Gordon Brown's coming to town

The stimulating exchange between Allen and Brown is now online:  http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2008-01-30a.313.0&s=speaker:10008

He's clearly coming, but it's still not clear when.


Graham Allen: If he will visit Nottingham soon to launch Nottingham as an early intervention city.

Gordon Brown: We are building Sure Start centres in my hon. Friend's constituency, and we will continue to invest in under-fives provision. I congratulate him on pushing for that in his constituency.

Graham Allen: The Prime Minister is aware of the massive financial costs of failing to raise our young people properly. These include the cost of prisons, policing, drug rehabilitation and a lifetime on benefits. Does he agree that a better way is to intervene early and invest to save, by providing effective prenatal services and intensive health visiting and by comprehensive parenting skills being taught to all teenagers? Will he consider making such an early intervention strategy the centrepiece of the next comprehensive spending review, so that we can tackle once and for all the intergenerational nature of these problems that afflict our young people?

Gordon Brown: Let me say also that I look forward to visiting my hon. Friend's constituency. I pay tribute to the work that he has done on making an issue of greater provision for the under-fives. This is part of the work that we are doing as a result of the comprehensive spending review. Our aim is to ensure that, for those children under five, any disadvantages that were previously built into their upbringing and prospects are removed as a result of Sure Start and other measures. I gather that there are 11 Sure Start centres in Nottingham already, and we are going to improve the numbers over the next few months. I also believe that Nottingham will be one of the first local authorities to benefit from the Every Child a Reader programme. We will do everything that we can to give more chances to every child under five in the country.

The welcoming party for Tony Blair was substantially boosted(on both occasions) because we were tipped off that he was on his way, and we were therefore able to email the Stop the War list.

Preparations for these visits tend to proceed in two stages: first, various people (like members of the Labour Party) are told on which day to expect the illustrious visitor, but not the precise time, or exactly where. This information is released 24 hours before the visit.

In the past there was no shortage of disillusioned members of the Labour Party who couldn't stand the Government's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who were very willing to give us whatever information they had (as soon as they got it). I imagine that Brown's attacks on public sector trade unionists may further increase this flow of information.

If you get to hear anything, my mobile number is 07739 712 432.

Looks like Brown will get welcome Blair got if he turns up in Nottingham, as long as we don't fall for any police lies& bluffs & have transport ready for schedule moves.
Our unity against G8summits& fash marches often works.
Check your Spanish revolutionary history, Stalinism seems pretty dead now. Is it time for another red,green & black populist front without proletarian dictators?
Seems most radicals are all genuinely against corporatism, fascism & for unions,the environment, consensus & democracy, as long as one group doesn't try & sweep the others under it.
If not how long has what little democracy we have & life on earth got?

This isn't just pedantic, but an important point in how we should (and do) organise.

United Fronts, as concieved in the period of the dying down of the revolutionary tide post WW1, involve revolutionaries working with other workers and progressive organisations that share particular goals and interests at that time, to defend workers interests, and hopefully also win them over to our cause in due course. In a United Front revolutionaries keep their own revolutionary programme.

Popular Fronts, as dictated by Comintern (Stalin's) policy from 1934, involve revolutionaries joining in with other workers organisations, but also 'progressive' bourgeois liberal elements, in a shared programme. I.e. revolutionaries abandon their programme in order to go along with the shared goals of the Popular Front. The classic example being 'defending' the Spanish Republic in 1936/37 at the expense of pressing ahead with the revolution. The CNT (like most of the Spanish workers organisations) made their fatal error in doing this. The revolution was lost, and inevitably the Republic was also - capitalism in the bourgeois liberal guise had had its day in Spain by then.

Similarly we might work with non-revolutionaries in our struggle to defend workers interests, and the interests of other opressed groups, against the BNP. But we we should do this in the spirit of a United Front, not a Popular Front. We shouldn't support any bourgeois political programme in order to oppose the BNP.

Good point,learning about this is important. Marxists & anarchists do work together in a united front against nazis & the war.

You say the revolution & civil was lost because CNT "anarcho-syndicalist union" didn't take the revolution far enough & kept with popular front against the nazis, I am not sure I thought it was because the Nazis had more arms & diplomatic support.
The revolution in Spain doesn't seem like it would have happened if there hadn't been a front.

"Similarly we might work with non-revolutionaries in our struggle to defend workers interests, and the interests of other oppressed groups, against the BNP. But we we should do this in the spirit of a United Front, not a Popular Front. We shouldn't support any bourgeois political programme in order to oppose the BNP."

We do work with with broad fronts against nazis & genocides. Is or was Respect coalition a popular or united front?,the lines are a bit fuzzy here. Does the TUC leadership work in interests of workers when they go to top corporate class meetings or are they part of it?
Where are the lines drawn, most people today are class mongrels& or have family members who are, as defined by Marxists. Certainly people like stalin,Lenin,Trotsky,Che, Kropotkin & other came from far from strictly working class backgrounds.
Everyone seems to have a different definition of class, Marx certainly doesn't have the last word. Personally I agree with famous punk band Crass that "w/c,m/c its all a load of shit".
The corporate classes merged with the old aristocracy seem to have real power now, even some of them occasionally rebel.The rest of humanity seems to be in mainly camps of both classes that support or rebel against the corporate system.

If we cant sit down & work out a loose consensus on how to change society at WSF & other forums, what chance has the rest of humanity? I do agree we should avoid alliances with any political group who maintain the corporate system, which obviously includes nazis.
The corporate classes are increasingly relying on technology to usurp all peoples power & benefits.

Maybe a new slogan should be"People of the the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our ism's"
We can stop G8 why not, comintern is dead as well as Stalinism
How about a true rebel alliance?

Bakunin was a great critic of dictatorships & lively revolutionary,Marx's criticism of capitalism was great, but he shouldn't have conspired to expel Anarchists from the first international.
They actually used to get on well for years, but then things went very sour vying for power in 1st international.
Marx accused Bakunin of being a tsarist agent,Bakunin was from an aristocratic family, but he bled for revolution & spent a decade in a tsarist hellpit,dying early.
Bakunin shouldn't have reverted to antisemitism though like many socialists sadly then& propaganda of deed is no where near as good as platformism,syndicalism or municipalism.
Makhno worked with the February 1917 revolution,then tried to work with Bolsheviks despite large parts of Ukraine being offered to Germans after Lenin cleverly got Kaisers train & money for a "peace" pact & tookover in October.
Dictatorship of proles ideology led Lenin to send orders to kill Makhno & crush the Ukrainian revolution, a smaller Makhnovista peasant army had just charged & defeated larger regiments of the Whites, who were almost at the gates of Moscow.
Trotsky was also a man of action in revolutions before 1917 & in leading the red army, but following the dictators, he too was double crossed& literally axed.
Looking at history I reckon the grandads with beards on both sides during the 1st international had a lot to answer for.
Libertarian Municipal Communalism includes communists & anarchists as does syndicalism & Makhnovista Platformists tried to work with Lenin.
Consensus & delegation technics used by thousands in frontline protests & communities work.
Some marxist do try to ally with anarchism, in Spain & Russia & globally, despite the strict adherence to doctrine.
Is that adherence communism?

cheers bob for your amazingly inspiring rhetoric & oxbridge python wit,

Ever learnt from history, to not make the same mistakes?,
its funny & sad theres so many splits in revolutionary movements that was the main point in Life of Brian.

Despite our past splits we are the kind of people who fought fascism from the start & keep movement against the war going.

here's to greeting the one eyed nuclear puppet