Founding Conference Live Video Stream
Left Unity Founding Conference Saturday 30 November 2013 Live-Stream footage has now been uploaded to Youtube:
Playlist for:
Left Unity Conference – Morning Sesssions
Playlist for:
Left Unity Conference – Afternoon Sessions
Conference documentation is available in PDF and Word document formats.
Morning:
Afternoon:
If the embedded stream above is not working try on the Ustream site here:
14 comments
14 responses to “Founding Conference Live Video Stream”
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I’ve just forwarded your Live Video Stream link to a friend/comrade still undecided whether or not to attend. I said: ‘Have you decided whether or not to go? I’m still dithering – and I fear the event will feature same-old arguments, in this case wrangling between ‘Left’ and ‘Socialist’ platforms. Being able to watch it online inclines me towards not…’
We both live in South West so quite a hike and expense getting to London – so well done to you for providing this facility. It’s the way to go! better for people inclusiveness, also energy saving and better for planet.
Hi,This is great .I would have loved to have gone but.. unfortunately I had an accident.I suppose there are others who are in a similar situation.Well done.Thank you, and BEST WISHES
Poor woman I wouldn’t want to chair this for all the tea in China!
Great to see so many like-minded people speaking common sense. For those of us not able to attend, this Stream allows us to be with you in spirit. Let the Left unite !!
I payed to go but could not attend. Apologies. Annoyed live streaming keeps crashing
Just been diagnosed with Angina on Friday but been unwell for some weeks now.
Have all sorts of /orders & instructions, but it means I cannot go charging about any more regardless, and have to limit what I do. AS I’m also a Musician with a commitment to concert next weekend DEc 8th Wimbledon Community Symphony Orchestra I could not cancel a rehearsal this AM, and neither after that did I feel able or remotely capable of coming up to London for the Conference.
I do support left Unity as a political formation- I think its a vital necessity for the re alignment and re-positioning of Politics in the UK bringing it back into sanity.
In Unity
Rodney Kay- Kreizman
Hi there,
I’m posting the poem I did yesterday as requested. Great conference and good to get so many things sorted.
THERE’S A WAR ON
(for all those suffering with the Bedroom Tax)
There’s a war on, they say
we must all make sacrifices
tighten our belts
there’s not enough money to go round
so we must
tighten the public purse-strings
there’s a war on
– I thought that was all over and done.
We are all in this war together, they say,
we are fighting this war
but I am on the losing side
morale has plummeted
the troops are ill-equipped
our rations are low.
The Captain says,
he says it won’t last long
he says we’re all winning the war
but we don’t see him here on the front line
not here
And now we must all be evacuated
we must move
we’ve got too much space, they say,
too much living-room
an extra bedroom
we must evacuate
downsize
squeeze.
This is our home, we’ve lived here for years
but there’s a war on, now.
We tell them we need that room
but they say we cost too much
they want our money back
but they keep all theirs
their second homes
yes, there’s a war on, now.
And so they come with their long knives
and they slice up our benefits
and we don’t know what to do
we used to manage
but we can’t now.
We have to move
we have to cut back
we have to
put that light out
put that light out
put that light out
– don’t you know there’s a war on?
It was great to be at the conference with my mum and members from the Northampton branch…Whilst at home, my dad was watching #keepingusconnected
Great conference, great people, great opportunity to create social change.
As a member of the Left Unity I thought I would be attending the Founding Conference of a new radical party of the left. I hoped for a broad and positive view of the way forward. Finding the conference dominated by members or ex members of hard left parties was rather disappointing to say the least. The day was dominated by the tired traditional left wing language which I had hoped we had grown out of; ‘class war’, ‘class struggle’, ‘communism’, ‘smash the EDF’, ‘working class’ (copious use of that). Strident rants – same old, same old. The LU stated aims summed up what was needed. Ken Loach’s sensible and positive proposal that at this stage we shouldn’t take a decision on which of the political platforms to endorse should have been heeded. As it was, the quality of the debate in general continued to reflect old, tired and failed approaches to what I had hoped would be a new way forward. On the odd occasion there was a speaker or two who seemed to realise that people who want a new radical party of the left would be disappointed with what was going on.
Apart from those few, there appeared no awareness or acknowledgement by those attending the conference that there are a great many people, perhaps not in the working class and who may not be suffering themselves but who are genuinely just as appalled at the terrible conditions this government is inflicting on those without power. If the aims of LU are to be realised, then the old ways this conference was perpetuating will not bring about the real change which our society and the world in general need. Creativity and imagination are desperately needed if we are to defeat the coalition and New Labour. The hard left in the LU need to stop talking to itself and realise that there are the voters out in the wide world who they need to attract if we are ever to make the changes needed to bring fairness and justice to this country.
Ms. Richards appears to believe you can have a left-wing Socialist Party without mentioning the words “working class” or “class struggle.” At one time too people believed the earth was flat.
The ideas of Socialism have arisen out of the class nature of capitalist society, and only those with blindfolds on can deny the existence of an exploiting class – bourgeoisie – and an exploited class – working class.
The never ending conflict between these two major classes in society underpins and colours all political events and developments. The middle class can side with one or other of the two major classes in society, but it cannot be neutral.
A Socialist Party, worthy of the name, naturally allies itself with, and seeks to articulate the demands of, the working class because it is this class which not only constitutes the overwhelming majority in all capitalist societies, but also has enormous potential power in its hands to completely transform society in the interests all those suffering at the hands of the profit system – the unemployed, the small businessman or businesswoman, the old, the sick, the disabled.
Changing society is a serious business requiring the highest level of theoretical consciousness – Marxism – allied to a combative, uncompromising, and implacable Party and leadership. Wishful thinking isn’t enough.
Those with no stomach for the fight, or who shy away from the unavoidable rough and tumble of political struggle, should deliver their sermons on avoiding the use of class terminology – which amounts to denying the very existence of class struggle in society – to an appropriate religious forum. But as an immortal champion of class struggle, Karl Marx, correctly observed a very long time ago : “Religion is the opium of the masses.”
Thank you Jimmy for taking the time to respond. I don’t actually believe in god – I am an atheist.
Obviously I believe that there is an exploiting class who are determined not to give up any power; they use that power for their own benefit and to maintain their place in the hierarchy. However I don’t believe that the “highest level of theoretical consciousness – Marxism – allied to a combative, uncompromising, and implacable Party and leadership” is going to win the working class vote.
No matter how hard you work for the working class I don’t see the poor, the dispossessed, the low paid, pensioners unable to heat their houses rising up and flocking to the Marxist cause. I see the working class disillusioned with politics of the left and right. In truth the working class are now an atomised group, they no longer have their previous cohesion. There are few factories, mines and workplaces where the unions and working class collect together. A great many of those in work are desperate to keep their jobs and have had the fight knocked out of them by the free market; punitive employment laws and low pay. It’s struggle for survival and please believe me I have a huge amount of sympathy for those who struggle.
LU aspires to be a political party which means we have a political presence both locally and in Parliament and in order for that to happen we need to appeal to many, many voters. That means we may have to include those members of the middle and lower middle classes who are also appalled at what has and is happening to the working class. Marxists don’t have a monopoly on compassion.
Glad to hear you do not suffer from opium addiction. You are nonetheless extremely muddled, pessimistic, and lacking in understanding of the class nature of society. I recommend you study the Marxism you are so contemptuous about. It will bring much needed enlightenment.
Labour’s tail-enders always maintain that political power cannot be won without “appealing to the centre ground,” .i.e., the middle classes. This is their perennial excuse for ditching Socialism, and embracing the madhouse of the “free market economy.”
This approach says more about Labour’s brown-nosed “leaders” and their own satisfaction with the status quo than it does about the political and social realities of life in crisis ridden Britain.
The working class and large sections of the middle class are indeed utterly disenchanted and disillusioned with all politicians at present. But why is that? Precisely because they are “all the same” and have no serious answers to the crisis of capitalism that is eroding the living standards of the masses in work, and driving those out of work into abject penury.
We are subjected to tweedledee, tweedledum politics, with no way out of the crisis being offered to the struggling millions while the millionaires continue to enrich themselves.
The way to raise those struggling millions to their feet and enthuse them with genuine hope that things can be better is NOT by offering more of the same pro-capitalist gruel that is being rammed down their throats at present by all the mainstream parties. It is by offering them a radical Socialist alternative, and by sticking to that line of attack regardless of the inevitable torrent of abuse this will attract from the capitalist press and media, whose job it is to serve their big business masters and to pour scorn on ANY threat to the profit system.
The working class, i.e., those who have to sell their labour power to capitalist exploiters, are the overwhelming majority in this and every other modern capitalist country so the argument about having to dilute Socialist politics to attract middle class voters is not only politically mistaken, it is also arithmetically wrong too.
The middle classes too suffer at the hands of big business. They must be made to realise by a fighting, uncompromising, and implacable Socialist Party that it is in their interests too to join working class people in fighting for a Socialist transformation of society.
Seeking to appease the “middle ground” by toning down a Socialist critique of the madness of capitalism is politically disastrous because such an approach fails to satisfy the huge pent-up frustration of the working classes with the current intolerable economic and social situation, whilst also deceiving both working and middle class people that a long-term solution to their everyday problems can be extracted from a diseased and dying capitalist system.
Everywhere you look in Britain today – the NHS, Education, employment, living standards, poverty levels, the heating crisis for the old and poor – the capitalists and their politicians, be they Labour, Tory, or Liberal Democrat, and their prostituted press and media, are insisting there is “no alternative” and the masses must pay for the bankers and capitalists crisis, and insatiable lust for profit regardless of human needs.
There IS an alternative. A Socialist alternative. The working masses can be won to the banner of Socialism providing the Party and leadership offering a Socialist way out is courageous, bold, determined, clear-sighted, and implacable enough to see it through to the end.
The electoral success of the semi-fascist UKIP, which is capitalising on working and middle class disenchantment with the three mainstream parties, is both a warning and a pointer to the left in Britain. The masses will respond to a serious left-wing Socialist alternative providing Socialists have the political will, clarity, and guts to present one.
No surprise that the hard left was prominent. Not necessarily a big problem for Left Unity. Perhaps they can be re-educated and encouraged to use more moderate language.
Just watched the recorded livestream right through. Good conference. Well done to the organisers of the conference and to the Left Unity members.