Huey Newton once wrote that revolution is a struggle between the old and the new; he argued that there is a constant generational struggle where the youthful eventually replace the esteemed incumbent leaders by interjecting new ideas and practices that change the power balance between the powerful and the youthful.
Today I believe that Black British politics is in a state of revolutionary struggle; it is a struggle between the socialist inspired identity politics of the traditional Labour Party that was adopted by the generation that founded and struggled in the Labour Party Black Sections and birthed Britain's first "black" MP's who I refer to as the Black Labour/Power generation and the Liberal Democrat inspired Hip-Hop Generation that my politics responds to.
The Black Labour/Power generation were instrumental in shaping "black" politics in Britain and giving it a particular socialist interpretation. They interpreted the term "black" to include not only people of African descent but also those of South Asian descent and created a political bloc that was like a collection of the formerly colonised. They argued for big government; nationalisation and championed the Labour Party as the natural party of "black" community politics. They created a nationalistic wing within the party and sought to further the careers of the parties "black" members. The struggle of the Black Labour/Power generation was a success and produced the Labour Party and Britain's first "black" MP's and Councillors; Bill Morris the Trade Union leader and spawned a generation of intellectuals and activists that are prominent in British politics today particularly in the area of race relations. They were able to produce a 500-fold increase in the amount of "black" candidates in Town Hall's across the country and changed the racial landscape of British politics.
The Black Labour/Power generation with political giants such as Bernie Grant in Tottenham were able to cement the socialist ideal of the Labour Party into the imaginations of grassroots movements as well as inspire the creation of other self-organising organisations in the police force and amongst lawyers and others. The generation of Bernie Grant and others were instrumental in making the socialism of the traditional Labour Party the default political outlook of the "black" community that still exists to this day.
Recent statistics show that 64% of BAME community members vote for the Labour Party which means that the Labour Party is the most popular party amongst BAME communities. British politics and economics is dominated by the over 50's who are more consistent with voting and have available finances to back political parties. Politics in the "black" community is no different from mainstream politics in many ways and therefore the Black Labour/Power generation hold the balance of power. Today they still hold onto the socialist values and ideology that became popular when many were up and coming politicos on the left and now these ideals have become the communal intellectual status quo; at least ideologically and definitely not practically.
In many ways the Black Labour/Power generation were a product of the wider politics of the time where socialism and militancy were very much on the agenda in Britain and other parts of the world. In the 80's the dream of a socialist world was still a force to be reckoned with, but by the 2000's things had changed considerably. Today there is no outside of capitalism; there is no functioning socialist movement. Old Labour politics is no longer a credible fixture in mainstream British politics. Although there has been a rise in Green Party membership and the Respect Party have been able to gain one seat in the House of Commons their movements are not a threat to the mainstream Labour Party who have fundamentally abandoned the hard-core socialist ideas of the 1983 General Election for something that looks quite different.
So today socialist and far-left politics is in tatters. The few Labour politicians and figures that came to prominence on the back of such politics have more or less abandoned their socialist principles and become middle class and disconnected from a more youthful and disenfranchised generation who have not lived through an era of radical socialist politics but have largely existed in a capitalist society where there has been no viable alternative model and there is no foreseeable possibility of a socialist utopia. Today, still; the Black Labour/Power generation embrace a socialist ideology intellectually but of course their livelihoods and lifestyles depict a different picture. If put under pressure to explain their politics, this generation of politicos more often than not reaches for its default ideological setting regardless of the conditions within which they now live or the compromises that they make in their day to day lives.
The Black Labour/Power generation including the likes of Dianne Abbot and Trevor Philips have been charged with hypocrisy for sending their children to private schools. Other's have accepted powerful jobs and faced ridicule for "selling out". It is clear that for a new generation of politicos to avoid these charges of political inauthenticity it is time to adopt a different type of politics that is authentic and possible and not the result of ideological inertia or stagnation.
There are some from the Hip-Hop Generation who have embraced the quasi-socialism of the Labour Party such as David Lammy and Chuka Umunna and again are confronted with questions of inauthenticity and "Champagne Socialism" that some of the previous generation have also experienced. Neither Lammy or Umunna could be considered working class. Lammy may have lived near to a council estate but the trajectory of his life makes his working class authenticity questionable. Umunna is a product of the middle and upper classes and an attempt to style Chuka as a working class hero is unthinkable.
What we need today is a politics that is authentic to the Hip-Hop Generation that have grown up in a post-socialist world. It is clearly inauthentic to champion an ideological stance but not live it; this results in the public's disengagement from the Labour Party and fundamentally the political mainstream altogether because of what they consider to be hypocrisy by politicians who do not have an authentic or clear set of political ideals because the party has abandoned it's traditional political practice for pragmatism and is in ideological no man's land and struggling to be coherent and match theory and practice.
The struggles of the Black Labour/Power generation that included securing "black" political representation and enshrining race equality legislation in law amongst other things have largely been won and now the politics of struggle is becoming incoherent. The conversation is still around a certain type of race equality that enables the functioning of a middle class that Trevor Philips is part of; there are still go to "race" men and women then articulate the racial problems and initiate communal race relations and the states relationship to "race" of which Trevor Philips is one. Now that the revolution is over the likes of Trevor Philips struggle to articulate issues around "race"; they do not have the focus of creating legislation and demanding race-equality in local government or making the first "black" MP's.
However it is clearly obvious that the politics of the young politicos that became middle class are irrelevant and totally disengaged from the issues today that impact on a growing number of people of African and Asian descent. They struggle to make sense of things when drawing upon their theoretical tools because they came of age when certain ideas were popular but are now discredited or have come to fruition and now they are not sure what to say. Philips is clearly struggling to figure out something new and important to say about "race" and so are many others. We are waiting for someone who can articulate the way that "race" operates today and some of the issues that are symptoms of "race" inequality.
But it is clear that today we cannot look towards the Labour Party or the Black Labour/Power generation for a politics for the Hip-Hip Generation and that we should begin to look elsewhere to a fresher and more clearer politics that is practically authentic and does not cause the participants to be in a state of cognitive dissonance and existential crisis most of the time.
That is why I am a Liberal Democrat. I want to be authentic in my politics. I am not a revolutionary anti-capitalist and there is no way that I could ever be in our political climate and the economic conditions. I am not directly a "black" politician because I was not part of the Black Labour/Power generation where "black" really meant something and was a political rallying call. The only way that I could embrace such a philosophy would be through nostalgia but there is no way that I could embrace that politics with sincerity today no matter the demands of the older generation. I look upon the politics of the Black Labour/Power generation with pride. I enjoyed reading the literature that that generation lived on intellectually; Huey Newton; Angela Davis; Elaine Brown; Maurice Bishop; Walter Rodney; Trotsky and Marx. It shaped my desire to do politics and philosophy but it is not my politics or my political philosophy. It is my inspiration; but not my politics. It is impossible for me live the politics of those previous decades with a sense of passion and urgency because it is not alive amongst my peers.
For me today the new black politics will arise out of the Liberal Democrat party political philosophy of anti-authoritarianism, liberty and freedom of thought. The new "black" politics will be firmly focused on the promotion of civil liberties; drug policy and prison reform; mental health; overhaul of stop and search and free education. These are central Liberal Democrat policies that speak to where the struggle for race-equality exists today. The struggle lies in places where the likes of Trevor Philips; Dianne Abbot and their heirs Umunna and Lammy cannot reach and in policy areas that they have not made important in their work.
In taking up this new politics it is clear that the language of "race" alone is not adequate to tell the whole story because there are distinctions; and it is not the only way that arguments for race-equality can be framed. Today to be a race-equality campaigner is to embrace policy that is not race-specific but fundamentally impacts on race-equality issues such as prison and drug policy reform to deal with the disproportion amount of African-Caribbean boys in prison and with drug convictions; or civil liberties that tackles issues around detention of migrants and excessive monitoring of Muslims by the security services; or mental health funding that can support disenfranchised communities to deal with the mental health issues that follow from social isolation and the identity crisis that can engulf visibly different members of British society when they are not invited to participate fully in the social world or develop inferior complexes because of what they perceive as "institutional racism".
It is my belief that if we want to have a new "black" politics then we have to embrace new ideas and ways of doing things as well as a new focus on what needs to be done and how. I don't believe that any serious politico has ever sat back on their laurels and just repeated and regurgitated the politics of a previous generation. That is not inspirational or transformational politics...
But finally; we must remember that a new generation may not use the term "black" to describe our new "black" politics because the term does not have the same meaning or depth of feeling and identity that it once had. It does not stir up the same passion and any serious political thinker and organiser from the previous generation should be more than aware of that. For me; today, I am not "black" politics but "street" politics. I am not a socialist but a liberal. I hope that the community open their ears and hearts and challenge ourselves to become something new...
That is my story and I'm sticking to it!
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