A Wind in the Willows: Protest March in London, March 26th

THere's a wind o'change a'blowin' 'cross Blighty. At least hopefully there is. And a new direction to YWNA to reflect those changes. Now is the time, as they say, for all good people to come to the aide of the party. And that includes YWNA.

I was, as a youth, a committed Marxist, a member of Militant Tendency in Liverpool, the Socialist Workers Party, the Labour Party and a trade union organisation called Bloc 84, all organisations that modern right wing press would describe as 'shadowy'. I left the aforementioned parties, not because I didnt believe capitalism is a fatally flawed, intrinsically evil system , because, obviously, I do, rather, I thought that Marxist determinism was as flawed as capitalist economic determinism, and also a lot of Marxists I met were incredibly inept, socially.

As a consequence, I drifted away from organised politics, retaining an interest only as a shop steward in my union. Its only now, after returning to the UK where the political situation is so catastrophically and actively obvious, and the rampaging effects of unbridled capitalism hit so many of us so hard, that I feel it necessary to return to the arena.

Politically, then activity has increased at Large Mansions. Not that the basement is full of leaflets, or the bookshelves full of books, but discussions have become increasingly political, donations to supported causes have flowed, I have become a student representative and active at meetings, and both RHB and I have been web-active. Next week, its time to get street active, so we're off to London to March.

http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/

The website, I admit, does appear, as a friend observed, to be the usual ragtag motley collection of unfocused lefty nonsense, including very tasteless appropriation of the disaster in Japan. And the haranguing rhetorical approach can leave the impression that every email the organisers send is marked "Urgent" and written in block capitals. The analysis often appears unsubtle, scare-mongering, unsophisticated, the agenda divisive, sloganeering and simplistic - "evil bankers", "corrupt politicians" , "save the whales", "stop nuclear missiles", "no cuts"...against, against, against.............its incredibly unattractive.

So why go to London next weekend??? Simply put, its because, at the moment, the Coalition of Resistance are right. Bankers are evil. Politicians are corrupt, possibly more so morally in the sense of their 'souls' than the simple fact of them taking money from the ordinary people(which they have also done). People are dying in Afghanistan, Iraq and will die in Libya because Western capitalism supports and arms totalitarian dictatorships for profit. It is easy to say that this has always been the case, but I think not, and not to the current extent. I think there have been polticians convinced that their way is in the interests of all the people. The current UK Government cannot, I believe, be included in that description. I think they are guilty of as simplistic an agenda as the "no cuts" sloganeering of the Resistance seems to be, and that agenda is, I believe, to remove permanently from the UK, any last vestiges of what they would describe as 'socialism' - large government departments, thinking at universities, national health systems and welfare. In short, they are attacking us. I think we should attack back.