‘There is a spectre haunting Britain and it’s called Nigel Farage’
Ken speaking at Saturday’s meeting
Ken Loach’s speech to the Left Uinty meeting on Saturday.
Well done to everybody for organising today and coming along. It’s brilliant that we’ve made this start. For some of us it’s a new challenge, for most of it’s the triumph of hope over experience. Some of us have been through left projects and have the scars on our back to show it. There has been an urgent need for a party of the left, a voice of the left, for as long as I can remember. Personally, I have been talking since the 1960s about it. I remember campaigning for Harold Wilson and the main conversation was – ‘How are we going to get him to move to the left?’
And of course he never did. And even before that an alternative was needed, as far back as Ramsey McDonald and the time of the general strike. The challenge has been there for a whole century. It’s a colossal task we’re undertaking and the odds are probably against it, but nevertheless we have got to give it a go.
One reason for giving is a go is there is a spectre haunting Britain and it’s called Nigel Farage. If you can imagine him being prime minister, then for god’s sake, let’s form a party to stop him. There is a huge amount of work to do. What brings us together is the opposition to austerity, it’s the mass unemployment, it’s the way every aspect of our civilised society is being stripped out of our world, whether it’s libraries, whether it’s facilities for the disabled, whether it’s council cuts. They’re reversing all the gains that have been made since 1945.
But, and this might be contentious and maybe it’s too early, but there is an important core political idea that sits at the heart of what I hope a new party will stand for. The way things are run now, this system will never provide a dignified life for us, never provide a safe future for our kids and will never take care of the environment. I could call this economic structure capitalism. We’ve talked about language earlier on and it’s a word that some of us might shrink from. But there have been two centuries of people fighting to refine our language so that we can talk precisely about the world we live in. So I hope you find that the word capitalism is acceptable in order to talk about the tasks ahead of us.
The core idea that I hope that sits of the heart of this party is the fact that we need a planned economy to get out of this mess. Of course, you can’t plan what you don’t control, so it needs to be an economy held in common, a democratically controlled economy. And we call that socialism. I hope that is acceptable to everybody here. That is a society where we are our brothers’ keeper, where we do look after each other and where we look after the sick and the old and where we give our kids a good education. That central concept is absolutely crucial.
The corollary of that is that this party is not a version of a social democratic party, this is not a party that thinks we should scramble around the crumbs as they fall off the table and it’s not a version of a party that tries to pull Miliband a little bit to the left. In my mind, we are not here to build a social democratic party.
But we have been through some bitter experiences and we need to learn from the past. We absolutely need to be a democratic party and I support the principle of one member, one vote. We’ve had groups trying to take projects over, we’ve had manipulations behind closed doors and we don’t want that again. Just like we don’t want one dominating group, we don’t want any charismatic leaders. I won’t name names now. It’s also very important that we turn out to all those campaigning groups who are leading the fights for the disabled, to save the NHS, against council cuts and every group that is suffering particularly at the moment. These are our natural allies. And while we might not speak the same language, we certainly are fighting the same fight and we need to turn outwards.
One more thing: We desperately need materials and analysis on the economy, on housing, the health service and I really hope the new committee can organise this. It’s a colossal project and it’s a long road ahead of us, but I really hope you’ll stick with it.
Thanks to the CPGB for transcribing the speech.
7 comments
7 responses to “‘There is a spectre haunting Britain and it’s called Nigel Farage’”
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Sounds like a job for Owen, if we are not naming names!
Dear All.
I don’t think you need to start at a beginning to get the info you seek
http://www.neweconomics.org/
Michelle
Compare and contrast:-
“We’ve had groups trying to take projects over, we’ve had manipulations behind closed doors and we don’t want that again.”
vs
“Thanks to the CPGB for transcribing the speech.”
Entryism wears many faces, some of them old familiar comrades?
These is very laudable but speaking as someone who has engaged with voters over the years, we know what you’re against but what are you for? And how are you going to achieve it?
Negative campaigning simply won’t work. People need HOPE.
I’d like to suggest a few policies if I may:
Number 1 above all: Banking and monetry reform – public banks to lend to co-ops and social enterprises at very low interest rates (nb. the Soviet Union had banks). The end of the privatisation of money. Currently private banks issue 97% of the money-supply. That means 97% of the money in circulation is interest bearing hence why it took 200 years for a trillion pounds to be ‘printed’ and 8 years for the next trillion. It is this debt-backed fiat which austerity is paying to prop up. So nationalise the money supply but NOT the private debts. Positive Money are excellent on this.
2, A redistribution of working time / reduction in the working week. This will give people more time to be free human beings and reduce unemployment. The New Economics Foundation is brilliant on this.
3, Use government created money to build the infrastructure we need and to ‘green’ the economy, investing in insulation, energy saving schemes and renewable energy.
4, Close the UK dependencies which act as tax havens.
5, End the City of London’s status as an onshore tax haven beyond the reach of parliament. In short, abolish it.
6, Free university education and free vocational training.
7, A national citizen’s income based on revenues for example from a national green power grid.
8, A serious appraisal of globalisation and what it means. The left does think this through properly. It is bad economics and terrible for the environment to export cheap consumer goods across the globe. Global regions should seek to become self-sufficient trading in surpluses only.
‘No cuts, no cuts, no cuts’ simply won’t engage enough people. Too many have been suckered by the media’s / establishment’s lies about the ‘need’ for austerity and where it really started (in the banking crash and not in public spending). They need at least alternatives as to what can be in place of cuts and hope for a better life in the future.
*The Left does NOT think this through properly.
“Negative campaigning simply won’t work. People need HOPE.”
Well said. But I’d add something to that. You can’t get a left-thinking government into power without votes. And what is pretty clear, is that not many people will be voting at the next general election. Labour is not an attractive prospect. Given the continuing neoliberal arrogance of Blair, the explicit madness of Gordon Brown and the lack of solid policy positions from Miliband, I don’t blame people for turning away from Labour. I certainly have. Cameroonian Conservatives are relying on the ‘usual suspects’ not voting for a win (or a continuation of a coalition steered by a conservative majority). They generally define those usual suspects as the poor, the uneducated and people under 25. A massive voting drive is needed. It really is. Sonething along the lines of the door-to-door campaign that took place not so long ago to inform people that were thinking of voting BNP, what the practical consequences of that might be. This time round, it has to be there to get people out to the polls, and remind them how many lives the coalition has ruined over the last few years. But…we need money. Lots and lots and lots of money. In the US, there are actually left-leaning billionaires who fund causes they are sympathetic to. If anybody can think of walking piggybanks like that here in the UK, then perhaps it’s time to start writing begging letters. We don’t have long until those polls open, after all…
Sun Yat Sen (early 20th century Chinese socialist theorist) formulated a version of a planned mixed economy held in common ownership which I think is really interesting. As a Marxist (or student of Marx) what I think could be very useful about it, is that he took care to present it in a format that could easily be communicated. This, plus the fact that not many on the left know about it, means it could be helpful in group activity where you want a more level playing field in terms of the background of participants. Have a look on Wikipedia.