May 6th, London. Return of the Angry Mob?

http://www.londonclasswar.org/newswire/

Text of the leaflet:

We all know politicians are lying, corrupt, self-serving parasites - its time we let them know.

This is our London, not their, their party's or their paymasters'.

On Friday May 2nd we will confront our class enemies at the Mayoral election results, reviving a great radical London tradition.

Its time to take to the streets and claim back our city.

6pm
City Hall
The Queen's Walk, Tower Bridge
South side of the river

++ London Revolting ++

We're told London is one of the wealthiest cities in the world, playground to the super rich, a global financial centre where city workers, paid in excess of £19bn, keep the institutions of power going.

But London has some of the poorest, most deprived areas in the country (50% of children here are living on or below the poverty line), as we are left to fight amongst ourselves for the most basic jobs and necessities.

As ordinary Londoners we are being priced out of our own city - either exiled to the outer reaches or pushed together in cramped expensive living conditions. Local councils sell off our housing to get-rich-quick developers, breaking up communities and further alienating us from each other as we struggle with increasing debt, fear and security.
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++ Power mad ++

The office of Mayor (with its annual budget of over £9 billion) is a massive government institution designed to keep us from making real choices and decisions about our own city. Despite endless public announcements about helping Londoners THE CROOK still puts his full financial backing behind the 2012 Olympics, against local objections, where public money will go to staging a 2 weeks sports show, while private companies reap the rewards; owning the Olympic land, property and sites in the east end that once belonged to us!

All over London THE CROOK is promoting property speculation an private development (selling off public facilities, and open spaces for luxury housing) at the expense of our needs while siphoning off taxpayers' money for his own pet projects and personal cronies. But would THE TOFF, THE COP or THE FASCIST act any differently? Aren't all politicians the same - out to line their own pockets, lying to protect their own interests and influential friends?

When it comes down to it, don't all political parties really represent the interests of the rich and not those of ordinary people?

And isn't it about time we did something about it?
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++ BNP / Anti-Fascism ++

Our so-called political leaders, along with the media, continually deflect our anger from the main enemy onto other working class people - immigrants and unemployed. They use people's genuine concerns to create false divisions and promote their own agendas. Is it any surprise that the BNP leadership, like Cameron and Brown, come from the same privileged backgrounds?

Our class heritage has always been one of defiance and dissent - a refusal to bow down to authority and oppression, be it the fascists during WW2, Thatcher during the Miner's Strike or Murdoch at Wapping - this is our real history, solidarity and self-organisation, and despite the language they use the BNP have always had a vicious anti-working class tradition.

Which is why we should be out in force to stop them taking the platform at City Hall.
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++ Get rid of 'em all ++

The history of London and Londoners is a culture of rebellion and discontent - organising ourselves against the domination of the privileged few - from the Peasant's Revolt to the Battle of Cable Street and the Poll Tax riot.

On May 2nd we will be adding to that tradition - an active resistance against the power the office of Mayor represents and the political parties that reinforce it. We want our city back from THE CROOKS, THE TOFFS, THE FASCISTS and THE COPS.

Its time London joined together making our anger count by getting rid of the lot of them.
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++ MAYORAL COSTS - HOW WE PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE: ++
- £100 million a year spent on publicity alone
- £33 million a year to staff City Hall
- £120 million a year on the 'Core GLA Budget' (ie, the Mayor's personal projects)
- £300 a year the average London household pays for the office of Mayor.

I know that many people who are involved in this are involved in doing good stuff. I know plenty of people involved in the groups listed above. I like them personally and respect the work they do - e.g. No Borders, HSG, HSN (Hackney has a Network, not a Group), Antifa. That does not mean that I respect the stunt. For one thing, I suspect a person from the Communist League will come to the demo on Saturday as well. Does that mean that I have to respect everything else they do, or even not be rude to them about Castro? Obviously not.

This is why I think the demo is obviously ridiculous. 1) it will win nothing for anyone. 2) it is not even intended to win anything for anyone. 3) The stated aim of the demo is to 'let them [i.e. the mayor] know' that 'we' (that is, the people at the demo) 'know they are lying corrupt, self-serving parasites'. a) why would I care if the Mayor knows I think that? b) even if they didn't know that already, why would they care when they found out? c) even if they did care when they found out, why would I, or anyone else, care? What is the Mayor going to do? Jump of the top of city hall? 4) I think it is the job of radicals (anarchists, libertarian socialists, whoever) to propose effective means of social change - not go propagandising for things that won't achieve anything. 5) Events promoted in the past on the basis of a similar language were obviously ridiculous as well. 6) It falls into the liberal ideology of demonstrations having an abstract value because they 'send a message' which is one of the most dangerous popular myths abut how change happens. 7) You're seriously demonstrating against the existence of municipal administration - or the fact that under capitalism municipal administrations are necesarily capitalist in orientation? Or is it that you're protesting against capitalism, or for communism. It just makes no sense. 8) Given the low ebb of all kinds of struggle at present, and the low general confidence of the class, wouldn't it be a good idea to do something which seems a leeetle bit more relevant to people's day to day lives, thereby to up the popular belief in the effectiveness of grassroots struggle? 9) Are you either thinking that lots of people will see you do it, or you'll get any sort of sympathetic press coverage? Neither are plausible assumptions. You'll either be ignored or ridiculed by the press.

oh calm down and stop being pointlessly rude. all these things I'm quite prepared to say to you in person and have a discusion about. Let's chat after the thing on Saturday, i can't be doing with internet animosity. Also, I think I might be taller than you.

Having the vote doesn't get working class people much, but it gets them something - that is, a low level of influence in an election every three to five years, in which politicians have to pander to a degree to the concerns of constituencies likely to vote. The less likely a constituency (a class, an age-group, a gender) is to vote, the easier it is, for practical purposes it is to ignore. Let's say that the whole class took your advice and didn't vote. What would happen? It would just be like the bloody 19th Century. The largest mass movement of the class this country has ever produced (arguably) was Chartism for, among other things, the vote. For the very simple bloody reason that it aint much, but it's something. There is no necessary connection between not voting and doing anything useful. It's not like even saying 'don't vote' is some sort of way into a conversation about doing other things, since most people will realise that there's no connection right away, and just wonder what you're on about. I can see that a propagandistic 'don't just vote' campaign would have some value, if it focussed on clearly proposing other, more effective, things to do... but that's not on the table

Yes I know that, and no they're not. I didn't say not voting was regressive and stupid, I said that producing don't vote propaganda was regressive and stupid. The reason large numbers of working class people don't vote is because it doesn't seem to (or in fact) make very much of a difference (at least not on the margin - if no working class people voted at all, it would make a big difference). This is a roughly similar reason why they would also not decide to produce don't vote propaganda. They would probably go to the pub instead, which is both progressive and clever.

Good luck, but it's not the first time this sentiment has been expressed at this stage. It's not that hard to think of things that are useful to do in themselves.

I heard a really good joke about Cuba the other day...perhaps you could use it again him?

It sounds just great. Why dont' you tell it?.

does this mean...
a) the marginal impact of an individual voting is miniscule (true, but that goes for pretty much everything else as well, and it doesn't meant the net impact of the class voting is miniscule)
b) if no working class people voted, the same results would come in, not only in the next election, but consistently in the future (i.e. classes do not express any divergent interess when they vote);
c) although different results would come in, it doesn't matter because all parties' policies are exactly the same, not just in terms of (i) 'all being pro-capitalist', but in terms of (ii) having the same affect on the lives of working class people at a given time. (If (ii) is true, that means that whatever laws get passed, they make no difference to people's lives. Only the most ultra-left of anarchists believe this.)

There are a bunch of examples of electoral dynamics (i.e. the natural impulse to vote of people symapthetic with working class causes) being a key determining factor in the success of large social movements - e.g. US civil rights movement. In this case, the voting strength of black and white 'liberal' (non-conservative) northerners (mobilised into action by black and radical white direct action in the South) was crucial in convincing the Democratic party to abandon its old affiliation to its earstwhile key voting bloc: southern plantation owners and other white racists. Of course, the results of the civil rights movement weren't ideal, economic oppression remained. That's why we also have a critique of capitalism. But that doesn't mean ignoring real, observable historical dynamics, which lead to real, important changes. There are plenty more examples where that came from.

Posi, who on earth are you suggesting we vote for? Those who might be the 'lesser evil' (I fail to see that as an apt term) are so rank outsiders, its a wasted vote. I simply argue against voting on a number of grounds,
1) primarily it sows illusions in where political change is
2) by and large the political centre or moderates or whatever you want to call those who oppose the BNP as fascists/racists etc, actually continually come out with policies which push people to the far-right anyway. Think Browns speech about 'British jobs for British workers' and as the BNP pointed out in Barking, Labour are reiterating their policies almost across the issue of social welfare! If you want to curtail the far-right the logic would be to vote tory, and frankly thats fucking absurd thing to ask people to do.
3) in the last 30 or so years none of the major parties have stood on a platform that was anything other than regressive or a series of attacks on the working class.
Your example of Civil Rights is about co-opting to the level bourgeois politics, when we should be pushing radical agendas and there is nothing ultra-leftist about the position I stated above, a clear platform by a core of the class struggle anarchist/libertarians in agreement declaring our objectives on a number of issues like housing, crime, transport, jobs, social security etc is entirely constructive and on the plane which most ordinary people could identify with. Wheres the ra-ra revolution chant about this?