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I've been thinking a lot about the role of 'Guilty Men', published 80 years ago this summer, in building opposition to the old ruling class – and especially so this evening. Four good pieces of reading/listening from earlier this year are... 1/
'Guilty Men at 80' by @conradlandin in @tribunemagazine https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/07/guilty-men-at-80, 'The Guilty Men Thesis and Labour's Route to Power' by @paulewart23 in @NewSocialistUK https://newsocialist.org.uk/guilty-men-thesis-and-labours-route-power/ ... 2/
'Keir Starmer needs to find his own Guilty Men' by @PolProfSteve in the @spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-needs-to-find-his-own-guilty-men, and @phil_tinline's 'Guilty Men' broadcast on Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khkn 3/
As someone who believes in leading on what you're for, not what you're against, this goes a bit against the grain - but in order to set out a solution you still need to define the problem 4/
As it happens I don't think 'guilty men' is exactly the problem today. It's more of a guilty system we face - tired, elitist, complacent, corrupt - and our current governing class is a symptom of that (even those who rail against 'elites'). 5/
Replacing one set of right-wing populists with another set of pro-austerity technocrats, or vice versa, won't solve anything - they thrive off each other 6/
We need not just a change of people at the top but something deeper: a transformation in our democratic processes: transparent, participatory, public-spirited and empathetic. 7/
That seems a long way off right now but George Orwell, writing shortly after Guilty Men, describes what we need: "What is wanted is a conscious open revolt by ordinary people against inefficiency, class privilege and the rule of the old." Can we build the movement to do this? 8/8
