I'm heartbroken today as the socialists in my City's CLP completely let me down. Last night I was thrown out of my CLP's Zoom meeting by the Chair, who I am informed is widely regarded as a right-winger. It's a bizarre situation where Carlisle's Labour Party has a Councillor as Chairperson who is married to a Tory Councillor who is the Deputy Leader of the Tory Council. Yes, you read that correctly...
But lets ignore this craziness for a moment and try to get to the core of why I was thrown out. Straight away you will jump to the seemingly obvious answer and criticise the Chairperson. But that's not the core of it so let us ask why again. Why was the Chairperson able to kick me out? Because kind socialists who filled that room Let her. Why did they let her? Because they did not have the courage to stop her. Reflecting upon the lyrics of The Red Flag I see that my own fellow socialists are the cowards who flinch whilst infiltrators who hate socialism are the traitors who sneer. Generalising, we, The Left, are the cowards.
Nationally courage is in very short supply. Socialist MP's have turned on Unite Leadership Candidate Howard Beckett sharing this image among their pathetic little WhatsApp group. It depicts Navendu Mishra who is in my opinion one of the traitors who sneer we were also forewarned about. In 2018 he was central to the candidate selection scandals which began the demise of the grassroots. He was one of a panel of three who voted to impose a millionaire local businessman as the momentum endorsed candidate for Copeland as opposed to the membership selected Rachel Holliday, a local charity worker with outstanding support and enough of the political courage we see too little of to stand up to them after pscohantic "tough men" called and tried to bully her and her comrades into withdrawing.
Mishra was being praised by the sneering traitors for this tweet.
Talk about Solidarity. I know that's going to make him laugh when he reads it. We are all his useful fools who campaign for him regardless of how he behaves. His newfound sycophants praising his cowardice would have you think he is some kind of Heroe but surely your heroes are the kind of people who would call or text a comrade directly challenging their behaviour when needed and defending them even when it means taking some flack themselves.
Owen Jones joined in on the Beckett bashing and appealed to his left-wing following to vote for Steve Turner. But this is the flip-flopper who in 2016 was touting Lisa Nandy as the socialist leader to replace Corbyn. No doubt his support was part of the reason she felt she could betray Jeremy and join the Chicken Cup that same year.
But these cowards are just the celebrities of the movement and what we really need is a movement full of courageous socialists. If we have that then we can not lose. So what does it mean to be courageous and how do each of us become more courageous.
Courage is "the ability to confront something painful or difficult or dangerous despite any fear."
The left often likes to take credit for the work of the courageous brigades-men who fought Franco, striking miners who got their heads bashed in by Thatchers goons and the OG Pride marchers who faced an army in New York. But they all had courage in abundance. Physical courage kept them going in spite of the fear of death and social courage to be themselves unapologetically meant in every case they whore their uniforms from donkey-jackets to stiletto heels.
TBC...