Working Class Bookfair Saturday 21st August 2010 Sunderland 11-5pm

you are not working class so get back to uni you semi-middle class leeches

Comedy gold from the stupid 'real working class' person??!! Are we 'not real working class' ? Must the working class be always stupid like you?

If you stepped out from your steroetyping and used your brain for once you would find that the real working class movement ALWAYS valued education. The early trade unions (which contrary to stereotype were not dominated by Marxists) and organisations like the Workers Educational Association which has been going for 100 years now (all around the country). You right wing dimwits are so thick its pathetic, you really do live in a fantasy world of your own construction and you try to force square pegs into round holes. Get a grip/life etc...

Just ignore the troll wankers who divide their time wanking themselves silly and coming on here to have a sneer.

The vitriolic comment from the rightist troll aside, the fact is that the modern left has been out of touch with the working class for many years now, and it's been getting worse and worse. I work as a labourer in a variety of fields and the reality is that a lot of the fellow workers I interact with are borderline BNP supporters. They end up voting Labour or Tory, but they'd never consider voting for a real social democratic party, let alone an out-and-out Marxist-oriented party.

This is in stark contrast to previous decades when the left was literally dominated by the working class. Today, you just don't find too much working class participation in politics. People still vote, but they're mostly apathetic and they don't consider alternatives to the establishment parties, even though Labour doesn't give a whit about workers. But you've got the BNP making plenty of inroads with working class voters thanks to the anti-immigration, anti-Muslim platform and heaping blame for society's ills upon immigrants and Muslims. Whenever times are tough, people always go after the minorities without considering that this pattern has been repeated many times before and led to the Nazi takeover of Germany.

The establishment still is very much afraid of any alternative to capitalist exploitation, especially Marxism, and the BNP is absolutely a tool of the upper classes to rile up the working class and distract them from the real source of the problems. What we are witnessing is the slow and gradual rise of a far-right party in almost the same exact way that the Nazi Party rose, with upper class financing and working class votes.

The solution is to pinpoint those areas where the BNP has been gaining in support and establish lines of communication with the workers there and educate them, instead of simply protesting and demonstrating. One of the biggest failures of the left has been the inability to educate people out of their prejudices, and things are getting worse since society is becoming more stratified and working class children aren't getting the education they deserve.

The ideologues of the left need to get out of their ivory towers and start talking to workers face to face, with particular focus on the poorest, least educated workers.

The modern Left is out of touch with the working class? No shit, thanks for pointing that out. How does your prolier than thou attitude help? I'm no fan of the middle-class Left, but going around accusing everyone on the Left of being middle-class is pointless and deranged. You're no better than the Bolsheviks or the Khmer Rouge.

@ REAL WORKING CLASS PERSON - Uni is not open on weekends, or in August for that matter! :)