Left-Wing Influences Part 1

Never one to shirk a challenge I have been tasked [albeit in a different internet guise] by Flesh is Grass for my thoughts on “Left-Wing Influences” – good, bad, indifferent, too influential or not influential enough. Hmmm!

My first problem is what is left wing? It kinda depends where you define the centre, which from where I stand keeps moving around [or maybe it’s me – all things are relative you know], and I’m quite sure there will be some who regard David Cameron as a Commie entryist. My second problem is the notion among physicists that space is curved – if you take a straight line for long enough it will be a circle. Some use this as a metaphor to argue that the left-right political axis is not a straight line at all but a circle with the extreme left and right wings occupying the same space – something I have some sympathy with particularly as we often see this on the TV news with the boys in blue having to keep them apart.

Anyway, I’ve had a think while watching the football – a subject where left and right wings actually have some meaning that is commonly understood. Here are my thoughts, whether they are left or right I have no idea but they are what came to mind.

Factionalism
This is where the left excel. They are constantly throwing their toys out of the pram and falling out with each other, as anybody who has seen Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ will be all too familiar with. These people are the purists, the fundies – there’s no scope for compromise or negotiation. They are right correct and everybody else is wrong. The trouble here is that if you take this to its logical conclusion we end up with Individualism, each belonging to a Party of One. And, strangely enough their view of Individualism is that it is a bad right-wing idea that produces selfishness and greed. Oh dear! Far too influential this one. We are social animals and we really must stick together for the common good, mustn’t we?

Tribalism
The very opposite of the previous heading but even here the left get it wrong. Misguided loyalties prevail. They will support their party of choice come what may regardless of whether that party are doing things they personally disapprove of. Let’s take a look at two local examples. Here we have Wes Tweeting, Labour Councillor in Chadwell Ward and former President of the National Union of Students [and a hot tip for a safe Blue Labour seat at the next General Election if there is still such a thing after the Tories have redrawn all the boundaries] tweetin us to his location on the political compass. Then we have local Chadwell LibDem Focus team activist Jesse Boucher whose position is almost identical. The trouble is that neither of them are anywhere near their chosen political party. Looky here. Perhaps they ought to consider paying a visit here along with the likes of John McDonnell and many others. Let’s face up to realities, there’s only ONE left wing party in England and it ain’t Labour, Nu, True or Blue. No, I’m not telling you where I appear on the compass, I’m in enough trouble already.

Academisation
Now we’ve established that there is only one ‘left’ party in England let’s have a closer look. The roots of the Green Party were conservative when it was formed as the Ecology Party back in the early 70s. But it has since attracted many who regard themselves as ‘left’, indeed there is a faction within the party called ‘Green Left’. Question: if the party itself is truly ‘left’ why do they feel the need to identify themselves as such? [see Factionalism] But what I want to highlight here is that the membership, or at least the visible membership – the activists, seem to be predominantly academic, ie Doctors of the PhD type although there is at least one who is a GP and wears a suit.

Now there’s nothing wrong with that, except that it’s not representative is it? [See later] This is a problem with the left who seem to regard an academic education as a must at the expense of teaching children how to actually do things. Like cook, change a tap washer, or even a light bulb. Grow some vegetables, mend a fuse….. Screwdiver? WTFs that? Write a 2,000 word essay on the role of screwdrivers in the oppression of the working classes, boy! And woe betide you if you abuse an apostrophe!

Of course these days the really useful things, like operating grandad’s VCR, the Wii, a computer and texting on a mobile phone are all learnt before children actually start shool at the age of 5….

Social Engineering
Now, I’m not at all sure that there was a ‘left’ prior to the twentieth century. Before that we had the Tories and Whigs, neither of whom I would have thought of as ‘left’, but in the early 20th century the working man made a stand via the Trade Union movement which gave us the Labour Party here and Communism elsewhere. This was a product of the Industrial Revolution. But there was an often unrecognised revolution later that century, which started about the 1950s – Social Science. It’s not science, it’s Bx, or at least the interpretation of it is Bx as alluded to in these two examples here and here. The practioners are just not disciplined enough to question what the evidence actually means and merely see what they want to see.

At the “Who Runs Redbridge” event last month we were told that there are more young black males in prison than at university here in the UK. Well, I’d want to have a look at the proportion of young black males in professional football and other sports [but not swimming; strange that] as well as the music industry to see how that compares.

If an identifiable group is under represented in one place they must be over represented somewhere else. You just have to look.

There is a tension between freedom to choose and forcing people into something they don’t really want to do just to make up the numbers for the illusion of representativeness. We are products of Nature, which works on stuff like chaos theory and produces random results. Chill out! Let it be!

The Safety Net
Most people would define this as The Welfare State, The National Health Service or even The Health & Safety Executive. But it’s gone way beyond that. The thing about a Safety Net is that it makes you careless and slack. It changes the way you view risk. You know that if you fall you are not going to break your neck. Take the most recent and topical example. The Bankers gambled our money in a casino and lost, knowing full well that if they did lose they were too big to fail and that those whose money had been lost [Mr & Mrs Taxpayer] would pay twice by picking up the tab. Now, had that safety net not been there, and the Bankers were personally liable for their losses do you really think they would have been so, well not to put too fine a point on it, so bleedin’ stupid? Of course not!

Same goes, I’m afraid to say, for those who bash the plastic and get into debt they can’t manage, knowing they can just walk away from it. Just declare yourself bankrupt and start all over again. And perhaps people would be more careful in the way they drive their cars if they didn’t have air bags and the surgeon wanted a Credit Card before administering trauma care.

It’s a good idea in principle, but as with all good ideas there is always the law of unintended consequences. No one I know would object to looking after the vulnerable and the poor, but the rest of us have two feet to stand on. It’s called responsibility.

Health & Safety is a popular target for the critics, including me, but it has had a major [positive] impact on injuries and even death in the workplace, particularly in the Construction Industry. The trouble is when it prevents people from volunteering to do things they would otherwise do. You then have to wonder about the way it’s managed and has been interpreted and implemented. Too much in this area is just box ticking and lip-service. In this aspect it’s not working at all.

Right, sorry left. That’s 5 headings written over a 5 day period and I’ve not even started on Equality and Equal Rights, Anti-Racism, Political Correctness, Direct Action and Revolution. I might do those later in Part II. In the meantime is there anybody out there up for a Guest post on Influential Right-wing ideas?