A little snippet of GUBU from the Irish News:

A ‘BLOOD and thunder’ band with links to the youth wing of the UVF is among dozens of loyalist bands to receive funding from the Ulster-Scots Agency and the National Lottery.

Sixty-five flute, accordion and pipe bands were given funds totalling more than £166,100 last year.

More than £4,600 of lottery money went to Pride of Ardoyne, which takes part in a contentious parade past the Ardoyne shops in north Belfast each year.

The funding, administered through the Arts Council, was for new instruments.

The band marches with a banner bearing an emblem of the Young Citizens Volunteers – the UVF’s youth wing – and the names of two former band members, UVF man Sam Rockett, who was killed by the UDA during the 2000 loyalist feud, and William Hanna, killed by the British army in 1978.

A spokesman for the Arts Council said that although it “monitors the artistic quality of applicants and is aware of its obligations under ‘Good Relations’ and Section 75 legislation, we are not proscriptive on grounds of an applicant’s political or religious background”.

“We respect their organisational independence, at the same time actively encouraging applicants to develop and expand their audiences and to break down barriers in society, in line with the aspirations of the Good Friday Agreement,” he said.

Among the bands given funding by the Ulster-Scots Agency was Mourne Young Defenders Flute Band which received £1,800 for musical tuition and a further £1,219 for an ‘Ulster-Scots summer school’ run by its members.

Mourne took part in the 2006 Love Ulster parade in Dublin which ended in clash-es with gardai and republican protesters. The band was set up in memory of Alan Johnston, an Orangeman and UDR member who was killed at his workplace in Kilkeel, Co Down, by the IRA in 1988.

The Arts Council gave about £102,500 to 24 bands, mostly for musical tuition.

The Ulster-Scots Agency gave about £56,500 to 38 bands for instruments.

The Big Lottery Fund gave £6,980 to three bands under its Awards for All scheme.

The figures were released in response to an assembly question from Sinn Fein MLA Paul Butler.

A spokeswoman for the Ulster-Scots Agency said that to receive funding bands must show that:

- they have good administration and a plan to attract new members

- the project is “financially viable”

- the project has “an Ulster-Scots element”.

A spokeswoman for the Big Lottery Fund said its scheme helped “organisations to run projects which will bring people together and increase community activity”.

“We continue to proactively promote the programme through outreach and development work and continue to target all sections of the Northern Ireland community,” she said.

It is the Second World War. The Nazi menace is threatening the world, but fear not! We can always count on Captain Invincible (a sort of amalgam of Superman and Captain America) to swoop in from the skies and defend what’s right against Hitler and his minions.

But then the war ends, and the next thing you know, Captain Invincible is arraigned before HUAC on charges of premature anti-fascism, flying without a licence, and wearing underwear in public (red underwear too, which the Committee finds significant). Cap storms out of the witch-hunt, and disappears from public view.

Fast forward to the early 1980s. Cap surfaces once again, in Sydney of all places. Sad to say, our superhero is now a washed-up alcoholic. And yet what the world needs now is a shining hero. Cap’s old nemesis Mr Midnight has raided a military base and stolen the top-secret Hypno-Ray for use in his latest dastardly scheme. (It’s a real estate scam, as it happens, and suspiciously similar to Lex Luthor’s real estate scam in the recent Superman Returns.) So there’s nothing for it but to find Cap, dry him out, and send him into battle.

This is a very silly movie, but scarcely more silly than most of the superhero movies that do big box office nowadays. And yet, there’s lots to like about it. It’s an affectionate but quite accurate send-up of the Golden Age of comics. It’s also an Australian production, which means lots of vaguely familiar-looking Aussie character actors. (This being the time when there only were about fifteen actors in Australia.) There’s plenty of the dry Antipodean humour that made Starstruck so much fun. There’s also a nice cameo of the US president striding around purposefully, followed by a hilariously grovelling Australian prime minister. Part of the Vietnam hangover?

And the cast doesn’t hurt either. In the lead is an appropriately world-weary Alan Arkin, playing a very Lower East Side superhero of the kind that Jack Kirby would have recognised. And as the villain, Christopher Lee, who’s never been shy about sending up his own image, strutting about in black leather and being generally menacing.

Oh, did I mention it’s a musical? Yes it is, courtesy of Richards Hartley and O’Brien, of Rocky Horror fame. If you like The Wicker Man, and are dying to see more of Christopher Lee in all-singing all-dancing mode, this is the picture for you. Just unplug the old brain first, and go with it.

And so we come to the question of what the election results say about prospects for the left. And the answer to that would be, not very much. But just about enough to be getting on with, if those involved can rise to the occasion.

The Respect results were solid enough – below what might have been expected, with Galloway not even coming close to that GLA seat, but far from being disastrous. Of course the split hasn’t helped, with the exit of the SWP meaning a loss of both resources and activists, and with both sides looking a bit like damaged goods, as usually happens in splits. On the other hand, 2.4% is not too bad given the circumstances, and the excellent vote for Hanif in City and East, plus the third council seat in Sparkbrook, show there is still critical mass in the party’s East London and South Birmingham strongholds. And, while some of the other results were poor, some were quite encouraging.

The problem is this – while Respect does have its strongholds, it’s very much a localised force. Even in London, Respect doesn’t exist in most of the city. And the prospects for expansion would have to be taken long-term – the Cheetham Hill result in Manchester, for example, shows potential, but you’d be looking years ahead to convert that into a mass base. That requires long-range planning and a fundamental break from the politics of get-rich-quick schemes.

But this problem of localisation is one for the left generally. The Socialist Party has a scattering of members nationwide, but in electoral terms it’s severely localised, and its implantation in the unions is also pretty sectional. You can also take a look at local formations with broadly Old Labour politics in places like Blaenau Gwent or Barrow, not to mention a whole raft of vaguely leftwing independent councillors. The left-of-Labour spectrum has very little traction, but there is a sociological space for a socialist alternative – it’s really a problem of organisation, of low levels of struggle and of atomisation.

What I think is this. None of these local formations are remotely likely to dissolve themselves into Respect – the most you can say for the moment is that, if Respect threw itself into non-sectarian networking in a serious way, as well as consolidating its own bases, it could be a centre of gravity for a smallish but significant left current. Also on the clár should be cultivating a dialogue with the Green Left, as well as keeping an eye on the LRC and Compass to see if there are any signs of life in the Labour Party. You can never tell where new forces will come from.

Obviously this poses a challenge for Respect. I’m not wildly enthusiastic about Respect as is – I’d like it to have a firmer socialist identity and more of an orientation to the working class than it does. The party also needs to get itself a bit of a sense of dynamism. Potentially, there’s a lot of good will out there towards the post-split Respect simply due to it not being the SWP, who have a serious track record of alienating their sometime allies. It would be a failure of massive proportions if that was allowed to dissipate.

As far as the SWP/Reespect/Left List is concerned, things are clarified a little. It should be pointed out that not all the Left List results were terrible – there is a fair base of support in Preston and Sheffield at least. We may point out that these results are based on long-term concentrated work that empirically goes against the grain of the SWP’s national practice. But then again, the key people are Michael Lavalette and Maxine Bowler, excellent comrades in many ways but also very very loyal to the SWP. While in principle there should be an opening to the Left List where it has a serious presence, in practice that poses a problem.

In London on the other hand, the results were diabolical. It may be that, with Galloway failing to win election to the GLA, the SWP has staved off the immediate danger of an exodus of members to Respect, as happened last autumn. But spending in excess of sixty grand to get results well below what the Socialist Alliance polled in 2000 is an embarrassment to say the least. Lindsey has never struck me as the kind of woman who would enjoy being spanked, so it’s no wonder she was the sole candidate not to appear at the mayoral declaration.

It puts the CC in an awkward position, doesn’t it? Some people were clear that the purpose of the Left List was to be a spoiler for Respect – hence the leaflets saying “Respect is standing as the Left List” and such like. But the membership were spun the idea that Lindsey was in with a serious shout of getting onto the GLA, that she was a national figure with mass electoral appeal, and that at the very least the Left List vote would run Respect close if not surpass it. None of these things have come to pass, for various reasons – an unknown name, yeah, but also an unbelievably sectarian mayoral campaign that, in the context of the Ken-Boris polarisation, aimed 90% of its fire at Ken and most of the rest at George. One may doubt if Cliff or Hallas would have got themselves into this position in the first place, but they certainly wouldn’t have run the sort of campaign their epigones did.

And so it is that John Rees, despite all his bluster, has cemented his reputation as the Rube Goldberg of revolutionary politics. The SWP’s few remaining allies in the Left List will have been given pause for thought. The three councillors in Tower Hamlets will be distinctly jittery. And, while I’m not expecting any move from inside the SWP leadership, if anyone is contemplating a coup against the Power Couple, now would be the time to do it. It’s hard to see the SWP playing any positive role in the broader movement while John and Lindsey remain in situ. Certainly, not many people will be falling over themselves to work with them any time soon.

Apart from the Tory victory last Thursday, one of the other depressing aspects of the local elections was the success of the BNP. This, it has to be said, was patchy, as the fascists failed to make the big breakthrough they had hoped for in their Lancashire, Yorkshire and Black Country strongholds. But their feat in surpassing the 5% mark in London and returning Richard Barnbrook, their leader on Barking and Dagenham council, to the GLA will have given them a spring in their step.

It will also, at least for the time being, strengthen the hand of the Griffin leadership within the fissile ranks of the BNP. Griffin, you see, has a cunning plan. Being a smart bloke, and not being content to spend the rest of his life leading an irrelevant sect, he’s been studying the examples of his analogues in Europe.

There really is no fundamental reason why Britain can’t have a sizeable right-populist party like you have in several European countries. But the candidates for that ecological niche have so far failed to fit the bill. UKIP had a certain amount of dynamism behind it, but UKIP is too monomaniacally focussed on the EU, too full of blazer-wearing retired colonels and too prone to define its reactionary politics in terms of hankering after the days when good old Smithy was running Rhodesia. There’s a certain market for that sort of thing, but it’s a limited and ageing market. The BNP is a lot more streetwise, but it’s been hampered in turn by being full of thugs - you can sell racism to the electorate, but it’s harder to sell thuggery - and by being mired in Third Reich nostalgia.

Griffin understands this. He is well aware that for decades the Austrian Freedom Party bounced around on about 5% of the vote - its spectacular growth under Haider was precisely the result of Haider spending years distancing the party from its Nazi and Pan-German roots in favour of a more contemporary appeal. Fini has done something similar in Italy, as has (to a much lesser extent) Le Pen in France. To say nothing of the various hard-right parties on the continent who don’t have roots in pre-war fascism. Fidelity to the fascist tradition may keep a cadre together in hard times, but it does severely limit the possibilities of appealing to a broader audience.

That’s why the Griffin leadership has been throwing old fascist shibbolethim overboard with gay abandon. You see a lot of this in the foreign policy sphere. Traditionally, the British far right has had an anti-Zionist stance deriving from its anti-Semitism. Sometimes this has shaded into a vague Arabism, and even into saluting the indefatigability of Saddam and Gaddafi. Yet today we find the BNP taking a staunchly pro-Israeli position, which might be surprising from a group that not so long ago was selling Holocaust denial tracts in its bookshop. But this is only surprising if you assume that fascists can’t have an opportunistic streak, and are so stupid they don’t realise that, while anti-Semitism isn’t respectable any more, there is a good deal of mileage to be had from bashing the Muslims.

And as with the Middle East, so with the Balkans. Recently the BNP has been banging the drum in favour of Serbian sovereignty in Kosovo. And yet, during the Yugoslav wars when such positions were actually relevant, the BNP held fast to the traditional fascist position of calling for victory to Croatia. Indeed, if memory serves, some BNP guys tried to set up an “International Brigade” to fight for the Croats, who were supposed to be defending European civilisation from the communist Serbs. Is it likely that Griffin has suddenly discovered a deep affinity for Serbia? I think not. It’s more likely that the new BNP position has its roots in Londoners’ fear and loathing of violent Albanian gangsters.

But what’s more important is domestic politics. This means going into run-down estates that Labour has pretty much abandoned, and offering people a seductive cocktail of what looks at first glance very like Old Labour politics, combined with racism as a global explanation of the working class’s woes. In certain working-class areas, especially racially segregated places like Oldham or Dewsbury, or white flight areas like Dagenham, you can understand the appeal to people at the bottom of the pile.

What’s obviously called for is an imaginative response. I think what Cruddas has been doing at grassroots level in Dagenham is interesting for this reason, that Cruddas understands that the white working class tends to be resistant to moralistic appeals from do-gooders, and that an anti-fascist and anti-racist strategy needs to be tied in to offering some kind of politics of hope and solidarity. Cruddas reckons you can do this by reconnecting the Labour Party with its core base. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. But thinking along these lines is vital if we want to do anything beyond contemplating Barnbrook in City Hall and throwing up our hands in horror.

More on this at Socialist Unity.

Cripes!

I mean to say, by jingo! What in the wide world of sports were the London electorate thinking of?

First, let’s consider the national picture. It’s been clear for some years that the Labour vote was collapsing. What’s saved New Labour up to this point is that it’s largely collapsed into abstention. To the extent that traditional Labour voters have defected, they’ve gone all over the shop - to the Lib Dems in some areas, the BNP in others and so on. There hasn’t been a massive swing to the Tories. And I’m still not sure that there is - what’s happening seems to be that the traditional Tory base, after years of demoralisation, has become energised again. Plus, there’s Rankin’ Dave Cameron with his strategy of making the Tories as inoffensive as possible, so they aren’t in a position where the majority of the electorate hate their guts and will return even the most useless Labour government in order to keep them out.

So you ended up in London with a sort of dual Boris campaign. There was the official Boris campaign, with the candidate playing down his neo-Thatcherite politics, straining mightily to avoid gaffes, and apparently having no policies other than buying a shitload of new Routemaster buses. In fact, in the popular view BoJo was more or less eviscerated of any politics, and simply viewed as that amusing bloke off Have I Got News For You. Then you had the unofficial Boris campaign, aka the Daily Mail and Evil Standard, pitching squarely to mobilise the Tory base on a hard rightist basis. Which seems to have worked: there was a massive turnout in the Tory-voting suburbs, the UKIP vote collapsed towards the Tories, and they also managed to mop up a large chunk of right-leaning Lib Dems.

The optics of the thing were really quite fascinating. On crime, Boris made some modest noises about putting more PSCOs on the Tube. Meanwhile, the Evil Standard screeched that London was facing a tidal wave of violent crime, and it was all Ken’s fault. On race - and the whole election had a nasty racial overtone - the contrast was even sharper. Boris spent a lot of time living down his various politically incorrect remarks of the past, and stressing how proud he was of London’s great multiracial community. On the other hand, the Mail and Standard promised that Boris would end the ethnic gravy train at City Hall. Hence the prominence of the Lee Jasper saga. Actually, though I’m none too fond of Jasper, my view is that Lee Jasper-type figures are pretty much unavoidable in big multi-ethnic cities, and Boris is likely to acquire some Jaspers of his own.

So now London gazes into the uncharted future of a Boris administration. Given that the city has just replaced a competent and experienced city manager with someone whose only experience of administration relates to the Spectator drinks cabinet, it’s no wonder Cameron is nervous.

As for the Cheeky Chappie, there may be a few useful pointers here. It’s notable that Ken’s vote rose quite sharply as voters rallied to stop Boris. It’s also worth noting that not only did Ken outpoll the Labour Party, but the Labour vote as such held up much better in London than elsewhere. At a time when the New Labour coalition seems to have broken down, should we really be surprised that an old-fashioned left social democrat, who has made modest but tangible improvements to Londoners’ quality of life, should do relatively well when Labour as a whole has done appallingly? It’s something that Labour Party members might do well to consider.

You see, Paul, being a trade union general secretary is very much like making love to a beautiful woman. You have to seduce the membership, string them along with your honeyed words, whisper sweet nothings in their ears, promise them the earth. Then, as soon as you get the chance, you screw them so hard they’ll be walking funny for a week.

Yes, I couldn’t suppress a smile at the news that Swiss Toni was running for the top job in SIPTU. This is one of those occasions where, though you have to support the left candidate against the right, your heart sinks at the prospect of doing so. Presumably a credible left candidate, like Clare Daly or Des Res, was unavailable.

It’s nice that Swiss is putting on a big show of taking this seriously. He’s been banging on a lot about the Crisis and how workers shouldn’t have to pay for it. This is, I assume, the same crisis he’s been prophesying for years. I’m also slightly startled to see that Swiss has procured himself a swanky website. Back in the days when I knew him, he was still having trouble with new-fangled gizmos like the tele-phone wire.

I can’t help thinking that it would be a laugh if he actually won. For, although the Gen Sec job is well remunerated and has a nice pension attached, I don’t believe he wants to win. Swiss is quite comfortable at the university. He is also, let’s not forget, permanent Great White Chief of the Socialist Workers Party, a position he’s held since being headhunted by Cliff thirty years ago, and which he could continue to hold for the rest of his natural life, provided he stays on the Brits’ good side.

So why this quixotic run? Well, I recall the first Carolann Duggan campaign, where Carolann’s high vote surprised everybody, despite her being exactly the kind of candidate union members warm to. At the time there was a clear anti-partnership platform, and there was a reasonable perspective that a rank-and-file movement would be built out of the campaign. Of course, no rank-and-file movement was built, and some of us were quite clear that the Swips weren’t going to build one, although many comrades thought they would. I assume this run has more to do with raising the group’s profile, and boosting morale in the ranks. After all, in a two-horse race it would take a really diabolical candidate to get less than 30%.

Still, Swiss on the campaign trail must be a real treat. Clever and articulate he may be, but other adjectives also come to mind, like dour and abrasive. Not exactly your hail-fellow-well-met type. A makeover may be called for. Give the dude a trendy haircut and stick him in a shiny suit. If he’s still going around in that green jumper with no elbows, now would be a good time to retire it. Maybe even break out the fine wines and Belgian chocolates…

I remember Prester John. You don’t remember Prester John, or if you do you probably won’t admit it. For the uninitiated, Prester John was a maniacal would-be world conqueror from the Dark Ages who somehow got hold of a time machine and transported himself to the 1960s, where he fought the Fantastic Four and the Mighty Thor - although sadly not at the same time. He had an evil eye, or perhaps a stellar rod, depending on which edition of the Handbook you’re reading. More recently a somewhat calmer Prester John has been playing a supporting role in the wonderful Cable & Deadpool, which is fine by me as it’s allowed Nicieza to have some fun with an almost forgotten character.

Which brings me to Doctor Who. The trouble with Who is that, while it works fine as Saturday-evening entertainment, it’s been terribly inconsistent in tone. Sometimes scary, sometimes moving, sometimes magnificently thrilling, sometimes silly to the point of panto. Sometimes all of the above within minutes of each other. By the way, I’m not as bovvered as some people about Catherine Tate. Sure, her acting style is broad, but then she’s standing next to Crazy Dave, whose increasingly manic chewing of scenery makes Tate look like Lena Olin.

So Doctor Who was on retro week. UNIT are back! Ah, those far-off days of Sergeant Benton, Captain Yates, Sarah Jane and the good old Brigadier… you can almost taste the Spangles. Today’s UNIT, however, is not the two-men-and-a-dog outfit of old. It’s a Serious Organisation, although what that means beyond a nice visual of lots of red-bereted soldiers yomping around, I’m not yet sure.

Upping the retro quotient, we had the eagerly anticipated return of the Sontarans. Now, I’ll admit that the Sontarans have never really done it for me. If you must revive classic aliens, my personal faves would be the Ice Warriors, who had that whole Noble Savage thing going on, as well as actually becoming more sympathetic with time. But the Sontarans are hugely popular with the Whovian fan base, and have the kudos of being seriously badass aliens who fought Tom Baker back in the day.

Not, I have to say, the most subtle creations in the canon. Rather stoutly built aliens of slightly porcine appearance and with the demeanour of a more than usually grumpy Regimental Sergeant Major. Best known for fighting massive intergalactic wars for no better reason than that they enjoy it. Possibly an inspiration for Douglas Adams’ Vogons. And here they are, invading Earth again to no obvious end - but then, that’s what Sontarans do.

There were a couple of nice little touches in Helen Raynor’s writing that I especially liked, and it’s worth remarking that she’s done some of the best of the revived Who. One was the teenage technology tycoon, straight out of the Revenge of the Nerds supporting cast, who aids an alien invasion through a mixture of egotism (the world isn’t big enough for my genius etc) and just thinking it would be cool. It’s the sort of thing you can imagine Bill Gates doing.

And I really, really loved the idea of the Sontarans dancing a haka before going into battle. This instantly makes them 100% more fun in my book. A well above average week.

And so it’s farewell to Humph. Legendary jazzman, socialist, Etonian, comic genius and all-round good guy.

And not least, the man who proved that an avuncular old codger could tell the filthiest jokes before the watershed, and the Radio 4 audience would love him for it. As long as he told them really well, which Humph always did.

I hear that I’m Sorry… will not carry on without its irreplaceable chairman, and that’s as it should be. On the other hand, it will be repeated forever, and that’s also as it should be. Selah.

And next on Louis Balfour’s Jazz Club, it’s the Lennon Sisters with “Mr Clarinet Man”. Nice…

I’m not usually a great one for going to demos in Dublin. The whole ritual of walking up and down O’Connell Street and then listening to longwinded speeches from the usual suspects just doesn’t have the appeal that it used to have. But, strange to say, I’m actually a little sorry that I missed the big farmers’ demo last week. Oddly enough, most of the Dublin left also seems to have missed this important event. Perhaps it’s just their knee-jerk view that the Irish farmer is an agent of Satan. Or maybe it’s because you can advance the class struggle much better by picketing beauty pageants…

It seems elementary to me that, if Peter Mandelson is hell-bent on destroying Irish agriculture in the name of the New European Empire, then he has to be opposed and any manifestation of the Irish farming class against Mandy is to be welcomed. And if that means lending support to a tougher Franco-Irish stance against the New Labour weasel’s antics in the WTO, then so be it. Even Fianna Fáil can sometimes move in the right direction, if there’s enough pressure behind them.

It may be a little unfashionable to say so, but I think it’s Economics 101 not to go about frittering away your natural resources but rather to use them for national development. Bear in mind that agriculture is still one of Ireland’s major industries. Hell, for a long time it was the only serious industry. Now remember that this was one of the basic political fault lines in the Revolutionary period. I’m grossly simplifying here, but basically the Cumann na nGaedheal programme was for Ireland to remain Britain’s market garden (the same sort of way that Bulgaria was the Soviet Union’s market garden) and hope for some trickle-down benefits. The original Fianna Fáil programme, for what little that’s worth now, was to establish self-sufficiency and then to plough the surplus into light industry. That’s what the Economic War was all about.

(Incidentally, the de Valera programme suggests itself as a possible path forward for underdeveloped countries today. In fact, Uncle Bob’s original programme for Zimbabwe was very similar. Unfortunately, it foundered on the corruption and brutality of the Mugabe regime, as well as the Brits reneging on their promise to buy out the white farmers.)

So we’re faced with a situation where the Mandelson position of today is actually a regression from the Cumann na nGaedheal position of the 1920s. Indeed, no politician with an actual mandate in Ireland (Mandy of course has no mandate anywhere) could contemplate putting forward proposals which, if the IFA is to be believed, could cost 50,000 rural jobs and the closure of a further 50,000 farms. For that reason I say, go farmers!

And this is not just an economic but also a cultural issue. Really, the two are inseparable. I’ve never been able to understand why so many Irish people who ordinarily have no time for the market are so laissez-faire about urbanisation, which they seem to regard as an unequivocally Good Thing. I don’t think so. Maybe this is an old Éire Nua streak in me coming out, but I don’t see it as Progress if half the population of Donegal has to move to Dublin. I think the depopulation and impoverishment of the West, combined with the unrestrained overdevelopment of Dublin, have a lot to do with why modern Ireland doesn’t work very well. And I don’t see why Ireland should aspire to the condition of Britain, where only about 2% of the population live on the land, and the countryside is divided up between multinational agribusiness on the one hand and the leisure needs of the upper and middle classes on the other.

No, we have an important and relatively successful economic sector here, not to mention a major natural resource. Any government with balls will be fighting tooth and nail to save it.

With the tea brewing and Aunt Rosemary singing “Mambo Italiano”, I turn my attention to the linked questions of autonomy and substitutionism. This is an area where the legacy of Cliff turns out to be more than a little problematic.

To take autonomy first, let us go back to the closure of Women’s Voice. This turned out to be quite a traumatic affair. It’s not just that it was controversial within the party, it was even controversial in Cliff’s family. It also turned out to be the making of a bright young fulltimer fresh out of college, one L German. Lyndzee made her reputation by acting as Cliff’s battering ram on the issue, going on a tour of the branches to ensure they all voted the right way. Branches that voted the wrong way were rewarded with a return visit.

Now, even the defenders of Women’s Voice would have said it was problematic, lacked focus and needed a serious overhaul. But basically, it fell foul of the retreat to the bunker signalled by the downturn perspective. That the move against WV wasn’t about the specific problems of WV was signalled by the fate of the SWP Gay Group, who got a lesson in Machiavellian politics when they voted in favour of closing WV, only to be closed down themselves immediately afterwards. Flame also fell by the wayside about the same time, in what precise circumstances I do not recall.

Well, that could be argued to be fair enough, in terms of the period. An experiment was made and it didn’t work out. However, then you run into Cliff’s fondness for theorising his pragmatic decisions. In practice, WV had proved to be a road out of the party; therefore, a recurrence of that sort of thing could be avoided by taking a stance against autonomous organisation. And if this was an unfortunate tendency of Cliff’s, the second rank of the leadership were much more rigid in this position. Cliff, at least, was pragmatic enough to be able to reverse his positions when he got a sniff of an opportunity.

So there was a culture that grew up of defending (in a rather abstract way) minorities’ right to self-organisation while in practice aiming the vast bulk of one’s fire against “separatism”. And we might rhetorically support the Black Sections in the Labour Party, basically to embarrass Kinnock, but there was no question of having any analogue in the SWP.

Actually, this was for a long time a small but significant underlying difference between the SWP and the ISO. Since the ISO was based in the homeland of identity politics and had seen much of the New Left disappear into Jesse’s Rainbow, you might have expected them to be even tougher on the autonomy question. In fact, while their position was formally identical to the SWP’s, the stress was very different, based on an understanding that minorities would organise themselves no matter what clever white blokes had to say on the subject.

Now we come to substitutionism. Cliff, in his occasional Hundred Flowers moods, used to like to quote Rosa Luxemburg’s dictum that the mistakes of a real, living movement were worth more than the resolutions of the wisest Central Committee. You might say, would that Cliff had applied this piece of wisdom to his own practice. But then you have to set this alongside Cliff’s fondness of talking about how Lenin (the real one, not Seymour) would go over the heads of the Bolshevik CC and appeal directly to the class. It’s crucial to understanding Cliff’s self-image. Of course, this only works if you’re prepared to believe that Cliff really did have a mystical connection to the working class.

Albeit that I don’t believe the structures of the Cliff movement were ideal, given those structures there were clear advantages to having Cliff around. He was a tough taskmaster. Notwithstanding his indulgence of some notorious chancers, he usually had a keen nose for bullshit. And, despite a broad sectarian streak, he was essentially a pragmatic sectarian, quite willing to carry out dramatic u-turns (“bending the stick” in Cliffspeak) if he thought it would help build his organisation.

Now, it could be said that the Cliff movement after the departure of the Great Helmsman would lose some of Cliff’s less attractive idiosyncrasies. But it also lost his assets as well, and its real weaknesses have been harshly exposed in recent years. Most prominent among them is a Central Committee the core of which has been in office a very very long time – imagine if Gordon Brown’s cabinet was packed full of relics from the Callaghan government and you’ll get the idea. This visibly ageing leadership is not supplemented by fresh blood as it needs to be – every so often some wunderkind will be headhunted, but talent does not rise up through the ranks. Nor is there any mechanism for it to do so.

At this point we enter a chicken-and-egg discussion, but it can scarcely be gainsaid that the permanent leadership does not really trust the membership, at least not to the point of allowing them the latitude to make their own mistakes and learn from doing. And this is reinforced by a tendency to circulate in a rather small, incestuous world. Not to mention they guard their positions jealously – power in a small sect may not seem like much, but it can become addictive in a way that Alex Callinicos’ ancestor Lord Acton would have recognised. And so the CC sets itself up as the font of wisdom, and the poor membership are reduced to being little more than a stage army. Which can have some romantic appeal if you fancy being a sailor in a re-enactment of Battleship Potemkin, but scarcely makes for the sophisticated and assertive cadre that (as Harman underlined in Party and Class) would be necessary to hold the leadership to account.

Now, this has definite political consequences. If you, as a would-be revolutionary leadership, have contempt for your own members, then contempt for the class as a whole cannot be far behind. The result is an almost inevitable political sectarianism.

This is why I think the “Russian dolls” analogy used in Respect, although it describes something real, is not quite right. Maybe it’s better to start with Rees’ assertion that Respect was too important to be allowed to fail. If you’re building a broad party – and I leave open whether that’s what you want to do in the first place – the Marxist left has to consciously minoritise itself, and accept that things are going to happen that it doesn’t agree with. When you’ve got a multi-ethnic formation to handle, you also need some sensitivity on issues of self-determination and autonomy.

Now let’s say that the leadership treats its own cadre as a stage army. In this scenario, the members of a broad front are yet another rung down – a stooge army, perhaps? Since the front is too important to allow mistakes to be made, there will be a strong temptation to use your organisational muscle to make sure everything goes the right way. The trouble is, that makes people outside the magic circle feel excluded. It’s particularly difficult if you’ve a lot of militant Asian youth with energy to burn and who are up for a political discussion, if they get nothing to do except leaflet drops and barbecues while the clever white blokes make the decisions.

Not that I’m lauding spontaneity for the sake of spontaneity, you understand. If you leave politically raw youth to their own devices, they are sure to make mistakes. But I think it’s a sign of political maturity to allow them the space to make mistakes, to have faith that they’re capable of reflecting on what they’ve done and learning lessons, and above all for a tendency with very few concrete achievements to its name to have a sense of modesty about itself. That may mean that some middle-aged white blokes have to take a back seat, but it’s not like the rest wouldn’t do them some good.