'Entryism', or, 'The People are Voting'

After several years of indecision, I have finally joined a political party. It's something I've been threatening to do since the Conservatives won the 2010 general election, but in the last few months, something has changed. With the election contest open to equally balanced votes from all members (thank you, Ed Miliband!), the Labour party has inadvertently offered members of the public a motivation to become politically active, with a minimum of effort.

Basically: oops.

Because this is not what the Establishment is meant to be doing. Rousing ourselves to vote is about as much as ordinary people should be involved - the rest is for the hardcore, loyal campaigners, the old wealthy families, the influential businessmen and trade unions who make up the small body of acceptably political beings. For the rest of us, we're not supposed to do much beyond listening to the news and voting. We're cattle, to be chastised when we move with the wrong herd, when we tramp from one dry pasture to another. (Run with that metaphor. it's heavy handed but there are worse concerning political parties. Definitely worse.)

Labour's simple membership deal challenges that. It's simple, it's accessible, and it doesn't require further commitment - three pounds, one vote. (Or less if you go for youth or student membership, which is a pound a year). There are no tricks, no traps, few rules; ordinary, semi-politicised people like me have a change to help create the party we want to vote for.

And there's the problem. Because ordinary people aren't, well, really meant to choose and control national politics. I'm grateful that we live in a democratic country, but democracy is only a ballot-box process; it doesn't shape the sociological and historical trends which elect the candidates on the voting card, it doesn't remove the social and economic pressures which discourage poor and disadvantaged people from voting or otherwise being heard, and it doesn't create results which are mysteriously acceptable to everyone. 2010 demonstrated that democracy doesn't always provide answers; I think 2015 will demonstrate that even when it does, they're not always good ones. But if more people are engaged in politics, we can't help but move towards a more balanced system, more likely to provide answers that will work; answers that will reflect the needs of the people, because they come from close engagement with a wider, more engaged public.

But what if what the public wants unsettles the establishment? What if it rocks the boat, maybe knocks a few of the privileged into the water? Well... then it must be illegitimate, because nothing is meant to really change in politics. So an influx of the public supporting a leader who might bring that change can't be legitimate, and someone digs up a neologism from political theory: 'entryism'.

Before I started writing, I did a quick google to check my definitions. Here's one from the Oxford Dictionary:

'entryism': the infiltration of a political party by members of another group, with the intention of subverting its policies or objectives.

It's a pretty serious accusation. The intention, of course, is of undermining the Labour leadership race, and principally Jeremy Corbyn, with the secondary intention of convincing the country that support for socialist-leaning left-wing policy is far lower than the polls, news, campaigns and publicity surrounding Mr Corbyn make it seem - a for-sure sign that the right wing are actually concerned that, well, that the movement might be genuine.

But, for the moment, let's say that the accusation is true, say that people who aren't born and bred Labour supporters are registering to vote. The assumption in the accusation is that this is a negative thing; we're meant to stay in our tribes. The Conservatives want this because after the disastrous election, the natural Labour support base is pretty small, made up of centre-ground Labour members who will happily vote in a Blair-lite leader who can be knocked down repeatedly for the next five years. If people from outside this tribe vote, they could be facing a far bigger beast - say, someone with actually policies.

I'll give this a paragraph to itself: traditional voters give traditional results. Claiming 'entryism', even with some genuine suspicion that it is taking place, does not come from a desire to make politics fairer or cleaner: it comes from the fear that the Establishment will lose control and the masses start genuinely influencing the direction of this country. tl;dr: they're trying to keep us quiet. 

So let's look at the entryists. Some of them are people like me, who might have been nominal Labour supporters or floating left-wing voters; the £3 supporters membership and vote is natural expression of support, but doesn't have the same level of commitment as full membership. In a climate where more and more people are 'floating voters', this is both an appropriate way to engage suitable supports and a way for the Labour party to slowly increase their voter support base. Some of these people will have voted Labour before, others might have voted Liberal Democrat, Green, Independent or not at all. Their votes are legitimate, though, not because they have or have not voted labour in the past but because they have a real interest in voting Labour in the future.

The argument against their validity as supporters is that, coming from other parties, the Labour party of the future would have had its 'policies or objectives subverted' by these incoming voters, seeking to use Labour's established role in British politics to push through their own agendas. It might become the Green Party in red ties (oh, what a terrible thing that would be...).

Three counterpoints. Firstly, I do not believe that any of these incoming voters would care enough to vote unless they already had some sympathy with the Labour party and its' objectives. Secondly, this attitude comes from an idea that political parties should stick consistently to their ideological ground, whether or not time and changing populations have moved their original support base away from them. All of our main political parties have drifted left and right over their history; even if the Labour party is about to be pulled left by the democratic vote of potential voters, as Corbyn and his supporters hope, it will still be in ideological ground which has at some point been covered by the Labour party. Thirdly, the position of a political party ought to be determined by the modal average of its' members beliefs; incoming support not only increases the control group, but may help correct the sense of alienation between the public and politicians. Incoming supporters might move the party, but as concerns those who are genuinely interested in supporting Labour, their support can only make the party better attuned to where it ought to be.

Then there are the 'entryists' from other parties. They do, seemingly exist; the news reports vague but unspecific examples of their presence, and of course, the news is always accurate and unbiased. Their existence is being used to negate the reality of serious, Labour-supporting new members. Already in this increasingly wordy blogpost I've argued that this is a trick the establishment is playing in the hopes of undermining real, grassroot democracy. However, even where true - where right wing or far-left wing are voting in the hopes of undermining a change for the left to choose the best leader - I do not believe that it is so great a problem as it is made out to be. Firstly, the risk of being expelled from your own party if discovered is great enough to discourage those in positions of power; those with significant authority or connections risk a double-page spread in the Sun if caught encouraging others to register to vote. There are, probably, some lower-level supporters engaging in 'entryism'. Where this means opposition parties voting for the candidate they believe will best undermine the Labour party, this is problematic. However, where people are voting for a candidate closer to their own policies - say, a Terrifyingly Left Communist Type voting for Jeremy Corbyn - they too are exerting their democratic right to be represented. It is easy to forget that, even as party members, we are not just represented by our own party; we are represented by whoever has power and influence to change our lives, and I see nothing underhand in a Green member or a LibDem, for instance, voting for a leader who may have power over their lives as PM. The more people we can have represented by our political system, the better. In the end, this isn't a chance for a revolution: we're picking from pre-selected candidates, selected by people in the heart of the establishment. No matter who is elected, they have all been given the green flag by Labour itself. 

The real 'entryists' are not unregistered Labour supporters or sneaky Conservatives, though. They are the literal 'entryists' - the people making their entry into the world of politics for the first time, who are for the first time getting a chance to be heard. So what should the papers, the Tories, the Labour leadership candidates do? Shut up and listen.

A Politician Dies: Feeding Time for the Press

I found out that Margaret Thatcher, once Prime Minister of the UK, had died through Facebook.

Normally, I'm a bit of a news fanatic. I wake up to the sound of Radio 4 on my radio alarm clock. I read the Guardian and the BBC websites most days, buy the Guardian occasionally, and read Independent, Guardian and HuffPost articles through social media. (Although I have to admit to the odd glance at the Mail Online... c'mon, who doesn't?) Usually when something big happens, I see it trending on Twitter, and the first posts are usually links to breaking news articles, followed by the first few caustic comments, then the babble of opinions, jokes and arguments as the world wakes up to the news

Social media is a cruel world. On Facebook and Twitter, the words 'Margaret Thatcher has died...' are not followed by '...of a stroke at the age of 87' or '...in her bed at the Ritz, after a long struggle with dementia.' Aiming to impress our friends or followers, people rush to make idealogical statements. I think the first comment I saw on her passing was a Facebook status celebrating it, followed by one calling her a witch. News has never been just news, of course, and people have always and will always comment on it - as is only right - but this wasn't news. This was a death.

When a child is murdered, or a soldier dies in Afghanistan, the 'British public' falls silent. Twitter silences are grandiosely upheld, trolls spam the hundreds of 'RIP' pages, and the online community competes to offer its unwanted sympathy. Tributes to the innocent, respectable dead overflow into anger at their killers, grotesque expressions of violence and disgust, a pantomime of grief.

But when someone like Margaret Thatcher dies, the same people are celebrating. 'Ding dong, the witch is dead!' has been one particularly popular reference. 

If you've read anything on this blog before, it's a safe bet that you can guess I'm not a fan of conservative politics, Thatcher included. But as much as I disliked all she and her party stood for and did, I don't want to be one of those people gloating because, like all of us, Margaret Thatcher is mortal.

And fair enough, I'm not an expert on the eighties. I'm not old enough to remember her whilst she was still a powerful political figure in this country, and I don't have any personal or family grudges against her. To be honest, my political knowledge is self-taught, and although I'm not quite naive enough to think the 80's was all Billy Elliot, perhaps I would have stronger feelings if she'd been my prime minister. 

Yet even if she had been, or if it was someone like David Cameron - who I do know about and whose policies I dislike - who had died, I still wouldn't be celebrating. 

And it's not about the taboo of speaking ill of the dead which some journalists (especially on the left wing) seem to be using to justify their attacks on Margaret Thatcher. She has a family, who need time to grieve. No matter how much you dislike someone on a personal or political level, using their death for political leverage is, frankly, disgusting. If there's one reason for leaving well alone at this point, it should be consideration for her family and friends. But that's not something the British press are good at; they barge in on the families of murdered children, press their cameras and opinions into people's faces, invading privacy under the excuse of freedom of information. If the press was a person, they would be a hated social outsider, but there's nothing we, the public, seem to like better than our intrusive window into other people's lives, a window protected by Cameron's poor response to the results of the Leverson inquiry. 

And behind the hundreds of news articles, the press coverage, the disgust, outrage, genuine morning, ambitious political mourning, the recalling of parliament, the state funeral, is the ending of our human life. The loss of a mother, of a friend, of an ill, elderly woman. 

Forget the taboo of 'speaking ill of the dead'. What about speaking ill of the living? Broadchurch last week featured a storyline about a man hounded to his suicide by the press, but most importantly, the people around him. When difficult issues come up, responding is difficult, and so people throw insults. Of course we need to argue, to criticise, and to debate, but then it seems to slide downhill into personal insults and aggression.

I went to a left wing political rally at my university a few weeks ago. Owen Jones was the key speaker, as well as Natalie Bennet of the Green Party, and I'm afraid I went on the strength of their names and the slogan 'Against Austerity' rather than any really knowledge of what the rally was about. It was  interesting, and made me think. But one thing made me uncomfortable. Whilst making their points, speakers - both from the audience and the invited speakers - frequently made derogatory, even near-abusive remarks about their political opponents. Bennet slagged off the Labour party - prompting an angry response from a Labour party member present - the Socialist Workers were as aggressive as normal, and David Cameron was denounced with some pretty graphic language, to which the general response was 'Hear, hear' and banging on the lecture theatre desks. The only positive speaker of the night was Jones, who didn't descend to that level, and instead talked about hope for the future, and for that I respect him. 

I'm not writing this to criticise left wing politicians in particular - the right is just as bad. As it happens, I sympathised with most of the sentiments expressed that night, just not in the way they were expressed. Sometimes hard times call for hard words, but I refuse to accept abusive words, abusive actions. I think David Cameron's welfare plans are cruel, class-biased and uninformed, and I think my argument is stronger for saying that instead of just tweeting 'Cameron is a tosser'. He's not; he's a human, as fallible as the rest of us, with feelings, with a family. God cares about him, no matter what us left wing-loonies call him at rallies. 

How can we make the world better by celebrating someone's death? How can we possibly have an effective political system based on politicians belittling their opponents in the houses of Parliament, or a reliable press based on selling controversy? 

Writing this, I have the feeling that I'm not saying anything new. We've probably all had these kind of thoughts. But this kind of vile stuff is still out there. If I log onto Facebook now, I'll see pictures of shared images, telling me 'If U get offended by our flag, get the F*** out of our country!'. Or maybe this time it'll be a status telling me that the Pope is a homophobe who should be burnt alive. I've seen some stuff that is so vile, so logically inexplicable, so nasty, that it has made me laugh with shock. And this often comes from people I know, even people I consider to be friends. I won't like your status saying paedophiles should be tortured, that immigrants should be booted out, that somalians are ugly kmt, because you are better than that. Because I believe in more than just the fundamentality of human rights for everyone, deserving or not (although who are we to judge?) - I believe that every person is special, unique, wonderful, and yes, made by God. 

Perhaps sometimes we celebrate the death of someone we disliked because it feels like life has got its revenge on them, like we've won. In some cases, like when Osama bin Laden was killed, it is a genuine breath of relief for the world. But no matter how understandable dislike of a person is, no matter what political or social or other reasons make their death desirable, revelling in someone else's pain is inhuman. We have to be better then that. 

So on the day they bury Margaret Thatcher, no matter what my views on her as a person, or even on the public expense incurred by her burial, I, for one, will keep silent. 


J.R. 

Backdated books review: LOTR, Rattigan, Economics, Owen Jones, Rilke, and other such ramblings

August 2012

I've been rather lazy with this page. When I realised I couldn't set it up to do individual posts - as on the main page - I went off the idea a little. However, I have been re-inspired to write something at least up about what I've been reading. 

My main project for this summer was to read the Lord of the Rings. The sheer scale of Tolkien's world, with its millions of avid readers, its fanfiction, films and appendices, really intimidated me - I was convinced it would be a whole-summer reading marathon, trekking through interminable passages listing the genealogy of elves. For those interested, there are interminable passages listing the genealogy of elves (and humans, dwarves, the Numenorians etc), but the story itself isn't overwhelmingly difficult. I can understand that some people might not get into it, but I was gripped. For days I raced through the familiar journey, watching Frodo and Sam struggle across Ithilien and revelling in the sheer beauty of the story. It has a wonderful epic quality, a richness of language, which is unsurpassable. I read all the appendices and spent days discussing the lineage of the dwarves with my Dad, who is a long-time Tolkien lover, and fully intended to go and read all the additional books, but then I got distracted reading other things, so I am yet to discover the history of the Second Age  of Middle Earth and that sort of thing. Perhaps its better this way. When you read the Lord of the Rings, you realise you're just skimming the surface of Tolkien's life work, the culminating event in the glorious history of Middle Earth. It's only fair that it should take a lifetime to read it, and savour the pleasure. 

Since then I've read a variety of new things and old. I finally read a Terence Rattigan play, The Deep Blue Sea, which I'm still thinking about, and I'm reading 50 Economic Ideas You Really Need to Know, one economic idea at a time. The idea is to try and make myself sound more intelligent when I'm arguing with politics students. So far, I'm eight ideas in, and I can refer to things like the 'invisible hand of supply and demand' with alacrity. The '50 ideas' series are the most fantastic books for sounding smart at short notice. I read '50 Literature Ideas You Really Need To Know' just before my A-Level exam, and I think it helped. Maybe. I'm slightly terrified that when I start university next month everyone I meet will genuinely understand these things, so I'm trying to polish my few nuggets of knowledge in the brief time left before I start packing... I've also been re-reading Sherlock Holmes for relaxation, because like most literaturish students I'm in love with him. 

Strangely for me, I haven't yet finished my holiday reading books. It's a tradition in my household that we each buy a novel or two for holiday reading, and this year I asked for Owen Jones 'Chavs: The Demonization of the working classes' (non-fiction), Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, and The Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, also by Rilke. I'll start with the book of letters. Written to aspiring poet Franz Kappus in the early half of this century, this selection of ten letters from Rilke to Kappus is inspiring, uplifting, encouraging, and life affirming. I felt, as I'm sure most readers do, that Rilke was talking directly to me. For a manual on how to write, on God and on life, they are essential reading, and I can this book becoming part of my 'Desert Island Discs' kit - the book, after Shakespeare and the Bible, that I'd want beside me when I feel lonely or lost. 
This brings me on to the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. I haven't finished the Sonnets yet, so I can't really comment on them. I don't feel qualified to comment on anything Rilke created, so all I can say is this: read them. Read them slowly. Read them on buses, and then listen to the conversation the people behind you are having about them, having seen you reading them. (You have to turn the pages every now and then so they don't realise you're eavesdropping.) If you can, read a bilingual translation so you can appreciate the rhythms and rhyme scheme which are totally destroyed in translation. Go away and learn German then read them properly.* Love them. Do not worry too much about understanding them. 

I bought the wrong translation of the Elegies and I am contemplating going and buying another translation because I think the phrasing is slightly better. This is how obsessive and lit-geeky I feel about them. (If you're interested: I have the Stephen Mitchell translation, which is good, but I'd prefer the Martyn Crucefix translation. So. Sad.) 

I haven't finished Owen Jones Chavs yet. It merits slow reading. Discussing attitudes to the working class in Britain, it is a truly challenging book, taking on many common misconceptions, from social to statistical. It suggests links between cause and effect, prejudice and reason, and argues strongly for the case that that social ills are a symptom of, rather than the cause, of Cameron's 'Broken Britain'. As you might have guessed, it's an angry left-wing work, with plenty of reasoned criticism of the Conservative governments of the last few decades, especially Margaret Thatchers' government. Jones also levies a fair amount of criticism of the labour party under Tony Blair, and is careful to present a reasoned and valid case for all his arguments. It is the sort of book that could be questioned, but it's a useful springboard for a groundwork of understanding the problem of class in Britain today. I feel it could do with - or at least, I'd appreciate - some more political theory to support the statements it draws from case studies and statistics, but the point is that the book is popular politics, designed to be accessible to everyone, so the absence of theory is justified in its premise. A highly qualified political commentator, Jones presumably has argued through the more academic side of his arguments and is confident that he could, and I think often has, support them when required to. It is, in any case, a useful and informative book, and the authority of Jones' arguments has for me been confirmed by the instances where he speculates about the future and his speculations have been confirmed by events since the book was published around two years ago. He's another person I'd love to meet, as our views seem very similar. The only other thing I'd nitpick about the book is the poor organisation of his arguments. It's a little hypocritical of me to complain, given the rambling nature of most of my blog posts, but I feel the book could have done with a plan setting out a miniature argument and conclusion for each chapter and then sticking rigidly to it, like an academic essay. Perhaps the book was planned like this, but if so, it's been hidden cleverly so as to create a general impression with each chapter rather than a logical, joined-up-the-dots argument. If there's one thing Critical Thinking AS Level did for, it was to make me pedantic about being able to trace argument structures, and it's often quite hard to follow the thread in Chavs. 
Nevertheless, it's definitely worth reading. It might not leave be more informed, or better at social arguments, but it will leave me with a genuine desire to challenge class perceptions and my own inherent prejudices. I have to read it in small chunks because it makes me want to hit people who vote Conservative,** but underwritten in the text is a genuine desire to make the lives of others better, and educate the uneducated - the degree-holding classes...

Soonish I will (hopefully) have a reading list for University, so that'll probably take up most of my time. I'm going to have to learn to think again! :D 

Until then, I have two main things on the go. I'm going to read Julius Caesar, because I saw the RSC production on TV and really liked it, and I'm going to read Les Miserables. Today, on the 7th or 8th book of the first principle book of the story, one of the main characters was finally introduced...more on that when I get there.

Until then, keep reading :D I always like book suggestions so please send me some!
J.R. 


*This one is still a work in progress. 
**Which isn't nice. Please don't stop reading if you vote Conservative. I love you really.