Irresistible: Be A Part Of The Movement For Change
I was speaking with an old friend recently, and they asked me if I was aware of the Festival of Resistance. Just the name alone sounded quite awesome.
I was certainly aware of it - I have friends attending and speaking - but I didn’t take an in-depth look until just recently, and I’m genuinely glad that I did.
Let’s be honest. The left is all over the place.
I’m not talking about pointless Twitter spats, for they are merely a tool of distraction, and they serve no purpose to a movement that must come together, in good faith, whether that is to take it to the government of the day, or even having to be the opposition to Her Majesty’s official ineffective opposition.
I mean, how lucky are we? The worst government in living memory, by some distance, and a painfully lame opposition determined to out-Tory the Tories.
What a time to live.
Anyway, back to this opportunity.
Today’s 4 contributors need very little in the way of an introduction. They can act, they can rap, they can teach, they will stand up for human rights, and they will all be speaking at the Festival of Resistance on the 16th and 17th of October, in Nottingham.
First up…
Alexei Sayle:
It felt like a quest to disrupt the bloated light entertainment hierarchy, and in particular the casual racism and sexism that characterised mainstream comedy. It was raw, spiky, and had a gloriously arrogant sneer of youth.
How much of your own politics, and even that of your co-stars, went into The Young Ones? And doesn’t “Jerzei” mean “Jeremy”, oh prophetic one?
“I think the general politics of the Young Ones group was the same as most young people's at the time, we were all opposed to racism and sexism, TV just hadn't caught up.
I was the only one who'd been involved in organised politics through my parents and my Marxist Leninist early 20s then through involvement with Anmesty, Medical Aid for Palestine, Chile & Nicaragua Solidarity and of course the Miners strike (though I think some of the others got involved in supporting that).”
“I think Jerzy Bulowski is some stupid pun on Jersey Pullover but I'll have to ask Lise Mayer (Young Ones writer).”
Like me, you were a vocal supporter of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, once saying…
“He's ascetic and morally incorruptible. The propaganda that's thrown against him is disgraceful. Until he appeared, you had to vote for one kind of Oxbridge twat or another, people who all go to the same dinner parties, people like the Ed Ballses and George Osbornes. Jeremy has shown that, within a democratic tradition, other things are possible."
Sadly, the Labour Party is now headed up by the very “twats” that you previously spoke of.
So where do we go from here, and does this underline the importance of events such as the Festival of Resistance, being held in Nottingham on the 16th and 17th of this month, which you are due to speak at?
“The crushing of the Corbyn Labour Party showed that there is essentially only one kind of ideology allowed in Western nations-a pro- big business, pro-military, pro-politcal arsehole one. But humanity can never reach a harmonious relationship with the planet or with each other until we act in, are governed/govern ourselves a different way (or there's a zombie apocalypse). That's ultimately the task of events such as The Festival of Resistance."
Next up?
Lowkey:
How has your activism been shaped by actually witnessing the protracted humanitarian crisis and the brutality of the Israeli occupiers close-up?
“I felt massively fortunate to spend time in Palestine, especially when considering that one in three refugees in the world are Palestinians who cannot practise their right under UN resolution 194 to return home. It made clear to me what Zionism means in a material sense. It shaped what I do in that it showed me how a struggle can be compromised through a carefully controlled infrastructure of collaboration. How walls can be built through the cultivation of national elite that imprisons the struggle through beuracatic violence and serves as a Palestinian glove around the iron fist of Zionist colonisation. Overall it hammered home to me the depth of the humiliation and defeat we as a people have suffered this century and made me determined not to ever become like that myself. After coming back from that place I could never be an ornament of the status quo.”
Not many artists can say they were asked to perform live in Venezuela on the invitation of President Hugo Chavez - a leader who once described George W Bush as “the devil” during a speech to the United Nations, while clutching a copy of Noam Chomsky’s book, Hegemony or Survival.
The establishment and their media often described Hugo Chavez as a “dictator”, although the reality suggested he was remarkably popular with the Venezuelan people, winning multiple presidential elections with popular policies such as taxing the rich to help the poor and redistribution of the nation's oil wealth.
How would you describe the legacy of Hugo Chavez?
“The first coup attempt Hugo Chavez launched in 1992 was because he refused to follow orders when commanded to open fire on Venezuelans rioting for food following an IMF shock programme. Following his imprisonment and election to power he lead a country in which only half a million children where in primary education, he increased that by 460% to 2.8 million. Overall school enrolement went from 45% to 95% because of Chavez. Half a million people new readers were raised. The amount of people with University degrees increased by 344% from 900k to 4 million. People who never had healthcare in their lives were treated by the 20,000 Cuban doctors he brought in to serve in Venezuela. He increased the amount of people with pensions in the society by 900% going from 370,000 to 3,280,000. On top of that he increased fhe national income from $14 billion in 1998 to $40 billion by 2006. He inherited a system where social spending was only 39% of the national income and left a system where it was equal to 74% of the national income. All the while his efforts were subject to financial imperialism and hybrid war from the US and it's allies. When US imperial games tore apart Colombia, Venezuela and Chavez absorbed around 5 million Colombian refugees. He was a legend in every sense of the word and deserves the upmost respect.”
And finally..
The Festival of Resistance has a brilliant speakers list, including yourself.
Now we no longer have a competent and effective opposition to the Conservative government, how much more important will gatherings such as the two-day festival become?
“Vladimir Lenin notes an encounter with Slyvia Pankhurst in his essay on the Labour party, "In a private talk, Comrade Pankhurst said to me "if we are real revolutionaries and join the Labour Party, these gentlemen will expel us.
Ralph Milliband said it in the 80s “This hope of the left to transform the Labour Party was illusory, and far from representing a short cut to the creation of a mass socialist party in Britain, it was in fact a dead end.
From the Zinoviev Letter during social imperialist Ramsay Mcdonald's time to Operations Clockwork Orange and Marmion during Harold Wilson's time, the real establishment has shown time and time again that the Labour party is so controlled by the intelligence services that it can only, at best, offer what Ralph Milliband called "a non socialist alternative to the Conservative party.
That, in addition to the well documented blacklisting of workers, of BBC employees and the widespread spycops infiltration of political organisation and campaigns, means we have been fighting a losing battle against a sophisticated juggernaut with many moving parts for many decades.
If our aim is to build bottom up pressure, we must engage in decades of work building institutions for political education and dissemination of accurate information. We have lifetimes of work cut out for us.
It is an honour to stand with the victims of this witch hunt. Growth always comes from the bottom up and we are here to keep pushing.
The resist festival is a step in the right direction.”
Let's have another.
Jackie Walker:
Anti-racism trainer, former Vice-Chair of South Thanet CLP, former Vice-Chair of Momentum, author, performer, teacher, writer or anti-racism training manuals, and defended by Ken Loach and Noam Chomsky.
Not many of us can say we’ve got a political CV quite like that.
But Jackie Walker can.
Jackie, I don’t think that many people realise the part you played in stopping Nigel Farage and UKIP from winning a parliamentary seat in South Thanet back in 2015.
Did you encounter Farage during the campaign, and where did he (and the media circus) get it so wrong?
“I lived in Thanet during the election and let's be clear, everyone, including the media, thought Farage was bound to win. A coalition of people, mostly women from the left, had coalesced to campaign against the UKIP group. We organised outside of the Labour Party (who were running a straightforward election campaign). We worked through consensus and created imaginative ways of protesting which caught the media eye and engaged with potential UKIP supporters.
We made sure that every appearance Farage made, we were there to counter what he was saying.”
You have seen Labour leaders come and go - where would you rank Keir Starmer, and can you realistically see any way back for the left in the Labour Party?
“Starmer is shockingly ineffective - apart from persecuting the left, anti-zionist Jews, and removing democracy from Labour members it's hard to think of anything remarkable he's said or done. He ranks pretty high in 'leaders who have broken their pledges to members' and his obsession with instituting, and enforcing a racial hierarchy in the Party. I can't see a way back for the Left, not in the foreseeable future, not under present rules and not while the Party is controlled by the Blairite PLP.”
And Finally…
The Festival of Resistance is bringing together some incredible activists and speakers.
How important are these events, with the death of the Labour Party in mind?
“Events like those offered by the Festival of Resistance are of critical importance. The SCG 'business as usual' rallying cry is a death knell for the left. The left needs to come together and find forums where ideas can be shared, where we are able to speak openly and fearlessly about what happened, what is happening, and where we should set our focus on for the future.”
Last and most definitely not least, the founder of the Resist Movement.
Chris Williamson:
Congratulations, Chris, on bringing together such an extraordinary group of activists and speakers for the Festival of Resistance on 16/17th October.
Can I ask, for those not familiar with Resist, what is the difference between the Resist Movement and one of the new Corbyn-lite groups such as the Breakthrough Party?
“We acknowledge that other groups are springing up and others have been around for a long time. We are not trying to supplant any existing activist groups; we want to bring people together. That’s why we have taken a seat on the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) steering committee. It’s why we are working with the Workers Party too and why we campaigned for George Galloway in the Batley and Spen by-election.
But we also recognise that putting all your eggs in an electoral strategy will almost inevitably lead to disappointment, so we are interested in encouraging the development of a social movement. The Bolivian ‘Movement For Socialism’ is a great example to follow. It’s precisely because they had a motivated mass social movement that they were able to reverse the US-backed coup that removed Evo Morales in 2019 who had just been overwhelmingly elected by the Bolivian people. But within 12 months the coup was reversed after the coup administration were forced to hold new elections and the socialists stormed back to power with an even bigger majority than Morales achieved.
That’s why, when I was still a Labour MP, I was leading the efforts to democratise the Labour Party. I wanted to put grassroots members in the driving seat to determine policy, leadership and parliamentary representation, and build a genuine mass movement to defend a Corbyn-led socialist government – on the streets if necessary. That’s not just fanciful hyperbole. A serving army general said they would use fair means or foul to bring down a Corbyn government that might want to scrap Trident, withdraw from NATO or cut spending on the military. Furthermore, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the US would “push back” against Jeremy Corbyn, so the prospects of a coup in this country are not out of the question.
Remember, Harold Wilson spoke about a plot to remove the party from power because it was beginning to embrace socialism.
So, we aim to build a movement that doesn’t just focus on getting people elected, but also fosters a social movement to raise political consciousness and increase political expectations. We hope this will promote self-help activity like the Panthers did in the US and encourage new working class leaders to emerge to replace the current political class that has brought politics and democracy into disrepute”.
There are many politically homeless activists on the left, as well as millions of the electorate, inclined to vote Labour, that simply will not vote for a Labour Party led by Keir Starmer.
Starmer’s party is Labour in name only, and is no longer even slightly resembling the vehicle for social change that we saw brief glimpses of under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
What would your response be to the statement, “any Labour government is better than a Conservative government”?
“I fundamentally disagree. The truth is the Labour Party presents a bigger barrier to a socialist transformation in Britain than the Tories.
The party is now beyond redemption and our duty is to help destroy it.
Anyone sticking with the Labour Party is either wilfully or naively perpetuating the deception that it represents the interests of working class communities. It does not. It is a tool of the neoliberal establishment and represents the interests of corporate capitalism.
Tony Benn used to say the Labour Party needs two wings to fly, but those days are long gone. The reactionary right-wing of the Labour Party has now assumed complete control. The party’s left-wing has atrophied to such an extent that it no longer has any influence whatsoever. The left inside the Labour Party is treated like a bunch of useful idiots by the neoliberal, imperialist war mongers. Their presence gives the impression that the party is still a broad church, but a profound reformation has taken place and there is no going back.
A Labour government would do nothing to confront the neoliberal status quo, nor would it challenge the military industrial complex. If people want to bring about real change they need to leave the Labour Party and stop voting for it in elections. The present crop of Labour MPs are like New Labour on steroids and anyone still waiting for the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs to provide any meaningful leadership will be waiting a long time. They utterly failed to consolidate the left’s position when the grassroots elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, and their mealy-mouthed response to his suspension tells you all you need to know about their attitude towards solidarity. They have zero influence on policy and so while a Labour government might tinker at the edges, nothing would fundamentally change. To bring about the meaningful transformation that is required, we need to jettison the Labour Party and start again. My advice is join the Resist Movement, become a member of the Workers Party, TUSC, or the Socialist Party, get involved in direct action movements like XR or Palestine Action, but remember, we must work together in solidarity to force change.”
What can we expect from the Festival of Resistance, and is there any one particular speaker you’re looking forward to seeing?
“The theme of the festival is ‘Why Resist Now’. We’ve got a packed agenda and a line-up of inspirational speakers and I’m looking forward to hearing from all of them. I couldn’t pick out any as they are all equally brilliant.
We’ll be covering a wide range of issues from the economy and the role of the corporate media to potential climate catastrophe and war, and there will be some great entertainment on Saturday evening too.
We hope this weekend will act as a catalyst for future action on a range of different fronts. Our aim is to follow the advice of the great Panthers leader Fred Hampton. So, we won’t be advocating fighting fire with fire, we’ll be saying let’s fight fire with water. We won’t be trying to fight racism with racism, we’ll fight racism with solidarity. And we won’t be saying let’s fight capitalism by tinkering with it. We’ll be saying let’s fight capitalism with socialism, because capitalism is like cancer, and the only way to deal with cancer is to destroy it.”
You can see all of these excellent people, and many more excellent people, speaking at the Festival of Resistance on the 16th and 17th October, in Nottingham. Be sure not to miss it.
Until next time,
Rachael x
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