4-9th August 2004, East Midlands

Is there a workshop on how to use the internet / computers?

i.e where particapants share their skills at not posting the same article seven billion times on indymedia.




(Or is it a deliberate attempt to clog up the newswire?????)

multiple copies of the oops! comment have now been hidden.

r7 [1 of imc-sheffield]

oh yes lets all get off our heads and be fluffy about the environment!

get real! the fash are up for election misleading our communities and you guys wanna meet up in a field (wtf). get with it man! i care about the environment (recycling, ethical purchasing!) but you gotta have priorities. The working class continue to be shafted by capitalist a$$holes and you wanna have a discussion... Get yourselves out there and make youselves seen and voices heard and toss off hedonism in a field... Think about it, before the fash stop you!

stop crying watcher, there's workshops about stopping ID-Cards, fighting the G8 when it comes to the UK next year, plus rooks of great other things. Its not about getting fluffy in a field, its about direct action and working together on loads of campaigns. you don't have to come, its not a school trip.
sort it brainwise

As someone who may be described as a class struggle revolutionary marxist and militant anti-fascist, I wanna go to the EF gathering!

You'll find people there who have a history of direct action to free the earth from GM Crops, Nazi racist BNP scum, multinational corporations, greedy privarizing fatcats and the rest! You might even find militant eco-marxists! And have good time too!

The G8, multinationals, GM crops might be important but they are not nessasarily working class isssues because most working class people would not nessasarily put them at the top of THEIR list of problems. If you were to ask a working class person what is THEIR number one problem THEY might say 'the housing crisis', 'anti-social crime', 'the state of my bank account' but what they will might also say is 'assylum seekers'. How does the left deal with these problems? err.... it just ignores them. Maybe when the 'millitant eco-marxists' start dealing with these problems the rest of the world will start taking them seriously.

Oh...for the record i do think that GM crops are important but it is of equal importance to do somthing that working class people THINK is important.

Having been at quite a number of protests it has been glaringly obvious how greater success could have been achieved with simple ideas, particularly at DSEi last year. Perhaps because the protestors hadn't been to something like this the real potential to make a huge impact was lost. Having not been on a couple of recent demos through illness I have seen the minimal mainstream coverage and although Alex Thompson from Channel Four News was at DSEi I saw recordings of their news and it hardly got a mention.

I welcome this opportunity to share ideas and hopefully the results will speak for themselves.

This is a very good point. The problem with politicians of all hue, whatever they profess to believe, is that they wish to lead the poor huddled masses, and often the poor huddled masses do and say things the 'enlightened' do not wish to hear and do not wish to deal with.

Working class issues are virtually always sidelined, forgotten and ignored, not only by the establishment, the powerful right-leaning politicos, but also the left in general. There are many reasons for this, obvious reasons and perhaps not so obvious reasons. The class issue is ignored because it brings into play uncomfortable and embarrassing realities; a person from a very impoverished background from a rough council estate will have virtually nothing in common with a middle class lefty who has come from even a relatively well-off family and been through higher education and held down a reasonable paying job. The biggest uncomfortable reality in Britain, in the majority of cases, is the class divide between the relatively well-off middle classes, and the impoverished working classes. Because of this, the inference from many left organisations and groups, because in many cases there are in those groups middle class people, there is an unwillingness to bring up the class issue at all; attack racism, bring up asylum seeker issues, talk about Indonesia, Africa, the plight of the South American indigenous people, anything at all and anywhere else in the world, BUT DON'T bring up the issue of class!!! The problem in Britain is really down to an archaic class system, that allows some people to live very well, and many others to not even have a reasonable standard of living. Until this issue is tackled, all the lefty organisations, parties, groups, and etc, will go nowhere slowly and in ever decreasing circles.

I argue that, for much of the left, there isn't an issue of changing or challenging injustice at all, it is a gravy train for people to look impressive and cool and all left wing, whilst at the same time making money and furthering what can be very lucrative careers. The left have become as big liars as the right. There is very little difference at all in Britain between left and right now, even in the so-called alternative parties.

Those who desire change, in their own lives as well in greater society, those who desire a new England have to look really hard at the issues. The left in England is virtually finished, and is so raddled with contradiction and ineffectiveness as to be almost useless. Think that I am harsh? Well, where were they during the Miners Strike, the Dockers Strike, etc etc? All the concerned seem as ever conspicuous by absence. Oh, it's only a working class issue, it doesn't really count, because, comrades, class isn't really an issue at all, might be too embarrassing to bring that up, comrades.

I can speak only of Liverpool here, but until working class people demand change, and more social justice, it will never come from those who already have comfortable lives.