LabourList – mouthpiece, no; defender, yes!

By VoteRedGoGreen

Alex Smith’s article on a “new direction” for LabourList is excellent, and is exactly the right thing we need if we are all going to be able to put the events of the past 4 weeks behind us.

Alex is generally right in his vision for what LabourList should be: a genuine online hub for Labour – and left-inclined individuals, who hold certain values – our values – and advocate them with passion and vigour.

Alex goes further, and says:

“But LabourList will not be a mouthpiece for government, nor a place for one personality to push an agenda”.

He is, of course, right again – but (as I’m sure he is aware) we all have to be very clear on what being a “mouthpiece” really means.

Nobody wants to read articles about things like “Combating consumer disengagement in the public sphere: synergistic axioms for a better tomorrow”, or other waffled government-ese, which simply announce what ministers are doing press-release style.

However, we shouldn’t fall into the trap set by the right wing trolls; defending the Labour government, and what it has done since 1997, isn’t being a mouthpiece at all. It should be at the core of what a Labour website is about.

I wouldn’t have joined the Labour Party, and continued being an active supporter through thick and thin, if I didn’t think that what Labour does in government is worth fighting for. Often, you look at a government policy and think that the government could have gone further; that it could have focussed differently; that its priorities are skewed; or that it’s doing something that it shouldn’t do at all. Nevertheless, the overall picture is of our government implementing those values which we agree LabourList should exist to espouse.

Of course, we don’t need the government or the Party leadership to tell us how to think. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t allowed to agree with them, even most of the time; nor that the less we agree with them, the more independent and credible we somehow are.

Since it was established, I don’t think that LabourList has been a mouthpiece for government. I’ve contributed a few articles: I came up with them (usually whilst bored during lunch-breaks), I sent them in, and they appeared. Nobody wrote them for me, nobody told me what to think or say, and nobody edited out anything rude I’ve said about Gordon Brown or any other minister.

I can only assume that the same is true of other contributors, especially those (frequent) contributions made by people who are critical of the government. I’ve seen no evidence of a concerted campaign to stifle debate and free-speech on this site, and the protests by the rightist saddos in the comments are simply shrill hysteria.

Most of all, I think, we have to ensure that we are comfortable being who we are: we can’t be knocked off balance either by the (few) voices telling us to be “more loyal”, nor by the screeching voices to our right saying that we’re government-led automatons.

Unless we feel confident being Labour people – and that may mean defending our own government on the frequent occasions when we think it’s in the right – then we’re going to be on the back foot permanently, and that can only go one way come election time.