[g8-sheffield] New Labour polotics in a very thin radical coat

[Jan Worth]

I would like to know who this person means by 'us' in his extremely patronising them and us tract that appeared on your website today. This mentality lives and breathes in the cultural industries quarter, (where you are now based )and has dogged most progressive movements in this country for years. Many from the seventies became labour party politicians and took with them the ingrained notion that the mission was to teach these uncouth hooligans to be more like 'us' we now see these policies in action. 
Is this young man the blunket of the future
Jan
 
 'What was most interesting to me about the counter-G8 actions over the 
last few
> days was the varied assemblages of people who turned out to make 
their voices
> heard. From filthy dirty autonomist radicals, families sporting Make 
Poverty
> History sashes, the socialist choir, the newly sprung Independent 
Socialist
> Youth Forum, and our amazing little anarchist punks who took it upon 
themselves
> to start up a separatist sit in on the road at the Rice for Dinner 
event.
> Though I declined to join the latter on their ill-fated (but 
worthwhile)
> venture I do nevertheless think their show of rebellion was 
remarkable and is
> an energy to be harnessed. It has been a while since such collective 
shows of
> defiance against authority has emerged in Sheffield against such 
young people.
> I am in my early Twenties and I cannot remember there being such a 
politically
> motivated mobilisation with which to put all my passion and rage into 
when I
> was at school or college in the working class northern estates of 
Sheffield in
> which I grew up (that s maybe why I sent those years beating myself 
up
> instead). Though I don t subscribe to the ACAB school of political 
philosophy
> in any shape or form, I nevertheless felt that what these kids were 
doing was
> partially exciting- true, out there on the front line of the demo, so 
to speak,
> any distinct notions of world peace and justice might have escaped 
their heads
> to be replaced by a  us and them  mentality, but just some of those 
kids might
> just have the potential some day to be fully equipped fighters for 
the global
> justice movement, and for local issues too. This doesn t necessarily 
imply a  
> mass mobilisation of working class people  as it may have done 
before, but
> merely a chance to join us all in a social space where they can share
> experiences and ideas with long time campaigners (helping to locate 
those nodes


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