I wrote this at dinnertime at the Progress conference I attended in London yesterday , except they call it lunchtime here. Weirdies. I didn’t have the computer technology to post it there and then.
As I’d expected and feared, the place is full of people in audience who stand up to ask a ‘question’ of the speaker which then becomes a 10 minute elucidation of everthing s/he does and doesn’t stand for, with added autobiographical details about how life, the Labour party and all else has disappointed them.
But on the plus side it’s quite good.
The first session was a talk by John Ross, who’s an economist and a pretty good speaker. He told us the economy is buggered, possibly as buggered as 1929, and that anything other than massive direct state investment is pissing in the wind. That’s the gist anyway, though he did give quite a lot of numbers.
I then went off to to a ‘breakout ’session about ‘Equality in the Economic Crisis’. The first two speakers spoke, and were pleasant enough, and told me nothing I didn’t know. Mind you, I do know quite a lot. The MEP who was speaking used the word ‘narrative’ a lot, like I do, but it didn’t really get us anywhere. A shame, because there’s much in the notion.
Then there was Sam Tarry, Chair of Compass Youth and a community organiser in East London. It’s good to see a young Labour wannabbee doing a proper job, as opposed to following the ’I want to be an MP and have told I need to work here now’ join the dots approach to political aspiration. his references to his work there were detailed, knowledgeable and appeared to be grounded in a decent apprecation of class injustice – as far as I could tell from a quick speech and some follow-ups to questions/rants.
He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know particularly. but he did the not telling me sincerely, made all the more sincere by the fact that he’d put a fair bit of time into sorting out his speech, and read it straight from typed notes.
While that might have made it more stilted, I actually found it a reflection of his commitment to his relatively important place as a new socialist broom in the Labour party, and there was a genuine passion in his voice as he spoke about income inequity both domestically and internationally.
So that was good.
The last question put to Sam by a young colleague of his was by far the the best (and had the virtue of actually being a question), because it connected with question I wanted to ask (I was, as ever it seems, ingnored by the chair in favour of more interesting looking people).
The question was more or less ‘How do we campaign most effectively about this equality aspect of political economy, in terms people will understand.
Sam’s answer was disappointing, though I accept it was very hurried end of session stuff. Essentially, he sajd it was difficult but we need to put it words people can understand, which was merely a reframing on the question.
My linked question, which I hope Sam will see and answer on this blog (I wanted to tell him I’d be putting this up but he was being badgered so I just left my business card with a message instead) was an attempt to move past that platitude, and ask what specifically should be Labour’s message to the electorate about (income) equality in a time of economic crisis. It more or less, I think, summarised the two different approaches from all three speakers. It is as follows:
What’s the best battle cry for the coming election?
1. Huge income inequality is really horrible, and must not be made worse during this recession/depression and after it? (more or less what the first speaker from the TUC said)
2 Addressing huge income inequality is an economic necessity during this recession/depression and beyond it. (sort of alluded to along the way by Sam but never explicit)
Yes, of course it’s loaded.
Over to Sam for the answer. Sam, Sam, are you out there, Sam?
