socialist worker envy

I’m wondering about whether the current appalling outbreak of decent-itis in Bethnal Green has any roots in what you might call SWP-envy.

Personally, I never much enjoyed political activity and was able to give it up fairly easily, pleading hangovers to nurse, football matches to attend and similar pressing public duties.

Other people I knew found it a bit harder. They felt like deserters, had acquired moral obligations and friendships that were hard to abandon, or believed that the subjects of their campaigning needed them to keep on keeping on. These circumstances make it harder to slip back openly into a decent apathy.

Unless you have an excuse. And the excuse I remember best for people who were sick of holding their end of the banner but didn’t want to admit it was “hijacking”. It’s hard to say that you’re not going on the march because you can’t be arsed. It’s much easier to say that the whole event has been “hijacked” by some fringe group or other, and that your can’t-be-arsedness is in fact a stand on a point of moral principle. And since the SWP seemed to throw themselves at the head of every cause going – they practically invented banner advertising in its pre-digital phase – it was usually the SWP that provided the hijacking excuse.

Now I’m sure that the SWP have a pretty ruthless way with committee work, in which they resemble every other political organisation I ever heard of. But that in itself doesn’t really change anything worthwhile about the causes that the Trots supposedly hijack. It does provide an opportunity to give up on said causes, pleading Trot contamination. Well, whatever gets you a free afternoon. This way, you can also claim an ongoing, generalised commitment to Good Things without a boring, specific commitment to sitting in draughty rooms above pubs having meetings, stuffing envelopes, signing petitions and doing other stuff that makes you feel vaguely like a total loser. In fact you can have a good laugh about the Trots and their endless plots, fantastical resolutions and flatpack campaigning structure, taken from cause to cause, assembled and then packed away till the next outrage comes along.

And then came Iraq, which, as ever, the SWP threw themselves into, thinly revealed under the guise of the Stop the war Committee. At first it looked like the usual thing on a slightly bigger scale, maybe a bit more promising in terms of recruitment than before, but nothing to set the word on fire. Then it turned out that the Trots had – finally and at long last – hit the jackpot. They helped organise the biggest demonstration the UK had ever seen. They had the punters banging on the door and climbing through the windows.

Me, I felt rather pleased for them. After all, they’d put in a lot of the work on stuff like this over the years. And it seemed like an excellent joke on the complacent. What, that bunch of losers? Yep, that bunch of losers, with a big parade to lead for once.

I don’t think this goes the whole way to explaining the remarkable degree of enmity with which the pro-war left has conducted its business over the past couple of years or some of the hysterical nonsense currently doing the rounds in the East End - think of George Galloway stamping on a human face forever! - but I think it’s somewhere there back in the mix.

But I’m being too cynical. It’s not spite – it’s decency.

Comments

[Matthew]

think of George Galloway stamping on a human face forever!
Big laugh on this one!

I agree that most of the "decent left" is no more than rationalising their passive support of war they couldn't be bothered to argue against. WMD? WMD! Democracy? Democracy! Whatever you say...

And if the SWP are the only ones in the demo for one cause or another, surely that's the faults of all the moderates who don't come; fence-sitters, staying at home weighing pros-and-cons (well for 5 minutes anyway)...

[Meaders]

Splendid stuff.