A number of people, few of whom I can be bothered to engage with, have displayed a disproportionate interest in the origins of the Euston Manifesto Group’s name, as well as the exact personnel.
If these discussions can be contained in just a few places – this pile of poo in particular, also here – thus allowing those who aren’t professional snides and cynics to take the manifesto on its merits, that would be wonderful.
I must say that I naively thought to myself, in advance of publication, “Might this manifesto have been so carefully drafted that it’s difficult for open-minded people to actually disagree with it, as a basis for future discussion?”. After all, it was intended to be cross-party, and only the most extreme should really have had difficulties with it. Well, if indeed the group does now have a mortal enemy, it’s looking to be the afore-mentioned web-dwelling nay-sayers, who may shelter under the “Left” banner, but who have nothing worthwhile to offer. Paul Anderson and Will both have more uncompromising, and more amusing, takes…
For those interested in trivia, the story is that the word Euston was derived from the approximate location of a pub (sorry, it wasn’t smoky, though the toilet was broken and cold – oops, given it away now) where group meetings took place. In fact, the name was originally proposed by myself, but won a vote, and was modified over time. Among the advantages are that, because the name is not itself overtly political, it – and the organisation that used it – could not be immediately dismissed by one section or other. The group would have to be listened to (OK, journalists were also involved), and judgements taken on the basis of merit. The fact that some weenies have attempted to draw some significance out of the name, or use the London landmark/tube station-theme themselves, is a little tedious:
Is it just me or does the “Euston Manifesto” sound like something dredged from the depths of a Franz Kafka novel?
Yeah, right.
Without wanting to minimise the huge contribution of Norm, it’s simply lazy to use terms like “usual suspects“, when the whole point of a group – especially one with an expanding list of supporters and contributors – is that all sorts of people are, and have been, contributing behind the scenes, and not all of whom can be tagged quite as easily. As regards the actual size of the group, well, the blogosphere is not so much of a meritocracy (this’ll be especially clear to you if you’re a blogging newbie and have discovered Comment is Free) that the perceived popularity/impact of a point of view in the blogging world is any guide to its rectitude or ‘worth’, let alone its popularity among the general population. Democracy’s great, but I can’t believe people waste their time speculating about how big a public demonstration one particular viewpoint could muster, as if that’s an accurate guide to anything.
Oh, one last point, there have been references to “left-wing turf war”, “ideological battles of the 70s”, and “Marxists looking for a new religion”. Must point out that, while some group members are of an age to have been involved when these battles were de rigeur, others are sufficiently young to be free of such associations, and haven’t the slightest interest in this kind of thing. Sorry I can’t participate, but they are essentially irrelevant to the manifesto.
By all means let your positive (or indeed negative) opinions of Euston Group members inform you as you read what they have to say, but that’s as far as it should be taken. As more articles are published, we’ll hear a lot more detail, and there’ll be greater discussion of the issues. At the moment, the group is still in “announcement” mode, hence the temporary turning-off of comments.
surely not ‘enemy’? surely rather just ‘people we disagree with about certain things’?
I don’t know about that – I just haven’t got any time for people (e.g. the links I mentioned) who are merely cynical, and who want things to fail just so they can gloat. What can you talk about? Left and Right doesn’t come into the discussion by this stage, nor good/bad, right/wrong, etc.
Sure, but you have to expect treatment like this, just as, say, Madeline Bunting has to expect getting a kicking from the guys at Harry’s Place whenever she writes an article for the Guardian. Whenever you express an idea, left or right, good or bad, you always find people lining up to mock you, so long as you do it in the public arena. Even if the sentiments in the Euston Manifesto were so universal that absolutely everyone agreed, you’d still be ridiculed – such is politics, sadly, and such is blogging…
Oh dear! People with too much time on their hands canc reate this:
http://muscularliberalswatch.blogspot.com/
PencilBob
Saw it earlier on – it has a certain charm, and thankfully very little to do with politics…
“surely not ‘enemy’? surely rather just ‘people we disagree with about certain things’?”
Indeed. To be this defensive only a fews days after launch speaks volumes about the “manifestos” authors confidence in the future of the project. No matter, as soon as it dies and Brown is PM I’m sure he’ll give em all cushy jobs as special advisors!
> as soon as it dies
Very constructive – anything useful to add?
I’ve just been to the site of the dope. No the thing doesn’t have anything to say. On anything. Whatsoever.
“anything useful to add?”
Yep, see my prediction of what the authors will do post EM.;)
‘it’s simply lazy to use terms like “usual suspects”,’ I agree.
It’s not lazy to use terms like, “those who aren’t professional snides and cynics” …
It might well have been lazy for me to use that term if it allowed me to ignore (and encourage others to ignore) the views of a particular group by making inaccurate generalisations (including some charming racial/religious/socioeconomic ones) about their views and identities. That’s not something I’ve done – I’ve read widely, with mounting queasiness.
Moreover, the charge of hypocrisy doesn’t work for another reason. On the one hand, we have criticism from opponents (a). We also have defence from supporters (b), and finally we have the document itself (c). The group I perhaps lazily tagged “professional snides and cynics” seek to blank out (b) and (c), giving casual readers no capacity to get involved in the discussion. Even if I had encouraged others to ignore the critics, that merely blanks out (a).
In other words, only one side is determined to silence debate, and it ain’t me/mine.
I can’t see your point here, Andrew. D2’s piece, which you refer to as “a pile of poo” has a link to teh manifesto in its first sentence. How is that blanking it out?
I did rather run with the “blanking” motif – what I was trying to express was that by labelling the protagonists as the “usual suspects”, authors (not D2) have implied that the Manifesto was predictable, a rehash of old arguments, and generally not worth the time of casual readers. There have been some well-intentioned critiques, but not many.
I’d much rather people said the Manifesto was vague, airy-fairy, or pie-in-the-sky, rather than neocon, right-wing, Blairite, Zionist, pro-American apologism, part of a left-wing turf war, an obsession of middle-aged Marxists, etc.
I’m not without humour, but the D2 thing was mocking without being satirical. It was also unfunny and short. So I think the expression I used accurately summed up its contribution to the debate, to the tone of the debate, and to the sum of human knowledge. The fact that the Guardian thought it worth giving prominence also rankles.
OK, point taken re D2. Except that I can’t see what’s wrong with short. The Gauche summary seems to be popular, and his is even shorter. (It’s not a very constructive abridgement, even though he’s a signee and a supporter.) And as for the length of the EM, it’s 2933 words. The Declaration of Independence is 1325 words.
I can understand why you’d like there to be “well intentioned critiques” (wouldn’t we all), but not why you seem to expect them. And I can understand why you’d like criticism to focus on vagueness, etc (which I think is a very valid criticism; I think much of it is very bland), but some of what you take as criticism is in fact intended as praise. Take A.E.Brain (another signee): “I still think this is more NeoCon than Leftist …” This doesn’t make her right, of course, but not everyone who says it means it critically. As for Blairite, surely there’s an implicit message in the Manifesto that the Left is better lead by Blair than by any alternative “leftist” candidate? There’s nothing which says that Blair should go, is there? Who can read Harry’s Place without being aware that there *is* a left-wing turf war?
Could it be that the Guardian was trying to be fair? It gave prominence to Normas Geras’ announcement as well. The New Statesman published it first, yet you’ve found the energy to be rankled at the dead tree publishers when they publish something you dislike, but not grateful when they publish something you like. You’ll just have to accept that a lot of what gets into newsprint is crap, and seeing your own opinions reflected in newspaper columns is no more a basic human right than vintage Krug. Be happy if it happens, and don’t let it rankle when it doesn’t.
I was really making the point that, rather than being pithy and concise, the D2 piece could have been knocked up in five minutes. If I had actually written parts of the EM doc, I imagine it would have been more concise, but there is a fair amount of substance there.
OK, fair point with regard to Harry’s Place, but I don’t accept the argument that the Manifesto set out to *provoke* a particular faction, to *offend* the anti-war movement as a group and as individuals, or be a continuance of a 70s far-left factional dispute (references to the history and ages of certain individuals). You can bring all these things to the discussion, but the Manifesto does not, I feel, necessarily imply them.
As for Blairite – accusers don’t seem to have twigged that the Manifesto might appear Blair-shaped for the very reason that he, alone among senior politicians, seems to have a ready grasp of the issues. Internationally, anyway. Domestically, it’s a different story, but that’s Blair’s problem – and our problem – and not necessarily within the M’s remit (I may need to re-read it, though). Present to the supporters someone with the same commitment but without the (ahem) other stuff, and Blair could be pensioned-off.
As for vagueness, well, I wouldn’t say that was my considered opinion, but others have said it, and I’d rather they thought that having read the thing than that they dismissed it out of hand. Of course if all they said was that it was vague, then
I don’t think my observations on the balance of CiF articles should be taken too seriously (though some of the comments left there have been outrageous), given that I’m not neutral, and will tend to react more to articles I don’t agree with. It just seemed a bit hackneyed and witless to be granted space on a national newspaper site (not to be outdone, Stephen Pollard has also jumped on the ‘tube station’ bandwagon) – naive!
Missed a bit:
Of course if all they said was that it was vague, then … they can’t have very enquiring minds.
[...] maybe I am overdramatising somewhat, but one of the purposes of the Euston Manifesto, as I see it, is that by presenting a document [...]