The same cannot be said for the appointment of Phil Woolas as a Shadow Home Office Minister.

Let’s refresh our memories about just how odious Phil Woolas is. He is currently awaiting the verdict of the first court case in generations regarding an election; after narrowly beating his Lib Dem opponent, said opponent filed complaints regarding several leaflets that former Immigration Minister Woolas had published. Emails between Woolas’ campaign team also surfaced:

Mr [Joseph] Fitzpatrick [Woolas' election agent] emailed Steven Green, the MP’s campaign adviser, to say: “Things are not going as well as I had hoped … we need to think about our first attack leaflet”.

He proposed publishing a newspaper-style mailshot, called The Saddleworth and Oldham Examiner, with the alleged main aim of persuading Tory voters, many of whom disliked the fact that the Conservative candidate was Muslim, to vote Labour rather than switching to the Lib Dems.

“Tory voters are talking of voting Lib Dem,” wrote Mr Fitzpatrick in an email to Mr Green on April 25. “If we can convince them that they are being used by the Moslems it may save [Woolas] and the more we can damage Elwyn the easier it will be to stop the Tories from voting for him.”

A twin-track approach was allegedly adopted: Mr Watkins [the Lib Dem candidate] would be portrayed as a friend of Islamic extremists, while Mr Woolas would be painted as a fearless opponent of militants. Mr Fitzpatrick suggested to Mr Green: “We need to go strong on the militant Moslem angle,” and suggested the headline: “Militant Moslems target Woolas.” This would send out a message, he suggested, that Muslim extremists wanted to “take down” Mr Woolas for standing up to them.

“Like it!” replied Mr Green in another email. “It’s going to be hard to write to minimise offence to some though.”

Mr Fitzpatrick, however, was uncompromising. “We need … to explain to the white community how the Asians will take him out … If we don’t get the white vote angry he’s gone.”

Regardless of the outcome of the case, and whether Woolas can get off in legal terms, many, including a sizeable chunk of Labour supporters, have called for him to have the whip withdrawn by the party. It is therefore even more remarkable that he has been appointed a junior Shadow Minister.

Politicalbetting.com speculate that Ed Miliband may have some insider information on the upcoming outcome of the Woolas case (which would be outrageous in and of itself). But what no-one seems to be asking is the simplest question – what on earth does Ed get out of this appointment? Why is he taking such a risk – appointing someone so notorious, who could soon be kicked out of parliament by the courts – when there are no discernible benefits?

Whatever the answer, one thing can be beyond doubt – Ed Miliband cannot be unaware of what Woolas has said and done. His decision to appoint Woolas therefore suggests that he endorses Woolas’ views as part of his ‘new generation’ – and that should be another wake-up call to the Left about how ‘Red’ Ed really is.

Diane Abbott was surely the Left’s sole representative – perhaps not the most inspiring figure, but better than the rest on offer. She also represents the hopes of many black members and women in the party. This makes her defeat doubly disappointing.

Many others have already written about how Ed’s choices add up to a triumph of strategy over principle; and it certainly seems that Ed has worked extremely hard to appease the Blairites, washed-up Brownites and various other power groupings within Labour, not to mention groups he was obviously trying to neutralise externally, like the media. There is no doubt that similar thoughts were in the various heads of PLP members when voting, with MPs spreading their preferences as thinly as possible in order to present a united front.

This says something extremely illuminating about the evermore nebulous Labour Left – of all the groups everyone has tried to please in the spirit of ‘party unity’, the Left haven’t figure at all.

This partly shows how determinedly anti-Leftist most Labour MPs now are – but, more worryingly, it does seem to suggest that the Labour Left are considered so insignificant as a force within the party that they are not even worth the trouble of being thrown a token Shadow Cabinet seat.

That ‘lurch to the left’ is looking even more unlikely – and, with a thoroughly right-wing Blairite as Shadow Chancellor, anyone who still thinks Labour can front a progressive campaign against cuts is unimaginably deluded.

Click here for more…

Tasked with writing the first post for a new blog called ‘Political Dynamite’, I immediately tried to think of the most explosive, earth-shattering campaigning idea I had ever had, probably hatched somewhere between the gym, the bus and the shower. In fact, I think most progressives struggle over and over, often throughout their lives, with the over-arching question of how change is brought about in society, constantly second-guessing themselves, changing their minds or just giving up altogether.

Many have grappled with the ‘reformists’ vs ‘revolutionaries’ debate, and come out the other side disillusioned, disappointed and disinterested. Should we engage in existing political and social structures and try to bring about gradual change, or build entirely different configurations in order to overthrow those same structures? It’s not a bad impulse that we on the left instinctively have – to ask the biggest questions – but, like physicists searching for a ‘theory of everything’, there are many false starts along the way.

Some days I wake up thinking that changing the system from within is the only way to bring a greater mass of people along for the ride; on other days, usually after watching Question Time, I wonder if there is any point even contemplating reformism, and start calculating how to assassinate the entire world elite in one high octane sniper spree. Neither of these thoughts is particularly useful.

The problem is that the seemingly ever-growing dichotomy between ‘reformist’ and ‘revolutionary’ is completely fabricated. It is only useful to dominant groups of ‘reformists’ and ‘revolutionaries’ to keep this illusion going, largely for recruitment purposes.

Simply put, the idea that there is a be all and end all choice – between struggling for gradual improvements within existing society, while simultaneously envisaging a completely different one – is harming attempts to do either.

Both ‘reformists’ and ‘revolutionaries’ are actually more similar than they would like to admit. They are both ends-focused – reformists expend all their energy on securing power in order to ‘make a difference’, whereas ‘revolutionaries’, naturally waiting for the great day to come, prepare only by instilling ‘consciousness’ in a small vanguard of future leaders.

But whenever you take an ends-focused approach to change, you inevitably compromise on one crucial part of the process – the means. The means of change are the small, seemingly boring steps between everything being the same and everything being different. As they are not particularly entertaining, and no way as cool as the grand finale, they get rather little attention from many progressives.

The fundamental problem with the ‘ends fetish’ is that there is no easily definable end. ‘End of history’ narratives always find themselves looking short sighted because history has a pesky habit, against all expectations, of actually continuing. Revolutions do not happen at a time completely of our choosing, and neither does ‘assuming power’ for a particular political party; the real question is how to create and sustain a movement in the long-term, dynamic enough to deal with any setbacks whilst at the same time delivering measurable improvements to people’s lives that point to a better world.

Sounds tough, but the best movements have done it. This process is so simple, so basic, that it often goes unnoticed. The origins of the labour movement, for example, are now largely forgotten, but the successes of trade unions and their attendant political parties were founded on developing a working-class milieu that surrounded, supported and protected its people, equipping them with the ability to change society in a way that could never be undone. Groundbreaking social movements do not just create institutions and organisations, like political parties, but also practices, ways of life and cultures of resistance and change anchored in people’s day-to-day experiences.

By way of modern examples, the most inspiring environmental movements do not just produce NGOs and Green parties, but also promote collective action to further its aims, from mass protest to small, collective projects in the local community. It may seem too simple to be true, but a healthy movement is one that permeates right down to the individual actions of its members; they are acting to further the cause just as much when they organise a free, local reuse scheme (that gives people access to perfectly useful items outside the market and the state) as when they shut down an airport.

The problem has always been sustaining a movement permanently, something which only the best have achieved. Often, their created milieus degrade into ‘subcultures’ outside of the mainstream, divorced from their context and cut off from their original project. Subcultures can quickly become cultish and irrelevant; the new movement for change has to embrace a wider approach that grounds protest movements in the everyday experience of the working-class to ensure that it isn’t just students and middle-class people with time on their hands who build camps and blockade roads.

Ultimately, we must have the confidence to believe in our own cause. Our belief, however, must not be in ‘a series of small defeats followed by only one victory’; but a series of small victories, one after another, continuously, until the next one.

This blog, and its different bloggers with different perspectives, will chronicle and critique such victories, and try to understand how to reproduce success after success. You are very welcome to join the debate.

No-one knows yet how Ed will react, although my guess is that he will move further to the centre and propose sharp but not-quite-ConDem-sharp cuts. The speech he should be giving, however, is about why it isn’t a good thing to be praised by the IMF.

The IMF have a long, storied history of delivering devastating shock therapy to many countries in the Global South, fuelling social injustice, poverty, hunger and, often, conflict. Indeed, the most famous but oft-forgotten example of the IMF’s one-size-fits-all, anti-statist ideology causing severe human suffering is the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Many other commentators have written more detailed accounts of the IMF’s role in the genocide, but the case bears repeating. Rwanda’s export income halved  between 1989 and 1991 after talks on extending the International Coffee Agreement (ICA) – which looked to regulate the coffee market and prices paid to producers – failed, largely due to a walkout by the US in the face of coffee corporations’ lobbying efforts. As in so many cases, the IMF were then forced into the country as a condition for access to aid, and immediately instituted one of their infamous ‘structural adjustment programmes’ (SAPs).

The ironically-named SAPs, already discredited at the time, classically involved currency devaluation. In a country where so many consumers had already suffered so greatly from the collapse on the coffee export market, devaluation further exacerbated the ability of many Rwandans to buy food and other basic necessities, leading to a shocking rise in child malnutrition and cases of malaria because of the shortage of affordable drugs. Indeed, as in so many other cases, the IMF enforced further devaluation in 1992. Together with another IMF trademark – extreme austerity measures for the rest of the economy – a vicious economic cycle took hold. Famously, farmers uprooted an estimated 300,000 coffee trees in order to grow food crops – but they were unable to sell them because of competition from cheaper imports.

By 1992, the Rwandan elites faced extremely dire economic circumstances, with falling tax revenues and a growing potential for social unrest. When the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) started threatending Hutu domniance from exile outside the country, the governing elite had to find new ways to keep control. The French, eager to sustain their influence over Francophone Africa, were happy to arm the Rwandan government, whose army increased eightfold from 1990 to 1992. Soon, extremist forces in government began agitating for a clampdown on the Tutsis, and death squads were formed, often with official military support and sanction. Able to draw from an increasingly desperate populace suffering from grave economic depravation, the death squads grew, and there were a number of smaller massacres before the great genocide of 1994.

I am certainly not arguing that the IMF were the direct, or predominant, cause of the genocide – a rich but truly depressing colonial history had created the latent ethnic tension, and some almost impossibly chance events would give rise to the sudden and intense killing in 1994. But the scale, size and nature of those events, and the smaller but no less saddening killings that led up to it, would have been extremely difficult for extremist Hutu agitators to produce without a great mass of unemployed or impoverished adult males with nothing to lose – a key prerequisite for many historical examples of social unrest. Ultimately, they existed due to dire economic circumstances that the IMF had exploited, exacerbated and, in some cases, created.

The debate about cuts in Britain is interesting – but it pales in comparison to the historic tragedy of the Rwandan genocide. Tragedies, nevertheless, have their causes – and coalition supporters should think carefully before welcoming the support of the IMF.

(Don’t) call me (Red) Ed

• Lenin’s Tomb gets it spot on about the implications of Ed’s victory for the left.
• At Another Green World, Derek Wall highlights Ed’s not-so-Red behaviour towards the Global South at international climate negotiations.
• More generally, Third Estate sees the results of the leadership election as a call to action for the left…
• … and they also have a timeless message for Labour from a certain Ralph Miliband.

Other than Labour…

• Why were representatives of the US left and antiwar movements so keen to meet Iran’s dictator, asks Infantile and Disorderly.
• It isn’t so bad on the US left – although it took a comedian to speak up for immigrants in Congress, as Harry’s Place reports.
• Over in the UK, the Land Value Tax seems to be getting some support in the mainstream (via Left Foot Forward), some 30 years after the Green Party put it in our manifesto…
• … and Ian Angus of Climate and Capitalism shares some must-read texts for green socialists.

The obligatory lefty starting point on the Labour leadership is this obvious truism – at least it isn’t Blairite, torture-supporting David. Mili-Elder did manage to win the membership’s and parliamentarians’ votes; but the sweet, sweet sight of seeing the trade unions snatch victory from an unashamed New Labourite is something worth savouring.

Still, the question immediately turns to what ‘Not-so-Red’ Ed’s election means – for Labour and for the left.

I’ve written before about how Ed, rather than being a break from the guiding principles of Blairism, actually represents much of what New Labour stands for – a repositioning of the party designed to capitalise on the circumstances of the time. This is why he has, rather skillfully, managed to tack left despite being a former Brownite adviser, minister and author of the last Labour manifesto. He can put his win down to this approach, which no doubt produced his crucial advantage in the trade union college, as well as persuading members from the left, right and centre of the party to support for him. The issue now is how his leftish-leaning rhetoric in the leadership election will affect his performance as leader.

Naturally, the Tories and their right-wing media partners have already gone on the offensive. The first crucial test for Ed Miliband will be whether he ‘does an Obama’, abandoning his base and any leftish pretences in the face of media pressure to do so. Judging by his first media performances, he is very defensive and keen to shed the ‘Red Ed’ label, and all suggestions point to him quickly moving to the centre ground in order to squash the idea that he is a raving commie.

As for the wider left, it is difficult to know how to feel about Ed. Yes, he’s not David; yes, he is, at least rhetorically, left-ish; but dealing with Ed comes back to the more historic task of how the radical left deals with Labour as a whole. The question has long plagued the left and, in my experience, every British lefty has had to ask themselves whether to join Labour and fight for the left from the inside, or whether to build something better elsewhere; this is why you constantly see prominent leftist individuals hopping in and then out of the party with each change of the political winds. In my opinion, this has scuppered many attempts to build support for a broader, left-of-Labour party or movement.

Should we encourage Ed to come leftwards, holding out a hand for unity and cooperation – indeed, how is it possible to do this without leftish support being swallowed up by a reinvigorated Labour in opposition? The key for me is to ensure that Labour doesn’t take control over the anti-cuts movement and push it away from being a grassroots, radical campaign that will destroy the chances of the ConDem cuts agenda; but, at the same time, that we also make sure that leftist voices in Labour are promoted and can participate in the fight. The nascent anti-cuts networks desperately need unity, but must ensure that, while allowing Labourites to join the fight, they do not simply invite Ed and chums into bed unconditionally, without holding him or his party to account.

Ed represents to many on the left a return, however partial, to the chances of building left politics within the Labour Party – and, however slim those chances really are, many on the left in Britain will be quite happy to swallow it. I predict that it will all lead to disappointment again, either in electoral defeat or in the complete betrayal of any leftist leanings by Ed himself (or both) – so Greens and others on the left must prepare to hold his and Labour’s collective feet to the fire, but keep the focus on the rather more important task of organising a wider, united left movement outside of Labour.

Simply put, the left needs to be less reactive to small changes within the Labour Party, and more proactive about producing big changes in society.

In Britain…

• Ruwan Subasinghe writes at Left Foot Forward about the Hayekian origins of Tory-made trade union laws.
• Liberal Conspiracy’s Sunny Hundal wonders why the media think the ethnic background of terrorist suspects is always relevant.
• Dave Osler wonders why the film ‘Made in Dagenham’ has been made at this time, and what that might mean point to in terms of trade union action.
• Top London blogger Adam Bienkov (aka Tory Troll) gives his verdict of Ken vs Oona.

In the world…

• At Daily (Maybe), Jim Jepps examines the continued rise of the German Greens, now level with the SDP in some polls.
• Ivo Petkovski, writing at Liberal Conspiracy, queries David Miliband’s commitment to an ethical foreign policy.
• With athletes pulling out all over the place, Socialist Unity highlights the real disgrace of India’s Commonwealth Games.
• … and Ireland’s economy continues to go to hell, possibly presaging the UK’s own double dip recession, says Liberal Conspiracy.

He addresses the issue as follows:

“Credit where it’s due: the right have played a blinder.

“Because just at the height of public anger with the banks, just when there seemed to be, for the first time in decades, a real chance of some genuine economic reforms… the Daily Telegraph published their first stories about MPs expenses…

“… the great crisis of neo-liberalism became the great crisis of democracy. Where so recently politicians had denounced bankers’ bonuses, now they had to defend themselves. Where we had learnt not to trust the private sector, we were suddenly taught to despise the State. And with the anti-elitist rhetoric of the left, the right swiftly distracted us from the big prize.  They changed the story.

“Many on the left bought into it… we gave their story legs. We stopped shouting about the capitalist failure… we cursed about politicians… we understood that this generation of politicians had failed us… and while we didn’t understand the financial de-regulation, we did understand duck houses…

“… as we accepted that public rage should be focused on our political system, we took the heat off the economic system… we took our eyes off the prize of economic reforms, and focused instead on political reforms… we accepted the broader narrative: the economic system was not to blame, but a few greedy, powerful individuals.”

My immediate reaction to this passage is – who is ‘we’? I would argue that there isn’t very much ‘we’ – no united, active, well-organised left ready to take the initiative – and the inner failing of the radical left, not just in Britain but elsewhere, is more important than whether or not the right out-maneuvered ‘us’.

Simply put, it wasn’t that ‘we’ accepted the expenses narrative – it was that we were so inconsequential to the debate that it didn’t matter whether we did or not.

My view is that the left should look to itself before it looks to others – we shouldn’t rely on crises to hand us the initiative, even if they do give us a range of opportunities to exert influence. The fact of the matter is that the left lacked any kind of base in wider society and, as a result, had little opportunity to launch a challenge to the great neoliberal crisis; indeed, even if we had responded better in the debate about the recession, we would have been nowhere without deep-rooted organisation in society to back that up. In countries where the left does have better organisation, it naturally had a better chance – but even that does not guarantee the triumph of left policies or parties, as the rise of the right across Europe shows. Out of the struggle between the left and other social forces comes something different, but you have to be in the fight to influence what it is that comes out the other side.

Essentially, there was no battle of ideas, let alone battle of social forces, in Britain. New Labour embraced deficit fetishism as it was completely in line with the previous 11 years of their economic policies; the right were clever enough to deflect attention or confuse the issue to ensure that nothing much really changed. The reason that ordinary people did not break out into broader social unrest, or punish politicians yet more, is because this recession was different to others in the past – more nebulous and difficult to fully appreciate. With the left just as confused and unsure as everybody else, as well as being too disorganised to direct people’s anger, public rage could be deflected, misdirected and, ultimately, frittered away.

The more important question for the left to answer is – why is the left so marginal now, and how can we organise so that it has deeper roots in society? It’s the hardest of questions but the one that needs the most urgent answers.

We don’t need to wait for crises to get organised – we just need to organise.