Enough is Enough Rallies

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Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by headshot » Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:13 am

I really wish the left could actually just focus on one or two issues at once.

I turned up to the Birmingham rally and most of the banners weren’t actually about the issue being discussed.

This will actively put passers-by off.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:17 am

Alternative take: people motivated by different (but overlapping) things are finally working together as they recognise their common cause.

If the aim was just to get people to turn out, mission accomplished. Harmonisation of the branding can follow.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by headshot » Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:31 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:17 am
Alternative take: people motivated by different (but overlapping) things are finally working together as they recognise their common cause.

If the aim was just to get people to turn out, mission accomplished. Harmonisation of the branding can follow.
I get it. Solidarity etc.

But if you want to bring people from outside of your bubble in, this ain’t the way to do it.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by bjn » Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:42 am

It’s stupid and will only alienate most people. Whatever you think of Israel/Palestine, it’s nothing to do with the problem directly at hand, nor anything the government has much control over. It’s as relevant as signs saying Bolsanaro being a complete cockwaffle or Xi is a murdering a..eh.le.

Most people will look at the signs and think “what’s that to do with me, total tossers.” and ignore you.

Flying Spaghetti Monster on a bike it’s pointless and counter productive.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:47 am

It does look a bit like people turned up at the last minute with whatever signs they already had.

Would a passerby be able to tell what the demonstration was largely about?
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by bjn » Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:08 pm

From the look of that it seems to be a march against Israel.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Grumble » Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:40 pm

This is why I don’t go on demonstrations
where once I used to scintillate
now I sin till ten past three

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:56 pm

bjn wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:08 pm
From the look of that it seems to be a march against Israel.
One out of three four placards mentions Gaza and that's your conclusion?
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by EACLucifer » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:11 pm

Stop the War Coalition are a despicable organisation filled with all sorts of tyrannophiles and apologists for tyranny and warmongering, just so long as the warmongers are antiwestern.

Lately, they've been campaigning about Russia's war of imperial conquest in Ukraine. You see, they blame NATO, and want Ukrainians to be denied the means to defend themselves.

So no, I wouldn't join that demo.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Grumble » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:14 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:56 pm
bjn wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:08 pm
From the look of that it seems to be a march against Israel.
One out of three four placards mentions Gaza and that's your conclusion?
The impression I have from those placards is that the demo is full of tankies.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:21 pm

Wider crowd shots, rather than a couple of cherry-picked individuals, make it pretty clear what the demo's for https://mobile.twitter.com/BirminghamUC ... 4834890752

Sometimes you have to put effective opposition over ideological purity.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by headshot » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:22 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:56 pm
bjn wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:08 pm
From the look of that it seems to be a march against Israel.
One out of three four placards mentions Gaza and that's your conclusion?
For the record, almost all of the placards were Stop the* War. The entire area was cordoned by about 10 of the anti-Gaza war placards.

*THE war? A war? ANY war?

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by headshot » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:25 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:21 pm
Wider crowd shots, rather than a couple of cherry-picked individuals, make it pretty clear what the demo's for https://mobile.twitter.com/BirminghamUC ... 4834890752

Sometimes you have to put effective opposition over ideological purity.
I was there. I took the photos in the OP.

The photos in the Tweet are the cherry picked ones. They’re avoided the placards and the pop-up tent with Socialist Worker’s Party plastered all over it.

I even saw a poster that said “Marx was right”. 🙄

I stayed for 15 minutes and left after the fifth speaker said the same thing then got the crowd to chant “Tory Scum!”

Way to win hearts and minds. Not at all juvenile politics at all.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:26 pm

headshot wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:22 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:56 pm
bjn wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:08 pm
From the look of that it seems to be a march against Israel.
One out of three four placards mentions Gaza and that's your conclusion?
For the record, almost all of the placards were Stop the* War. The entire area was cordoned by about 10 of the anti-Gaza war placards.

*THE war? A war? ANY war?
As I understand it, today's protests were organised collectively by various groups encouraging their own members/contacts to turn up. So it probably isn't surprising that there were different groups there.

Stopping the* War does seem irrelevant to Enough is Enough's focus on the cost of living crisis, and their take on Ukraine (and other stuff) is rubbish. But I wouldn't write off the whole effort just because of a couple of numpties.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:28 pm

headshot wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:25 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:21 pm
Wider crowd shots, rather than a couple of cherry-picked individuals, make it pretty clear what the demo's for https://mobile.twitter.com/BirminghamUC ... 4834890752

Sometimes you have to put effective opposition over ideological purity.
I was there. I took the photos in the OP.

The photos in the Tweet are the cherry picked ones. They’re avoided the placards and the pop-up tent with Socialist Worker’s Party plastered all over it.

I even saw a poster that said “Marx was right”. 🙄

I stayed for 15 minutes and left after the fifth speaker said the same thing then got the crowd to chant “Tory Scum!”

Way to win hearts and minds. Not at all juvenile politics at all.
If we're going to judge what the demonstration as a whole looked like, we need to see more than a handful of people.

And, um, Marx pretty clearly was right about quite a lot of stuff, from the accumulation of capital to class struggle. That's why everyone, including you, was there.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by dyqik » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:33 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:28 pm
headshot wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:25 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:21 pm
Wider crowd shots, rather than a couple of cherry-picked individuals, make it pretty clear what the demo's for https://mobile.twitter.com/BirminghamUC ... 4834890752

Sometimes you have to put effective opposition over ideological purity.
I was there. I took the photos in the OP.

The photos in the Tweet are the cherry picked ones. They’re avoided the placards and the pop-up tent with Socialist Worker’s Party plastered all over it.

I even saw a poster that said “Marx was right”. 🙄

I stayed for 15 minutes and left after the fifth speaker said the same thing then got the crowd to chant “Tory Scum!”

Way to win hearts and minds. Not at all juvenile politics at all.
If we're going to judge what the demonstration as a whole looked like, we need to see more than a handful of people.
Er, why on earth would you make that statement to an eye witness?
Last edited by dyqik on Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by EACLucifer » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:34 pm

headshot wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:25 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:21 pm
Wider crowd shots, rather than a couple of cherry-picked individuals, make it pretty clear what the demo's for https://mobile.twitter.com/BirminghamUC ... 4834890752

Sometimes you have to put effective opposition over ideological purity.
I was there. I took the photos in the OP.

The photos in the Tweet are the cherry picked ones. They’re avoided the placards and the pop-up tent with Socialist Worker’s Party plastered all over it.
SWP love to hijack causes. They love to hijack well-meaning naive people too. Utterly poisonous organisation that, aside from their tyrannophilia and other sh.tty politics - one of their front groups protested alongside Anjen Choudhary against Southhall Black Sisters :shock: - also have massive problems with abuse and predatory behaviour inside the organisation, and notoriously bullied a young rape survivor into not going to the authorities to protect the middle aged perpetrator who was senior within the group.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by discovolante » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:37 pm

The SWP turn up to every rally going, it's pretty much unavoidable and the fewer non-SWP people are there the more the SWP will dominate.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:42 pm

dyqik wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:33 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:28 pm
headshot wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:25 pm


I was there. I took the photos in the OP.

The photos in the Tweet are the cherry picked ones. They’re avoided the placards and the pop-up tent with Socialist Worker’s Party plastered all over it.

I even saw a poster that said “Marx was right”. 🙄

I stayed for 15 minutes and left after the fifth speaker said the same thing then got the crowd to chant “Tory Scum!”

Way to win hearts and minds. Not at all juvenile politics at all.
If we're going to judge what the demonstration as a whole looked like, we need to see more than a handful of people.
Er, why on earth would you make that statement to an eye witness?
The eye witness started a thread claiming "most of the banners weren’t actually about the issue being discussed".

They posted photos in which five banners are visible: three small ones, of which two are completely irrelevant and one at least mentions not cutting welfare, and two big ones for trade unions which obviously are relevant. So that's about half of a tiny sample being about the issue being discussed.

I went on twitter and searched for #EnoughIsEnough Birmingham and found a bunch of wider-angle crowd shots which give a different impression: lots of big banners about the cost of living crisis.

So the illustrative pictures chosen by the eyewitness aren't very convincing. The problem might arise from their thinking that groups like Unions and the Socialist Workers Party aren't relevant to a demonstration in favour of helping workers by doing more socialism, for instance.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by dyqik » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:43 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:42 pm
dyqik wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:33 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:28 pm


If we're going to judge what the demonstration as a whole looked like, we need to see more than a handful of people.
Er, why on earth would you make that statement to an eye witness?
The eye witness started a thread claiming "most of the banners weren’t actually about the issue being discussed".

They posted photos in which five banners are visible: three small ones, of which two are completely irrelevant and one at least mentions not cutting welfare, and two big ones for trade unions which obviously are relevant. So that's about half of a tiny sample being about the issue being discussed.

I went on twitter and searched for #EnoughIsEnough Birmingham and found a bunch of wider-angle crowd shots which give a different impression: lots of big banners about the cost of living crisis.

So the illustrative pictures chosen by the eyewitness aren't very convincing. The problem might arise from their thinking that groups like Unions and the Socialist Workers Party aren't relevant to a demonstration in favour of helping workers by doing more socialism, for instance.
Ok, so it's because you don't believe the members of this forum.

The SWP aren't relevant to anything to do with actual help for people in the UK, as their major aim/effect seems to be to keep Labour out of power. And Stop The War are actively supporting the fascist that is partially responsible for the cost of living crisis.
Last edited by dyqik on Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:46 pm

EACLucifer wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:34 pm
headshot wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:25 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:21 pm
Wider crowd shots, rather than a couple of cherry-picked individuals, make it pretty clear what the demo's for https://mobile.twitter.com/BirminghamUC ... 4834890752

Sometimes you have to put effective opposition over ideological purity.
I was there. I took the photos in the OP.

The photos in the Tweet are the cherry picked ones. They’re avoided the placards and the pop-up tent with Socialist Worker’s Party plastered all over it.
SWP love to hijack causes. They love to hijack well-meaning naive people too. Utterly poisonous organisation that, aside from their tyrannophilia and other sh.tty politics - one of their front groups protested alongside Anjen Choudhary against Southhall Black Sisters :shock: - also have massive problems with abuse and predatory behaviour inside the organisation, and notoriously bullied a young rape survivor into not going to the authorities to protect the middle aged perpetrator who was senior within the group.
Yes, they suck. I can see why they're there though. As disco says it's probably better if sensible people who support the cause - which, according to recent polling, seems to be just about everyone - also hold their nose and turn up.

Much like the far left are always told to hold their nose and vote for centrists they disagree with on a lot of stuff. As a wise man said, the centre/left need to "actually just focus on one or two issues at once", which in this case is demonstrating about the cost of living crisis, rather than getting worked up because people they dislike share their concern.

headshot is in favour of not putting off Tories. The same argument applies to groups on the left IMHO.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:49 pm

dyqik wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:43 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:42 pm
dyqik wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:33 pm

Er, why on earth would you make that statement to an eye witness?
The eye witness started a thread claiming "most of the banners weren’t actually about the issue being discussed".

They posted photos in which five banners are visible: three small ones, of which two are completely irrelevant and one at least mentions not cutting welfare, and two big ones for trade unions which obviously are relevant. So that's about half of a tiny sample being about the issue being discussed.

I went on twitter and searched for #EnoughIsEnough Birmingham and found a bunch of wider-angle crowd shots which give a different impression: lots of big banners about the cost of living crisis.

So the illustrative pictures chosen by the eyewitness aren't very convincing. The problem might arise from their thinking that groups like Unions and the Socialist Workers Party aren't relevant to a demonstration in favour of helping workers by doing more socialism, for instance.
Ok, so it's because you don't believe the members of this forum.
Members of this forum ask each other for evidence all the time.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Opti » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:52 pm

The 'far-left' aren't particularly key to the next UK GE. There aren't huge numbers likely to vote labour anyway. Look at the voting numbers for TUSC and Respect, for example. The centre vote is absolutely essential to a Labour win at the next election. Like it or not.
The Great British Public have just been subjected to revolutionary politics. My bet is that they're not keen on a different sort of revolutionary politics just now.
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:01 pm

For sure. So it's good that these events whose organisers have sensible objectives enjoy mainstream support, despite the appearance of some annoying tw.ts.

Otherwise it's like letting a few stupid anarchists hijack the BLM campaign.

I'm saying don't write off the whole movement because of what appears to be a noisy unpleasant minority. It's good that people have turned up to this, and it would be bad if they were put off by some a..holes.
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Re: Enough is Enough Rallies

Post by headshot » Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:14 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:01 pm
For sure. So it's good that these events whose organisers have sensible objectives enjoy mainstream support, despite the appearance of some annoying tw.ts.

Otherwise it's like letting a few stupid anarchists hijack the BLM campaign.

I'm saying don't write off the whole movement because of what appears to be a noisy unpleasant minority. It's good that people have turned up to this, and it would be bad if they were put off by some a..holes.
I’m not writing the whole thing off. I was there after all, and it was a decent-ish turnout. Probably 300-400 people. Lots of good points made by the speakers (the CWU guy was particaulrly good) - even if each of them basically said the same thing every time.

There were three large banners for the unions. I’m very supportive of their presence. Frau HS is the Secretary for her branch of the UCU.

BUT…the majority of placards and banners as you walked up to the event were SWP, Stop the War, Pro-Assange (!) and other leftist causes.

As I said, the Gaza “End the siege” placards surrounded the entire space. It looked like an anti-war demo, not one with which almost every passer-by would associate with, or feel compassion for.

It was alienating and clearly gave people the wrong idea.

People need to be encouraged to join protests like this, and to feel comfortable being there - from all parts of the political spectrum. Chanting “Tory Scum” is just dumb, when you could shout “No more cuts” or “Liz Truss Out” or whatever.

It’s playground politics writ large.

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