Much coverage of the twentieth anniversary of the demise of a small-circulation Communist intellectual magazine.
Deservedly so.
Eurocommunism and the related New Left tendencies now define the limits of acceptable political opinion in this country, and have in fact done so for most of those 20 years. New Labour was entirely an expression of those tendencies, and New Labour now defines both Coalition parties, as well as the small and embittered but very noisy Blairite rump still technically within the Labour Party because you can do pretty much anything in London and not be expelled.
But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If the Left can be redefined in terms of the feminist and homosexualist movements (barely 20 years old in 1991, if that in the latter case), or the views of black people if they happen to be the wildly untypical Stuart Hall, or the views of ecowarriors, or what have you, then why not in terms of the views of trade unionists, or the views of co-operators and other mutualists, or the views of working-class patriots, or the views of orthodox Catholics, or the views of attendees at the black churches?
Or why not in terms of the views of the Established Church's bishops of vast rural dioceses as well as urban ones whose deprivation must be apparent from even the most illustrious Senior Common Room or magazine office? By no means all of those bishops, whether rural or urban, are remotely on the liberal wing of the Church of England.
A generation on, what was once the New Left thinks that the crisis in its approach is that of what to do with or about the Muslims. But the Muslims are the least of these people's worries.
Postmodernism is not going to eat itself. Rather, it is we who have already added salt and pepper, and picked up our knives and forks. In the coming Miliband and Umunna Era, we fully intend to tuck in.
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Also the coming Glasman and Lindsay Era.
ReplyDeleteCan’t see what what Ed Miliband and his famously relaxed attitude to marriage and parental legitimacy has got to do with all this Blue Labour stuff.
ReplyDeleteI’m sure all will be revealed in the fullness of time.
See http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2011/11/british-obama.html
ReplyDeleteIt is not far off 20 years since Peter Hitchens brought out The Abolition of Britain. Your next book is universally expected to attract the sort of attention from left to right not seen since then. Why is the collection in response, anticipated almost as eagerly, being written by your mates and edited by one of your much younger protégés? What are you afraid of?
ReplyDeleteNothing.
ReplyDeleteNor is he any "protégé" of mine.
The responses book is his project, not mine. If the people from whom you take your moniker want to do their own, then I am not stopping them. I might even get a freelance commission somewhere to review it.
I read that link and I still don’t get it. Are you saying that Ed Miliband will sign up to a socially conservative agenda that he doesn’t really believe in if it will get him into Downing Street? Sounds like slippery opportunism to me. It certainly doesn’t bode well for a movement which would like to pride itself on its moral rectitude.
ReplyDeleteI am saying that he is open to what the socially conservative tendencies within and around the Labour Movement have to say. Blair wasn't, Brown wasn't really allowed to be, David Miliband isn't remotely. Ed Miliband is no John Smith, but ven so.
ReplyDelete