LESS ED AND MORE RALPH

The young Ed Miliband with his father, Ralph.

Russell Brand should be listening to Ed Miliband's father, Ralph, and his views on the Labour Party.

RATHER THAN EMBRACING Ed Miliband,  comedian and actvist Russell Brand would of been better off reading what Ed's late father, Ralph, had to say about the Labour Party.

Ralph Miliband was of the view that the 'strategy' of socialism via parliamentary politics was nonsensical and that socialists would be better off building an alternative to the Labour Party at the grassroots level. Socialism would be delivered from the people, 'from below', not from 'enlightened politicians' handing out gifts 'from above.'

In his book Parliamentary Socialism Miliband writes: "It is absurd to think that the men who now rule the Labour Party, and who will go on ruling it, will ever want, or would agree under pressure, to push the Labour Party in socialist directions, and to show the resolution, single-mindedness and staying power which such reorientation would require'.

In The State In Capitalist Society he warns that the failure of the Labour Party would make the pathway"..smoother for would-be national saviours, whose extreme conservatism is carefully concealed beneath a demagogic rhetoric of a national renewal and social redemption, garnished, wherever suitable, with an appeal to racial and any other kind of popular prejudice."

The task for socialists in Britain,as it is in New Zealand, is not to meekly fall in behind the Labour Party at every election but to build a genuine socialist alternative. In Britain Left Unity is leading the way. In New Zealand we haven't even started the job.