Brighton Discussion Group
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It is hoped comrades will be attending a joint Left Unity and United and Different event in Brighton (Clock Tower) on Monday, 20 February from 2pm onwards. Please PM me if you can help out.More details here:https://www.facebook.com/events/1266208500118363/
Still early days but a resumption of Brighton Discussion Group meetings is very much on the cards with plans to hold meetings at the Victory pub (upstairs), 6 Duke St, Brighton BN1 1AH, starting on Sunday, 25 February at 1pm and thereafter on the fourth Sunday of each month.More details as they become available.
gnome wrote:Still early days but a resumption of Brighton Discussion Group meetings is very much on the cards with plans to hold meetings at the Victory pub (upstairs), 6 Duke St, Brighton BN1 1AH, starting on Sunday, 25 February at 1pm and thereafter on the fourth Sunday of each month.The title of the meeting on 25 February has now been fixed.'Momentum; just Swings and Roundabouts?'http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/brighton-discussion-group-1pmhttps://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/events/247133062/
Discussion held at the Victory Pub, Brighton on Sunday, 25 February.Theme of discussion: 'Momentum – just Swings and Roundabouts?'Summary of discussion1. Take influence from Momentum's success in engaging tens of thousands of people (usually younger voters) with left leaning politics (Cowburn, 2018). The SPGB could look into creating a digital app to translate our emails, Socialist Standards and website information to. We agreed that Momentum's free app would make a great template for our own, or we could even steal ideas for a youth SPGB website?These are a few possibilities of features a digital app could have:Voting abilitiesMeeting summaries and minutesProfiles for members to contact each other and their branches (almost like a Social-ist Social Media app)Organisational abilities – create announcements for events, leafleting and stall opportunities, talks (etc.)An events calendar – colour coded for talks, Conferences, branch meetings (etc.) with notifications set up to remind comrades of their next meeting and so on.Links to "partnerships" – trade unions? IWW? Libertarian Socialist/Marxist YouTube channels? Companion parties. Charities/trusts? Collectives?Suggested reading tab – Socialist Standards, Marxist literature (etc.)Would likely be fairly cheap to do and so could fit into our budget nicely.Audio-visual – accessible and exciting to young people, as well as for those comrades who may have visual/hearing impairments.An app like this would have to be social, which could, in turn, help boost attendance at branch meetings, conferences. Live streams of events could be used so that those who could not travel to the event can still participate by commenting and watching in real time.2. Party Traditionalists vs. Party Contemporarists: Stepping the SPGB into the 21st century by appealing to younger generations.The party needs to start establishing and promote concrete steps towards a global socialist society for new members/supporters/voters to aspire to. People are clear on our message and our end goal, but we need to make the concept of a socialist society more tangible. We need to have clear, very visible answers to the following questions:"How are we going to get there?""What's going to happen if the SPGB are in government but no other country in the world has voted for the socialist alternative?""What will the starting points of reorganising our capitalist societies into socialist ones look like?""What's the next step?"3. Agenda topic for the next Brighton discussion meeting: 'Practical Ways for Spreading the Case for Socialism'Sunday, 25 March at the Victory Pub (upstairs), 6 Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AH @ 1pmReferences:Cowburn, A. (2018) Momentum surges past 35,000 members with 'more than 1,000 members joining every month'. Article published by the Independent. [Online] Available at: <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/momentum-members-growth-labour-party-jeremy-corbyn-ukip-green-conservative-membership-numbers-tory-a8166031.html> [Accessed 25th February, 2018]
There are some very useful ideas in this report and the digital app it refers too – though I'm a bit hazy about how it works – sounds like something the Party ought to definitely acquire One of the features mentioned is an abilty to provide "Profiles for members to contact each other and their branches (almost like a Social-ist Social Media app)". This could assist implementation of the proposed "buddy system" mentioned in the recent Party Survey. It would also be very handy to know the particular interests and abilities of members from the point of view of the Publications Committeee insofar as we would like to widen the engagement of members in various projects that have been suggested
Next meeting of the group will be on Sunday, 25 March at the Victory Pub, 6 Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AH. It has now been decided to have this and future monthly meetings in the evening:7pm to 9pmSubject for discussion – 'Practical Ways for Spreading the Case for Socialism'http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/brighton-discussion-group-1pm-0
Discussion held at the Victory Pub, Brighton on Sunday, 25 March.Theme of discussion: 'Practical Ways for Spreading the Case for Socialism'Summary of discussionIncrease representation of minorities within membership of the party – including young people, BAME, LGBT+, women etc. This will help us engage with their communities. Our principles and literature is inclusive, but actions speak louder than words. Talk about how capitalism negatively affects these minorities (e.g. commodification of BAME communities, objectification of women etc.) Engage with activism. Short term, medium term and long term tangible goals for socialism – "In 10 years time, we want this to happen… so to get there we need to do this…" We have lots of members and supporters, but only few people show up. What are we offering them? A pint and a chat won't suffice, creativity and goals (maybe branch projects?) could increase engagement. Branch projects include individual accountability for its success, furthers the party and builds branches together as teams a communities. The party is tangible to a certain point (candidates standing in elections) but where does it go from there? We can't shrug it off as, "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it". Propaganda and getting our message across is still the first aim of the party, over candidacy. But how do we convince people to join us and how do we measure that? Sponsored advertisement in social media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc.)? Subscriptions to YouTube channels – YouTube campaign. Younger generations don't trawl through literature, they watch viral videos, short articles, videos, podcasts, "click baits". Bite-sized information and social media campaigns, not socialist standards and books. Audio-visual content is the most effective way of engaging young people – music, videos etc. University and College committee could do more by communicating with student unions to organise talks, meetings, film evenings and debates. Members could leaflet student unions and trade union meetings? Facebook, Snapchat (world socialism filter?) and Instagram stories. – We have uploaded a photo of the discussion meeting onto the event's and SPGB group's Facebook story. Formatting seems to be a problem for Facebook if the photo is landscape. It all comes down to, "Actions speak louder than words" and effectiveness of our actions and goals.Someone in the pub, who we talked to, asked us to change our group name to the "Sexy Brighton Socialists"… it was not voted upon. The next meeting will be on Sunday, 27th May @ 7pm due to the April Annual Conference – no discussion topic has been set for this meeting.Niall M.
gnome wrote:Discussion held at the Victory Pub, Brighton on Sunday, 25 March.Theme of discussion: 'Practical Ways for Spreading the Case for Socialism'Summary of discussionIncrease representation of minorities within membership of the party – including young people, BAME, LGBT+, women etc. This will help us engage with their communities. Our principles and literature is inclusive, but actions speak louder than words. Talk about how capitalism negatively affects these minorities (e.g. commodification of BAME communities, objectification of women etc.) Engage with activism. Short term, medium term and long term tangible goals for socialism – "In 10 years time, we want this to happen… so to get there we need to do this…" We have lots of members and supporters, but only few people show up. What are we offering them? A pint and a chat won't suffice, creativity and goals (maybe branch projects?) could increase engagement. Branch projects include individual accountability for its success, furthers the party and builds branches together as teams a communities. The party is tangible to a certain point (candidates standing in elections) but where does it go from there? We can't shrug it off as, "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it". Propaganda and getting our message across is still the first aim of the party, over candidacy. But how do we convince people to join us and how do we measure that? Sponsored advertisement in social media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc.)? Subscriptions to YouTube channels – YouTube campaign. Younger generations don't trawl through literature, they watch viral videos, short articles, videos, podcasts, "click baits". Bite-sized information and social media campaigns, not socialist standards and books. Audio-visual content is the most effective way of engaging young people – music, videos etc. University and College committee could do more by communicating with student unions to organise talks, meetings, film evenings and debates. Members could leaflet student unions and trade union meetings? Facebook, Snapchat (world socialism filter?) and Instagram stories. – We have uploaded a photo of the discussion meeting onto the event's and SPGB group's Facebook story. Formatting seems to be a problem for Facebook if the photo is landscape. It all comes down to, "Actions speak louder than words" and effectiveness of our actions and goals.Someone in the pub, who we talked to, asked us to change our group name to the "Sexy Brighton Socialists"… it was not voted upon. The next meeting will be on Sunday, 27th May @ 7pm due to the April Annual Conference – no discussion topic has been set for this meeting.Niall M.The above all sounds encouraging and positive. How can it be linked up with recent efforts looking into the Party's reorganisation. What is happening about the latter?
robbo203 wrote:The above all sounds encouraging and positive. How can it be linked up with recent efforts looking into the Party's reorganisation. What is happening about the latter?Haven't you seen the agenda for Conference. Apart fom a couple of joke motions fom Lancaster, that's all thst's going to be discussed.
robbo203 wrote:The above all sounds encouraging and positive. How can it be linked up with recent efforts looking into the Party's reorganisation. What is happening about the latter?ALB wrote:Haven't you seen the agenda for Conference. Apart from a couple of joke motions from Lancaster, that's all that's going to be discussed.Well, not quite all. There's a few joke motions from elsewhere too.But see for yourself:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/world-socialist-movement/conference-2018-final-agenda
Quote:If we were to obtain such a windfall…We imagine the money would be spent on doing what we do now better and on a bigger scale. We could obtain our own printing press and perhaps bring out a weekly paper as well as a glossy monthly. We could pay socialists to work full-time as journalists, designers, printers and experts in distribution. We could put organisers in the field. We could start a publishing house to bring out books and pamphlets, both reprints and new material. We could contest more seats at elections and run a more high-profile campaign: if we put up more than 50 candidates we could have party election broadcasts which we would have the money to do well. We could help our companion parties and socialist groups in other parts of the world expand their activities too. We could step up our advertising and publicity.http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/03/letters-back-to-land-1997.html
alanjjohnstone wrote:Quote:If we were to obtain such a windfall…We imagine the money would be spent on doing what we do now better and on a bigger scale. We could obtain our own printing press and perhaps bring out a weekly paper as well as a glossy monthly. We could pay socialists to work full-time as journalists, designers, printers and experts in distribution. We could put organisers in the field. We could start a publishing house to bring out books and pamphlets, both reprints and new material. We could contest more seats at elections and run a more high-profile campaign: if we put up more than 50 candidates we could have party election broadcasts which we would have the money to do well. We could help our companion parties and socialist groups in other parts of the world expand their activities too. We could step up our advertising and publicity.http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/03/letters-back-to-land-1997.html
All of that presupposes a much larger membership than we presently have but even before that stage is reached it'll be a sad day when we have to resort to paying members to work for socialism.
gnome wrote:The next meeting will be on Sunday, 27th May @ 7pm due to the April Annual Conference – no discussion topic has been set for this meeting.Topic for this meeting will be: 'Where do we go from here?'https://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/events/249102485/
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/brighton-discussion-group-7pm
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