What Isn’t To Be Done (with Edmund Griffiths)

Doctor Edmund Griffiths joins Alexei to discuss a realistic and pragmatic approach for the left to have an effective role in British politics moving forward.

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Hi everybody Welcome to podcast number 47 of the Alexis L podcast now um this may in some ways uh seem a bit Niche the subject matter that we cover today but I also think it’s the most important thing ever in the history of the world so you

Know somewhere you know treat it like that it’s also I suppose I’ve I’ve made my part of my career part of my work has always been mocking the idiocies of the left really the kind of the splits and the the kind of ridiculous jar and and

That was all fine and good in a in a time when um the uh uh what the baddies called in in Transformers movie they they the Decepticons Decepticon yeah yeah that was when the de Decepticons when um coming for us now I think this is a a moment

When I think that left party some form of left party or left parties needs to stand in uh the general election and in up coming uh byelections in the future I think now I don’t think that just to concentrate on parliamentary politics is the way forward that I think the new Left Pary

Party needs to be both a campaigning organization and but it also I think they don’t take you seriously if you don’t also have um members of parliament so I think that it has to be a my feeling is that um if we are going to save ourselves from the aliens out of uh

Independence Day who are coming to rulers then uh we need we really need to um get our [ __ ] together have a party or parties that follow that uh twin track appro approach well actually having bums and seats in the House of Commons yeah I think I think you have I think that has

To be a part of it I mean I guess yeah an but when we talk about sorry to interrupt when we talk about we need a new party that actually represents us yeah you always imagine in your head like oh okay they’ll take up a third of

Parliament and that’s such a um you know that’s like a unrealistic or sign of like you you don’t imagine that actually being possible yeah right and uh but it doesn’t have to be you know 100 seats does it no no well I think Dr Edmund Griffith makes it clear what the what

The aim should be certainly in the short to medium term in the in the in in in the interview really I mean Anarchist grips will probably argue that um yeah the the the campaigning for parliamentary votes is completely pointless and um just you know it’s that

You have to fight for a Kind of Revolution and take over the means of production and I I don’t know I just you know it might be right but I think that we’ve got to try this approach we got to go for parliamentary seats as well as campaigning

Um I became distracted for a minute there because for some reason we started sarking yeah and wi make a brief he makes a point at the start about uh I think he is a kind of anist really he’s been piping up a lot recently yeah

He’s got very sorky L yeah he he makes a brief intervention but then we settled down to listen to the debate and did he said afterwards he I found it fascinating and he’s he he shifted his views to some extent in a nutshell Alexi what’s this interview about this coming

Up so I read this I mean I say it in the body of the podcast where I read this article that Dr Edmond Griffith had written about just about how you campaign how left parties need to campaign how they need to bring how in the past I think they have

Um they have stood without um a level of seriousness they have stood for I don’t quite understand them the motivation for why you would stand for Parliament without um trying to win the seat but for whatever reason left parties have continued on that and we talk about how that is

A that has a negative effect I think it makes people this Smiths uh left thinking you know as being un serious and unsustainable and the truth is I think as I think probably are say in the podcast that Britain is a much more left leaning country than its

Governments have ever allowed it to be really that if you could find a way and it won’t be easy but the way to get around all those various traps and uh sabotage that if you whatever government they offered in Britain that did offer leftwing Social Democratic policies those would be

Extremely popular um instead what we’re going to get is a I move to the right by both labor and conservative and I think that also opens the door for um the the far right I think and uh if we don’t do something I probably going to get and in

This interview you hit on some realistic kind of ways at the left he’s he’s talking about practical things to do ready which is you know I mean that’s one of the things again as I think I say in the body the of the podcast that um you know obviously I’ll read lots of

Um articles about the left you know and they all the points that they make are fine about you know colonialism or genocide or the the the corruption of the stock markets or the growing Gap gap between the and the poor classes yeah but what they very rarely talk about is

How what you got to do about it yeah and um yeah it’s always moan moan moan isn’t it yeah yeah yeah you know which I mean you have to have that you have to have that knowledge of what it is you’re fighting but you you also have to think

About how you’re going to find it and and sitting back and listening to you and Edmund chatting I was like I was so uh I I felt empowered you know it was weird to listen to it it felt like there was actually a possible way that we can

Start to change things and this discourse needs to happen more it’s starting to Bubble I think I’m seeing a bit of it happening around you know our best pal Owen Jones has recently said something similar but his solution is his solution is throwing money at at campaigns whereas uh Edmund yeah and but

Ed works for those who actually are thinking about being more politically active than just you know funding a GoFundMe or something Edmund outlines some really really good points yeah no I think I really I don’t know I think what he says is really important and I think

That I mean yeah we have collectively I think we have felt so powerless over the last well since the the rise of starm particular specially obviously over the last 6 months when we’ve seen we’ve seen the monster in all its awfulness you know you we’ve seen what

They will do if you get in their way in Gaza that’s an object lesson in who they are and what they what they will tolerate really and you know you in in the face of that enormous machine one has felt powerless and I think that this

Is what he says what we say is uh you know at least the start of a way of thinking of of somehow fighting back I think Wicked roll tape um we record all this on uh four track tape recorder yeah schol hold on I just got to turn

The cassette over to do the interview there we go press play and record at the same time and action [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] so I um I have a feeling that there is a suddenly there is a space opening up in terms of left politics that um you know that that that the general election uh I think that there’s possibility of of of independent left candidate standing and then also once

There is a starm a government that they will be so [ __ ] awful that when the opportunity arises uh and there are byelections that independent candidates will hopefully be uh able to stand and succeed in a way that uh you know that Galloway kind of showed the way I’m also terribly worried

Though that somehow in some way the left is going to entirely [ __ ] this up uh as a consequence that I read a really interesting article it was actually on the Jewish voice for labor site it was recently written for the um uh website or a publication called communist news

And it was written by Dr Edmund Griffith and I just thought it was full of wisdom and insight about it was called what was it called Edmond how we should contest how we should contest the general election and um it was just seemed to me it was full of wisdom about the

Practicalities of contest in a general election what left parties need to do to actually be successful not to stand and lose their bleeding deposits as so many uh as so many of us have done in the past but I think we can’t afford to throw away this opportunity now there is

A real we we owe it to the world in a way not to fail this time because otherwise we are I think heading into irredeemable um authoritarian darkness and the only basan between that and uh the world is is is a is left party so um I don’t know welcome Dr Griffith and

Give can you give us a a flavor really of how this I guess how it came about and what the the artical uh your messages it contains well yeah thanks thanks for having me on Alexi um the this article is is about how the left could contest elections because I think

We all kind of know deep down that putting up candidates and getting 200 votes in a constituency or getting half a percent is demoralizing it pulls people off um it yet the left has endlessly done it really yeah for God there’s well thugging reason yeah the

Left the left continues to do this and I mean I’ve voted for those candidates I’ve campaigned for those candidates um but I think we need I mean there is as as you say there is a a space there but that doesn’t turn into political support that doesn’t turn into votes just of its

Own accord um well shut up that’s cool and and so in this article which actually it starts out not as an article but a talk for a discussion group that I’m part of um and then I wrote it up as a as an article um in the weekly worker

The bew that’s right publication the the the original title of the of the talk was there’s a general election coming up um not very inspiring um but I suppose one key point that I’m trying to make in the in the article is we don’t get much media coverage we don’t get our

Publicity work done for us by the tblo press and that means we need to go out and do the work on the doorstep door Todo canvasing which you know the Tories don’t need to do Tories don’t don’t do much canvasing door Todo because everybody’s heard of the Tory party

Already they’ve got the mail and the Telegraph and whatever else helping them get their message out uh we don’t have that and we’re not going to have that so you need if you want people to to vote for you you need to you need to go door too absolutely um and in a

Constituency the the typical constituency is 70 or 75,000 people and that’s 40,000 households so on average it’s about 40,000 front doors you’ve got to knock on if you want to meet the voters and to do that needs a lot of people who are prepared to put serious

Time in if it takes 5 minutes to knock on a door and know that’s a bit of a guess I mean I don’t know how long it takes but if it takes five minutes to knock on a door then you can do 12 in an

Hour one person you can do 120 in 10 hours and 10 hours is a long stent and you haven’t got very far towards your 40,000 that you’re trying to cover over a kind of six week election campaign so it works out if you’ve got a hundred

People who are prepared to do five or six hours a week each yeah you can cover right if you’ve got much less than that you’re going to end up doing what the left usually does which is you put up a stall in the town center and you meet

People who pass by the store but anybody who wasn’t doing their shopping in town that Saturday never really finds out you exist yeah and that’s so yes do that kind of procedure is compl points because it also it says I mean I think what you’re saying to the punter really

Is if you just as you say p is saying you’re not serious isn’t it really yeah ex exact exactly that um and and sometimes these organizations are not are not really trying I mean perhaps they’re they’re trying to promote something to a relatively small number

Of people I know there was a left party I’m not going to name the party but left party that stood in my constituency several elections ago and my dad was visiting and he saw their stall in the street and he said to them I don’t live

Here I can’t vote for you but my son lives here and he’s voting for you and they said are you sure what’s his name that is not a party that’s trying to get to to the 70,000 people who live in that constitu um and there’s and and when is

Ends up getting 100 votes or 150 votes or whatever it ends up getting um it makes the whole left look Fringe yeah it means that if there’s people who were out there who maybe lik the message and thought yeah that does make sense but am

I just am I wasting my time is this is this just like monster oen Lut yeah and then against that very small vote and they think God yeah know it really is fringe I really am the only Nutter who thinks this yes yes um so I think you’ve

Got you’ve just got to to stand candidates where you’ve got enough activists to put the work in and if you if you haven’t then it’s not then you’re not actually making the argument you’re not getting to the to the voters right and thing that left groups typically say when they stand is

I yeah but we got a much more the small vote that we got that doesn’t reflect that we got a much more favorable response on our store well yeah you probably did cuz on your store you met 30 people they might have all voted for

You but all the people you did not meet never knew what you were about and they didn’t vote for you yeah um and we talked a little bit about one of the things that I found impressive about the article was it sort you referenced the party which I’d been sort of interested

In which was the northern indep dependence party uh and they um well you know I i’ kind of expected better things of them I think if you’d like to talk a bit about them really as epitomizing I mean in some ways they they went the um the epitome

Of kind of doer kind of left politics because they wear witty and stuff like that but as a turn how that didn’t help yeah um no I mean this this was an interesting example this was people who I think generally they had been Corbin supporters and they were disappointed by

It and by kind of defin well Northern Independence Northern independence party and they brought out a kind of anti-austerity Manifesto and what they were brilliant at was social media they were really funny online and they attracted a lot of attention and and some of this was happening during the during the covid

Pandemic and people were were not out and about but they were looking at their screens and the northern independence party seemed like something fresh it seemed they had something that PE that works very well online are we’re joking but are right um even the headline about independence for Northern England it you

Sometimes it was difficult to tell do they do they really want to go through with that or is that just a way of making the point that the north gets ignored yeah um and they did that very effectively and for the first time they stood an election candidate was

Byelection in Harley pool they got felma Walker who’d been a labor MP under Corbin yeah woman to be their candidate you know completely very credible cand and they got to 50 um and then their next attempt um for philma Walker you could say well because they were still going

Through the Electoral commission there’s electoral commission bureaucracy that makes it difficult to register a new party especially a small party if you haven’t got lawyers and accountants and so on it makes it difficult so Thor Walker was on the ballot paper as an independent right but then by the

Following year they’ managed to tickle the boxes with the Electoral commission and they put up a proper candid under their own name Northern independence party with their logo 84 votes so I mean nothing yeah and I think what you what you learn from that is that doing it

Online and doing it in podcasts is not um that doesn’t replace really meeting people face to face where they live it can be useful as well it can be useful as an auxiliary it can help um one thing about the northern independence party it got loads of press coverage it was

Written up in the times it was in the guardian it was in the independent which minor parties normally aren’t those papers would normally turn their nose up at a small party with a leftwing c platform absolutely but all those political journalists they’re all on Twitter if they see that people are

Excited about it on social media and they’re intrigued by it then they might think this is this is a big deal and we’ll we’ll write it up but but it doesn’t get through to those thousands of people who are not looking at political social media accounts right

I’m not reading the guardian and they’re not reading the guardian um and the for a for a small party if if you had billionaire funds and so on then there might be other ways to do it but for a left party the only way you’re going to do it

Is having people doing the leg work in the constituency and getting through to people you know getting window getting people to put a poster up in their window um because then other people in the street can say oh there somebody else you know this is this is starting

To be a bit a bit real and talk to people they know and say God I had that left Party come around knock on my door and say yeah I had that as well actually they were making a lot of sense and some of the want say they were making a lot

Of sense I mean some people won’t agree a lot of people won’t agree even if they do hear the message but if if we’re not even giving them a chance to hear it then you’re not really fighting that election no I I mean do you agree that

This is a inflection point I suppose that there is that this is the most important kind of um I don’t know dichot is not quite the right word really but you know this is the um yeah we are facing something very real here and we need we need to

For the first time in our goddamn political lives in some ways we need to act sensibly yeah I think I think there’s a lot of Truth to that I there’s a lot of Truth to that I mean part partly because we’ve had the Corbin experience we’ve seen seen what happens

You know after a 100 Years of people saying yeah but if the left got we got a left leader of the labor party then well we’ve now seen what happens and what happens is that the labor right fight like animals to stop it and block the left and the labor left end up

Pulling their punching um and those I mean amplify that a bit why do you think that is that they pull their punches I mean I think a lot of them are genuinely committed to the labor party as a project they really believe uh you know that you hear from

Labor left that the the bird needs a left and a right wing to to fly um they really believe that they are part of the same project with the labor right and if the rights in charge then we might Grumble a bit but we’ll go along with it

And if we’re in charge then the rights should grumble a bit thing is nobody told the labor right that that was the deal not at all no and and the labor right have made it clear that they w’t uh that they won’t operate like that no and from their politics it’s not just

Because the labor left are decent selfless people and the labor right are Thugs and monsters that might be true um but also somebody who’s a Blair right what they want politically really is closer to a one nation Tory than it is to the labor left yeah um so why

Should they work to put Corbin in power instead of the Tories well actually they get more of what they want a Tory government isn’t their first choice but it’s probably their second choice right yeah yeah um whereas the labor left are committed to the idea of a labor party they would all

Prefer the most right-wing labor government I’m good for them they’re going to get it the most right-wing labor government you can imagine they would always prefer that over the tourist which means that they they won’t fight the inner party right and this is something that that’s I’ve never heard

That Insight before but yeah see it rings true really I mean I I I hadn’t seen it until Corbin ISM I was I was told Years Ago by an old left leftwing activist the problem is that in inner party labor party battles the right always fight to win and the left never

Does yeah and I just you know I kind of remembered that as a bit of folklore um you know I I hadn’t seen it happen and then when corbynism came along you know red sky in the morning I mean the folklore was right that is how it how it

Happened yeah and and so I think that means that going back to the way people did relate to the labor party and think well yeah the the right’s in charge because the right won the vote but the left should play along with it well you know we’ve tried that yeah um the right

Will not allow the left and you can see how much more tightly controlled the campaign group labor MPS are now than they were under Tony Blair Tony Blair was not the famous libertarian in the way he ran the party but they had far more space then to criticize and to

Argue um do you me do you think star will get rid of them all just before the general elections are they it wouldn’t surprise me at all it wouldn’t surprise me at all I I don’t think that by shutting up they’re necessarily saving themselves no because that’s what you

Can clearly see that they’re keeping their heads down open to make it to the general yeah yeah I think they are and I’m not at all convinced that that’s going to work um even if it does you know the argument for having them in the

Labor party was oh well at least we get to make the arguments at least we can we can speak the truth in Poland and so yeah but if you never do because you you know that you’ll get purged then what’s the what’s the yeah yeah um I think it

Kind of corrupts the soul as well a bit I think I don’t know about that but just sitting there being intimidated it you know I don’t know yeah I think I think that’s true and I think it applies to I mean I think probably it was a it was a

Problem of the in the labor life that you saw a bit during kinism that the sort of people who were still around on the labor L were people who who for decades could could keep being pushed around and lose the argument and being beaten by the right people who

People who found that totally unendurable they either left labor left the labor party or they stopped being on the Left Right lot plenty of people you know Margaret Becket or whatever was complete benite back in the in the day but moved right because that was the way of being of

Having a voice or whatever getting on in the yeah and other people you know Scargill couldn’t couldn’t hack it and walk down right um once it was clear that his politics was being completely marginalized and the people who had stayed around up to 2015 were people who hadn’t made either

Of those decisions um but no I mean I think in you know what you say about it damaging to the soul I think that’s true for the for people involved in in labor politics it’s true for Grassroots members it’s true for it’s true for people who are considering voting labor

Under stum this is a party that goes out of its way to show how much it hates you and hates everything that you stand for yeah and it will Dem demonstratively stem on you but you’re still going to vote for it that’s not you know have some self-respect that’s

Not get out get out now EXA exactly exactly um and and so for that reason it this is an important elections ATT turning point also as you as as you hint turn from both main parties to be increased inly authoritarian rolling back civil liberties Democratic rights right to protest right to free speech

You know things that were that were hard one by the left and the labor movement and and others and it and it’s important to to try and fight that and to try and I mean ideally extend those Democratic rights but hang on to the ones that we’ve got as well

Hang on to the right to to protest and so what’s what’s best case scenario then let’s try and look forward to I mean what what should we do as Lenin said what is to be done I mean we’re not we’re not going to be forming a government after the next

Election um best case scenario I think is getting a you know if we could get one or two seats if if we could get some MPS elected on a clear left platform then there’s things that even one or two MPS can do um one or two MPS they can use

Parliament as a platform they can speak in Parliament without being scared of the labor Whip and all the rest of it um they can ask questions to the government the government can still lie I mean they can lie or they can refuse to on but it’s harder to lie to an official

Question asked by a member of Parliament and they can also if we’re talking about civil liberties and some right to protest if you’ve got left MPS they can be in the front rank if there’s a demad that the police might come and break up and make them Arrest A Member of

Parliament and again they might still do it they might still Arrest A Member of Parliament but it’s it’s making it harder for them um to say that you’re arresting uh um uh an opposition mp uh rather than you know the play like you and me um so I think what we want is

To get our own MPS elected and I think this is len in as well to be tribunes to be a a voice to provide a public voice for our politics and to to make the the argument and it would be it would be great if we

Could have hundreds it would be great if we could win a majority we’re not currently at that at that place um I think there is support there that can be mobilized but like I was saying with knocking on doors you with kind of tedious work yeah but then there are

There are a legion of people disillusion Corbin supporters you would go anywhere to uh to to to knock on doors don’t you think when we do have an army at our disposal if we can find the right people to stand I think we we do if we can find

The right people to stand if we can find the right platform for them to stand yeah under if we if we can if we can make sure that we’re mobilizing those people and not spreading the resources to thi yes um by standing loads of candidates when we’re

Not sure that we can get the the activists behind them um it’s much better I mean the okay the last couple of general elections most of the most of the far left was supporting Corbin supporting labor so there were not many there were still some there were not many

Candidates standing against labor from the left but at the one before that 2015 um just in London the uh group trade unionist and socialist Coalition put up 26 candidates in one city uh 26 constituencies is a million front doors to knock on right I don’t know how many members they’ve got

In London but I don’t think they could knock on a million front doors why not make it one why not make it two and really get the get a proper campaign active campaign and this is something that you can this is something that you can learn from from uh from Galloway and

I’ve got a lot of criticisms of of Galloway’s politics but one thing that Galloway really gets right is that he campaigns when he’s standing for Parliament on a massive scale he expects to have hundreds of volunteers out knocking on the doors and posters and literature everywhere and so everybody

In that in that Rochdale B I doubt there were very many people living in rochell who did not know that George Galloway was candid yes um and that’s part of why he of why he wins well if you compare that to a typical left Campaign which often boils down to

A few people in the Town Center on a street corner with a cible table yeah um giving out a few leaflets well that’s part the reason why why he gets the votes and those other those other absolutely um so picking a comparatively small number of constituencies uh where you can bring

The activists in like I was saying in in London where there’s public transport you know it’s you don’t have to spread it as thin as that you can pick a small number of constituencies I don’t know which are the right constituencies I people on the ground have decided which

Where where have we got the best chance where have we got the best chance of making a a breakthrough and maybe you win the seat and maybe you don’t win the seat you know maybe you still um maybe you still it takes a couple of Elections to get there it

Might well take a take a couple of Elections to get there that in this election you get enough of a vote to show that we’re serious to show that we’re in the mix that we’re a we’re a Contender here and you fight those Wards in council elections and so on as well and

Then hopefully at the next election there will be people because after four or five years of Stan govern there might be quite a swing to the left away from labor if we’re there if we’re there because the other thing is that the most likely outcome is a

Swing to the right really yeah I mean this is this is a pth that you see increasingly in in the world now that you have authoritarian neoliberal governments of the of the center and the opposition to them comes from the right of the far right because those those Centrist policies inevitably

Fail that yeah um and so you get you know macron versus lean in in France and that I think would suit Tories and labor and our whole political class down to the ground they would love it to be macron versus Leen um that’s why they tried to build up

Leave versus rain as a kind of macron Le Pen or Biden Trump right or whatever um and the left needs to be saying these are not these are not the solutions and if you if you hate the stone on the government you’re right to but the

Solution to it is not to go even further to the right and I don’t think it’s impossible to put that across to people I don’t no well I mean it’s yeah I mean as as has been endlessly stated Corbin’s policies when they were put to people without being told that they were

Corbin’s policies were immensely popular weren’t they yeah they they were and even I mean in 2017 the labor vote went up I there was massive and something that I think isn’t paid enough attention to is that Corbin did mobilize an extremely broad political Coalition and there were people who supported Corbin

Enthusiastically supporting Corbin who were very soft left in the labor party or or not even soft left there were people on the right of the L party who hated him and were very effective about that but but his support reached quite a way to the right of himself also reached

To the left of himself and the people who had been or maybe who still were are anarchists or part of different far-left groups who actually who actually had a lot of time for Corin and we mobilized um so it is it is possible it

Is possible to do it and it’s to do with the specific policies but it’s also to do with the idea that there’s another there’s another white yeah um that it doesn’t have to be the kind of grinding increasingly uh unequal increasingly undemocratic society that that we’ve all

Been experien you know that I’ve been experiencing my whole life yeah um and that it might be possible and we don’t know exactly what the alternative would look like but we can debate what the alternative would look I mean you had some interesting things to say I

Thought as well about the offer that left parties need to make to the voters because I remember like Ken L God bless him he he stood in some he formed some Socialist Party or something and I remember seeing their Manifesto which is this like 60 page document I mean I’m

Exaggerating but you know our our uh our policy towards the restitution of the chos islands will be you know our our policy on Marine bleaching you know I mean this kind of I me it’s like what why are you about telling people this CU it’s not like they you’re not going to

Be the government yeah exactly exactly uh a party that is intending to win the election and be the government might put out a Manifesto with all its detailed policies and we’ve got a fully costed Manifesto so and we know how this tax is going to pay for this reform and so on

But for left parties which have never stood a major in a majority of seats so even if everybody who physically could vote for the left had decided which they didn’t but even if they had decided to vote for the left it would still not have been in the

Garden um and when you know that the best the best case scenario is that we’re going to win seats and we might not you know we we’d not be depressed with some good results um that still fall short of winning seats um then it it just what

What does it mean to say this is what this is what I would do when I’m Chancellor after the election well you’re you’re not going to be I you you you literally have zero chance I mean it it looks falal enough when the lib Dems put out that kind of Manifesto but at

Least they’ve got the candidate I mean they physically could win the election we can’t so I think I think mostly you shouldn’t you shouldn’t waste people’s time with that kind of thing because that’s just a fantasy football isn’t it this is what I would do with this government Department um

But you can say these are you know this is where we’re trying to get to this is about getting away from capitalist system and moving towards socialism and I think that’s attractive to people absolutely yeah um and if you’re not if if you’re not saying that then kind of

What’s the point absolutely yeah uh so you can say that without saying how every bit of it is going to be funded because we don’t you know this we’re not we’re not there um and then you and you can also talk you can also say we’re not

Standing to be the government we know we’re not going to be the government we’re standing to be in opposition we’re we’re trying to get to be in a position where we can make our voices heard where we can strengthen campaigns and protest movements and so on that are happening

Outside outside Parliament because a lot of politics does not a lot of real Poli and I think that’s another important point I think that I mean I’ve been saying for a while that that whatever left parties are have to be working on the ground with protest movements as

Well than the in community campaign yeah exact exactly um exactly it has to be something that’s that’s part of an ongoing movement and does it benefit this movement to try and get a voice in the political formal political process to try and get a voice in Parliament

Well it does it does benefit I think so um does it benefit the movement to stand and not even try and get 100 votes it doesn’t it’s a setback um but so I think that’s that’s the kind of Manifesto A Manifesto you know the labor or t Manifesto is saying it might

Be completely dishonest but it’s claiming this is what we want to do over the next four or five years and if you vote for us and put us in government well we’ll do it um and I think left parties rather than having a list of policies well what

Are we planning to do over things for yes what do we want to do yeah over the next four or five years that will at least move things a bit in the way that we want things to go and try and hold back movement away movement in the wrong

Direction yeah and explain to people how does you voting for us how does it help well if it gets us a seat then this is what we’re going to do with one with one seat um and that’s like those things of putting the MP where they can get

Arrested and using Parliament to make speeches and so not saying we’ll pass this law because we won’t pass the law we won’t we’re not going to be in a position to pass the law but we’ll uh we’ll have an MP who will raise the issues who will raise the opinions

That we want to express make it harder to keep them completely frozen out of the press and all the rest of it um if we don’t if we don’t even get the seat but I think you can explain to people if we get 20% then that’s better than if we only get a

Couple of percent yeah I think you can make sense I think that makes sense to people I think you can say look if we can get we can get a decent solid vote if we can get thousands of votes yes rather than a couple of hundred or

Couple of tens we can get thousands of vots then it means we’re showing that there is a real support that there’s a base of support for these ideas it’s building towards the following election it’ll be is is part of a of a movement forward um I don’t think there’s any way

If you’re expecting to get you know why is getting 150 votes better than 120 votes it isn’t there’s you can’t answer that to somebody um because the there’s no and and that’s that’s why as I say if you’re if you’re expecting to do that badly if you think you’re at that level

Of then don’t yeah don’t stand well [ __ ] around people yeah um I mean you’ve got you’ve got to seem as though you’re taking it a bit seriously and so you’re taking yourself serious yes yes exactly yes no to dilon ISM how um so uh well I

Mean one of the things I don’t know if it’s your line or I thought there was an interesting what’s the website my oh weekly worker weekly worker one of the things I I seem to read on there was just that I mean one of the things that um we have

To finally put an end to in this cycle all we’re done for is factionalism I think that you this kind of fishy P fishy I was proun that wrong fish perious whatever is FY perious nature you that’s kind of the the the the the inclination of the left to split I think

The inclination of the left to split thinking about it a lot partly comes from the fact that everybody thinks they’re right don’t they on the left so they think I’ve got if I don’t win this argument or if I don’t my particular point of view doesn’t get across that

I’m letting down the working class of the entire world I’m letting down the antal struggle because and I think one of the things that came across on that site was that we don’t we don’t we know that generally left policies antical policies anti capitalist policies all

Right but we don’t have none of us as exact right idea and anybody you anybody on our side will prob be better than anybody on their side yeah I think I think that’s that’s very important that there’s there’s things where none of us actually can be completely sure what the

Right answer is and there’s also things I think that the left doesn’t always left is not always as good as it should be at realizing that sometimes we’re just going to disagree people just legitimately are going to have different opinions and we’ll argue it out and the majority yet their way because that’s

How democracy work yeah but you don’t have to think they were right and you can you can still and you don’t have to split off and form an even smaller policy that party that get even less votes yeah um but I mean I think part of

The reason why why the left finds it easy to split is that if you think of it like the formation of the planets in the early solar system then if you’ve got some lump that’s big so it’s got a lot of gravity and Other Things fall in with

It and it all merges together and little things find it hard to say away because it’s got a lot of gravity and that ends up being the Earth or Jupiter or or whatever and where that doesn’t happen where there’s just little lumps that bounce off each other and none of them’s

Got much gravity you got the asteroid belt right and that’s the left um the actually no group because you saw when kinism started lots of people joined the labor party who’ve never been labor members I mean some of them might have regretted it since lots of people joined

The lab party lots of people because I was getting somewhere so we will rowing behind it um and the left at the moment if you’re in a party that’s got 100 members and you’re always in the 40 who lose all the votes then why not split

Why is it worse really being in a party of 40 than in a party of 100 it’s not much worse you know it’s the same uh and that keep and so you can keep splitting and then if you’re in the 15 who always lose the votes in the

Party of 40 then you can split then we got then we got the really Pure Line and I mean you know I’ve got I can see why people do it I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s it’s malice and I don’t think it’s just silliness it doesn’t happen

With other political forces because they’ve got something that’s got enough gravity right that if you’re if you’re broadly in the space of green politics that even if you hate the leadership of the green party even if you think it gets stuff wrong you’ll probably still

Think yeah but I can get more done as a minority in the green party right than I could breaking away from it and launching my own green party brackets ml um uh and it’s the same with the Scottish national party or whatever like like that yeah um and so those are not those

Are proper planets and we’re an asteroid belt um but I think the this I we’re not the left grou left is not all going to completely unite because somebody tells it to um but I think the the minimum thing about the election that it should be possible to do is to

Say if my own group or the group that I support doesn’t have a candidate around here then okay I’ll help out with your group yeah but also not I just say also not to try and sub that group not to connive against them but to throw yourself wholeheartedly behind that L

Yes and and do it and I have I I’m not currently part of a uh of a left group but I’ve campaigned for various different organizations and yeah you try you try to do it honestly and say the arguments that you think yeah you think are their position

Um uh and if we did that then the number of constituencies where we would have a reasonable chance of having a go at it would be a lot bigger because there’s not many constituencies where one group is going to have the numbers to do a serious campaign um

But if if they could just agree you know sure there’s still stuff we disagree about we still think Aron is the best um but if we’ve got our own candidate then we’ll work for our own candidate but if in this city we’re not strong enough to

Put up a candid and you aren’t having a gance it then we’ll we’ll get behind it for the sake of the election because the fact that we have a different interpretation of the transitional program from you isn’t quite the same as the difference between us and starm or us and the Tories no

Um uh some people on think that’s much more important yes no indeed well have to deal with them when we we will when we come to them any other any other words wisdom then I don’t think these have been NOS of wisdom I mean well no the I it’s more

Sensible than you know I’ve heard from a lot of people I think well I mean thank it honestly it took me long enough to work out any of these things if you’d ask me a few years ago I would probably have said oh yes s loads of candidates

Loads of candidates let’s get the argument out there and I I gradually came to realize you’re not getting the argument out then if nobody actually hears it um and it feels as though you know as though it’s saying as though it’s being defeatist or saying we can’t achieve we can’t achieve the

Revolution tomorrow but actually I think a there there are no shortcuts at the moment there are real ways forward as you’ve been saying that there is a political space to the left there are lots of people who were infused by Corbin or by the movement around Corbin who supported labor

Because it seemed to represent something more to the lefted and and so that that that support is potentially there um but it it takes daytoday work to make to make it a reality or to make it politically effective I think you made a point about names as well didn’t you that there’s

One you said what was that yeah I me this is something that left groups do is stand under names that they’ve made up for the particular election um rather than under their real name um and I think I say in that article I think if

You ask members of the public to name uh far left organization they would say either militant or the swp but the name militant has only ever appeared on the ballot paper and one constituency in a general election actually got 6 and a half thousand votes or something um and the name Socialist

Workers Party has never in a general election appeared on a ballot paper not that those organizations don’t stand candidates but they stand them under different names that they’ve made out there are constituencies where in the last uh 20 or 25 years the same person has stood in different elections

Under three different party names while actually being part of the same group and I don’t think that’s the way to build up support base no um I mean I think if you’ve got a name that the public might recognize and name recognition is difficult to get if

You’re a minor yeah um if you’ve got a name like millitant I think if if they would stand or the organization that’s the successor of that if they put militant on the ballot paper then I think there might be some at this point after what I’ve seen on voting

Millison uh because they’ve heard of it that see some people would hear the name militant and be put off by it some people don’t look but that that’s true of conservative that’s true of Labor um it’s true of any party name that some people support it and some people don’t

But I think it’s better to use the real name and it’s better to use the name that you use in your day-to-day campaigning and in your political work absolutely because if you’ve been active in local struggles or in campaigns or whatever it might be and you’ve been

Doing that under a particular name then why stand as United socialist this that and the other yeah which nobody’s ever heard of yeah instead of the name that people might have seen think so I mean it’s a sort of ignorance isn’t it of the way the world you know

Advertising works for a reason really your branding works for a reason it’s not capitalis nonsense well it is but it’s also important I remember reading somewhere years ago hearing that like the firm renter kill they hate that name the executives and that they’re like oh

Man I work for Ren I don’t all you know but they can’t change it because it so powerfully represents what they do and also you know it’s so well known that they can’t change it they’re stuck with it you know yeah um yeah and they and it’s quite right because if they changed

The name nobody would ever heard of it of course not and how how would you ever build up the advertising budget doesn’t exist in the world to build up that no particularly on the left we don’t have that no and we don’t have it so if you’ve got name

Recognition then making it oh no this this election we’re going to be socialist alternative and then next time we’re going to be socialist Alliance and next time we’re going to be don’t do that yeah and I think uh I think that’s just not that’s not sensible politics and it wouldn’t be for any

Party yeah uh I agree well I I mean unless you got the other I see that might do us for now Dr Griffith thank you very much thanks for having me on Alexi so yeah uh I me an amazing interview I think and uh a road forward this will be the moment you will listen to this podcast and you will say to yourself this is the moment my life changed MH this is the moment when I rediscovered hope and became active

Again come on people let’s do this [ __ ] [ __ ] hey rise up rise up man but you know like in a focused way not just in that sort of generic kind of you know people we all got to be together kind of nonsense I mean he’s com in now will is rising up

He’s into it is he holding a little Packard he’s marging up and down behind you he’s doing a little yes yes yes protest yes says down with the bastard labor right on his blackard yeah get organized yes will that’s right that’s absolutely right dy’s doing a

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Byebye you’ve been listening to the Alexis Cel podcast this show is produced and edited by talal kouti music by Taro records thanks to audio Boom for hosting us please keep your emails coming in at Alexis podcast gmail.com goodbye