On Thu, Feb 29, 2024 at 04:12 PM, hari kumar wrote: > > As an aside, in the UK I had many friend in the then Tony Cliff IS later > the SWP. > At end university many 'went into the unions'. The tales they told later > included being viewed as complete outsiders by the union members.
Class background helped some. Those raised in working class communities and exposed to working class culture, especially being able to banter about sports, were better equipped to bridge the class gulf. This applied equally to left-wing students and intellectuals who made the “industrial turn” into the trade unions and to labour educators on the outside with working class backgrounds. But, whether from outside or inside, if you intervened in a sectarian way without taking into account the confidence most workers still had in the leaders of their organizations , class origin counted for nothing. The vanguard sects like IS tended to lose more militants to the trade union movement than they gained. Many activists left these groups because they gauged that circulating the party press and otherwise carrying out the line from headquarters would hamper rather them help them influence those they hoped to lead. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29204): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29204 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104608543/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
