Wednesday, April 27, 2005
A general theory of voting labour....or how i learned to stop worrying and love blogs
From the rather good a General Theory of Rubbish blog, which I have just discoveredMore reasons to vote Labour.
for the muddle-classes and assorted nitwit liberals and professional gobshites who like to play the sophisticate, voting doesn't really matter and who you vote for is all a game.
This is one of the reasons why I'm becoming such a fan of blogs. With my friends and with much of the media (with only a few exceptions) I often feel very isolated in my politics, that I'm the only one who holds particular viewpoints on certain issues or see things in a particular way. It's like my teenage years as a Manic Street Preachers fan all over again! Apart from a period in the mid to late 90's, I was the only fan I knew and felt like the only person listening to their music - then i'd go to one of their gigs and it would be full of thousands of people like me, knowing all the words of all the songs that I had spent so many hours of my life listening to and obsessing over.
Labour, like the Manics, may not be quite what they used to be, but the feeling they are capable of good things above what their contemporaries are capable of still exists strongly. I may well be misguided, but I still believe. I may have bought their records or voted for them in the past but I could never believe in a Coldplay or a Liberal Democrats.
Or as a General Theory of Rubbish, puts it much better.
Ill-considered 'radicalism' leads to a reactionary position. To defend or support the Labour Party against the attacks of its enemies does not mean to defend each and every action of its leadership or each and every action of the government which is the instrument of the leadership. A 'totalitarian' concept of a defence or support of the Party is absurd. The distinction to make is that between actions that promote the interests of the working-class and those that are harmful, while nothing should ever be surrendered until it is irrevocably lost.
The Labour Party (despite everything) retains its character as a labour organisation. The other parties do not. The pathetic Liberals are nothing but Tories without their kicking boots on and act as Tories whenever they gain any power. Their potential for any radicalism is non-existent.
for the muddle-classes and assorted nitwit liberals and professional gobshites who like to play the sophisticate, voting doesn't really matter and who you vote for is all a game.
This is one of the reasons why I'm becoming such a fan of blogs. With my friends and with much of the media (with only a few exceptions) I often feel very isolated in my politics, that I'm the only one who holds particular viewpoints on certain issues or see things in a particular way. It's like my teenage years as a Manic Street Preachers fan all over again! Apart from a period in the mid to late 90's, I was the only fan I knew and felt like the only person listening to their music - then i'd go to one of their gigs and it would be full of thousands of people like me, knowing all the words of all the songs that I had spent so many hours of my life listening to and obsessing over.
Labour, like the Manics, may not be quite what they used to be, but the feeling they are capable of good things above what their contemporaries are capable of still exists strongly. I may well be misguided, but I still believe. I may have bought their records or voted for them in the past but I could never believe in a Coldplay or a Liberal Democrats.
Or as a General Theory of Rubbish, puts it much better.
Ill-considered 'radicalism' leads to a reactionary position. To defend or support the Labour Party against the attacks of its enemies does not mean to defend each and every action of its leadership or each and every action of the government which is the instrument of the leadership. A 'totalitarian' concept of a defence or support of the Party is absurd. The distinction to make is that between actions that promote the interests of the working-class and those that are harmful, while nothing should ever be surrendered until it is irrevocably lost.
The Labour Party (despite everything) retains its character as a labour organisation. The other parties do not. The pathetic Liberals are nothing but Tories without their kicking boots on and act as Tories whenever they gain any power. Their potential for any radicalism is non-existent.
