The ego of Peter Tatchell

My most persisting memory of Peter Tatchell is from a counter-demonstration against the EDL, who at the height of their strength were trying to march past the East London Mosque. Tatchell's helpful contribution to this was to turn up with a placard denouncing 'far right Islamists'. I thought he was a twat.

Now, 'Islamist' is a worse than useless political description, but I no doubt agree with Tatchell that the people who I presume are his targets - fundamentalist, patriarchal, homophobes - need to be stopped. Politics, however, isn't simply about having the right ideas and saying the right thing. It's about doing this in a concrete political situations with due attention to context. In other words, it's about doing this as recognising that your fellow participants are human beings rather than robots. The importance of this is easy to forget if you are, say, a white man with ready access to the media.

If you're a member of a besieged community under immediate attack from fascists, on the other hand, you might wonder why on earth Tatchell felt the need to do something that might look like qualifying or nuancing his support for you. Perhaps you yourself have some ideas, on homosexuality say, that would fall within the remit of Tatchell's condemnation - plenty of people do (or all faiths and none). Or perhaps you have some sympathy for Islamist politics; given the slipperiness of the term it's easy enough. What might move you more towards Tatchell's type of politics would be a display of unconditional solidarity against the immediate threat, leading to conversations based on the relationship of trust this kind of solidarity can create. The intervention picture above would, if anything, push you in the other direction.

Fast forward to today. Jeremy Corbyn was giving a speech on violence against women. And then this happened:

Now, I think the left needs to be able to criticise Corbyn, and I think the cult of personality that some have for him actually undermines his leadership. I also think Corbyn has been naive on Syria - calling for 'diplomatic' responses, for instance (as though either Assad or Daesh would engage in meaningful diplomacy), and being insufficiently strong in his condemnation of Russian attacks in the region. This is the legacy of the dual influence of pacifism and Stalinism on the Labour left, and needs addressing. But once again, it's not simply a question of what one says, there remains the matters of how and where one one says it.

Questions might reasonably be asked about attacking Corbyn at such a vulnerable time, with his leadership under renewed attack in the wake of the Sleaford by-election result. Admittedly Green supporter Tatchell might not care too much about this: one way the heckling could have been reported is 'Politician heckled by member of rival party'. But above all else, whatever you have to say, is heckling a speech against violence against women the way to do it?

One thing the Corbyn leadership has undoubtedly been good at is giving prominence to issues that are forgotten by mainstream politics. Mental health is one example. Women's liberation is another. I don't know what he was saying about violence against women, since it hasn't been reported, nor whether I agree with it (or whether, for instance, his approach was carceral). But at least he was talking about the issue. Here was a politician for once talking about an issue that affects millions of lives worldwide. And it is being ignored because of Peter Tatchell.

A working hypothesis: what Peter Tatchell cares about is getting Peter Tatchell in the newspapers. And being a contrarian is a good way to do that. Hey, I'm even writing a blog about him.

A noninertial frame

Apparently MxV stands for 'momentum times velocity'. This is most likely a bad physics joke gone wrong. The more alarming thought is that somebody at Momentum head office thinks that it sounds down with the kids. People who believe this kind of thing also think that the kids in question say things like 'down with the kids'. We are at this point millimetres away from the organisational equivalent of dad dancing.

The internet you see is a double edged sword. At once a means of communication without parallel and fertile forum for political ideas and campaigns, and yet also a new occasion for surveillance, control, and - less seriously but more irritatingly - gimmicky naffness of the highest order, the technology needs to be handled with care in order to be an asset to an organisation.

It is perfectly in order then that Momentum's National Committee, meeting last week for the first time in too long, scrutinised and rejected the Standing Committee's plans for an on-line conference, with One Member One Vote, to be managed through the MxV system. Instead there will be a delegate conference, in line with the norms of the labour movement. This will allow genuine meaningful debate at a local level, with everyone getting their say in a way the respects them as an agent, able to contribute to arguments within an organisation, rather than simply a passive clicker of a mouse button. It will also prevent the centralisation and leadership control to which the more plebiscitary alternative would be prone, and avoids frustration by technological hiccup.

It was the right decision. National Committee member Laura Murray doesn't agree. Reported by the Guardian today she hands our opponents on the right the opportunity to repeat the tedious line about Trotskyist infiltrators. Quite incredibly, moreover, she claims that the Alliance for Workers Liberty - an organisation which doesn't have enough members to launch a coup in the Inverness branch of the Crewe Alexandra Supporters Club - is plotting to unseat Jon Lansman.

I happen to think that Jon Lansman's role within Momentum is quite unhealthy and inimical to the organisation doing everything it needs to do, particularly outside of London and amongst working class voters disillusioned with Labour. That's beside the point, however. What on earth incited this vitriol in Murray?

You'll need to read her blog. Leaving aside the unhelpful elision of OMOV with the internet-conference idea, there is an attempt to portray the division as being along generational and sectarian lines. Forward thinking, urbane, and inclusive young people wanted MxV. Conservative factional elderly Trotskyists wanted a delegate conference. As far as the debate in Momentum goes, this is nonsense. Not being based in London, I have the privilege of being involved in an incredibly active, diverse, and energetic local Momentum group with a wide age-span. It overwhelmingly backed a delegate conference, as did our regional representatives. This was because people, having experienced grassroots democracy, being involved in the labour movement, and listening to the arguments were not convinced by the Momentum leadership's case for MxV.

Partly, I think Laura's viewpoint is distorted by her being London-based. I can well imagine that London Momentum meetings feel more like a far-left talking shop than anything useful. But London bias is indicative of a deeper problem that goes to the heart of the current problems in Momentum. It can be seen in the, uncannily Blair-like, assumption that the leadership know what 'people', especially 'young people', want. The upset at the weekend's vote reflects a professionalised polite elite whose role in the organisation has been scuppered. It has this in common with some recent outbursts within the Labour Party.

Momentum will remain relevant and interesting to the extent that it is a genuine grassroots movement run by its members, rather than by a London based leadership of political hacks. That leadership not getting things its own way over conference is a welcome sign. The priorities now are twofold: making sure that conference defends and extends democracy within the organisation, and - much more importantly - building Momentum at local levels.

For the record, momentum times velocity equals twice kinetic energy. That might win you a pub quiz one day.

Defending repetitive beats

This weekend 6Music have been celebrating twenty years of rave. I do not like rave music. It took me a couple of decades to admit this to myself. You see I was politicised by the Major government's Criminal Justice Act. I'd been brought up in a left-wing family, had the right kind of ideas about things and had read the Usborne Guide To Politics. But the first time I did anything political was in response to the then Criminal Justice Bill.

In part this was because my then girlfriend was a bit of a hippy and cared deeply about hunt sabbing and roads protests, both threatened by the Act. Eager to impress, I followed her to meetings and lapped up leaflets condemning governmental attacks on things I dimly understood. Quite apart from this youthful romance, however, my own indignation was fired by the news that the Bill would effectively ban rave parties. I had no idea what a rave party was, but they sounded fun, and I was not going to allow the Tories to stop them.

As it turns out, I feel about rave music much as I do about repeatedly banging my head against a block of concrete. Add this to the list of my contrarian views about the music of the period. Yet this really isn't that important. There are plenty of things that I don't like, from Coldplay through to those disappointing wrapped up chocolate biscuits you get in Christmas assortment packs; I don't think the state should ban them. Not even Coldplay.

So I'm proud of my inept teenage activism. The CJA was a nasty, repressive piece of legislation, targeting not only partygoers, but protesters and travellers. It strengthened police powers - the power of arbitrary stop and search, racist in effect and too often in motivation, and the power to retain intimate body samples. For all the campaign against it was a failure, it brought together a wide range of people - from the music industry to grassroots campaigns, environmentalists, travellers' rights groups, and the organised left. Those at the present time who talk about transforming Corbyn's Labour into a social movement could learn a lot from it.