Labour Party and the Unions

[Jim heartfield]

In message <v02130500630bd5d0fa89@[128.112.71.23]>, Rakesh Bhandari
<bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> writes
>
>And Jim, so the left should be too tough to call for nationalisation,
>welfare or anti racism (no wearing swastikas is really the heroic act)? 

Nationalisation and welfarist socialism were not anti-racist, but
racist. Identification with the British state was central to the
chauvinism that influenced British Labour. At hospitals and benefit
offices the first question is always, where's your passport? The
National Coal Board - with the connivance of the National Union of
Miners - kept immigrant labour out of the mines.

>And
>what has LM provided instead? 

Rather more than the Rakesh Bhandari party.


> You know the LM positions: learn how to fly a plane--just do it!

I'm sorry, I missed that article. 

> What LM (that minority of
>the minority) figured is that to survive in the high times of bourgeois
>individualism, the left had to break with socialism, solidarity and the
>oppressed, right?

When 'socialism' meant immigration controls, military occupation of
northern Ireland, anti-gay legislation the yes, you're right LM did
break with socialism. And when 'solidarity' meant loyalty to the British
state, 'last in first out', and import controls then yes LM wanted no
part with such solidarity. As for the oppressed, you are mistaken if you
ever thought that British Labour had any identification with the
oppressed. LM by contrast has consistently opposed British imperialism
and repression at home.
-- 
Jim heartfield