyn I might consider joining.  That, in itself was a pretty major change on my behalf as I had never ever considered joining a party before.

In August Jeremy Corbyn came to speak in South Wales.  He spoke at a number of venues but one was the Aneurin Bevan memorial in the Sirhowy Valley   This is an historic venue, where Nye Bevan used to hold open air meetings and somewhere right in the centre of my stomping ground.  I turned up at the meeting more than anything to see what the fuss was all about and because it was a nice afternoon to spend walking about the mountains of my beloved Welsh valleys.  I turned up early as I thought there would be a good turnout. Although I turned up a good three quarters of an hour early there was already a good crowd there and more than that there was a real carnival feel already.  The Red Choir were already there.  Being Wales we have a strong choral tradition and the Red Choir have been going years and they often perform at rallies and political meetings. People were around chatting and talking of the buzz of the Corbyn campaign.  People were catching up with friends and family and there was a real “valleys” feel to the event.

Then the man himself arrived.  No fanfare, no announcements, no hyperbole, he just walked in to the midst of us and started chatting to people, you know like a normal human being.  No minders, no security, no obvious hangers on he just walked in to the centre of the gathering and started chatting. I was stood chatting with a group of friends a couple of yards away and one of my group just went over and started chatting to him in a very natural way.  When I had been at the Labour party conference earlier in the year I just couldn’t have imagined that happening with Ed Milliband.

Corbyn then started to address the crowd, very unassuming, very naturalistic and not a particularly good public speaker.  He started to talk about the historic significance of the spot but more he talked about the late great Ray Davies. Ray was a local councillor, activist and character that I bet most local people in the crowd had come across at some time.  It was obvious that Corbyn knew Ray as a person, it wasn’t as if he had been briefed by one of his aides, he had connected with the terroir of the South Wales valleys, no mean feat in itself and something that cannot be faked.

The man talked, I wasn’t particularly impressed or overwhelmed but I just thought here is a genuine guy and that in itself, I am sorry to say in this day and age, is an impressive quality in a politician. He spoke, he took questions and there was discussion and debate. No spin, no managing the event, politics as politics should be, ideas not personalities. I was impressed by the approach, the social movement not by just the man himself. Although not a great orator the man spoke with passion and from the heart.  Without notes or script but with genuine conviction, when was the last time we saw that with all our staged managed politicians?

Well to cut to the chase dear reader that night when I got home I signed up as a Labour party supporter do you know why?? Because I could see hope, I could see a vision of a different way of doing things moving away from the bland, self-centred and self-obsessed politics that seem to have dogged us since the late 1970s. Although I had previously had reservations I wanted to be part of this opportunity to change things.

Since attending that meeting on the mountains of Sirhowy I have been increasingly disgusted by the antics of the other three candidates, including Burnham, in their personal attacks on Corbyn which he has had the good grace not to react to.  Who knows what the result will be??  I cannot believe the Labour Party machine will allow a Corbyn victory as there appears to be those in Labour who think they know better than democracy. This I believe is a real opportunity to change politics in the UK.  Even if people don’t think that Corbyn is the right person to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom he is the right person, indeed the only person on offer, to lead the opposition to this hateful destructive Tory government for the next five years.

This is my truth, tell me yours.