Solidarity Steve

Enough Is Enough appeared on the political landscape in late July with five great and simple demands;
1: A Real Pay Rise
2: Slash Energy Bills
3: End Food Poverty
4: Decent Homes For All
5: Tax The Rich

It quickly rose in popularity gaining hundreds of thousands of supporters, yet it remains to be seen just exactly what it is going to do with them or how it is going to get its demands met. To date its actions have comprised a pointless letter appealing to that rare and mythical creature: compassionate Tory PM, and what amounts to a roadshow of talks by established figures of the left around the country.

I do think it’s a shame that we now have 3 or 4 ‘movements’ all essentially fighting on the same issue, but that speaks to the need of such a movement. It is impressive that E!E has got the support it has, and it speaks to the desperation that people have been feeling that it got it so quickly. The media appearances of Lynch, Dempsey, Ward have been great in combating the neoliberal right wing agenda on the big stage, but a movement has to be more than its leading figures. It is also great that it has given people some measure of hope, but unless it starts taking action that hope will quickly fade.

So what now? What is the point?

When Corbyn held a series of rallies – most of which were outside and therefore available to every passer by and random intrigued person, it was to register people to vote and to get people voting Labour. That served a purpose at election time, but even they could have and should have been more and we should have learnt that lesson by now.

What are these rallies for? They seem to be held in theatre halls and behind closed doors, open to those who have got tickets and are therefore clearly already invested in the project. They pack these people in to halls to hear the same old stuff from the same old people. We don’t need to hear people talking about the crisis, we know the crisis, we are living it, we need people to be taking action on the crisis.

It is great that E!E has got the support it has, it is great to be getting all these activists attending these rallies, but what a wasted opportunity if they’re just going to do the same old, same old. I’m signed up to it myself, but I fail to see how I can contribute in any meaningful way to achieve its demands or organise
within my community.

Beside the rallies I don’t actually know what it’s going to do, how it’s going to achieve its demands or the actual purpose of the organisation, is it just a pressure group for its demands or is it a movement? I hope it’s a movement, it certainly has the potential to be one but only if it starts taking action.

E!E is going to do a rally in 50 locations around the country, but then what? Say they do one a week, that is nearly a year of rallies that ultimately achieve nothing. If you’re going to these places and bringing together hundreds if not thousands of activists, use them, do something, get out on the streets, get the message out, build something, create something, this is a golden opportunity that won’t come around again – don’t make this Momentum 2.0.

Enough IS Enough but when will we have had enough rallies? When will we start doing something?

The rallies serve a purpose but they can only be useful if a wider strategy of solidarity and engagement is utilized alongside them. Firstly at the very least these rallies should be held outside and therefore open to all – causing a stir within a community and getting the attention of people that don’t live on the twittersphere or are already knee deep in left wing politics can only be a good thing.. Creating greater exposure to the ideas and the words said by the speakers, as after all everyone on the left has pretty much heard it all before anyway.

Yet more importantly these rallies could be used by E!E to go into a community and support that community, help them in organising within their community. Why not use the rallies to also educate attendees with workshops that teach valuable organising skills, so that the impact of the rally is felt long after it is over.

Why not use them as a way to sign people up to trade unions? To get people active within their trade unions, that is if they can afford a TU membership when many necessities are going to be unaffordable. To forge stronger cooperation between local trade union branches, while strengthening community support and cooperation. Not everyone might be in a trade union, but this fight is the fight of all the working class, employed or not.

The rallies could be a launching point to get all the groups signed up in an area, and create an E!E group that people not affiliated with any of the signatories to E!E can start doing something productive within their communities, with the support of the rally attendees.

I’m still hopeful that the mass of people signed up to E!E can drag it away from the talking circuit and bring it out on to the streets. We need to be out on the streets, carrying out acts of solidarity, supporting local communities and helping people organise to defend themselves and their communities against
the full force of this capitalism crisis. They can be utilizing the hundreds of thousands to help support strike action, and any action by a local community that furthers the interests of the people.

It is a necessity, people are dying, people are going to die and we need to be organising to defend our interests and defend the working class against the suffering it is enduring and will continue to endure.

Now is already late, and tomorrow many of us won’t be alive. It is really now, or never.