Corbyn and the stump speech in the modern era

Jeremy Corbyn has adopted a style of  speaking I hadn't heard since I worked for Claude Ryan in Quebec. Back then during a by election campaign in a vast rural constituency, Mr. Ryan  then  leader of the provincial Liberal Party would open his stump speech with the following bit... "This is the 23rd time I have  made this speech".  The number  would increase  each time of  course, but the implication was clear, he was required to make  his message personally to each crowd  as he could not depend on the local media and radio in rural Quebec to publish his every utterance in time to reach the population of Argenteuil county.

2000 listen in Sunderland

There were of course extenuating circumstances. The area the size of  half of England was considered sparsely populated and not worthy of it's own daily media outlet and the radio was all about sound bites. So why does Corbyn, in a country with a modern rolling news station on telly and many national papers that should be interested in at least some of what he has to say, opening his rallies with the words... "This is the 25th rally I have spoken at  since..." followed by the usual  litany we  can  recite by heart. Anti austerity, defence of workers right to collective bargaining, right to organise, nationalisation of the rail and  bringing  buses under  council control, saving the NHS, housing, mental health; mixed with the  local policy issues that crop up in various locations. Surely clear signs that some of us get it but obviously not most people using the traditional media, apparently. 

I can hear you shouting  all sorts of un comradely things about Auntie Beeb and the Murdoch press, but I won't repeat them here as I'm taking the high road. I won't for example accuse BBC news of blatant propaganda and fudging of  numbers and images, that would never be on. Furthermore it would be unwise of me to intimate the intentions of credible news organs like daily politics and the mainstream dailies in their choice of sources  and  front page stories, also likely to get me in trouble. Instead I will simply say the truth.

The selfie

The news media in general and the BBC especially have ignored to their level best on the national supper  hour and  rolling news, the tour. Corbyn and  his team  could be selling out every o2 arena in the land  and  doing the best impression of  Glastonbury complete with mosh pits and muddy fields and it would still not be news. Who cares what  thousands of  supporters in each town think? During the private volunteers meeting in Gateshead council chamber, Corbyn had  at that time done  20 rallies  and  estimated that to the end of the leadership run, he'd have spoken at another forty such rallies in public squares and parks, as venues these days seem to be too expensive ( football stadia and concert arenas) or just  plain too small. So let's do the maths here.  20+40=60.  Yes comrades, that's at least 60 x minimum average of 2000 people per rally plus the extra 8,000 from Liverpool. In other words, 200,000 supporters minimum, will have heard him speak. That's more than the entire membership of the Tory party. Still less than a quarter of the membership of the Labour party a few weeks  ago, when it stood at least 500,000.

1500 Geordies march in support of the leader earlier last month.

This  is the sort of stubborn resistance we are faced with. The sort of clear unvarnished agenda that  takes  months  not weeks or  days to plan against the democratically elected leader of the Labour party.

I was told by a friend of  mine who'd spoken to Jeremy not too long  ago, it  could  have  been at the Miner's Gala even, that it was the rallies  last  year that put the fire in Corbyn's belly. To be precise, We had  been  working hard to set up a meeting in  Newcastle last year, Middlesbrough had been hastily added to the tour and the Town Hall at  mid day was the venue in a place known to be hostile to Corbyn in 2015. When Jeremy was greeted  by a packed hall on short notice in  the middle of Blairite country, he knew he could win. When he showed up inside the Tyneside Opera house after addressing a crowd of  close to 1300 people outside, he was greeted by a heaving audience full to the rafters who'd patiently waited for him, waited  for his message, for his signal that our Labour Party would never again be the same; he was blown away.

Speaking to the packed house  at the Tyne Opera House 2015

Newcastle 2015 addressing the first  big crowd after that London meeting

Today as  he speaks, apparently at  no fewer than two  maybe three rallies, we the true progressive wing of Labour are the wind  beneath his wings. Corbyn is so happy now he'd  rather dance than worry about the big bad traditional press. Some have likened us to :

Core Labour workers who will be on the doorstep and create policy.

Trots - Nazis - Moonies - a fan club - rabble -Thugs -Bullies

We are none of those things, we are people who have a clear vision and programme that will be carried out by one man and his team of present and future MPs, councillors and party officers. We are Momentum, We are the fresh blood that this party and  country needed for decades. I was not aware until a few few days ago,  mostly due I will admit to the torrent of negative stories, that the Labour party of the UK is the biggest socialist party in Europe and  growing bigger every week. If that is failure we are spectacularly going down the pan. It's  been repeated elsewhere, but as John McDonnell said  during  his visit to Newcastle, it's not Corbyn the establishment fears, it's us, the 99% who are refusing to fall back into quiet submission. The agenda is ours to write and soon the the narrative even in the mainstream will be required to give under the sheer weight of evidence out there.

Ian Mearns " This MPs not terrified, cos Corbyn's on fire!"

What can we do to make this come to pass faster? Be the media. Spread the links in social media, pressure the local broadcasters and press to recognise the mass movement Jeremy Corbyn merely is the head of.  Join your local Labour Party and Momentum groups. Participate in any way you can  no matter how limited. Come the general election we'll need every foot soldier, policy wonk, fundraiser, phone banker, door knocker, organiser and CANDIDATE we  can lay hands on. This is a movement that will be written about for decades and studied for much longer. I would love if that movement was to culminate in the election of  the first of a string of Governments Bevan would be  proud to vote for.

 The fact that this movement is so strong and policy based, is testament that we are  not Jeremy so much as He is US. The social movement that he represents is the acorn planted by Occupy in 2011 when people decided the status quo no longer good enough. The Corbyn wave is Occupy all grown up and now entering active practical politics through the route of Peoples Assembly, Momentum, trade unions and the Greens. The energy and  push  for change from within and  without the Labour Party are there and not going away. I'm fairly sure Corbyn will win resoundingly and push on...

Corbyn busts a move in Sunderland

Listening in Gateshead

However, before we can talk future elections we need to insure that our leader remains leader despite the dirtiest campaign I have had the displeasure of witnessing and  enduring  in my political life. Go to phone banks to get the vote out, go to rallies to support the leader, be active in local campaign NOW, become the beating heart of your bit of the Labour Party. If enough of us do this to the end  and beyond, we will like the ants in the song... knock over the rubber tree plants.  Sounds revolutionary  doesn't it? That's because it is  brothers and  sisters, it is the very revolution some of us have waited all our  lives for and  others are lucky to be there at the right place and time. WE will suffer every sling and arrow of outrageous fortune, including the most recent Victoria Derbyshire omnishambles of a failed stitch up,  to get to the end of this and there waving in the breeze, a bit tattered, a bit torn  but  intact, will be our flag and the man who holds that banner high in victory. 

I'll stop now  before we have to start singing about our martyred dead ... :-)

The far right, UKIP and why we should vote in the European elections

May 22nd Europe will vote, even the bit of Europe that isn't on the continent, yes, by that I mean the UK.  What's interesting is that until about last week I thought UKIP and Nigel Farage were going to be the embarrassing winners of  a lightly attended vote thus sticking them further and more firmly on the front pages of every newspaper in the land. Turns out however that in the last few days the shine has come off of the UKIP penny, and that by their own hand.

By making it known that the money guy paying for the ads won't let the party craft the message and accepting the message this man is putting out, UKIP acknowledge once and for all they are out and out racists. No better than the BNP, The National Front and the EDL. It gets worse for them and better for us, suddenly, it would appear, parties including the Lib Dems and Labour are growing a spine, saying nice things about immigrants, talking about the real issues  of  a level labour playing field and the unchecked power of big business. The deflection of immigration and other racial issues that seemed to seep into the mainstream with the disgraceful apology by Gordon Brown for having called a racist ,  shock..... Racist, and seemed to have slipped in the  way of reasoned discussion is now giving way to a more cautious and careful approach that has in recent days broken into a full blown defence of the previously indefensible. Faced with a choice of allowing the further radicalisation of the British electorate  or fighting back, the instinct seems to finally show the revulsion of having to compete for the same handful of racist bigots who are even now tearing the Tory party to pieces. In point of fact, the rise of UKIP is directly tied to the moment the mainstream parties abandoned the moral high ground and egged on Farage and his goons in the hope of hurting the left or hurting the right. All three parties are guilty of  not seeing the danger earlier. Like the German power brokers who thought they could harness Hitler in the hope he would stop the left, they learned, tho not fast enough, that there was no holding him back once they had given him the room to grow and flourish. Are Nigel Farage and UKIP, Hitler and his Nazis? God no, but only because most of us like to think that no one would actually vote for these barking mad pedlars of fear. So far so good.

For an interesting read.... Is UKIP a party of  bigots from the New Statesman.

Links with European far-right parties ( from the article cited above)

Ukip is part of the group Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD). The group includes representatives of the Danish People’s Party, the True Finns Party, the Dutch SGP and the infamous Italian Lega Nord – all of them far-right. Nigel Farage is co-President of the group along with Lega Nord’s Francesco Speroni, who described multiple murderer Anders Breivik as someone whose “ideas are in defence of western civilisation."

That said, I don't for a second think that a person who is a racist and ignorant of the general easily verifiable truth out there will stop being a racist in a sudden flash of remorse; that would be too Moffat  love conquers all, but I do think that people who might have bought into the surface bile and lies and might have voted UKIP now won't. They will either stay at home or vote for parties that aren't trying to ignite a race war in the streets of Britain. What with Russia, Ukraine and fuel prices showing conclusively that we not only need the EU to stop WW3 but we need it to establish a fair social and economic balance across all of Europe. If enough rational people vote on May 22nd, the rise of the far right will not be contributed to by voters in the UK, it may even be given a solid kick in the chops by greens, socialists and even fiscal conservatives across Europe who have no problem with gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims, Romanians or Polish plumbers.

The sickening tone of the far right message regardless of where it comes from is the single greatest cause of concern in Europe today, and if isn't, it should be. The rise of the far right and it's reach into the very heart of the discussion of what it means to be European and where we should go as a block,  has so intruded on the debate, it has derailed the very real important questions that need asking even now. Is it necessary to re-arm the constituent states in order to protect ourselves from Russian hunger? Can we create a larger fairer marketplace for labour and manufacturing to thrive where even now some governments would prefer to keep stifling protectionist measures up. What ever happened to the green agenda? Like all the other issues, it's been sidetracked by apologists, climate change deniers and Eurosceptics intent on showing how bad the EU is by trying to break it.

As long as the right continues to pillory immigrants, we continue to loose sight of things like  recently released figures  showing an increasingly aged population with a shrinking pool of young people in employment also being asked to care for the elderly. Any nation state that permits immigrants, will have an easy pool of working tax payers to cushion this blow, those that wish to remain closed off will find not only that the ill equipped poorly trained local labour force is not willing to take up certain jobs but is also simply not trained to.  If you want your society to collapse, by all means, stop immigration.

And if that weren't enough.... the jobs these immigrants are going to steal have been created by a ratio of 6 out of 7 by other immigrants. In my time in North America and here in the UK I have always been aware of a certain over representation of ethnics and immigrants in the riskier parts of the economy. These people, these dangerous people, are  the ones who have been creating jobs for decades and will continue to do so. And yet, we see the ignorant and the closed minded politics of the far right in every corner of Europe scoring points on the backs of Gypsies, Jews, Turks, Africans and Muslims amongst many other selected targets. How can these people get on with life and what they do best when around every corner there are parties who's principle aim is to come to power by solving the economic woes of a country by advocating the 4th Reich?

Most recently has the acceptability of anti-Semitism, which had been on the wane overall and had in fact all but disappeared in some places, become so strong that a group of  Russian sponsored activists thought it was ok to pass out a pamphlet that appeared to officially demand that Jews in the Donetsk region register or leave. In Hungary an anti semetic and anti muslim party is the 3rd largest in Parliament, Nordic democracies long known for tolerance and social activism are lurching to the right with Muslims first and foremost in the line of fire, but hardly exclusively.

Mosley black shirts

In the 1930's, Europe from the streets of London to the Black sea, was awash with strong  read brutal regimes and parties that espoused a view of the world that we thought had died with the extinguishing of the last oven in the last German concentration camp in 1945. Alas, even the upheavals and soul searching of the 60's and 70's has not extinguished the appeal of the far right. As a child who's own father's family was split between fascist and socialist, I chose to insure in the most absolute way that never again would a Nazi, Fascist or other such scum be allowed to flourish let alone come to power. I have a bookshelf full of books  about rebuilding entire nations dating from the post war period, all of them demonstrating the incredible waste of resources and the destruction of cultural, commercial and agricultural capacity that took in some cases  over a decade to recover  and some cases never, as for the human toll, not including military deaths and collateral damage to civilians, over 12 million died in the camps that we know of .  Do we really want to go through that all over again?

So with  the next great European war simmering away on the front burner in Ukraine, Putin being hailed by the right as a strong leader who should be admired and an economic crisis hanging over the Eurozone and Europe over all, what are the actual issues that should be exorcising people today? I'm glad you asked.  How about getting on with the job of finding a new source of gas and oil other than Russia till we find new greener ways to keep warm, cook and build things. Extending the benefits of justice to every corner of the EU, keeping open a road and rail system that hasn't been this free and easy to use since the start of WW 1.  Creating a better Euro or finding another way to insure the economies of Europe already interlincked one way or the other don't fall victim to the poor judgement of one country or one sector. How about training people to participate in labour intensive lucrative industrial sectors that would make multiple parts of Europe, World leaders in industries that will not fade and die as quickly as the dot com bubble or the building boom fuelled by reckless bankers who are still asking for double bonuses and want us to pay for their mistakes.

Of course to do that, European leaders and people themselves need to admit that some of this won't be easy, and issues like food security have to take into account reality and  be less driven  by the wide eyes innocence of the 70's and 80's. Issues like regional security will include a component of choosing to stop pretending that Russia under Putin is in any hurry to become part of the Union or to be democratic. Energy security which has become more pressing since the ongoing problems in Ukraine, recently hotted up, is far from resolved. There is a school of thought that feels regulatory powers are used with little regard to reality or regional circumstances. A more focussed approach by politicians and technocrats can find the solutions if the process is not distracted by growing numbers of far right protest parties who's only goal appears to be sabotage.

So what's so bad about having a few clown fish from every nation sitting in Strasbourg? Surely these far from rational people are not harming the greater dream of an integrated Europe? Well maybe they are. Every time deputations like those of UKIP do not vote on key issues or worse vote against what even the most Eurosceptic Tory would find reasonable , even important, they help create a block of hate that gives oxygen to the views of parties  like Golden Dawn, Jobbik and many others. Despite the lack of  awareness the average British voter has regarding The EU or because of it, small numbers of determined nutters are taking the jobs of what should be Tory, Labour, Lib Dem and Green MEPs . The voice of Britain in Europe is the sound of screeching hyenas baying at the moon and waving their toy plastic swords in defence of the fantasy white world that never existed. In their haste to show just how useless the European Parliament is, UKIP were 6 among the 14 to vote against a ban on elephant ivory poaching.  Just what did the elephants ever do to UKIP ? There isn't a day that doesn't go by where yet another elected UKIP swivel eyed loon pops his or her head over the ramparts for a shot at everything the Daily Mail hates and a few things even the Daily Mail have yet to hate.

And so what is it that will convince the great British electorate that what happens in Europe, even far off Kiev with whom the UK have 5 iron clad treaties of cooperation and defence, is as important to them as Paris, London or Manchester?  How will the suffering and deaths of people in Donetsk, the consequent ripples of worry all through Central Europe from Warsaw to Vienna, the utter misery of being Greek or Spanish in austerity finally convince Britons it has something to do with them? I would like to think they care now, but I know most of them are oblivious to events further than their doorstep and couldn't even name their own MP let alone consider what occurs in Brussels as significant to them. However there will come a time when the specific events in the Ukraine and the need for a united Pan European reaction to Putin and his empire will make it all very close to home. Will it take the near break out of WW3? Will it take the tripling of gas and oil prices? Will it perhaps come when the average Briton sees the rest of Europe as just another place where they can, like anybody else, go forth and seek work, their own back yard, the next county over.  Maybe then . At some point the people of Britain will take as seriously European elections as they do the ones to Westminster, till that day we need to keep working at getting the numbers up steadily in order to insure that come election night, we won't be sending any more UKIP etc... fruitcakes to  Brussels than we absolutely have to.

 I'll be voting Labour as they are part of the Socialist block (S & D), their platform is one  I find practical to apply, creating a world closer to my liking. I have chosen a path that is not hatred and isolation, I have chosen a path that promises a solution to the  challenges facing the greater society we live in. I urge you to explore the blocks on your own and see where you fit in. Be part of the dialogue that is Europe.

If you have not yet registered for the election , you have till May 6th.... don't delay.