[rad-green] (Britain) Reflections on our defeat and the challenge ahead

*https://eyalclyne.wordpress.com/2019/12/13/reflections-on-our-defeat-and-the-challenge-ahead/
<https://eyalclyne.wordpress.com/2019/12/13/reflections-on-our-defeat-and-the-challenge-ahead/>Will
to Truth          13 Dec 2019*



*Reflections on our defeat and the challenge aheadI was a canvasser for
Labour in the North West, in 8 different constituencies that we’ve lost,
and this is what I learnt*

*By EYAL*

I had the privilege to dedicate the final 15 days leading to the general
elections yesterday to canvassing intensively for Labour. Together with
hundreds of volunteers, I commuted daily from Manchester to eight North
West marginal (all but one Leave) constituencies, where I canvassed from
dusk to dawn, in rain and storm, usually for 10 hours a day, all of which
we eventually lost. Having knocked on tens of thousands of doors, and met
with a wide range of targeted voters, I was not very surprised by last
night’s results. Anyone who has been listening openly to the repeating
narratives and emotions at the doorsteps of these traditional Labour
voters, could not have expected a different result.

While totally broken politically this morning, I do feel a great sense of
gratitude for the opportunity I had to visit and converse with the people
of Leigh, Crew, Bolton, Calder Valley, Altrincham, Blackpool, Bury,
Newcastle UT, etc. Indeed, we lost all these seats, but this fieldwork was
an invaluable experience of getting familiar with, listening to, and
touring in person mainly working class and poverty areas, outside of the
big metropolises, that I have never visited before. I saw their towns,
homes, communities and lives. I walked for many hours up and down their
streets and estates and front gardens or front doors. I saw the different
ways of living, smelt the smells, heard the sounds and voices, saw their
neighbourhoods and sometimes neglect or distress, and sensed the places in
which they experience. I listened to their stories, saw their faces and
bodies and clothes, shook their hands, and felt their frustrations.

Fearing that I was a pessimist about the doorstep responses — given the
late pre-election polls that made me doubt the extent to which what I heard
repeatedly was representative — I kept my views almost entirely to myself,
so as not to demotivate my comrades. Now I can find a cringing solace in
knowing in retrospect that my qualitative research senses, sadly, still
work very well.

But, in all honesty, it wasn’t all that difficult to know. Many voters were
very open outright about not giving us their vote this time, while
emphasising that they have never voted Tory before, and many still
preferred not to vote altogether over having to vote Tory now, because they
knew what that would mean to their rights and condition, yet they would
still not vote for us either.

Above all, four frustrations surfaced time and again on almost every
doorstep, and the most common among these was, without a doubt, Brexit. (With
the exception of one Remain marginal). For many Remainers, the unclarity
and secrecy about the full meaning of “Brexit” correctly serves as evidence
of it being a smoke screen, full of disinformation, that distracts us from
all the other political issues. Leave voters are also sometimes seen as
ignorant, brainwashed or racist, images that did not corresponded with my
own impressions overall. However, for Leave voters, Brexit now symbolises
the way in which their voices were being ignored, repeatedly and
undemocratically, by the losing Remainers, whom are also associated with
other classes and more privileged social groups. The way they see it is
this: before the referendum, all the parties pledged to respect its
results, but then didn’t. After the referendum, Parliament [stupidly] voted
to activate Article 50, thus effectively promising that if no deal will be
struck within two years, we would [shoot ourselves in the foot and] leave
the Union without an agreement. But when that time came, we again did not
leave. As far as they are concerned, Labour (and others) did not fully
respect the will of the working class, and a democratic result. They feel
betrayed, and any attempt to ‘educate’ them about how Brexit ‘took them for
a ride,’ or feeds from wrong information or fears, or will make them worse
off, or that a Tory deal is bad, or that it distracts them from other
issues, is simply not only irrelevant (or, as relevant as any
misinformation affects an election), but striking the exact cord of the
middle class urban deaf-eared Left that thinks that they know better. I
suspect that had Labour advocated Leave in these elections, thus respecting
the vote of the working class and the results of a democratic referendum,
things would have looked different for Labour today.

The second most common issue was Corbyn’s image. Surprisingly, Only a
relative few, in my experience, resonated the vilifications that they were
fed through the media, (like that he is a terrorist sympathiser, an
extremist or an anti-Semite). It was more common to encounter a vague
emotional negative hunch, a discomfort from the way they ‘felt’ about him.
For whatever reasons that they struggled to verbalise when asked, many
explicitly ‘didn’t like him,’ regardless of their strong rational agreement
with his social policies. The media contributed to this image, sure, but if
I may guess, I think that the voters did not want a ‘nice old man,’ who
‘never did any wrong’ almost inhumanely, who always engages in calm
discussions, but would favour a more relatable and animated person, who
gets angry sometimes (after all, we have much to be angry about), and whom
is perhaps more dominant in conversations and offers simple messages, like
Jonson. Remember that people vote more emotionally than rationally, as an
expression of their identities and wishes, and, sadly, our leader, whose
policies and personality were my own reasons for joining the canvassing,
wasn’t screen popular with the masses.

A third topic was the breadth of Labour’s manifesto, especially when
compared to the oversimplified non-manifesto of the Tories, which they
hammered repeatedly in soundbites over and over again. Simply put, our
broad scope has backfired. It felt to many like too much, causing the plan
and its funding to feel unrealistic and risky. ‘How are you going to pay
for all that?’ and ‘You will never be able to achieve so much’ were common
responses. Of course, we had our answers to such statements, and some
canvassers did turn many people around, yet overall, we only met with small
parts of the general population, and for a very short time, so the main
benefit of these conversations was allowing us to listen, sense and make
sense of these interactions, rather than, again, to ‘educate’ the voters
about all the things that *we* can teach *them*.

Finally, a fourth frustration was seeing us only before elections. Here, we
should have had an advantage, because nobody would ever volunteer to
canvass for the Tories, whereas we brought large numbers. Still, the timing
and our plea for votes inevitably casts doubt on the purity of our
intentions, although, understandably, it is difficult to mobilise
volunteers – who usually have their own work, study and family commitments
– outside of election times. Nevertheless, it is important to surface this
dominant issue and think about it further.

Finally, my biggest lesson from the intense canvassing was one of humility,
to which I can only hope others on the Left in middle class and big cities
would be willing to listen to, too. I truly learnt a lot from these two
weeks, about being there, seeing and listening, and about the task ahead
for the British Left, if we are to overcome their alienation and justified
sense of being left, forgotten and not listened to. While last night
brought us horrible news, which will affect ‘them’ worse than me, and that
the scope of which we can only dread, this outcome is not necessarily the
end of the Left in Britain, but can be, if we dare listen more openly, a
new beginning.

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppcxFRFF-fLOsE9GMkRmvf8NfCCmqY%2BgLo5kotBZW8QqKqA%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>