‘Which is more effective – the Ballot Box or Direct Action’

In fact you can vote *and* take direct action.

If one thought that voting alone will make a positive change, that is foolish.

But to say 'don't vote' reminds me of people who say 'demonstrations are useless, only direct action gets the goods'. Contradictory: because demonstrations legitimise direct action, and are a way in for people.

Same goes for a demonstration at the polls (=voting for a truly radical alternative, one who even denounces the electoral system). At least the BBC and police will probably not claim that only a tenth of our numbers took part, as they do in street demonstrations where there's no official count.

First of all, there is a way of looking at voting you have perhaps not considered. Let's take a show of hands can count the raised arms of those on each side. Then imagine a sword in each hand and think of voting as a way of makign the decision skipping the fighting out to the end having predicted whioch side would win by preponderance of swords. Can also think fo a "voice vote" as taking inot account enthusiasm as it isn't always strictly numbers that count in a fight but determination too.

Second, and very important, it take far far less power to be able to disrupt than to displace the rulers of a society and rule in their place. So you perhaps have enough power to bring down the existing order? But then those of that order who perhaps outnumber you by several times have an even easier time bringing down anything you attempt to establish in their place.

Stop for just a moment and think. Suppose you DID have the enthusiastic numbers sufficient to establish a new order. Doesn't that mean you would have enough total numbers to already have won at the polls?

The 1945 General election was known as the Khaki election – the report below shows why every fucking radical and anarchist must strive to make the 2010 election ‘THE CLASS WAR ELECTION’ – get off your arses and use the coming rash of billboard party advertising to spread the word.

‘The gulf between rich and poor has grown wider under Labour than at any time since World War II, according to a devastating report to be published today.

It paints a picture of a country shaped by inequality and an enduring system of class, with the children of the poor destined to live much harder and shorter lives than those of the wealthy.

The 450-page report by the Government’s National Equality Panel represents a damning verdict on Labour’s 13 years in office and Tony Blair’s pledge on poverty in 1996.
Canning Town council estate in Newham, London
London’s poorest district: Canning Town council estate in Newham is only a short distance from the City – but a long way in terms of wealth

The study says that inequality in income has reached the highest level since records began in 1961, and probably since the end of the Second World War. It also concludes that inequality in Britain is among the worst in the developed world, with the highest rate of poverty in western Europe.

It says ‘deep seated and systematic differences’ remain between the life chances of different social classes and groups. People’s class and origins ’shape their life chances from cradle to grave’.

The report says there is ‘widespread ignorance of the scale of inequality’ and warns that many people will find its conclusions ’shocking’.

CHILDREN OF POOR FAMILIES LIVE ON AVERAGE 13 YEARS LESS THAN THOSE OF THE RICH’

The Tories physically attacked working class communities and caused a quarter of a century of impoverishment. The Labour Party has introduced over 3000 new crimes since 1997 and has whittled away our hard-won liberties – such as Habeas corpus, the right not to be tortured, etc, etc, and even, with their supposed solutions to anti-social behaviour, the right to a trial by a jury of our peers – to a higher degree than any other peacetime government. ALL mainstream political parties follow the same socially and environmentally destructive Neoliberal (and highly fascistic) economic trajectory that has been responsible for so much suffering in working class communities

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Recent official figures show, yet again, that England’s poor white teenage boys are still dropping behind in education. The BBC has reported…

Poor, white, teenage boys in England have slipped further behind other youngsters in their GCSE exams, reveals a breakdown of this year’s results.

The official figures show that fewer than one in five who qualified for free meals achieved the benchmark of five good GCSEs including English and maths.

The latest statistics back up the findings of the Runnymede Trust, which were published in their report, Who Cares About the White Working Class back in January 2009 (this should be compulsory reading for anyone who does claim to care about poverty in England).

Right-wing groups argue that scarce resources are given to minority groups at the expense of the white working class, whereas the mainstream left tend to ignore the white working class altogether (unless it is to falsely condemn them as thugs and bigots). The reality is that the poor white working class are subjected to widespread institutional classism (a form of bigotry so acceptable that our spellchecker doesn’t even recognise the word).

Not only do impoverished white lads have to put up with levels of stereotyping which would chill a liberal to the core if it were directed against race, gender or disability; they also have to contend with the widest ‘aspiration gap’ imaginable. In his groundbreaking book, ‘The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone‘, Richard Wilkinson shows that the level of poverty per se is much less important than the level of inequality within a society (i.e. it is ‘relative poverty’ which does the damage). Our society is still dominated by white affluent males, which places poor white males at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to the aspiration gap. This situation won’t get any better simply by throwing money at poor white boys; what we really need to do is stop throwing money at rich ones!

On February 15, 2003 coordinated anti-war protests across the world against the imminent invasion of Iraq saw the largest protest in human history. Millions of people took to the streets in approximately 800 cities around the world. According to the BBC (always conservative in their estimations) between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries over the weekend of the 15th and 16th; other estimates range from eight million to thirty million. The BBC figures seem less likely when you consider that the protest in Rome alone involved around 3 million people, and is listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history.

The Iraq war went ahead regardless, from climate change to the Class War.

With the future of six billion people in the balance the proceedings ground to a halt thanks to the ineptitude of a few old men who frankly will be dead soon and have little to worry about in the immediate future except for keeping a tight hold on their obscene power and wealth (excuse our ageism, but we’re rather pissed!). But the latest scientific evidence suggests that everyone below the age of fifty will live to suffer the effects of an increasingly more treacherous and unpredictable climate.

As Henry wisely observed on Ian Bone’s blog…

The share holders thank you, Mr President, but the polar bears think you’re a twat.

To call this state of affairs democratic is an insult to 99.9% of the human race. We need real change, and we need it now. We’ve said it before and we’ll keep saying it, the infrastructure and technology exists to do away with the aged (oops, sorry, there goes the ageism again) and corrupt political systems that serves the interests of banks and corporations instead of people and planet. The celebrity freaks who claim to be our ‘leaders’ have proved themselves to be inept and should be abandoned completely. But we also need to question the fact that these leaders are drawn from people unqualified for the job in hand; if your boiler blows you don’t vote for the bloke with the whitest smile, you get the guy with the right training. We have the technology (see, we told you we’d keep saying it) to ensure that the right minds are applied to the right problems - now we just need the balls to make it happen!

When The Independent announced the findings of research produced by accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers which suggest that the rich and the middle class are facing the biggest squeeze on their living standards in decades. Today the same paper has reported that a million public sector jobs , including frontline roles in the NHS and the police, may have to be axed if the Government is to cut its deficit. And as our good friend Mr Bone has pointed out; “A poll in the guardian shows over 50% of people to believe class is a defining issue in Britain.”

underclassrising (and pretty much everyone we know) are in the low income bracket so we cannot genuinely say that we overly concerned about the fortunes of Middle England (let’s face it, they never showed any concern for us). But this is not the time to say ‘we told you so!’*

In the coming months and years the class war will heat up as the problems of impoverishment become more immediate to more people (of all classes). People who were once comfortable with their lot will begin to question the legitimacy of one of the most class divided societies on the planet. There will be no better opportunity to galvanise our ongoing campaign against classism and build a political movement that truly represents the interests of the working class.

Our attempts to organise against classism failed partly due to funding, but also because it is a problem that is largely invisible to those who do not suffer it’s blows. As was said on the Action Against Classism website…

Economic inequality in the UK is at the highest it has been since records began in 1961. A child’s social class background at birth is still the best indicator of how well he or she will do in school and later on in life. The lower your socio-economic position the greater your risk of low birth-weight, infections, cancer, coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, accidents, nervous and mental illnesses – in other words, class kills!

Class remains as important an issue as climate (in fact the climate issue will not be solved until class is taken into consideration), but it has been almost universally ignored for over 20 years thanks to the politician’s and the media’s pretence that we’re somehow all middle class now. But that time has passed, the veneer is cracking –

But not what the original post was about.

You are saying that CLASS is the issue around which should be organizing, whether in the arena of electoral politics or "by other means". Let's leave aside the "around which issue" for the moment because the original was about something else. Namely, wanting to discuss whether should use "other means" when unable to mobilize support for a successful electoral campaign NO MATTER WHAT THE ISSUE (the issue wasn't specified).

So let's take "class" for a moment (let's assume that's the agreed issue). What do you do when the lower classes stubbornly resist (foolishly? unwisely?) resist your attempts to organize them into a substantial voting block with real bargaining power. What is the actual problem? (is this something external or does it simply mean that those of us trying to organize people around class are failing to be effective and if so, why?)

Economic inequality in the UK is at the highest it has been since records began in 1961. A child’s social class background at birth is still the best indicator of how well he or she will do in school and later on in life. The lower your socio-economic position the greater your risk of low birth-weight, infections, cancer, coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, accidents, nervous and mental illnesses – in other words, class kills!

 http://libcom.org/tags/no-war-class-war-0

The study says that inequality in income has reached the highest level since records began in 1961, and probably since the end of the Second World War. It also concludes that inequality in Britain is among the worst in the developed world, with the highest rate of poverty in western Europe.

It says ‘deep seated and systematic differences’ remain between the life chances of different social classes and groups. People’s class and origins ’shape their life chances from cradle to grave’.

January 24, 2009 one year on:

As reported on Snookcocker the  http://www.runnymedetrust.org/ have released the findings of a new study on classism in the UK. The paper, entitled ‘Who Cares About The White Working Class?’, the report states…

The white working classes are discriminated against on a range of different fronts, including their accent, their style, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the social spaces they frequent, the postcode of their homes, possibly even their names. But they are not discriminated against because they are white.