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Lens
is a French town, coal mining and working class, that
has spawned a culture which for long was conducive
to nurturing strong left wing sentiment. In what seems
like an act of keeping faith with the past the town
is currently fronted by a Socialist Party mayor, Guy
Delcourt. Not everyone there sees the past through
rose-red tinted lenses and the mayoralty of Delcourt
sits perched astride a chasm being prised ever wider
beneath it - socialists on one side glaring across
at right wing supporters of Jean Marie Le Pen facing
them. Joe Klein attended a meeting of the Socialist
Party in Lens. It was no real surprise to find him
reaching conclusions similar to those already discovered
in Belfast and Dublin. The socialists, he mused 'have
no idea how irrelevant they've become'.
Most
people have heard some variation of the following
joke - the leader of one of the sects within Belfast
Trotskyism borrows ten pence saying he needs it to
phone a follower; the lender tosses him twenty and
says 'call them all'. Yesterday, a friend, Liam, brought
over a couple of papers from the sects. Why he bothered
I have no idea; probably to wind me up. They never
get read here, always reminding me of the little religious
tracts that the occasional born again Christian with
the Board Of Visitors would bring around while we
were on the blanket protest for the sole purpose of
tormenting us. A torment rapidly transformed into
delight by the wing smokers who used the pages as
cigarette papers. The message of the tract was invariably
'read this and agree with us or you will forever suffer
hellfire and damnation'. Said out loud in a coarse,
broad North of Ireland accent and the effect becomes
even more pronounced. How easily Christians can glide
from born again to burn again if you don't agree with
them.
Left
wing sect members are not much different. Marx once
said that the sects proliferate when there is nothing
progressive happening. Ours are so impoverished in
the quality stakes that they don't even proliferate
here where there is certainly nothing progressive
going on, and would have fewer members than their
religious counterparts waiting in the narrow streets
of Belfast's city centre to ambush any misfortunate
and hand them a leaflet with some psalm on it while
gruffly inquiring 'are ye saved yet?'
Anyway,
the papers that Liam brought were so dull from all
perspectives that my daughter rather than tearing
them up, as is the normal fate for the papers she
gets her hands upon, scattered them across the floor
- and what is it they say about truth and the mouths
of babes? A while ago myself and Liam went to a Left
unity conference in Dublin. But it was like sitting
in at a meeting of the vertically horizontal society,
a veritable consensus seeker's Purgatory. Besides,
left unity would spoil the party - what could they
do with unity? What purpose would they have in their
lives if they couldn't shout 'bourgeois deviationist
... social democratic centrist ... Menshevik' at each
other? What appeal would there be for them in a political
existence where there was no place for the joyous
pastime of purging the ideological unclean on the
grounds of what Trotsky said: 'the party in the last
analysis is always right ... one must not be right
against the party. One can only be right with the
party, and through the party'. No purges, no ideological
errors to correct, nobody to lord it over - the sect
member's ultimate nightmare. In any event we could
hardly contain ourselves in Dublin as the Spartacus
League howled 'defend China ... Ken Livingstone is
an imperialist pig.' What one had to do with the other
I remain unsure. And then some boring bureaucratic
type from Belgium united us all - in sleep. No wonder
the sects never transmit ideas when all but the most
devout of listeners fall unconscious during the delivery
of yet another turgid testimony.
Caught
in Corn Market one Friday morning with a friend, Alex,
as we waited on his partner and child, ''Brother Bobby
Brown'' from East Belfast took to the bandstand and
invited us to share in his Damascus Road conversion
to the Lord. Now Brother Bobby was hard to listen
to but we heard him out in wonderment at what propels
someone onto bandstands, when there are pubs open
just across the street, to regale passers by with
their testimony which virtually no one apart from
our two cynical selves appeared vaguely interested
in. As uninspiring as Brother Bobby was the Dublin
experience with Comrade Trot was immeasurably duller.
Small surprise that Gerry Healy of the Workers Revolutionary
Party (seriously, they did call themselves that) in
his leadership era livened matters up a bit through
a touch of hanky-panky with the membership. At least
the worst those of us unhappy with the Sinn Fein leadership
can say is that our Gerry only screws us politically.
No doubt things were explained to the sceptical as
merely a tactical variation of entryism, situated
in the practical application of a dialectical blend
of Marx and Freud - recasting revolutionary strategy
in the form of a new National Libido Front for Tooting.
Socialism,
if defined as bringing capital under democratic control
must have a future. For Marx certainly had a point
in warning either 'socialism or barbarism'. That so
many of its would-be-beneficiaries seem repelled from
it is not because of any great job those who favour
capitalism have done in destroying the intellectual
and ethical merit of socialism, but lies in the appalling
case made for it by the Left. Arm the most mediocre
minds with a totalising ideology and allow them to
believe it is a grand metanarrative which can explain
everything - and another self-important and self referential
fundamentalist cult is then in business. That it has
only two or three members is neither here nor there,
it alone has the 'truth' which it shall endeavour
to inflict on the rest of us. Is it any wonder that
socialist ideas are in the doldrums when an intellectual
caricature can command a central place in socialist
discourse, despite the rich intellectual heritage
socialism clearly possesses?
While
in prison I recall going through an Open University
course where the case study dealt with a meeting of
an English left sect. Four there belonged to the various
state security agencies while three attended because
they believed in it. It is hard to imagine that the
state would spend time spying on that crowd when,
as spook and Spycatcher author Peter Wright said,
there are ponds of quacking ducks more dangerous who
could be subjected to some underwater surveillance.
One can only conclude that the security services had
penetrated the sects not to monitor them but to assist
them in the promotion of the socialist message - a
sure way of ensuring no one would ever receive it.
While the sects continue to operate as the public
face of the radical left then rampaging capitalism
can relax and smirk contently, comforted by the thought,
'what chance socialism?'
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