From one year ago........

I am suffering from Post Hay Festival Syndrome. I am in need of humour from resistance to right wing nasties. I need Srdja Popovic and his methods of rebellion. I had a lovely weekend we went to the festival ,drank wine and stayed in a cottage outside of Hay. The four speakers we saw Srdja Popovic, Polly Vernon, Alex Salmon and Peter Hain were all erudite, witty and perceptive. However I feel in retrospect that what we all need is an element of all of them. The dream of a more radical world stayed hiding and unformulated. Srdja Popovic gave the means of resistance , using humour, leaming to pick our battlegrounds and yet did not formulate s cleasr radical, ecosocialist analysis, Polly Vernon saw that we still had unequal pay, that sexual violence still threatened women and that we must defend a womans power over her reproductive rights. Alex Salmond was charismatic told an interesting story about the referendum and the rise of small scale representative movements. Peter Hain had the most intellectuaally charged and positive analysis. It was the first time for 40 years that I have heard hin use the phrase Libertarian Socialism. He challenged the cult of austerity and argued that we must follow a scandanavian model of the state. He argued for high taxation or growth or a mixture of both.. What was refreshing about it was that it was a stark contrast to the words of Stepehn kinnock that I heard during the general election, sneering at the idea of a Welsh State. Hain is a clear thinker and is thinking about the future of Socialism and its relationship to Green thinking and alternative economic theory.. I bought Hayley Peter Hain`s new book. Its an interesting outlook from someone who fourty years ago was in the same party that I was. I still see his gleam and radicalism...But the question remains how do we bring about a realignment of the left and a new radical campaigning party.

if our country was run by the radical thinkers that attended Hay it would be kinder, gentler more socialist , more green yet how can that be now. That is the challenge to all of us......

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