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Epitome of delusion
Walking past UCLU this morning I was swamped by the unofficial UCL socialist workers party handing out leaflets calling for a ‘revolution’. As I passed them, muttering the words ‘deluded, absolutely bloody deluded’ under my breath my thoughts continued. I am a huge supporter of free speech, and it would be wrong of me to attempt to deny them a voice. However I found them almost as irritating as those swines who continually thrust london Lites or the London Papers upon you.
A better comparison may be drawn between the socialists and the scientologists who insist upon harrassing you as you walk down Tottenham Court Rd. They certainly have the right to express their views, but don’t help themselves at all by the manner in which they try to gain support. Do they seriously think anyone will support a group who appear to be incompetent and untrustworthy. Everyday, we are seeing the demise of Labour and the rise of the conservatives. Brits now need to decide not necessarily between the ideologies of the parties, as there are only subtle differences between them, but between the trustworthiness of the parties and their leaders. Compared to France, where there are obvious extremes and the choice is between the ‘right’ and the ‘left’, Britain as a whole has very similar views. People are as a whole satisfied by the lack of choice, as the majority of Brits fall into the traditional category of being ‘centre-right’. Those parties who lie away from this seem to gain little support, but should not be ignored. It is difficult to envisage, barring a complete redistibution of wealth, Britain’s political landscape changing significantly, and therefore groups such as the socialists need to adapt to this if they are going to gain significant support. There is a gap in the left of British politics, and any serious party with leftward leaning views would no doubt gain support from the dissolutioned LibDem/Green supporters.
In the interests of having a more democratic Britain, I for one would welcome such a party, it would at least give us more to argue about on a fundamental level rather than the debates which occur now which seem to be about technicalities. Nevertheless the key issue which arises here is the age old ‘chicken and egg’ arguement, i.e. do the parties create ideologies to which the public need to decide between, or does the public’s views make parties adapt. Sadly, I think the former is the case. My view will always be that socialists are simply deluded, but I think by trying to organise a ‘revolution’, they are being highly counter-productive, and cannot be taken seriously.
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January 31st, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Note how the socialists wear their Converse and Addidas as they campaign against the capitalist system….
….I wonder if they would be at UCL without the capitalist system… whose taxes pay for their tuition?
January 31st, 2007 at 8:37 pm
The problem is that most political parties are driven by one ambition: to get into government. As in your article, there are always some groups that are ready to put hardline ideology before electability. Like you said, they are often deluded fools, but all due respect to them for preserving their beliefs in the face of the voters.
It’s by no means a modern phenomena. Political parties for a very long time have been making compromises with beliefs they may have once regarded as sacred. The Liberals, for example, in the early 1900s, argubly compromised on their idea of ’self-help’ to establish National Insurance, so as to prevent Labour from stealing their electoral power base.
Even Hitler in the 1920s compromised on ‘core’ party beliefs for the sake of being elected. Whereas once he believed that the German government could only be overthrown by a nationalist revolution, he later had the foresight to tame the Stormtroopers (to a degree) and present the Nazis a ‘democratic’ political movement (although he never denied he would abolish democracy on coming to power).
Even when he and the Nazis did get what they wanted, they obtained power through wholly legitimate and legal means. That’s what the BNP are doing, hence the fact they’re always proclaiming they’re the party of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, when in reality they are, fundamentally, fascists.
I don’t think that any strong left-wing party will emerge to fill the gap created by the Lib-Dems and the Greens, as you say. Old Maggie herself once said, “State socialism is not in the character of the British people; it has no place in our traditions, it has no hold on our hearts”.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Fair points made there. I think my message was mainly that if any sort of left-wing group wished to gain any sort of influence, then trying to organise a ‘revolution’, because all credibility is seemingly lost. The Thatcher quote is quite a prominent one and I truly believe it will need a drastic change in society for the landscape to change so a left-wing party may govern.
February 1st, 2007 at 1:51 am
I disagree with the last sentiment expressed by Iain. Sure, it would take an awful lot for a revolutionary left wing party to be elected, but that’s true of any truly revolutionary party, no matter where they are on the political spectrum. Hence, the SWP suffers just the same problems as the BNP, except that the BNP masks its leftist philosophies with hatred of everyone that doesn’t vote for them (a charming idea that served Mr Hitler well). As a result, it is hard to imagine that SWP as representing a fully typical mainstream left-wing view. I have no doubt that there is a greater tendency towards revolutionarism than on the so-called ‘right-wing’, but that doesn’t mean that there is no potential left-wing party that accomodates legitimism.
The problems with the British political system are manifold. Primarily, Iain is wrong to state that we are centre-right. We’re actually centre-left, as the country seemed very uncomfortable, even with the supposedly ‘low’ 36% of GDP public expenditure that the Tories left them; no government that takes more than one-third of my money can be considered right-wing, and they would only barely scrape into the centre-right.
The most fundamental point to the argument is actually true. We have no legitimist left-wing option, in the form that the old Labour Party presented. That remains so, even if revolutionary lefties won almost 1% of the vote at the 2005 election. Perhaps more importantly, we have a centre-right bloc that doesn’t reflect any political symmetry; we have no party, legitimist or otherwise, that: calls for any further privatisation (or re-privatisation of the railways), argues consistently for low taxes, or demands that we enshrine the legitimacy of the individual above the legitimacy of the collectivist government. Those are the true positions of the centre-right, the true hallmarks of the freedom-lover, and, yet, no party steps forward. I ask, why not?
February 1st, 2007 at 9:44 am
Though I think the points made are valid, I mostly disagree. Though it is bad to give any party a place on a political spectrum, and I am guilty in doing this too often, I think you are too narrow-minded in your arguements. The whole ‘political spectrum’ is comprised relative to other parties.
You talk about Taxation, and GDP - you ask why no party are ‘truely’ positioned centre-right. The answer, my friend, is that more than 33% of the public seem satisfied paying high taxes, if they get high quality public services in return. I’m not a supported of Labour’s high tax-high spend policies, but the reason they have been successful is that people seem to put public services over taxation. I think it is naive to suggest that Cameron will not lower taxes. It is not in the parties interest to make promises at this time, with the current state of the economy, to lover tax. The economic climate will have been assessed by election time, and if it is viable, Cameron will lower taxes.
The arguement, I re-iterate, is whether parties shape the country’s views, or vice versa. It seems that because people, as a whole, seem content with the way things are, no ‘true’ centre-right party as you put it would ever be successful, and wouldn’t exist. This supports the bottom-up arguement.
February 1st, 2007 at 1:13 pm
I think there is a UKIP membership badge with your name on it somewhere Cooper.
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Were it not for the fact that they’re preoccupied with an issue of minor political importance, and the fact that they’re predominantly pseudo-educated racists and misogynists, I would be a UKIP member. Unfortunately, their being oppressors of the liberties of ethnic minorities and women somewhat blows a hole in their claims to be libertarians.
Davenport.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Oliver, you’ve just said that were it not for their obsession with a single issue and assorted bigotry, you’d be a member of a bigoted single-issue party! I know what you mean. If the Conservative party were a progressive, centre-left, truly liberal party, free of prejudice and unnerving oddballs like John Redwood, I might consider joining.